A Time Before Crack

A Time Before Crack photographs by James Shabazz, out by powerHouse books. I remember when New York City looked like this! I went to Mt. Vernon High School, 90% African American. I remember hearing "Flashlight" at a block party. Forbidden music. I started searching for my own contact highs.

smarter New Age still dumb

Arthur Magazine is an infuriating mix of smart music writing and bad, bad pseudospiritual expectoration on the future, bashing dumb New Agers while promoting a smarter future of spiritual enlightenment is still not smart enough! I don't want a New New Age of no-bullshit anti-gurus -- courtesy of Rabbi Rushkoff and Daniel Pinchbeck. These guys, like their predecessors, Ken Wilbur and company have read Hegel second hand, and are predicting all sorts of disasters in the future that are meant to help us all grow spiritually. -- This is according to these heavy thinkers the REAL meaning of the Age of Aquarius!!!

Thanks, but no thanks! Read Marx, read Walter Benjamin, read some real thinkers for God's sake, and get back to me on commodity fetishism before you dribble on about your synthetic vision of the future of mankind. What is so SAD is that the music coverage and some of the other writing is fantastic (Chris Goss for instance). So I am really angry that Angelenos once again serve up good music writing with bad philosophy. ARRRRGGGGHHH...

CCP: Money making machine

Japan Times reports that the intellectual architect of Deng Xiaoping's market reforms has decided that the clock must be turned back: Liu Guogong has decided that "the Marxist canon" and free market are incompatible and that the latter must be jettisoned to save the former.

Sensing that the government has actually lost control of the country, Liu is hoping to reimpose Marxist orthodoxy rather than real Marxist analysis of a situation in which the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer. Instead of social services, we have in China no safety net at all...after fifty years of revolution, there is no socialism in Mao's famous countryside, where conditions deteriorate and a steady migration of peasants into the city provide cheap sweat shop labor.

Military ethics officer and West Point prof commits suicide in Irag

The Los Angeles Times reports that, "A psychologist reviewed Westhusing's e-mails and interviewed colleagues....She said that Westhusing had placed too much pressure on himself to succeed and that he was unusually rigid in his thinking. Westhusing struggled with the idea that monetary values could outweigh moral ones in war. This, she said, was a flaw."

Psychologists like this give psychology a bad name -- let's just call it apologia for corruption...Westhusing was honest, but emotionally fragile it seems. He had a Ph.D. in philosophy and enlisted to serve in Iraq. He could not reconcile what he saw the private security company USIS was doing in Iraq with his sense of ethics. I'm not sure this inability should be called a "flaw."

In April, Westhusing received an anonymous letter accusing the Virginia based company of committing human rights abuses -- (among them covering up the murder of innocent Iraqis while in detention) and overcharging the US government for its services.

The psychologist, however, blamed Westhusing...and called the letter the major "stressor." Yes, I would say that receiving such a letter when one is in charge of overseeing such an outfit might be a bit, well STRESSFUL.

Who are these people who get psychology degrees? They may have profited from focussing on Westhusing's specialization -- ethics, but then they may not have been able to reconcile the principles of ethical engagement and the practice of their so-called profession. USIS may be corrupt and greedy, but what are army psychologists?

french machinima explores riots

This is interesting: a simple but effective take on the French riots, made in machinima with the new Lionhead game, The Movies [via Thinking Machinima]

Let them Drink Bottled Water! -- CCP to Harbin's poor

The Guardian reports on the situation for Harbin's poor: a mother who can barely afford food is contemplating buying bottled water, but can't afford it, and has given up boiling her baby's bottle for the purposes of sterilizing it.

This is just ONE family's story. More than three million people live in Harbin.

Signs of hope -- the Chinese press have condemned the government's clumsy attempts at a coverup.

I also heard today that the Songhua river is freezing for the winter, locking in those benzene molecules in greyish chunks of ice. Shortsighted profit taking has been the name of the game since Deng Xiaoping declared that it was all right for the privileged of the CCP to use their political clout to get rich. The poor reap the harvest of ecological devastation and destruction. It's not all that different from the rest of the world, except for the sheer scale of the triumph of ruthlessness and sociopathology over hundreds of millions of Chinese peasants and working class poor.

Yes, it is the Industrial Revolution, but the scale is very different and scale is going to make all the difference here.

China's govt policy on toxic spill:

cover it up and hope no one notices Chinese Officials Sought to Hide Toxic Spill in Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang province. Local water supply was contaminated on November 13 in an explosion at a petrochemical factory that killed 1 and inured 70 more, but the government didn't notify residents downstream for a week as they tried to hide the extent of the accident.

I'm glad to see that the CCP remains consistent in its policy of "saving face" and jury rigging a cleanup -(by releasing water from a nearby dam to "dilute" the chemical spill) at the cost of poisoning millions of Harbin residents with benzene and other toxic waste.

So the day after Thanksgiving, I guess I'm thankful I don't live in Harbin.

bloggers' rights

Blast modern art

Following up on the post on bad art for bad times, I pass this one along:

"The recently released Curator Defense game puts the player in the role of a museum curator defending against rampaging art (it's unclear whether this means modern art or contemporary art). Using a light, RTS-like tech tree, the player can set up various defenses, such as banisters, defense turrets, and the Venus of Willendorf, to prevent modern art from reaching the store room. Once a piece reaches the store room, it becomes part of the permanent collection, displacing one of your Old Masterpieces. You lose when your entire collection has been replaced with modern art."

[Via Grand Text Auto, although I fixed their atrocious orthography here.]

LA Times on Curveball

is well summarized at Talking Points Memo. Curveball, an Iraqi defector to Germany and the source of the much touted intelligence on bioweapons in Iraq turns out to have been a mediocre engineer who was far from involved in Iraq's weapons programs. CIA investigations revealed that even his friends in Iraq called him a "con man" and "hustler." Pretending to have valuable information about the Iraqi weapons program, he gained political asylum in Germany, where he now resides. The best part of the story, or okay, best part to me, is that when investigators find his mother in Iraq and interview her, she shows the investigators the vestiges of her son's room, filled with posters of American rock stars.

Analysts in the CIA who dared to question Curveball's credibility were sidelined or pushed asiide, even when it was proven that he had been fired from his government post in 1995, and claims he made about developments in the development of bio-weapons were dated 1997. Curveball fingered a weapons plant that turned out to be a corn silo. The UN inspectors tested the corn.

Maybe Americans don't care that their government distorts intelligence in order to justify a war. I don't know.

Balboa Peninsula at dusk

Good signage can still be seen all over the Southland. Rx for the lack of visual texture that is Orange County.

Attack of the Career-Killing Blogs

Attack of the Career-Killing Blogs - When academics post online, do they risk their jobs? By Robert S. Boynton. Yes, it's true, what I always suspected, blogs can kill (careers).

Rather than seeing them as a way of creating new spaces of debate and dissent, some academics probably think they're out of control. And they're right. I don't publish my scholarly writing here, I test out ideas here and complete thoughts that I may not otherwise have the space to expand on in more academic writing. One hardly replaces the other. I very much appreciate the efforts of other bloggers, most of them not academics.

there is no greater happiness than

beautiful design, economically constructed with care and thought like The Dwell Homes by Empyrean. Anti-consumerism too often degenerates into asceticism and pseudo-spirituality: this is not what I want to suggest. These homes represent a utopic vision of living in beautiful spaces designed by people who think about the concept of the house as something not nostalgic nor pretending to be something it's not.

let there be beautiful lighting! for a small price...

This chandelier's description is what I'm talking about: this chandelier is performing intellectual operations of reduction and abstraction -- the point of purification! "Distilling the concept of a chandelier down to a single queue of exquisitely cut Swarovski crystal pendants, the Cellula (1996) is dramatic without being fussy or overbearing" is an example of this language of design transcendence that attributes to objects a kind of aesthetic redemption out of my reach. I am sitting under mass produced Home Despot lighting in our Club Ed kitchen, brass chain, glass shade -- it does nothing to the concept of hanging lamp at all -- it's a disgrace to itself and to me!

I'm a poor aesthete, the worst kind, I fall for this kind of stuff. The more desperate I feel, the more I want to be swaddled in DESIGN beyond my reach.

Design Beyond Reach

I'm so sick of Design Within Reach. I just can't take their catalogues anymore with their picture perfect objects, their literary descriptions of their picture perfect objects and their projected utopia based entirely on -- you guessed it!

Picture Perfect Design!

Its image of a "design" enlightened consumerism makes me want to throw up. I don't know why this has come over me all of the sudden, but I've suddenly realized that this recent design thing is all about buying your way to perfection. DWR thinks that because they're selling Corbusier, Eames, Nelson and Noguchi that somehow they're BETTER than other retailers selling plaid sofas, vinyl upholstery, suburban and cheap! And I was going to mention La-Z boy as another example of our style "retardataire." but then I checked their website.

Oh my God! -- even La-Z Boy is very DESIGN!

IT'S EVERYWHERE! I HAVE NO PLACE TO HIDE!!!!

something about this pic

is very, very creepy. Did they go to central casting to find him? In order to scare the bejesus out of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting? Luckily, he had to step down. It's not like the CPB couldn't use a little shakeup, but not like this!

"you Americans are crazy"

This post on dailykos deserves praise -- especially for its critique of the LEFT instrumentalization of religious discourse -- ends justifying the means -- we shall all be as cynical as we need to be to win elections so we must all publicly profess and confess to our deep spiritual lives and higher yearnings! But Jerome's post ignores the fact that Americans have gotten used to instrumentalized spirituality -- reading any self-help book. God is here to help us get ahead in life! Rather than arguing for a strong secular state, after the VA elections, the Dems are searching for the religious path to electoral victory --

This reminds me of the posters on campus for the Chinese Christian Fellowship. "Excel even more!" seems to be their motto. What does Christianity have to do with excellence? In fact, from the the religious pov, this is blasphemy and from the ethical pov, this is just the most blatant example of what passes today as religiosity.

Blatant self-promoting post coming up soon -- I shall speak of myself only in the third person and boost the ego in face of relative poverty!

the lying game

Document Says Oil Chiefs Met With Cheney Task Force. Said document was obtained by the Washingon Post from an unnamed source who has access to Secret Service records.

"A White House document shows that executives from big oil companies met with Vice President Cheney's energy task force in 2001 -- something long suspected by environmentalists but denied as recently as last week by industry officials testifying before Congress.

The document, obtained this week by The Washington Post, shows that officials from Exxon Mobil Corp., Conoco (before its merger with Phillips), Shell Oil Co. and BP America Inc. met in the White House complex with the Cheney aides who were developing a national energy policy, parts of which became law and parts of which are still being debated.

In a joint hearing last week of the Senate Energy and Commerce committees, the chief executives of Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips said their firms did not participate in the 2001 task force. The president of Shell Oil said his company did not participate "to my knowledge," and the chief of BP America Inc. said he did not know."

When you make 62 trillion dollars, you can lie in front of the Senate, especially when the Republican Senators refuse to put you under oath.

I'm having a problem with rich people these days. I know it's so UNSEEMLY to be resentful and that what I should do instead is go for a binge of self-promotion to make myself feel better and to boost the go and that's what I'm going to do in my next post.

bad art, bad artforum, bad world

In a previous post about no experimental wriiting after Abu Ghraib/Katrina aftermath/white phosphorus in Fallujah and the list keeps growing, I have decided to elaborate, especially since a commentor astutely asked, "what would non-experimental art be?"

It would be bad, I said, bad art for a bad world, with bad art criticism, bad art magazines, which is actually kind of what we have now anyway. I'm not a total grouch. I don't get out to galleries much any more. I don't see enough art period. I know there is some good art out there, but I have a general feeling, that if most art is baaaaad right now, it is because a great deal of what is made is very facile and that the kiss of the fashion world and the cult of youth, the power of collectors and the enormous amounts of money have conspired to make art baaaaad, which is why some one like Damien Hirst is authentic, because somehow he understands that there is some thing immoral about it all and he celebrates it. And Andrea Fraser's performances last year tried to allegorize the artist as prostitute, collector as john relationship, but the work just came off as sensationalistic and sleazy. Suddenly, I had to think of Michael Fried and his "anti-theatricality" fondly.

Now, I know that I'm quite crazy because I think that it is somehow it matters that I am keeping track of bad people and all the bad things happening in the world, but I must make a confession. I have not read a novel in months, and the only ones I can bear to read are Coetzee and Salih's Season of Migration to the North , books that are about senseless suffering and an ethically unsentimental position with regard to it. In addition, I have only able to read muckraking journalism, histories of the Middle East, labor history from the 70s -- histories of monopoly capitalism, Frankfurt School, Walter Benjamin, etc. I read cult studs because I'm working on a book about it, and in order to get angry.

I read Minima Moralia by Adorno over and over again. I may read Zizek for comic relief, I find most recent (80s, 90s) "theoretical writing" unreadable. I feel unmoved by the intricacies of "disrupting" or "subverting" or "transgressing" identities. I don't like the word "anxiety" as used without castration involved, I don't like the term 'masculinity in crisis."

While I was moved by Egger's autobiography, I couldn't finish it. Occasionally, I look at McSweeneys and admire the production values. I have become a philistine. The reign of W. has made me a barbarian, and I'd like to think in a good way.

I do yoga and try to block out the New Age spiel because the postures awaken my nerves, help with my bad back and shoulder and get me out of myself.

I admire anyone who experiments with art making, but writing/reading an entire novel without using the letter e does seem to me to be the kind of luxury I can't afford. Because I've got to keep track of the badness, in order to be able to better recognize the beauty, the goodness, the promises of happiness, as they are occasionally dealt to us, and of course to keep track of the bad guys. Who knows? What if one day I wake up with super powers and then I'll have to take care of some business, and my lists will have to be in order!

think twice about using aluminum helmets

Helmet Head has a special meaning for paranoiacs, who long thought that aluminum was the substance of choice for blocking out unwanted rays and other forms of long-distance influence. Thanks to students at MIT Media Lab, this has largely been disproven: aluminum helmets are not only a questionable fashion choice, they in fact AMPLIFY certain kinds of signals.

(thanks to bOing bOing).

No experimental writing after....

Abu Ghraib/the use of white phosphorus on civilians/Dick Cheney/W./the full extent of the atrocities committed at Abu Ghraib...Yes, I am rewriting Adorno's notorious statement "no poetry after Auschwitz..." It's a deeply felt thought experiment. I wish I could nod along and say cool to noulipo at Grand Text Auto. But something in me has become as barbaric as the events around me. I'm not able to kick back and play with language with the best of them. But then I've always hated the sanctimonious lecturing of missionary like do gooders who hector youth about the bad world we live in. So I'm left in quite bind here.

Experimental writing presupposes a utopic world: it's just very hard for me to project myself there these days. We probably need the experimental spirit more than ever in thinking writing living experiencing...making art, making things, making poems...making images that stimulate more than they deaden. So I'm trying to go back on the absolutism of the first sentence of the post, but I can't.

White Phosphorus

Independent Online Edition > Middle East reports as have many other sources in the past few days on information regarding the use of white phosphorus in the American assault on Fallujah. The Italian journalists have made a documentary called "Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre." White phosphorus is considered a chemical weapon, and its usein Iraq went widely unreported by the Western press until now. You can read the article in Italian here .

In addition, the documentary made by Maurizio Torrealta "also provides what it claims is clinching evidence that incendiary bombs known as Mark 77, a new, improved form of napalm, was used in the attack on Fallujah, in breach of the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons of 1980, which only allows its use against military targets." We are grateful to foreign journalists to take the risks and ask the hard questions, of the Department of Defense who has denied use of white phosphorus except for purposes of "illumination." The documentary provides eyewitness testimony of former American soldiers as well as photographic and forensic evidence to the contrary.

buy my bush for nine mil

As the New York Times reports, a Lobbyist Sought $9 Million to Set Bush Meeting: I move that we add Jack Abramoff's picture to the dictionary definition of "chutzpah" (and I note for those who never set foot on the East Coast, chutzpah is a word used "to describe someone who has outstepped the boundaries of accepted polite behaviour for selfish reasons, in English chutzpah can be spoken in admiration of non-conformist but gutsy audacity," wikipedia).

OC Returns

I voted in Irvine: you can count my NO in Orange County's results. This pathetic red county showing makes all the more proud of St. Paul for kicking out its faux Democrat mayor. The OC overwhelmingly voted for Arnold's initiatives from the anti-teacher initiative to the attempt to hobble union political contributions without imposing similar limits on corporate political sponsorship.

I don't understand the demographics here at all, but the Republicans proved loyal to the Governator. Luckily, there are a lot more people in Los Angeles County and the city of San Francisco!

Whew!

gimme my muji

In this recent Observer Magazine piece, Fiona Rattray reports from Tokyo about Muji, one of my favorite stores (in Paris or anywhere). I want to know why their California franchise was delayed!

Coleman and Rybak coast to victory

Coleman and Rybak coast to victory with St. Paul delivering a big FU to Bush lover, Randy Kelly. What was that man thinking? Coleman (no relation to Norm) trounced incumbent Kelly 69 percent to 31 percent. So, let us gloat for a moment. I remember thinking that it was impossible that Kelly would even have thought about endorsing Bush in 2004, much less do it. He is supposedly a Democrat, but the snake-like Machiavellian gesture has turned around and bitten him in the rear....

My private boycott of Wal-Mart

AlterNet: Special Coverage: Wal-Mart Coverage is a clearinghouse -- not for human intelligence, but journalistic coverage of Wal-Mart's corporate and Labor policies. The beneficiary of corporate welfare, Wal-mart has also managed to lead the way to the bottom in terms of labor conditions, at home and abroad. Its union busting tactics deserve special scrutiny.

For those very very and post post who believe that unions are merely corporations in disguise -- or are the rear-guard on a nostalgia trip for better days and bettery wages, take a gander at this noxious bouquet and then we can talk in abstractions.

Scooter Libby's erotic novel

"The Apprentice" (By Scooter Libby -- nothing to do with the reality TV show by the same name) reveals that the VP former chief of staff had another ambition -- pornographer. Read this The New Yorker: The Talk of the Town with juicy excerpts from Scooter's novel at your own risk! There is a noble virgin, gratuituous bestiality, insinuations of incest and minors initiated by -- let's just say it's unexpected.

Not one to frown up literary efforts, I've realized something about the martial neo-cons -- their prudishness is a strategem to fuel their aspirations to a kind of Burroughsian hyper-virility. They live in fantasy and historical novels. Did I mention that the novel is set in 1903 Japan for some no doubt prurient reason?

The other thing this Libby's pornographic scribbling reveals is that he is a rice queen. And if you don't know what this, I can't help you.

Mechanical Turk

Amazon Mechanical Turk is an on-line clearinghouse for tasks that cannot be performed by a computer. Referring to the famous chess playing automaton of the 19th century referred to in Walter Benjamin's "Theses on the Philosophy of History," the mechanical Turk appears to be able to defeat all opponents at chess, but was actually operated by mirrored contraptions and a dwarf who was hidden in its base.

I suppose what the Amazon service provides are opportunities for allegorical chess-playing dwarves to do things that computers and computing still fail at performing properly. Piecemeal work offered on line for all sorts of outfits who would prefer NOT to hire full time employees. Most of the tasks seem to have something to do with "image adjustment." But the tasks themselves are called "HITs" -- short for "Human Intelligence Tasks." Sign up for a task that only a human being can do and you might get paid. What is Human Intelligence then, but a capacity to do things that computers have not yet been programmed to do? So instead of computing being supplement to human intelligence, we have human intelligence here recruited as a supplement to computing.

Human labor strangely enough, can only be figured as a stunted and hidden "ghost in the machine." But remember -- the Turk always wins! Even if he isn't using mechanics to play chess!

Riots Put a Fear in the French - Los Angeles Times

As the Los Angeles Times reports it, "order and justice" are going to be the rallying terms for Chirac's center right government. The government is losing its grip on legitimacy and authority as the riots spiral out of control for an eighth night.

The May 68 riots almost brought down de Gaulle's government as well, but we have to remember its tragic ending -- intensification of police action, exhaustion of protesters, bickering within the Left that rendered them helpless when the moment to seize political advantage arrived.

This crisis will probably have similar outcomes: the rioters/protesters will be put down through police action. The police have reinforcements, protesters do not. And it is just as likely that the law and order folks of the Right will win the day.

The Left in disarray ever since Jospin's outrageously bad showing in a runoff for the Presidency when he came in third behind J-M Le Pen, is calling for the resignation of Sarkozy. But the powder keg of the suburbs will blow again, unless something like social and economic justice and equality for North and Sub-Saharan immigrants becomes a priority and not an afterthought for the French ruling class. Of course, that is one way to dominate your marginal populations -- the powder keg method let's call it.

Sexual Harassment Law in California and Tomatoes in November!

What do Sexual Harassment Laws have to do with Tomatoes in November? You don't see education about much of either in Minnesota!

I don't want to trash the place completely, but while I was taking my on line training course as faculty (and supervisor of TA's) -- required by the state of California, I realized that if there were strict state and university guidelines for Sexual Harassment and Hostile Workplace in Minnesota, I might have stayed there! Under state law in California, supervisors are responsible for handling in as objective a way as possible reports of harassment and they are responsible for reporting them immediately to the proper University officers. When I first expressed my dismay that Prof. X yelled at me and my female colleagues, I was told, "We can handle him. Don't you do anything!" Patronized and shunned, I informed another senior colleague who said, "If you think that is bad, you should see what he does when he comes to my office!"

Behind the scenes, I was transferred to another department. My departure from my original department inspired a great deal of hostility. I had gone above their heads. California's state law may not be perfect either in execution or conception, but it offers very clear guidelines for complainants and supervisors about their responsibilities: none of this was clear in Minnesota. The California training program emphasizes that most cases of harassment go unreported. I know why.

A year later, after my transfer, I got a piece of hate mail, slipped under my door on December 17, right after retirement party for another colleague. There was no administrative intervention, but the letter was hostile enough to be reported to the police. Nothing came from the Deanery to say to the faculty, "Anonynous harassment of colleagues is unacceptable!" How did I know it was from a senior colleague? The mail reported details of my cv -- and grant application successes to which only the senior colleagues had access.

Recently, one of my TA's at Irvine received a very hostile email -- anonymous of course. I spoke to the whole class about it. I realized now that "rising above it" does NOT work when confronted with abject expressions of hatred. So I'm waiting for our November tomatoes.

The photo is courtesy of Leo.

The University reinvented -- radical proposal by Herman Rapaport

EducationGuardian.co.uk dares us to dream big in this article by Herman Rapaport, or at least to begin to engage in a radical re-evaluation of what the University can be.

Instead of playing a defensive end-game against the trend, according to Nicholas Lemann -- to turn Universities into national personnel departments, Rapaport, a professor at the University of Southampton suggests that we rethink the entire institution, from the ground up -- from architectural housing to administrative structures.

The corporatization of University structures seems inevitable, but how can we begin a sustained dialogue about education and the humanities that does not consist merely of hand-wringing or head in the sand strategies of non-engagement?

An explosive situation in the suburbs of France

recalls images of May 68 with burning cars and barricaded streets. But the confrontations are not between university students and veterans of the colonial wars pressed into polic service. .Liberation reports on the weeklong violence by offering eyewitness accounts of the nightly confrontations of youth with police forces suspected of being responsible for the deaths of two teenagers who were electrocuted last week when they sought refuge in an electricity sub-station. BBC reports that Nicolas Sarkozy has inflamed the situation by calling the rioters "thugs" and "scum." Prisoners of poverty and discrimination, young North Africans trapped in the housing towers of suburban France have confronted the police periodically over police brutality and racism. This most recent series of events has taken on a new gravity, calling to mind not so much the student revolts of 1968 as the Detroit riots of that same year -- these are race riots.

Sarkozy, who has presidential ambitions was hailed by "average" French people as the populist choice to succeed Chirac. He seemed to be addressing the real problems afflicting the middle classes, squeezed by high taxes and worried about security. Unlike the patrician out of touch politicians of both Left and Right whose Cartesianism seemed woefully inadequate in the face of any crisis, Sarkozy appeared authentically concerned about France's malaise. Even my Left-wing friends found him refreshing, but his tough talk may do him in this time. The roiling violence seems to be spreading from Paris to other cities. Anyone who stays in France for more than a five day tourist trip is bound to notice the misery and poverty of its immigrant enclaves. After two terms of Center Right rule, France is scarred by a growing gapbetween graffiti-covered slums and the shining gentrified city centers. Normally swanky Left Bank neighborhoods were haunted by bands of roving suburban youth this summer. These kids have nothing to do and nowhere to go, no strong leaders and no sense of hope. They exuded a directionless menace and the situation felt extreme and explosive.

Chirac mutters paternalistically about the dangers of "disrespect." But who is disrespecting whom?

Conversations About Rosa Parks

See/hearConversations About Rosa Parks a short video of mourners who moved between the Capitol Rotunda and the Metropolitan AME Church in Washington DC.

Rosa Parks' act of refusal projected another future for all minorities in the United States: Parks proved that each moment of the present can give birth to a better world. But with this fantastic sense of potentiality comes the enormous danger: in fact, most of the time, the present keeps reproducing the world of fear, exploitation, radical inequality, veiled violence and contempt for the disenfranchised, conformity, cupidity, narrownness of vision that is our daily dose of poison.

But it's Parks' courage we should celebrate now, as I hope to remember and hope to teach that everyone should keep their eyes on the prize --to give freedom meaning for everyone in the face of attempts to make it into yet another empty word...decorating some megalomaniac's dream of conquest and infallibility. That is not the freedom we honor today.