The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces
The Weird Times: Issue 13, August 9, 2020
There is so much going on right now, it is hard to keep up.
Street artists install anti-Trump messages on crosswalk buttons
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I am honored to present this appreciation for the life of John Lewis by his friend and colleague, David Bonior, former Democratic whip, US House of Representatives.
ON JOHN LEWIS
In the spring of 1964, a year after his famous speech at the Lincoln Memorial at the March on Washington, John Lewis, the national leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, met with student civil rights leaders on our campus at the University of Iowa. My wife Judy was the president of our student chapter. They gathered at a red bricked church in the center of campus, where John preached justice, peace and nonviolence. He was as humble and gracious back then as he was when he made his last public appearance a month ago near the White House with the new generation of activists, Black Lives Matter.
I met John Lewis many years later in January of 1987 when he was elected to Congress. After ten years of congressional service I had just been elevated to the number four position in the Democratic leadership as the Chief Deputy Whip. Four years later in 1991, I was elected by my Democratic colleagues to be the Whip. And I knew instantly that I wanted John as my Chief Deputy Whip. For the next eleven years we worked as a team. In Congress he was as fearless and principled as he was when he crossed the bridge at Selma and was severely beaten.
John was not only gracious and humble in demeanor, I thought of him as saintly, “holy” if you will. His example and influences were profound. Nobody in our caucus who was being whipped by John wanted to tell him, “no I can’t help you.” If they were on the fence on how they were going to vote on an issue the leadership cared about, John was the man to get them to come down and vote with us especially if the issue touched on racial, economic or social justice. His moral force built over a lifetime of commitment and courage, was comparable to that of Mandela, King, and Gandhi and Dorothy Day.
John sat next to me at our leadership meetings. Having him there gave me confidence. His mere presence made all of us aware of our responsibility to “do the right thing.” John being at my side in those meetings was akin to having St. Francis of Assisi sitting next to you at a meeting of elders in the 13th century.
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Whatever it is, coronavirus has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt like nothing else could. Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to ‘normality,’ trying to stitch our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture. But the rupture exists. And in the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to normality. Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.” -- Arundhati Roy, from The Pandemic is a Portal, in Azadi: Freedom, Fascism and Fiction, 2020
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And yet another scandalous attack on democracy in America.
Trump’s push to spoil the census – and make Democrats disappear, Editorial Board, Washington Post, August 2, 2020
Census Bureau Director Steven Dillingham is sworn in to testify before a House Committee on Oversight and Reform hearing on the 2020 Census on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. (Andrew Harnik/AP)
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“The concern that a sitting president is angling not to win reelection by appealing to a majority, but rather by using the apparatus of his high office to cheat, is unprecedented, and we must not normalize it.” Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American, August 3, 2020 (Free newsletter, subscribe here).
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Letter from economists: to rebuild our world, we must end the carbon economy
“From deep-rooted racism to the Covid-19 pandemic, from extreme inequality to ecological collapse, our world is facing dire and deeply interconnected emergencies. But as much as the present moment painfully underscores the weaknesses of our economic system, it also gives us the rare opportunity to reimagine it. As we seek to rebuild our world, we can and must end the carbon economy.”
This letter has been signed by more than 100 economists. See the full list of signatories here. — The Guardian, August 6, 2020
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If there is one thing the Black Lives Matter movement has done, it has forced white people to examine not just their history but also their myths. As writers we know how difficult this can be. We know too often the work we do perpetuates certain myths while distorting the truth. Racial identity at times has an adhesive backing connecting it to myths of superiority. Tear it off too quickly and blood spills from an open wound. Knocking down Confederate statues will always come with a price if there are no explanations. The Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 has been a wake-up call for America. We either move towards a New Reconstruction or we face another Civil War. As writers, we will need to define and create beauty not just for ourselves but for every living thing that has a desire for air. We cannot tell each other what to write or how to live, but we must show one another how to love. I want to call my neighbor – Beloved. — The Black Lives Matter movement…If you don’t know me by now, E. Ethelbert Miller, 50Bold.com
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No surprise: Trump’s pick to manage Bureau of Land Management is a right wing racist. With confirmation hearings coming, we can make some noise to get William Perry Pendleton removed from his acting role.
“For years, Pendley was head of the Mountain States Legal Foundation, a right-wing organization that has fought multiple high-profile cases favoring private property rights in states west of the Mississippi, including in Native territories. In court and in his voluminous writings, Pendley attempted to undo protections for sites considered sacred to tribes; fought Justice Department efforts to support Native voters’ rights; argued in favor of toppling key legal precedents that uphold treaty rights; and made statements about Native identity and religion that Indigenous scholars and attorneys call deeply offensive.” Read more in The Intercept, August 5, 2020.
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The differing immune system responses of patients with COVID-19 can help predict who will experience moderate and severe consequences of disease, according to a new study by Yale researchers published July 27 in the journal Nature.
The findings may help identify individuals at high risk of severe illness early in their hospitalization and suggest drugs to treat COVID-19. Immune system variation can predict severe COVID-19 outcomes, Bill Hathaway, Yale News, July 27, 2020
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Two on-the-spot tests that can detect coronavirus and flu within 90 minutes are to be rolled out across Britain this autumn in a development hailed as a “game changer” by ministers. In a significant boost to the effort to control the virus as winter approaches, the government has approved the nationwide use of testing devices that are faster and more accurate than those presently being used. (via Times of London)
And where is the US in fast testing? The White House has it. Anyone else?
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“As we work toward treatments and vaccines for Covid-19, we must remember that patients and activists can also be experts, and that substantive change depends on our ability to hold the scientific establishment to a higher standard, consume information critically and carefully, and question recommendations when necessary.” Activist Fiona Lowenstein, As a Covid-19 survivor,I don't have blind faith in health experts. Here's why, in The Guardian, July 30, 2020
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I’m deep in the “don’t know” phase about what’s next in life. But I feel strangely calm, more curious and interested than anxious. I find myself paying attention to synchronicities, to song fragments and random comments that move me and to my memories and dreams. I’m listening for what is needed and wanted, and what is mine to do. And I know that the joy and sense of purpose I feel now would not be possible without first experiencing hopelessness.
Instead of being a “feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making me happy,” as George Bernard Shaw put it, I want to go out the old Viking way, wielding a splendid torch and singing my death song.
“Bring it on,” I’ll shout. “Bring it on. Today is a very good day to die.”
Eric Utne, Feeling Hopeless? Embrace It. And then take action, New York Times, July 24, 2020
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We're on a ride to nowhere
Come on inside
Taking that ride to nowhere
We'll take that ride
Maybe you wonder where you are
I don't care
Here is where time is on our side
Take you there, take you there
Talking Heads: Chris Frantz / David Byrne / Jerry Harrison / Tina Weymouth — Road to Nowhere lyrics © Warner Chappell Music, Inc, Warner Chappell Music Inc
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Pierre Joris
A 56 SECOND MANIFESTO
The days of anything static, form, content, state are over. The past century has shown that anything not involved in continuous transformation hardens and dies. All revolutions have done just that: those that tried to deal with the state as much as those that tried to deal with the state of poetry.
Keep in mind that what Georges Bataille called “the fascist temptation” is not only a 20th century aberration, but a species-specific permanent risk for homo sapiens.
As far as moral or social values are concerned, total miscegenation is the only solution. Purity is the root of all evil.
Between-ness is our essential nomadic condition, a becoming that crosses borders, is borders, lives on & in borders.
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In November, Americans will vote Trump out of office and Democrats will re-take the Senate — unless Republicans and their nefarious foreign allies steal the election. We need to be prepared to act to save our country from this disaster. Wear your mask and vote in person on November 3. If you vote with an absentee ballot, make sure it is delivered to your local authorities. Deliver it or have it delivered for you.
And work for and with one of these organizations, starting now!
Asian Americans Advancing Justice
How to Protect Our Elections and Get Out the Vote (from the American Bar Association).
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I am not wrong: Wrong is not my name
My name is my own my own my own
and I can’t tell you who the hell set things up like this
but I can tell you that from now on my resistance
my simple and daily and nightly self-determination
may very well cost you your life
--June Jordan, from Poem about my Rights
Buy: Directed by Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan.
