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thefederalistfreestyle · 7 years ago

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Hamilton: how Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical rewrote the story of America (New Statesman):

[. . .] Because of the success of Hamilton – it has been sold out on Broadway since August 2015, won 11 Tony Awards and the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and is on tour in Chicago and Los Angeles – there is now an industry devoted to uncovering and explaining its references. Yet the sheer ebullience of the soundscape is not enough to explain why it became a hit. To understand that, we need to understand the scope of its ambition, which is nothing less than giving America a new origin story. “Every generation rewrites the founders in their own image,” says Nancy Isenberg, a professor of history at Louisiana State University and the author of a biography of Aaron Burr. “He [Miranda] rewrote the founders in the image of Obama, for the age of Obama.”

In doing so, Miranda created a fan base that mirrors the “Obama coalition” of Democrat voters: college-educated coastal liberals and mid-to-low-income minorities. (When the musical first hit Broadway in 2015, some tickets went for thousands of dollars; others were sold cheaply in a daily street lottery or given away to local schoolchildren.) He also gave his audiences another gift. Just as Obama did in his 2008 campaign, Hamilton’s post-racial view of history offers Americans absolution from the original sin of their country’s birth – slavery. It rescues the idea of the US from its tainted origins.

[. . .]

There is, of course, a great theatrical tradition of “patriotic myth-making”, and it explains another adjective that is frequently applied to Hamilton: Shakespearean. England’s national playwright was instrumental in smearing Richard III as a hunchbacked child-killer, portraying the French as our natural enemies and turning the villainous Banquo of Holinshed’s Chronicles into the noble figure claimed as an ancestor by the Stuarts, and therefore Shakespeare’s patron James VI and I.

James Shapiro, a professor of English literature at Columbia University, New York, and the author of several books on Shakespeare, first saw the musical during its early off-Broadway run. “It was the closest I’ve ever felt to experiencing what I imagine it must have been like to have attended an early performance of, say, Richard III, on the Elizabethan stage,” he tells me. “But this time, it was my own nation’s troubled history that I was witnessing.”

Shapiro says that Shakespeare’s first set of history plays deals with the recent past, ending with Richard III; he then went back further to create an English origin story through Richard II and Henry V. “Lin-Manuel Miranda was trying to grasp the fundamental problems underlying contemporary American culture,” he adds. “He might, like Shakespeare, have gone back a century and explored the civil war. But I suspect that he saw that to get at the deeper roots of what united and divided Americans meant going back even further, to the revolution. No American playwright has ever managed to explain the present by reimagining so inventively that distant past.” And where Shakespeare had Holinshed’s Chronicles, Miranda had Ron Chernow.

There are Shakespearean references throughout his play. In “Take a Break”, Hamilton writes to his sister-in-law, Angelica:

They think me Macbeth and ambition is my folly. I’m a polymath, a pain in the ass, a massive pain. Madison is Banquo, Jefferson’s Macduff And Birnam Wood is Congress on its way to Dunsinane.

Shapiro says that these “casual echoes of famous lines” are less important than the lessons that Miranda has taken about how to write history. “Another way of putting it is that anyone can quote Shakespeare; very few can illuminate so brilliantly a nation’s past and, through that, its present.”

[. . .]

I love Hamilton – I think the level of my nerdery about it so far has probably made that clear – but I find it fascinating that its overtly political agenda has been so little discussed, beyond noting the radicalism of casting black actors as white founders. Surely this is the “Obama play”, in the way that David Hare’s Stuff Happens became the “Bush play” or The Crucible became the theatre’s response to McCarthyism. It’s just unusual, in that its response to the contemporary mood is a positive one, rather than sceptical or scathing. (And it has an extra resonance now that a white nationalist is in the White House. One of the first acts of dissent against the Trump regime was when his vice-president, Mike Pence, attended the musical in November 2016 and received a polite post-curtain speech from the cast about tolerance. “The cast and producers of Hamilton, which I hear is highly overrated, should immediately apologise to Mike Pence for their terrible behaviour,” tweeted Trump, inevitably.)

Hamilton tries to make its audience feel OK about patriotism and the idealism of early America. It has, as the British theatre director Robert Icke put it to me this summer, “a kind of moral evangelism” that is hard for British audiences to swallow. In order to achieve this, we are allowed to see Hamilton’s personal moral shortcomings, but the uglier aspects of the early days of America still have to be tidied away.

There’s a brief mention, for instance, of Jefferson’s relationship with his slave Sally Hemings – whom he systematically raped over many years. But the casting of black and Hispanic actors makes it hard for the musical to deal directly with slavery, and so the issue only drips into the narrative rather than being confronted. There’s a moment after the battle of Yorktown when “black and white soldiers wonder alike if this really means freedom – not yet”. Another sour note is struck in one of the cabinet rap battles between Hamilton and Jefferson, in which the former notes acidly, “Your debts are paid cos you don’t pay for labour.”

In early workshops, there was a third cabinet battle over slavery – and the song is available on The Hamilton Mixtape, a series of reworkings and offcuts from the musical. When a proposal is brought before Washington to abolish slavery, Hamilton tells the cabinet:

This is the stain on our soul and democracy A land of the free? No, it’s not. It’s hypocrisy To subjugate, dehumanise a race, call ’em property And say that we are powerless to stop it. Can you not foresee?

Ultimately, though, the song was cut. “No one knew what to do about it, and [the founding fathers] all kicked it down the field,” Miranda explained to Billboard in July 2015. “And while, yeah, Hamilton was anti-slavery and never owned slaves, between choosing his financial plan and going all in on opposition to slavery, he chose his financial plan. So it was tough to justify keeping that rap battle in the show, because none of them did enough.”

***

In March 2016, Lin-Manuel Miranda returned to the White House. This time, one of the numbers he performed was a duet from the musical called “One Last Time”, sung with the original cast member Christopher Jackson playing George Washington. After Alexander Hamilton tells the first US president that two of his cabinet have resigned to run against him, Washington announces that he will step down to leave the field open.

It is the political heart of the play’s myth-making, comparable to Nelson Mandela leaving Robben Island. The decorated Virginian veteran was the only man who could unite the fractious revolutionaries after they defeated the British. Washington could have become dictator for life; instead, he chose to create a true democracy. “If I say goodbye, the nation learns to move on./It outlives me when I’m gone.”

For a nation just beginning to think that Trump could really, actually become its president, seeing the incumbent acknowledge that his time was nearly over was a powerful moment. For Obama watching it in the audience, it must have felt like his narrative had come full circle.

Towards the end of the song, Hamilton begins to read out the words of the farewell address he has written, and Washington joins in, singing over the top of them. It was a technique cribbed from Will.i.am’s 2008 Obama campaign video, in which musicians and actors sing and speak along to the candidate’s “Yes, we can” speech.

In his memoir, Dreams from My Father, Obama had written, “I learnt to slip back and forth between my black and white worlds, understanding that each possessed its own language and customs and structures of meaning, convinced that with a bit of translation on my part the two worlds would eventually cohere.”

This was the promise of his presidency: that there was not a black America or a white America, a liberal America or a conservative America, but, as he said in his breakthrough speech at the 2004 Democratic convention, “a United States of America”. The man who followed him clearly thinks no such thing, but nonetheless the nation must learn to move on.

In his farewell address in January 2017, Obama returned to the “Yes, we can” speech, using its words as the final statement on his presidency:

I am asking you to hold fast to that faith written into our founding documents; that idea whispered by slaves and abolitionists; that spirit sung by immigrants and homesteaders and those who marched for justice; that creed reaffirmed by those who planted flags from foreign battlefields to the surface of the moon; a creed at the core of every American whose story is not yet written: yes, we can. Yes, we did.

For the playwright JT Rogers, this is the true triumph of Hamilton – giving today’s multiracial America a founding myth in which minorities have as much right to be there as Wasps. It is political “in the sense of reclaiming the polis” – the body of citizens who make up a country. “The little village we live in outside the city, everyone in the middle school knows the score verbatim,” Rogers adds. “They recite it endlessly and at length, like Homer.”

the full long-read here!

#hamilton #meta #u.s. politics #obama #new statesman #history #shakespeare

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livinginlandmarketing · 4 years ago

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The first time Olani LaBeaud learned in detail about Juneteenth — a day in history that marks the end of slavery in America — was toward the end of high school, in an AP history class.

She was in her first year of college at Cal State Long Beach when she heard about the Tulsa Massacre — a race riot in 1921 when mobs of White residents, some deputized and given weapons by city officials, attacked Black residents and destroyed homes, killing more than 800 people and wounding many others.

LaBeaud, who graduated from Summit High School in Fontana in 2017, learned about Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks in the classroom and during Black History Month, observed in February. But as a young African American girl, she had to rely on her own curiosity and research skills to discover illustrious figures such as Sojourner Truth, an abolitionist and women’s rights activist who was born into slavery, but escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826. After going to court to recover her son in 1828, Truth became the first Black woman to win such a case against a White man.

“Why did I not hear about her in school?,” LaBeaud asks. “What about Ida B. Wells, Toni Morrison and so many others? Why did I have to learn so much on my own?”

Depth, context lacking

LeBeaud is not the only one asking such questions. A year after a nationwide reckoning with racism following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and a pandemic that disproportionately killed African Americans, Black students, teachers and activists in Southern California and across the U.S. are demanding better Black history programs in schools. They speak of an urgent need to give Black history the context, depth and meaning it deserves.

On Thursday, President Joe Biden signed a bill making Juneteenth a federal holiday, commemorating June 19, 1865, the day Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger, who had fought for the Union, led a force to Galveston, Texas, to deliver the message that the war was over, the Union had won and now had the manpower to enforce the end of slavery. This came two months after the Civil War ended and after President Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

African Americans have traditionally commemorated Juneteenth with readings of the Proclamation, cookouts, food festivals and other activities celebrating African American history and culture.

While many in the community are happy to see Juneteenth formally recognized by the U.S. government, some worry that history lessons say little about the strife and struggle Black people endured after that day and the systemic inequities that took shape in the next century.

A report titled “Inland Empire Black Education Agenda” released by the BLU Educational Foundation in San Bernardino in February, found that Black history was among the top three priorities for Black students and their parents, a finding that came as a surprise even to the study’s authors at the time. The group surveyed 1,100 Black parents, students and community members in the Inland Empire.

A 2015 study by the National Museum of African American History and Culture showed that U.S. history classrooms devote one or two lessons to Black history. In a 2014 study, the Southern Poverty Law Center found that 12 states did not require any instruction on the civil rights movement. Fewer than half covered Jim Crow laws.

The center gave California a B for its history standards, which were adopted in 1998 and recently updated in 2016.

California schools introduce Martin Luther King Jr.’s story in kindergarten in the context of learning about the national holiday named for him. In second and third grades, students learn about Harriet Tubman, who pioneered a network of antislavery activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad to rescue and free slaves. The standards call for a deeper dive into slavery around fifth grade.

In eighth grade, teachers are encouraged to discuss resistance by enslaved people and the role slavery played in American politics. In 11th grade, students analyze the development of federal and civil voting rights legislation and landmark cases such as Brown v. Board of Education that led to the desegregation of schools.

Related links

First Juneteenth events set for two Inland cities

Celebrating Juneteenth looks back on previous challenges and victories, the fight ahead

Can Inland Empire leaders turn racial justice talk into action in 2021?

Student-led group aims to make high school reading lists more diverse

Teaching hard truths

Despite those standards in California, actual teaching practices fall short, said Akilah Lyons-Moore, an assistant professor at USC Rossier School of Education. Students learn about Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott, she said, and they learn about slavery, but the racial aspect of slavery is not explicitly taught.

“We move from indentured servitude to slavery to slave trade,” Lyons-Moore said. “But students don’t learn about how color became a way to distinguish who was enslaved and who was free. They learn that the slaves were freed. But they have no idea that the period of reconstruction — what came after Juneteenth — was the deadliest for Black people.”

While slavery “may feel like a long time ago” for some, she said, it doesn’t feel that way for Black people.

“My grandma was born into a sharecropping family,” Lyons-Moore said. “That’s barely two generations ago. And the repercussions are still being felt. You don’t get that from the history that is taught in our classrooms.”

Black history should be introduced in detail at the elementary school level, said the Rev. James Baylark, pastor at First Community Baptist Church in Desert Hot Springs. He says he is working with school districts in the Inland Empire and in Los Angeles County to make that happen.

“I will not say California is any better than other states when it comes to teaching Black history,” he said. “It seems to me that the teaching is limited to Black History Month. It should be talked about every day.”

Catching them young

Even high school students have no idea who Garrett Morgan was, notes Baylark, who is African American. Morgan was an African American inventor whose notable inventions were the traffic signal and the gas mask.

“It seems to me that important facts about Black history are introduced too late,” the pastor said. “By that time, (students have) lost interest. We need to catch them young. And it’s important for all children, not just African American children.”

Elementary school teacher Billy Bush at his home in Yorba Linda, CA, on Friday, June 18, 2021. Bush believes students don’t learn nearly enough about slavery and what happened to Black people after slavery. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

But when African American children, especially, are not taught their history and culture, it leaves a lasting impression on their psyche, said Billy Bush, who teaches history and math at Dr. Mildred Dalton Henry Elementary School in San Bernardino.

“Children’s self worth comes from knowing who they are and where they come from,” he said. “When it comes to education, they don’t seem to be going for depth. They’re trying to cover the bare minimum and move on. African American history needs to be taught in depth. It’s particularly important for Black boys who are seeing themselves on television either as ball players or drug dealers. It’s sad because they are not given a journey or a narrative.”

Real history, real change

Teaching Black history in schools is also a great way to improve race relations, said Bush, whose mother is African American and father is White.

“The only way racism can be overcome is when people understand what’s been done to the oppressed,” he said. “If you teach everyone real history, you will see real change.”

The recent push to teach anti-racism and ethnic studies in public schools is essentially about highlighting the experiences of those whose voices have not been heard so far, Lyons-Moore said.

“In a history class, anti-racism would involve looking at multiple perspectives and understanding the way different people look at the same events,” she said. “There are many things we don’t discuss at school. We don’t teach about lynchings or how the U.S. Postal Service used to make postcards from pictures of lynchings. This is a part of our history we cannot deny.”

Teaching Black history or anti-racism is neither about making White people look bad nor about portraying Black people as victims, Lyons-Moore said.

“It’s really an opportunity to understand each other in a way we haven’t before,” she said. “How do we understand it? How do we see it in our laws, policies and norms? How can we put forth solutions? And above all, how do we keep history from repeating?”

-on June 18, 2021 at 10:35AM by Deepa Bharath

#riversidenews

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outsideangle · 8 years ago

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The Expat’s Dilemma: Reckoning With a Trump Presidency From Abroad

Waking up in my foster home of Melbourne, Australia on Wednesday, November 9th, I felt a mix of hope and certainty that my country would come to its senses. Judy Woodruff and co. looked bright and cheerful on the PBS NewsHour live stream as the polls on the eastern seaboard closed 16 hours behind me and tallies began coming in, and with the previous week’s polls showing an almost assured victory for Hillary Clinton—some being so bold as to predict with 90% certainty or more—the crew had good reason to be. I was excited, bordering on proud: my country was about to elect its first female president and show the world that yes, actually, Americans do happen to do the right thing eventually. Eventually has turned out to be much further off than predicted.

It’s a curious feeling, being the only American in an office of internationals, watching as Florida falls, your birth state of Wisconsin flips, and your home state of Pennsylvania fumbles under the crushing weight of Appalachia, and all the while trying to plan a lesson for your evening class. I started receiving texts from friends everywhere—American and not—as the poll closings rolled west and our hope gave way to panic and fear and frustration. Some of my co-workers tried making jokes, and I nearly snapped at one of them, but channelled that anger into a Facebook post proclaiming that now was not the time for humour. My ex-girlfriend and I, both Americans living in Australia, traded messages of outrage and heartbreak—hers worse, as her parents had voted Trump—as we realized what was happening at home; she ended a Tinder date early that night so we could drink whiskey and beer and wallow in our powerlessness from across the Pacific. We shared an awkward kiss goodnight when I went home, born of uncertainty, but it fit with the new world we’d been hurled into. Uncertainty is a frustrating emotion, but after the election nothing was stronger than my sense of powerlessness. I’ve felt it subtly for years, but didn’t begin acknowledging it until the killing of Michael Brown and the events that followed: continued deaths at the hands of police who never faced consequences, one mass shooting after another, and watching the government slowly be taken over by ultra-conservative politicians who not only didn’t care about any of it, but also wanted to limit the rights of minorities by strengthening the institution that kept them repressed. I was living in South Korea as an elementary school English teacher through most of that, and in my rational mind I knew that being home and joining movements wouldn’t really change anything, but my geographic inability to take part in activism and grassroots participation exacerbated the feeling—even then, I sometimes wonder if, were I home, would I have partook at all, or was it looking in from the outside that made me long to engage. Watching your home burn from afar, stuck, awakens an entirely different set of emotions than having the flames around you. That was a different time, though, and nobody could’ve predicted Trump’s ascension to the Republican nomination—he’d only been a contender for two months when I returned to the United States in August of 2015. When I left again, this time for Australia, in February 2016, nobody could believe his hate-filled campaign was still running, and with such success. As I watched him clinch the nomination and somehow hold his own in polls with Hillary Clinton, I began thinking, “I should be there. I should be fighting this. I should help.” All I could do from abroad was send in an absentee ballot and sign petitions, and these felt like hollow actions. Hate is not passive; it is aggressive and threatening, and passive resistance will not stop it. I tried to be active and assert my power in Melbourne the Saturday after the election, where I joined a march through the city protesting Donald Trump. A few days prior, I had posted on the event page, “I’m an American living here, and I cannot WAIT to protest this demagogue my country has somehow chosen,” and was met with numerous critics telling me to “get over it” or “get out of Australia.” One sad soul with a lot of time on his hands (he commented at around 3 AM on a Friday night) went through my old profile pictures, found one of me dressed up in a sports bra as a female jogger for Halloween and posing with my female friend grabbing my boob, and overlaid the sentence, “I WONDER IF SHE’D FUCK ME WITH A STRAP ON AFTER THE TRUMP PROTEST.” The photo was deleted, but he posted it again the next day telling me I was a “seppo cuck,” and still people are saying “you lost, get over it.” Regarding the cry of “you lost,” I can understand the criticism of protesting, especially outside the United States. However, to call out protestors for that is to miss the point: we protest not because we lost the election, but because we will not tolerate the rhetoric that elevated Trump to office—we protest to show we will not let human rights go quietly into the night. Many people don’t have the luxury of “getting over it.”

The march turned out a few hundred people, mostly socialist student activists, and while it felt good to be in the streets, it was too soon after the election for anything to come of it. The sense of powerlessness quickly returned.

In other attempts at effectiveness, I’ve not stopped reading analysis and action plans, even going so far as to give myself a Christmas gift in the form of a subscription to The New Yorker. The day before the inauguration, David Remnick wrote how it’s our duty to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution from Trump and his cronies in the Cabinet, referring back to 1787 and that the Constitution’s ratification alone did not “guarantee [its] endurance and health,” and that it’s the “constant work of citizens, collectively and individually,” to maintain it. At The Washington Post, Linda Hirshman urges us to take cues from abolitionists of the 1850s when it comes to achieving a goal after a disastrous setback. These are great ideas, but once again leave little opportunity for expats to participate.

One piece of reading that did help temper my seething fury was “Indivisible: A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda,” which pulled from the methodology the Tea Party used to gridlock the country. It presented some direction and concrete ways to affect change, and this essay wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t read that guide—I’m ecstatic to see all the local action groups it’s inspired. Still, though, all I can do is write or send emails, but I can’t be there in person to confront my Members of Congress or march in protests, and that pains me.

At least I’m not the only expat who feels this way; there are several million of us living outside the country, after all. I’ve asked other Americans living abroad how they wrestle with this sense of inefficacy, and nobody seems to have a perfect answer yet. Laura Hagy, who works in Haiti, and Kathleen Phelan, an Australian/American dual citizen, both agree that “having open and honest dialogue” with Trump supporters and people they disagree with is the cornerstone of resistance. I admire the optimism, but from my travel experience I have not once met an American Trump supporter, and face-to-face discussion would probably be the only way to sway opinions—our comments on Facebook posts and message boards are useless and, for me, an unrelenting wave of frustration at the hands of obvious trolls. Bob Kennedy, who lives in Korea, thinks the most effective method is to “lobby the DNC to never again play kingmaker for a candidate,” and I’m inclined to agree with him.

When people on my travels ask me how Trump won, I tell them he didn’t; I tell them that the Democrats lost. The DNC is a hollowed-out husk of a party that needs to be restructured and find its base again. Since Obama’s 2008 victory, the Democrats have lost more than a thousand statehouse seats, 12 governorships, nearly 70 House seats, 13 Senate seats, the presidency and the Supreme Court—that is failure on a colossal scale. If Democrats are going to be the party of resistance, then they need to get it together and demonstrate that they can be effective again.

Ms. Phelan’s final thoughts on best resistance are a little morbid, but no less accurate: “Just survive.” That’s almost all we can do from outside the country, though Ms. Hagy shares my feelings that “[being] far away doesn’t mean I have an excuse to be inactive,” and it’s something both of us are still grappling with. It’s the crux of the expat dilemma this election has posed: reconciling the love for travel and residing abroad, and the internal drive to fulfil one’s civic duty.

Every day since the election, that predicament has been kicking around in my head. My first idea was to start a non-profit organization where expats can donate money and, depending on the amount donated, have a “surrogate” represent them—that could be marching at a protest in their place, or perhaps reading a letter to their Congressperson on their behalf. I also toyed with returning immediately, joining the Democratic Party to try and shake it up from the bottom, and running for office in 2018. Ms. Hagy, for her part, is seriously considering a return to the US to take a more proactive approach. For myself, I decided to put my ideas on hold and move to Singapore for a few months to give the organizations in America some time to figure out a plan of attack, then move back and join the most effective, but still the waiting nags at me. Several weeks into Trump’s presidency and he’s taken a hard-line on immigrants as I’ve moved from one country I’m not a citizen of to another.

The beginning of his time in office has had me reconsidering, though. Since taking office he’s written horrific executive orders on immigration, the Dakota Access Pipeline, and—most frighteningly—restructured the National Security Council and given renowned white-supremacist Steve Bannon even more power. Then there’s the fiasco with Russia that forced Michael Flynn’s resignation, and it surely won’t be the last scandal this White House sees. We’d been preparing for the worst, and a shred of me hoped, “maybe it won’t be as bad as we’re expecting.” But here I am, and there they are.

The day after the inauguration, the Women’s March on Washington took place, and my parents and some of their friends went to DC to protest—my mother even knit a plethora of Pussy Hats—and my brother marched in Philadelphia; I could not be more proud to have a family that’s ready and willing to take a stand, especially when I’m not there to join. For my part, I participated in Melbourne’s solidarity march. I arrived expecting a few hundred people, much like the protest the Saturday after the election, and was astonished to discover more than 6,000 crowded around the steps of the State Library of Victoria, all despite a massacre down the block that claimed six lives the day before.

That crowd, and those all over the planet, showed me that I am not alone. It demonstrated that there are expats everywhere—and non-Americans—who are prepared to stand up to Trump and his vitriol. I wrote postcards to my Senators as well, as per the Women’s March action plan; I’m writing this essay, and intend to write more; I’ll keep sending messages to my representatives. All I can hope is that people do more than protest—that they get involved by donating time and money to organizations that need it and participate in our democracy.

So far the signs are positive, and it’s the most important thing friends and family can do for me back home: send the hope on. Me and other expats only ever see the news, and the news is rarely ever good; we need the good stories from home to keep us going—to let us know that change is in the works. I still don’t know what the best course for me to affect change is—maybe this blog will help, at least in a selfish sense—but perhaps I do have a unique power as an expat: in my travels, I can be an example, and show the world that Americans are many things, but that we are not our president. We will, eventually, get it right.

Photo: Joe Raedle / Getty (via The New Yorker)

#abroad #democrats #Trump #Donald Trump #election #expat #indivisble #protest #march #international #news #politics

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wweeeelppp · 8 years ago

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Violence #10

cw: anti-blackness, white supremacy, violence, nazism

Recently during my AP/Honors US History class, we had a discussion about the recent protest at Berkeley noted for the violence that occurred (one Trump supporter pepper sprayed allegedly, some other citations I can’t find due to the fake news blubbered by white supremacist sites *cough* Breitbart). Unsurprisingly, I found myself at odds with other classmates; those who disapproved of the tactics used and instead pushed for peaceful large gatherings. An important note here is that the majority of students are white at my school, particularly my grade, and is unrepresentative of the local population; Latinx student population (6%) only represents 23% of the actual Latinx population in the local counties (26.15%).

I am now reading documents by white supremacists from the KKK for an upcoming seminar for the same class tomorrow. In order to power through, I am playing Young Jeezy’s “My President is Black,” the same song I found myself playing in the morning as I rode to school with a guttural sense of foreboding on January 20th. Some may say it’s my fluctuating, ambivalent mental health or the delirium of a lack of sleep, but futile laughter can’t help but roll of my tongue as a mix of disappointment and un-surprise mixes in an unpleasant cocktail.

I am often perplexed by the paradox that is often put in front of me when it comes to social injustice. I stare at these well meaning white faces who condemn white supremacists that we read about. The faces who ponder about what they would do if they were living at that time and desiring to have contributed to the abolitionist cause or the Civil Rights Movement. The faces who are yet to show up for black lives despite the plenty of promptings from Ferguson to Baton Rouge; from “All lives matter” to “I don’t see color” to “Not all cops are bad.” These faces who look back confused and or uncomfortable as I affirm violence committed for liberation.

What happened in Berkeley was necessary. Milo Yiannopoulos, a white gay literal neo-nazi was planning to expose undocumented students at the school; people who are seriously threatened by a Trump presidency. Previously at another college, Milo violently outed a trans woman by hurling slurs, misgendering her, and then promptly telling the entire audience that “the way that you know [she does not pass as cisgender is] I’d almost still bang [her].”

Larger than Milo, when confronted with such white supremacy— do you still want to flirt with the idea that violent response to this egregious injustice is somehow inevitable or invalid? That we should not be angry and upset that our lives are viewed as playthings to further a white supremacist agenda? That the people who we love, know, are friends with are literally at threat of being deported, denied access into the country, denied healthcare, denied hormones, denied their basic and fundamental human rights?

This is not to condemn or invalidate anyone who actively practices and or teaches nonviolent protest. If you’re showing up and targeting the right institutions and putting pressure on the right points, you have all of my support. However, if you are to tell me how to react to my oppression if you have not stood behind and for me and others as we combatted our oppressors, I would rather not engage or receive your misinformed and apologist input. You do not get to critique or police the way in which I or others choose to survive, since you sure as hell aren’t doing anything to help us.

Instead of showering disapproval on violent response to malicious white supremacy, how about you criticize and combat the violent state that is literally killing people in the street both domestic and international? How about the institutions that tear families apart through deportation and or mass incarceration? How about them?

Or how about the White protestors that everyone praises for dunking the English Tea into the Boston Harbor? How about the white protestors who harassed tax collectors? How about the Revolutionary War? How about the blood white people in the United States shed in order to secure their sovereignty? Yet, black and brown resistance is somehow the true enemy and aggressor?

So if you ask me- Is it okay to punch a Nazi? My answer is a whole-hearted yes. Furthermore, it is your duty to if you claim to stand with and for those who are at risk of hate crimes and injustice right now from both the government and civilian Nazis. I don’t care if you went to the Local Women’s March and flaunted your “clever” transphobic sign. Are you contacting your local government? Are you researching organizations near you to help? Are you donating money and resources if you can’t donate your time?

Let’s not forget that things did not just suddenly got bad. They have been bad since Columbus set a single toe in the western hemisphere. I am curious to know how you all measure “progress” and “things were better” when we live in the very area that amplifies and intensifies the destruction of culture and vicious gentrification of San Francisco and Oakland through venture-capitalist, techie start-up realities.

From “the future of progress and civilization depends on the continued supremacy of the white race” (Evans 1926) to "It's not just that they are leftists and cucks, it's not just that they are genuinely stupid. Indeed, one wonders if these people are people at all” (Spencer 2016), let us never humor ourselves to think that racism had suddenly reappeared with the inauguration of Trump. There is much work to be done, and invalidating a critical component of movement building and organizing is doing more harm if anything.

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Massachusetts State Quotes

Official Website: Massachusetts State Quotes

• And a special thank you to the citizens of Massachusetts: You are paying all the taxes, creating all the jobs, raising all the children. This government is yours. Thank you for letting me serve you. I love this job. – Mitt Romney • And I agree that the Democratic legislators in Massachusetts might have given some advice to Republicans in Congress about how to cooperate, but the fact of the matter is we used the same advisers and they say it’s the same plan. – Barack Obama • And of course coming from Massachusetts, Rocky Marciano was my favorite. – Robert Goulet • And some sad news… the first lesbian couple to legally get married in the state of Massachusetts has split up. They cited irreconcilable similarities. – Jay Leno • As an economics undergraduate, I also worked on a part-time basis in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for a company that was advising customers about portfolio decisions, writing reports. – Merton Miller

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Massachusett', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_massachusett').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_massachusett img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Basketball may have been invented in Massachusetts, but it was made for Indiana. – Bobby Knight • Because of my own family’s service (in the U.S. Army, Navy, and Massachusetts and New York National Guard), I am a strong supporter of the military and do believe that there are just wars. – Camille Paglia • Both my parents came from Russia and suddenly they wound up in Boston, Massachusetts, Brookline, Massachusetts and they felt the sun rose and set on Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s backside because he meant so much to them. This was freedom. This was something totally different from the Russia they had left. – Mike Wallace • By the time I started high school, I knew I wanted to be a writer. After graduating from Smith College in Massachusetts, I moved to New York City and worked for the advertising agency J. Walter Thompson. – Cynthia Voigt • By the way, if I have my own cult of personality with my own geodetic dome in western Massachusetts, I will have a hurt yurt for anyone who crosses me. – John Hodgman • Courage–judgment–integrity–dedication–these are the historic qualities of the Bay Colony and the Bay State….And these are the qualities which, with God’s help, this son of Massachusetts hopes will characterize our government’s conduct in the four stormy years that lie ahead. – John F. Kennedy • Deadly assault weapons have no place in Massachusetts. – Mitt Romney • Even in Madison’s day, the practice of gerrymandering for partisan advantage was familiar. In the late seventeen-eighties, there were claims that Patrick Henry had tried to gerrymander Madison himself out of the First Congress. The term was coined during Madison’s Presidency, to mock Elbridge Gerry, the governor of Massachusetts, who in 1811 approved an election district that was said to look like a salamander. – Jeffrey Toobin • For me when I was growing up, some of the happiest times were when we went to a small island called Nantucket off Massachusetts. – Gwyneth Paltrow • Foreign diplomats could have modeled their conduct on the way the Negro postmen, Pullman porters, and dining car waiters of Roxbury [Massachusetts] acted, striding around as if they were wearing top hats and cutaways. – Malcolm X • From tea parties to the election in Massachusetts, we are witnessing the single greatest political pushback in American history. – Marco Rubio • Governor Romney has been a great success in business. He has been a great success as executive, as governor of Massachusetts. I think that’s the kind of guy we want in the White House. – Chris Christie • Henry Adams was scared shitless, politically, by the discovery that England isn’t alien to a boy from Boston, but it was true, and it is true. It’s a Boston and coastal Massachusetts thing. Henry Adams blocked it out. – William Monahan • I am told that there have been over the years a number of experiments taking place in places like Massachusetts Institute of Technology that have been entirely based on concepts raised by Star Trek. – Patrick Stewart • I can tell you, Massachusetts, fastest growing sector of our economy is clean energy and energy efficiency companies. And they’re growing faster than any other sector. – John F. Kerry • I can work in London. A British journalist asked me if I had any trouble working with an English crew, as an American, and I said I might have if I was from Scotland, but I’m from Massachusetts, which is sort of Oxfordshire, but more intellectual. That’s kind of unforgivable but you’ve got to let them have it. – William Monahan • I can’t imagine having a conversation about ‘Celebrity Big Brother’ in Cambridge, Massachusetts. – Niall Ferguson • I come to present the strong claims of suffering humanity. I come to place before the Legislature of Massachusetts the condition of the miserable, the desolate, the outcast. I come as the advocate of helpless, forgotten, insane men and women; of beings sunk to a condition from which the unconcerned world would start with real horror. – Dorothea Dix • I did one of the worst shows for that kind of thing in Northampton, Massachusetts, which is one of the most liberal spots on the planet. There were numerous people who walked out, somebody had thrown a beer, I had people yelling and screaming. – David Cross • I do not hesitate to say, that those who call themselves Abolitionists should at once effectually withdraw their support, both inperson and property, from the government of Massachusetts, and not wait until they constitute a majority of one, before they suffer the right to prevail through them. I think that it is enough if they have God on their side, without waiting for that other one. Moreover, any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already. – Henry David Thoreau • I do not wish, it happens, to be associated with Massachusetts, either in holding slaves or in conquering Mexico. I am a little better than herself in these respects. – Henry David Thoreau • I don’t know if I ever mentioned back in 2002 we fought our way into a governor’s debate in Massachusetts where, you know, this was televised and I articulated our usual agenda: cut the military, put the dollars into true security here at home, provide healthcare as a human right, raise wages which needed to be living wages, green our energy system, equal marriage? – we were the only ones talking about it back in 2002. – Jill Stein • I grew up in a town called Hopedale, Massachusetts. I was born there in 1964, and the only thing I hate outside of myself is everything else. – Dana Gould • I grew up in Fall River, Massachusetts. My background was modest, and I worked at a Portuguese bakery in town. – Emeril Lagasse • I had a teacher’s degree and a degree in Oriental Philosophy from the University of Massachusetts. I thought I was going to India to study but all of a sudden, I had a career in music. It really surprised me. – Buffy Sainte-Marie • I know this well, that if one thousand, if one hundred, if ten men whom I could name,–if ten honest men only,–ay, if one HONESTman, in this State of Massachusetts, ceasing to hold slaves, were actually to withdraw from this copartnership, and be locked up in the county jail therefor, it would be the abolition of slavery in America. For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once well done is done forever. – Henry David Thoreau • I noted, though, that other strong critics of Donald Trump did attend the inauguration. Hillary Clinton went. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders went. I saw Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. I saw Congressman James Clyburn, all of whom have been critics of Donald Trump. – Michel Martin • I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts; she needs none. There she is. Behold her, and judge for yourselves. There is her history; the world knows it by heart. The past, at least, is secure. There is Boston and Concord and Lexington and Bunker Hill; and there they will remain forever. – Daniel Webster • I think [John Adams’s] influence on the federal Constitution was indirect. Many including James Madison mocked the first volume of Adams’s Defence of the Constitutions of the United States in 1787. But his Massachusetts constitution was a model for those who thought about stable popular governments, with its separation of powers, its bicameral legislature, its independent judiciary, and its strong executive. – Gordon S. Wood • I think it’s alright if the government wants to say, in the state of Massachusetts, in the state of New York, in the state of California, that civil ceremonies should be accepted, I think that should be fine. I don’t think that even those states that believe in civil marriages between homosexuals or ordained in a church should perform civil ceremonies. – Jimmy Carter • I think it’s unconscionable for a Senator from Massachusetts to come down here and tell the people of Florida what’s right for them. It’s arrogant and irresponsible. – Jeff Miller • I think that Governor Romney needs to talk about the fact that what he tried to do in the state of Massachusetts was him seeing what could be best for his state, but maybe it didn’t work out as well. – Allen West • I took part in a theatre festival in Massachusetts two summers after I graduated from college. Then I was in Los Angeles thinking: “I’m going to go to New York.” I’d decided that I would not have a chance of a film career, so I was about to make the move. I bought a plane ticket and found a place to live in New York, packed my bags and of course the universe “told me” that I was not meant to go. Suddenly, a week before I was supposed to leave, I had three job offers and one of them was my first movie. – Chris Pine • I took the T from Logan airport to Harvard Square. I hate driving in Boston. It’s the traffic that drives me spare, and the absolutely terrible manners of the motorists. Other New Englanders refer to Massachusetts drivers as “Massholes. – Geraldine Brooks • I used to live in New York City, then when my son was two years old we moved to Cambridge Massachusetts and we’ve been there ever since. My son is now twenty-nine years old, so we’ve been up there for a while. – Errol Morris • I was an actor as a kid in Boston. Then I went to art school with Brice Marden, the Massachusetts College of Art. So the hybrid of being an actor and artist is a director. – Arne Glimcher • I was born in Massachusetts and lived there until I was thirteen years old. – Robert Goulet • I was born in Taunton, Massachusetts on June 1, 1917, but I actually grew up in nearby New Bedford. – William Standish Knowles • I was born on a tiny cot in southwestern Massachusetts during World War II. A sickly child, I turned to photography to overcome my loneliness and isolation. – William Wegman • I was listening to music to kind of pump myself up and get psyched up, like I was listening to Iron Maiden and Misfits and Dead Kennedys, and it was like my ’80s Massachusetts parking-lot heavy metal and Guns N’ Roses. – Eli Roth • I went to high school in Lexington, Massachusetts, which in hindsight was very nice. – Eugene Mirman • I went to Massachusetts to make a difference. I didn’t go there to begin a political career running time and time again. I made a difference. I put in place the things I wanted to do. – Mitt Romney • I won the youth vote in Massachusetts and in California. I did very well with it in Ohio. – Hillary Clinton • If I lived in Massachusetts, I’d try to vote ten times … Yeah that’s right, I’d cheat to keep these bastards out. I would. Because that’s exactly what they are. – Ed Schultz • I’m a big believer in getting money from where the money is, and the money is in Washington. I learned from running the Olympics that you can get money there to help build economic opportunities. We actually got over $410 million from the federal government; that is a huge increase over anything ever done before. We did that by going after every agency of government. That kind of creativity I want to bring to everything we do (in Massachusetts). – Mitt Romney • I’m extremely proud of my family’s record of public service to Massachusetts and the nation. – Joseph P. Kennedy III • I’m from Boston, and in Boston, you are born with a baseball bat in your hand. And actually, most of the bats in Massachusetts are used off the field instead of on the field, and we all had baseball bats in our cars in high school. – Eli Roth • I’m from Connecticut, and we don’t have any dialects. Well, I don’t think we have any dialects, and yeah, it’s very complex. That Rhode Island/Massachusetts New England region is arguably the hardest dialect to nail. – Seth MacFarlane • I’m lucky to have been raised in the most beautiful place – Amherst, Massachusetts, state of my heart. I’m more patriotic to Massachusetts than to almost any place. – Uma Thurman • I’m with an old family” was the euphemism used to dignify the professions of white folks’ cooks and maids who talked so affectedly among their own kind in Roxbury [Massachusetts] that you couldn’t even understand them. – Malcolm X • In 1948 I entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, undecided between studies of chemistry and physics, but my first year convinced me that physics was more interesting to me. – Burton Richter • In Massachusetts they [Democratic politicians] steal, in California they feud, and in New York they lie. – Robert Kennedy • In Massachusetts, scientists have created the first human clone. The bad thing is that in thirty years, the clone will still be depressed because the Boston Red Sox will still have not won a World Series. – Craig Kilborn • In Massachusetts, where properly qualified ‘persons’ were allowed to practice law, the Supreme Court decided that a woman was not a ‘person,’ and a special act of the legislature had to be passed before Miss Lelia Robinson could be admitted to the bar. But today women are lawyers. – Lucy Stone • In Montana, they renamed a town after an all-time great, Joe Montana. Well, a town in Massachusetts changed their name to honor my guy Terry Bradshaw–Marblehead. – Howie Long • In the little town where I live in Hampshire County, Massachusetts, we now have a ‘Public Safety Complex’ around the corner from what used to be our hokey Andy Griffith-esque fire station. – Rachel Maddow • In the very next election, the American people elected 63 new Republicans to the House of Representatives – the largest sweep of Congress for any party since 1948. Even liberal Massachusetts elected a Republican senator solely because of his vow to vote against Obamacare. – Ann Coulter • Indeed, if I understand this global-warming business correctly, the danger is that the waters will rise and drown the whole of Massachusetts, New York City, Long Island, the California coast and a few big cities on the Great Lakes – in other words, every Democratic enclave will be wiped out leaving only the solid Republican heartland. Politically speaking, for conservatives there’s no downside to global warming. – Mark Steyn • It is the night-black Massachusetts legendry which packs the really macabre “kick”. Here is material for a really profound study in group-neuroticism; for certainly, no one can deny the existence of a profoundly morbid streak in the Puritan imagination. – H. P. Lovecraft • It is time to acknowledge the extraordinary sacrifice of all of our veterans. While many Massachusetts soldiers served our nation in a period technically dubbed ‘peacetime,’ they restored American pride in the wake of Vietnam and helped bring a successful end to the Cold War. The service of these men and women was not without cost. There are countless stories of soldiers who served with great distinction only to be denied veteran status after returning home. Every man and woman who volunteered to serve this country should be treated with the same degree of respect, gratitude and dignity. – Mitt Romney • It was [John’s Adams] Massachusetts constitution if anything that influenced people. – Gordon S. Wood • John Kerry’s victory over Howard Dean has completely changed the presidential race around. Now instead of the rich white guy from Yale who lives in the White house facing off against the rich white guy from Yale who lives in Vermont, he may have to face the rich white guy from Yale who lives in Massachusetts. It’s a whole different game. – Jay Leno • Just a small-scale cult of personality, maybe raise a geodetic dome out in western Massachusetts and make people wear jumpsuits and give all their possessions to me. – John Hodgman • Let me announce this to the American people tonight one of the best things about this debate, as a Democrat from Massachusetts, I have proposed eliminating, getting rid of the alternative minimum tax. – Richard Neal • Let me tell you the story about Massachusetts under Governor Romney. It did fall to 47th out of 50 in jobs creation. Wages went down when they were going up in the rest of the country. He left his successor with debt and a deficit, and manufacturing jobs left that state at twice the rate as the rest of the country. – Stephanie Cutter • Massachusetts became the first state to marry gay couples, though lawmakers say allowing gay couples to get married raises a lot of questions. You know, such as: does that best man invite both guys to the bachelor party? – Jay Leno • Massachusetts children cannot only lead the nation in test scores, they can be competitive with the best in the world. And the gap in achievement among races can virtually disappear. – Mitt Romney • Massachusetts constitution] was [John Adams] attempt to justify that structure by the traditional notion of social estates – that the executive represented the monarchical estate, the senate the aristocratic estate, and the house of representatives the estate of the people. – Gordon S. Wood • Massachusetts is the first state in America to reach full adulthood. The rest of America is still in adolescence. – Uwe Reinhardt • Massachusetts led the nation passing the first state minimum wage a century ago in June 1912, and with passage of an $11 state minimum wage … will be leading the nation again with a wage floor that is good for business, good for customers and good for our economy. – Holly Sklar • Massachusetts women as a rule adhere too strongly to old-time conventions. – Julia Ward Howe • Matt and I have set a date. Matt and I will tie the knot New Years Day in the town of Swampscott, Massachusetts. Reserve your hotel rooms now. I will be having a gay marriage. – Ben Affleck • Mitt Romney is a] Massachusetts moderate who, in fact, is pretty good at managing the decay.” He’s “given no evidence in his years in Massachusetts of any ability to change the culture or change the political structure. – Newt Gingrich • Mitt Romney talks a lot about all the things he’s fixed. I can tell you that Massachusetts wasn’t one of them. He’s a fine fellow and a great salesman, but as governor he was more interested in having the job than doing it. – Deval Patrick • Mr. President, I wish to speak today, not as a Massachusetts man, nor as a Northern man, but as an American. I speak for the preservation of the Union. Hear me for my cause. – Daniel Webster • My daughter just graduated college and she’s a dance major. She’s done a couple of dance videos already and won Miss Massachusetts a couple of weeks ago. She’s going out for Miss United States the second week of July, out in Las Vegas. She will probably wind up going to New York and trying the Broadway thing. – Doug Flutie • My father was in the coal business in West Virginia. Both dad and mother were, however, originally from Massachusetts; New England, to them, meant the place to go if you really wanted an education. – John Knowles • My grandfather on my mother’s side was a professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; my other grandfather was a lawyer, and one time Speaker of the Tennessee House of Representatives. – Kenneth G. Wilson • My intention was to enroll at McGill University but an unexpected series of events led me to study physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. – Sidney Altman • My mother was independent. She had grown up in Dalton and Pittsfield, in western Massachusetts, and she was one of the first women drivers in that area. – Julia Child • My next book is on the Salem witch trials. As a small-town Massachusetts girl, this makes me very happy. So does the reunion with documents! – Stacy Schiff • My understanding is that Kansas, Massachusetts, they’ve been more pioneers on the special education side. – Margaret Spellings • New Jersey boasts the highest percentage of passport holders (68%); Delaware (67%), Alaska (65%), Massachusetts (63%), New York (62%), and California (60%) are close behind. At the opposite end of the spectrum, less than one in five residents of Mississippi are passport holders, and just one in four residents of West Virginia, Kentucky, Alabama, and Arkansas. – Richard Florida • No: until I want the protection of Massachusetts to be extended to me in some distant Southern port, where my liberty is endangered, or until I am bent solely on building up an estate at home by peaceful enterprise, I can afford to refuse allegiance to Massachusetts, and her right to my property and life. It costs me less in every sense to incur the penalty of disobedience to the State than it would to obey. I should feel as if I were worth less in that case. – Henry David Thoreau • Now I have been studying very closely what happens every day in the courts in Boston, Massachusetts. You would be astounded–maybe you wouldn’t, maybe you have been around, maybe you have lived, maybe you have thought, maybe you have been hit–at how the daily rounds of injustice make their way through this marvelous thing that we call “due process. – Howard Zinn • Obviously, the technology community in Massachusetts competes in a global economy, and our efforts to create a more competitive environment recognizes that competitiveness at a local level. We’d expect employers in other states to use this site as they consider where in Massachusetts to locate or expand their presence. – Christopher Anderson • Of the creative spirits that flourished in Concord, Massachusetts, it might be said that Hawthorne loved men but felt estranged from them, Emerson loved ideas even more than men, and Thoreau loved himself. – Leon Edel • On the 31st of August, 1846, I left Concord in Massachusetts for Bangor and the backwoods of Maine,… I proposed to make excursions to Mount Ktaadn, the second highest mountain in New England, about thirty miles distant, and to some of the lakes of the Penobscot, either alone or with such company as I might pick up there. – Henry David Thoreau • One night last summer, all the killers in my head assembled on a stage in Massachusetts to sing show tunes. – Sarah Vowell • Only a liberal senator from Massachusetts would say that a 49 percent increase in funding for education was not enough. – George W. Bush • Our nation is too different, too diverse to say that what works in Massachusetts is somehow going to be grabbed by the federal government, usurping the power of states and imposing a one-size-fits-all plan on the nation. That will not work. – Mitt Romney • Pennsylvania, the state that has produced two great men: Benjamin Franklin of Massachusetts, and Albert Gallatin of Switzerland. – John James Ingalls • Perhaps more significant than his experience in Europe, though, was [John] Adams’s experience in his own country, and his extensive reading on the history of the English constitution. In 1779, he had an opportunity to try out his ideas by framing the Massachusetts constitution. – Gordon S. Wood • PILGRIM, n. A traveler that is taken seriously. A Pilgrim Father was one who [was] not permitted to sing psalms through his nose [in Europe], followed it to Massachusetts, where he could personate God according to the dictates of his conscience. – Ambrose Bierce • Reforming the way the state works with businesses and providing incentives for employers will help preserve and create new jobs in Massachusetts. – Mitt Romney • Remember, we could solve this in a heartbeat with ranked-choice voting. The Democrats won’t pass it. This allows you to rank your choices and eliminates the intimidation and the fear. They won’t pass it; I know because I helped file the bill. Sixteen years ago in Massachusetts they could have solved the spoiler problem. They won’t do it because they rely on fear. The fact that they rely on fear tells you something very important. They are not on your side. For that reason alone, they do not deserve your vote. – Jill Stein • Republican Scott Brown lost his bid for Senate in New Hampshire last night, two years after he was voted out as Senator in Massachusetts. When asked what he was planning to do next, he said, ‘Are they still looking for a mayor in Toronto?’ – Jimmy Fallon • Roadrunner, roadrunner, going faster miles an hour. Gonna drive past the Stop ‘n’ Shop, with the radio on. I’m in love with Massachusetts and the neon when it’s cold outside. And the highway when it’s late at night. Got the radio on, I’m like the roadrunner. – Jonathan Richman • Scott Brown may be the last Republican to win a statewide fight in Massachusetts for a very long time. He caught the machine flat-footed in January 2010 when he out-hustled Martha Coakley and stole the Senate seat Ted Kennedy held all those years. And since then, the Democrats haven’t lost a single statewide fight. – Howie Carr • Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts has got to have Ted Kennedy rolling over in his grave, spilling his drink. – Ann Coulter • Sodomy will always be a sin with god, even if its legal in Massachusetts. – Gordon Klingenschmitt • The American servicemen and women of the Guard and Reserve leave their jobs, their spouses and their children to wear the uniform that defends our country. This selfless commitment should be honored by businesses across Massachusetts as we work to ensure they are treated fairly while they balance their employment responsibilities and obligations to the armed services. No business should ever put the bottom line ahead of America’s front line. – Mitt Romney • The available divorce data show that marital breakdown is now considerably more common in the Bible Belt than in the secular Northeast. . . . The percentages of broken families and unwed mothers remained higher in places like Arkansas and Oklahoma than in New York and Massachusetts. – Joe Conason • The average parent may, for example, plant an artist or fertilize a ballet dancer and end up with a certified public accountant. We cannot train children along chicken wire to make them grow in the right direction. Tying them to stakes is frowned upon, even in Massachusetts. – Ellen Goodman • The fact is I’ve been in Massachusetts for the last two weeks, and it seems over the last few days that the price is increasing by the hour at the pump, so there needs to be an aggressive investigation. – Marty Meehan • The first newspaper I worked on was the ‘Springfield Union’ in Springfield, Massachusetts. I wrote over a hundred letters to newspapers asking for work and got three responses, two no’s. – Tom Wolfe • The first time I ran for office in 2002, running for governor in Massachusetts against Mitt Romney, we actually worked with a Democratic legislator to file that bill, so that there would be no risk of splitting the vote. The Democrats had about 85% of the Legislature at that time. They could have easily protected their access to the governorship. But they refused to do so. They wouldn’t let the bill out of committee. – Jill Stein • The irony is that we’ve seen this model work really well in Massachusetts because Gov. Romney did a good thing, working with Democrats in the state to set up what is essentially the identical model and, as a consequence, people are covered there. It hasn’t destroyed jobs. And as a consequence, we now have a system in which we have the opportunity to start bringing down costs as opposed to just leaving millions of people out in the cold.” “Gov. Romney said this has to be done on a bipartisan basis – Barack Obama • The late rebellion in Massachusetts has given more alarm than I think it should have done. Calculate that one rebellion in thirteen states in the course of eleven years, is but one for each state in a century and a half. No country should be so long without one. Nor will any degree of power in the hands of government prevent insurrections. – Thomas Jefferson • The Massachusetts constitution was written much later than the other revolutionary state constitutions, and thus it avoids some of the earlier mistakes. The executive is stronger, with a limited veto; the senate is more formidable; and the judiciary is independent. – Gordon S. Wood • The Massachusetts constitution] resembles the federal Constitution of 1787 more closely than any of the other revolutionary state constitutions. It was also drawn up by a special convention, and it provided for popular ratification – practices that were followed by the drafters of the federal Constitution of 1787 and subsequent state constitution-makers. – Gordon S. Wood • The Massachusetts Institute of Technology accepts blacks in the top ten percent of students, but at MIT this puts them in the bottom ten percent of the class. – Thomas Sowell • The Massachusetts Land Bank, during Colonial times, prospered, and brought prosperity to the community, until it was forcibly suppressed by special act of Parliament. – John Buchanan Robinson • The old charters of Massachusetts, Virginia, and the Carolinas had given title to strips of territory extending from the Atlantic westward to the Pacific. – Albert Bushnell Hart • The old rule in Massachusetts politics is shape of the field determines the winner. If you have got a whole bunch of hawks, all the way from [Mike] Huckabee all the way across to [Chris]Christie, that covers the spectrum on every other issue, all hawks, all hawks, and one guy out there saying, not me, Jimmy Carter won that way back in `76. I know it`s 1,000 years ago. – Chris Matthews • the place (Dogtown, in Gloucester, Massachusetts, fh) is forsaken and majestically lovely as if nature had at last formed one spot where she can live for herself alone.. (it) looked like a cross between Easter Island and Stonehenge – essentially druidic in it appearance, it gives the feeling that an ancient race might turn up at any moment and renew an ageless rite there. – Marsden Hartley • The Senator from Massachusetts has given us ample grounds to doubt the judgment and the attitude he brings to bear on vital issues of national security. – Dick Cheney • The Turkish Embassy in Washington is an ornate, eclectic building on the corner of Twenty-third Street and Massachusetts Avenue which was built originally for Edward Hamlin Everett, the man who put the crimp in bottle caps. – George W. S. Trow • There are now reports that President Obama will name Massachusetts Senator John Kerry to be the next secretary of defense. Apparently this is part of America’s new defense strategy to bore our enemies to death. – Jay Leno • There is no one who’s gonna be sitting on that stage who has the record of job creation I have. There’s one in particular who’s created jobs all around the world. While he was the governor of Massachusetts he didn’t create many jobs. – Rick Perry • There’s nothing noble or selfless about politicians and there never has been. Putting it charitably, Profiles in Courage is a compendium of Democratic mythology, ghostwritten for an ambitious young Massachusetts Senator who never did a thing for himself if he could pay to have it done by others. – L. Neil Smith • They know your name, address, telephone number, credit card numbers, who ELSE is driving the car “for insurance”, … your driver’s license number. In the state of Massachusetts, this is the same number as that used for Social Security, unless you object to such use. In THAT case, you are ASSIGNED a number and you reside forever more on the list of “weird people who don’t give out their Social Security Number in Massachusetts.” – Arthur Miller • This is an issue just like 9/11. We didn’t decide we wanted to fight the war on terrorism because we wanted to. It was brought to us. And if not now, when? When the supreme courts in all the other states have succumbed to the Massachusetts version of the law? – Rick Santorum • This is something which I think this country needs… I want universal coverage! I want everyone in Massachusetts and in this country to have insurance. I support universal health care. – Mitt Romney • To me there is nothing more fraught with mystery & terror than a remote Massachusetts farmhouse against a lonely hill. Where else could an outbreak like the Salem witchcraft have occurred? – H. P. Lovecraft • To the second end, we hold that minimum wage commissions should be established in the Nation and in each State to inquire into wages paid in various industries and to determine the standard which the public ought to sanction as a minimum; and we believe that, as a present installment of what we hope for in the future, there should be at once established in the Nation and its several States minimum standards for the wages of women, taking the present Massachusetts law as a basis from which to start and on which to improve. – Theodore Roosevelt • To-day Massachusetts; and the whole of the American republic, from the border of Maine to the Pacific slopes, and from the Lakes to the Gulf, stand upon the immutable and everlasting principles of equal and exact justice. The days of unrequited labor are numbered with the past. Fugitive slave laws are only remembered as relics of that barbarism which John Wesley pronounced “the sum of all villainies,” and whose knowledge of its blighting effects was matured by his travels in Georgia and the Carolinas. – Horace Mann • Two [Massachusetts coal burning power plants] remain: Brayton Point in the South Coast region and Mt. Tom, just down the road. Within the next four years, both should shut down and Massachusetts should finally end all reliance on conventional coal generation. – Deval Patrick • Want to hear a sad story about the Dukakis campaign? The governor of Massachusetts, he lost his top naval advisor last week. His rubber ducky drowned in the bathtub. – Dan Quayle • We always spend the summer together. My wife and kids, we always go back to Massachusetts and spend the summer there near where my wife and I both grew up. I wasn’t willing to sacrifice the summer to go elsewhere. – Steve Carell • We do have tough gun laws in Massachusetts. I support them. I won’t chip away at them. I believe they help protect us and provide for our safety. I’m sure my positions won’t make me the hero of the NRA. – Mitt Romney • We’ll be competitive with organized labor, we’re also competitive with regular, unorganized labor, working people who see their stakes and their future in the plans we’re putting forward to move Massachusetts forward. – Deval Patrick • What we want is not mainly to colonize Nebraska with free men, but to colonize Massachusetts with free men-to be free ourselves. As the enterprise of a few individuals, that is brave and practical; but as the enterprise of the State, it is cowardice and imbecility. What odds where we squat, or bow much ground we cover? It is not the soil that we would make free, but men. – Henry David Thoreau • What will people of the future think of us? Will they say, as Roger Williams said of the Massachusetts Indians, that we were wolves with the minds of men? Will they think that we resigned our humanity? They will have the right. – C.P. Snow • When abused children under court protection were studied in California and Massachusetts, it turned out that a disproportionate number of them were unattractive…abused kids had head and face proportions that made them look less infantile and cute. – Nancy Etcoff • When I was a kid, Eisenhower had been President forever, and all of a sudden, everything in the world was all about Jack Kennedy. I was 12, interested in politics; my father was from Massachusetts, had an accent like Kennedy. – James Ellroy • When I was Governor of Massachusetts, we worked to get Sable Island gas into New England. – Paul Cellucci • Where the heart is, there the muses, there the gods sojourn, and not in any geography of fame. Massachusetts, Connecticut River, and Boston Bay, you think paltry places, and the ear loves names of foreign and classic topography. But here we are; and, if we tarry a little, we may come to learn that here is best. See to it, only, that thyself is here;–and art and nature, hope and fate, friends, angels, and the Supreme Being, shall not absent from the chamber where thou sittest. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • With the presidential debates right around the corner, John Kerry is going to play Mitt Romney to help the President prepare for the debates. That’s kind of a stretch; a rich white guy from Massachusetts playing a rich white guy from Massachusetts. – Jay Leno • Without really analyzing it, I grew up in Massachusetts, so the Salem witch trials were always something that I was around. The average kindergartner probably doesn’t know about it, except that in Massachusetts, you do, because they’ll take you on field trips to see reenactments and stuff. – Rob Zombie • You go to towns in Massachusetts, Greenfield, first settled in 1686. Wouldn’t it be cool if it said, “Greenfield. First settled c. 13,000 B.P. or approximately 13,000 Before the Present. Resettled.” Maybe we could say even, “Resettled by whites,” Or, “Resettled anyway, 1686.” It would have a different impact. And of course it would help explain why the town is called Greenfield, because it was a green field and the fields were left by Native people who had already been farming them. – James W. Loewen

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equitiesstocks · 5 years ago

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Massachusetts State Quotes

Official Website: Massachusetts State Quotes

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goswagcollectorfire · 5 years ago

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CARL’S BLOG: DARK CLOUDS OVER ALABAMA; carlsblog.online; http://sbpra.com/CarlJBarger; Arkansas-Hillbilly.com

10-19-19: Christmas break at Twin Oaks:

As Bill stopped the carriage in front of Twin Oaks, my parents, Sarah, Mattie, Betsy, and Penelope were standing on the front porch waiting for my arrival. I didn’t wait for Bill to open the carriage door as I normally would have. I opened the door, stepped down, and quickly climbed the eight steps leading up to the top of the porch where everyone was waiting. “Welcome home, my son!” my mother said, as she threw herself into my arms. “Oh, Mother! It’s so wonderful to see you.” “Welcome home, Son,” my father said, as he gave me a hug. Sarah was waiting her turn as usual. She threw herself into my arms and said, “Great to see you, Obadiah. I can’t wait to hear all about your first semester.”

After greeting my family, I turned and walked toward the door where Mattie, Betsy, and Penelope had been patiently waiting. I first hugged Betsy, and then Mattie. I then turned to Penelope. She was so beautiful. As I reached out to hug her, she offered me her hand instead. I knew immediately she had learned this social grace at Mrs. Adams’s Prep School. I knew she wanted me to acknowledge it as well. Not to embarrass her, I bowed slightly and kissed her hand, and she smiled. Then before I could say anything, she jumped into my arms just as Sarah had done. It didn’t take long for me to realize that my feelings for Penelope were still very present. I could feel Penelope’s heart beating as I held her in my arms. How was I to react to this burst of affection? I knew everyone was watching us. I put her down and took a step back and said, “Look at you! I can’t believe you’re all grown up.” I wanted to say, “You are so beautiful!” but decided this was not the place or time.

“Thank you, Master Obadiah!” Penelope said with those beautiful blue eyes sparkling along with her beautiful smile. “It’s cold out here, “I said. “Let’s go inside where it’s warm.” I enjoyed my short visit with my folks before supper. We talked about the Georgia Medical School, the Milton House, my new friends, and my college course work. I answered one question after another. They wanted to know a full semester’s agenda in a short time. I decided to save my questions for them for a later time. Mattie came to the parlor and announced supper was ready. As we got up from our chairs, I noticed my father getting up a little slowly from his chair. I had never seen him get up so slowly. Normally, he springs up and out of his chair with ease. “Are you feeling okay, Father?” I asked. “Just arthritis setting in, I suppose,” he said. “Have you seen Dr. Banister about that?” “No, not yet, but I will if it gets worse.”

Mother was right; Mattie, Betsy, and Penelope had done a great job on the meal. It was very good. I ate so much I literally thought I would burst. As old George would say, “I’m as full as a tick!” After supper, we all returned to the parlor for coffee, dessert, and fellowship. Several more questions were asked and answered. I was informed that my good friend, Hank was going to be a father. He and Nanny were expecting a baby in April. Big Jim had turned into a strong assistant for my brother, John, and Mattie was pregnant with Big Jim’s baby. A lot has been happening, I thought. Father was still very concerned about what was going on in Kansas. “What happens in Kansas will certainly affect all of us,” he said. “I’m hoping they can get control of some of the violence up there.”

What my father was referring to, was that Kansas was to have been forever free under the Missouri Compromise of 1820, but in 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act established “Popular Sovereignty.” This new law required residents of the territory to vote its land free or pro-slavery. In the lingering hope that the North and South might again share federal power, Kansas would have had to become a pro-slavery state. The abolitionists wouldn’t accept this because Kansas Territory was the only land then available to balance the slave power. There was a famous quote coming out of Kansas that said, “As goes Kansas, so goes the nation!”

I had been keeping up with the events in Kansas by reading both the Augusta Chronicle and the Selma Times. I’m afraid my father is right. What happens in Kansas could very well affect the slavery question throughout the South. It had been some time since My father, and I had been interested in the same subject.

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tattooed-alchemist · 6 years ago

Link

reposting note: I’ve included the entire article sans links because the original website seems to have something malicious going on, and I felt the writing was too important to let it be lost to hijacking or whatever.

DECEMBER 8, 2017

FANNIE SOSA

BIOHACK IS BLACKPHOTO CREDIT: MANZEL BOWMAN

“NEVER AGAIN applaud poems about progress while your people die at the hands of the state

NEVER AGAIN allow people to assert a lack of intersections between experimentation and people of color.

experimentation is fundamentally rooted in blackness and wounded life: they don’t get to tell you otherwise

your body is an experiment.

your memories: an experiment

your life: an experiment

every minute is an experiment in survival

everyday is an experiment toward liberation”

http://gringpo.com/

The other day I was minding my own business on the Internet when I found this article:

In this article, Rose Eveleth, a “producer, designer, writer and animator based in Brooklyn who explores how humans tangle with science and technology”, establishes an analogy between her IUD and her RFID microchip. One of them lets her control her fertility and the other one unlocks phones and doors by waving at them.

She explains how the uterine device is never frowned upon, but the RFID microchip implant is looked at with suspicion, as if it was a dystopic device of surveillance: “No one has ever jolted backwards and said, “You have a what in your uterus?” They have at the news of my chip. I call them both cyborg implants, but most people would only consider one of them cyborgian at all.” From then on, she analyses how we think about bodyhacking as the realm of men.

A hormone releasing IUD, according to Eveleth, is the most significant bodyhacking device she uses, because ”(…) the ability to control when I conceive is a power unheard of for thousands of years of human history”, making of her a cyborg. Yet, she says, it is not thought about it as such because it is not a “manly technology”.

————————-problematic—————————————————–

(disclaimer: this is not, under any circumstance, a critique of no one’s contraceptive methods. It is a critique, however, of modern gynecology and the agency it enables, as well as the systematic erasure of Black and Indigenous knowledges)

The notion of modern gynecology being the pinnacle of fertility management is racist, erasing, colonial and patriarchal. Womxn have been in control of their fertility since the dawn of times. Womxn have been in control of their fertility much more often, in societies that worship khunt, where khunt epistemologies are allowed to cell divide in the womb of a fearless Black mother. This determinist frame of mind about fertility management as a 21st century western scientific prowess purposefully omits that modern gynecology (the praxis, the tools, the protocols, the language) was born as a tool to ensure seamless production of forced labourers, and is intimately linked with colonialism, slavery and settler capitalism.

If we are examining how technology and how we think about it is oppressive, it seems ridiculous to stop at the gender reading and further a blurry notion that biohackers have been around us under the shape of the womxn on the right side of the barbed wire fence safeguarded by the extractive pharmaceutical complex, that have an IUD.

The invention of modern gynecology, such as practiced today in mainstream medical spaces, rests on the thorough study of how to make Black and indigenous womxn produce and reproduce in captivity, be it physical and/or institutional. Sexual and reproductive trauma, intently caused by the settler, was then dissected, explained and validated scientifically in medical plantations. To a great extent, modern gynecology still exists traumatically embedded in public hospitals, reservations, free clinics, prisons, detention camps, schools, etc. Whether it is forced sterilisation, forced STD/STI inoculation, non consensual drug testing, criminalisation of abortion, discriminatory laws, and inadequate social protection, gynecological violence still regulates Black and Indigenous womxn’s bodies. This traumatic inheritance also regulates motherhood on a larger level, and the whole conceptualisation of the womb as an inherently painful space. Pain is deemed normal through the lense of modern gynecology, be it during the menses, birthing, going through menopause, and all over an active sexual life.

Stating that the unseen bodyhackers are the womxn that have a copper IUD is a way of not so subtly erasing the history of gynecological torture and sexual warfare on Black and indigenous womxn. It is also an unforgivable act of erasure of the long herstory of fertility management, contraceptive, and abortive knowledge Black and Indigenous womxn have protected and transmitted from the margins. These particular knowledges have been purposefully burnt, its recipients persecuted and hunted down, for economic reasons: an autonomous womxn in control of her fertility does not a good slave make.

If we are talking about cyborg capacities and biohackers, we could for example talk about Black womxn forced to birth yearly offspring for 20 years, birthing in the field and continuing to work on the field, still dancing to drums and receiving orixás that safeguarded their health. How did they survive? And how did they not? We can mention Mammies that lived until 125 years old to tell the story of how they protected their 30 plus year forcibly extracted milk: when breast feeding the master’s children they called upon loa to slow down the oxytocin and prolactin release, so coming back to their own lactating children they still had some of the thick milk that was otherwise destined to strengthen white babies.

Can we talk about the descendants of the settlers in places of power, fed with Black breast milk, as a form of bio-hacking too? Can we talk about Harriet Tubman and her invisibility cloak, or how she used her Black womxn embodiment -deemed illiterate, submissive, and disabled- serving at the master’s table, to develop a cross-state abolitionist network? Can we discuss Blackness as a superpower? And can we formulate why the beyond-human character popularised for Black narratives is a less-than-human threatening personhood, the Zombie? Why is the cyborg white? Ain’t I a superhuman?

Moving on and around, let’s talk about the use of phytohormones to hack gender by non binary indigeneity. We could be talking about the practice of burying the placenta/mxnstrual blood near the gardens of the village. The DNA contained in the endometrial tissue is absorbed by the ground, making several plants customise their properties to respond to the needs of this DNA. This ensures food sovereignty and unites all the members of the community on a cellular level as they eat the food customised to best feed the mothers of the clan.

Maybe also let’s mention how mxnstruating people living in physical proximity synchronise their cycles? What about the womb as a bodyhacking technology? Can this lead us to talk about the practice of co-mothering by mutualizing breast-milk amongst the clan’s lactating children as a social bonding rite? The term “sisterhood” becomes much more concrete when you have received care and breast milk from several people, building empathetic pathways transversally across the community. Thinking about this could lead us to remember a consensual Mammie: sharing her breast milk as a way to build kinship and alliances.

Let me remind you, Rose Eveleth from Brooklyn, that before your ancestors went through a mutation that made them white, there were matriarchs that build their progeny, or their lack of, in consent from the womb to their graves. They consented sexual encounters with a partner of their choice, they asked their community and themselves if now was the right time to bring forth life, and then they nested the consensual foetus in their pleasurable womb, until it came out consensually -orgasmically- to further a life based on thriving, in symbiosis with nature.

Do not try to fool yourself and us telling us that your IUD brings you “freedom”, adopting yet another level of colonial imagination to how we understand khunt. Your IUD was built on our back. You have a dystopian surveillance device sunk in your womb. The analogy between your RFID microchip and your hormone releasing IUD is sadly accurate. They are both cyborgian. But this article misses an entire and very important point: they are both surveillance devices, built on the back of Black and Indigenous womxn, serving a (re)productive capitalist agenda, and constituting an extractive cyborg body that I reject.

This particular use of the cyborgian status by the colonial imagination, disengaged from any racial/colonial/climate justice critical reading, is part of the oppressive epistemologies that reinforce white supremacist patriarchy. You cannot address cyborg as male without addressing it as white, cis-gender, able and extractive. Cyborg personhood was born from a critical impulse, as a way to re-think rights based on personhood rather than “humanity”. This critical impulse of enlarging who gets to be considered a person, also present in animal rights, companion species manifestos, dis/ability studies, and queer theory, was fueled, modeled and led by Black and Indigenous womxn’s organised resistance, yet we never see cyborgs as a Black or Indigenous womxn, neuro-atypical folx, non-human people, etc.

Weather cyborg personhood is presented as something critical or uncritical, it is always dystopian when it is not conceived intersectionally all the way to inter-species alliances. The so called post-colonial, post racial, gentrifying, RFID microchip, hormone releasing IUD carrying human body who is cut from the cycles is not the body I aspire to bring forth. It’s not the body of progress. It’s not the body of freedom. It’s not the body of choice. It’s not the default body. It’s not the cyborg body that I imagine when talking about Black futurities. And it certainly is not the cyborg body that I inherited.

#womxn #cyborgs #fertility control #gynecology #agency #systematic erasure #reproduction #womxn's bodies

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