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| Photo copyright Wings, 2015; all rights reserved. |
Now posted at The NDN Silver Blog, as promised, it's the companion piece to the work featured yesterday. It's also one of my favorites, a near-perfect work in design and execution, and one that embodies some powerful imagery.
The post itself is here. Wings's main page is here. We need sales, so please share the site links with your networks. Thanks.
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2015; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
A fire in a winter landscape. Just saw the last tweet. I have to admit, I was not thrilled at first over the BLM protest venue choice, but I've been listening and reading, and I can see why it needed to be done. People who want to simply defend Bernie's response are doing him no favours. If he wants to be President, he's going to need to listen to people of colour, and respond in language that shows them he's committed to working on what THEY need him to, not just what he thinks they need him to work on.
ReplyDeleteHeh. Pretty much. He made this last winter (late winter into early spring), and it pulls it all together.
DeleteAs to the other, you were one of the people I meant. Explicitly. I saw you wade in at DU this morning (I read sometimes, even if I don't join). I've always felt like Bernie's grasp of POC issues/concerns was at the level of Edwards, more or less. And when one group of citizens is being slaughtered in the streets daily for the color of their skin, by state and private citizenry alike, that HAS to trump canned speeches at what have been largely social events for liberal Dem types. The revolution is occurring right in front of the eyes of the people who claim to want it so badly, and yet, they're angry that they didn't get to hear yet another iteration of the same old speech because Black folks are literally dying to live? Nah.
I was presented with a very informative link this morning, an interview of Sanders in late 2014. In it, he claims that "this country overcame racism" and also openly "reject[ed]" in exactly those words, "going into this demographic stuff," all in favor of focusing instead on "white working class voters." That says a lot. It also says that yesterday's porr response is nothing new.
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DeleteBleah, had to delete my comment to edit it, that's kind of clunky.
DeleteWell... I read that interview too, and I think the tweets take some of it a bit out of context. If you go to the bottom transcript at the link, not just the earlier summary, I think it's a bit more clear that he doesn't think the country has overcome racism as a whole, that he meant simply in the single instance of electing Obama and that even there, the 'overcoming' was a near thing - and that his line about not simply 'voting your skin colour' in context was partially about needing white people to vote for black politicians. If he ONLY meant we need black people to vote for white politicians, that's way off base.
Where I think he was most wrong was in why the party was 'losing white voters', unless he means just lately. We 'lost white voters' in 2007-2008 because Obama was black.
Is he a perfect candidate? No. Is he the best candidate in the race? I think he is, even if that's not saying nearly as much as I'd like. And if he does win, he still needs to be pushed, HARD, to address racial issues on which the white part of the country struggles to maintain a willful ignorance.
Oh, and thanks for the 'cookie', heh. I didn't know you read DU as well as DK. I don't know that you ever really solidly become an 'ally'. I think it's a constant tightrope walk of trying to remember to not just 'be' from moment to moment, but to examine everything consciously from other viewpoints. And sometimes you fail. I'm sure my 'Bernie glasses' are more rose-coloured than they should be, but I just don't see anyone better out there right now.
DeleteLOL - I think we're talking about two different tweets. I meant (& thought *you* meant) the one about thanking white friends and allies who are doing the hard work of stepping up and explaining the problem to their fellow white folks. [Heh - def not the "cookie" one, which was sparked by one particularly noxious Twitter user who consistently demands derailing attention from POC.]
DeleteAs to the other, I read the whole interview. It was, from the standpoint of POC, mostly noxious. He's dismissive, and he hasn't thought about our issues in anything remotely approaching depth, because he's convinced himself that his one pet issue - economic inequality, esp WRT the middle class - is the oNLY real issue, and the one that will solve everything. He actually has a history of being dismissive, and the fact that no one can actually point me to substantive work by him dedicated to the issues of non-white/cis/het/male marginalized groups, other than marching w/King a half-century ago, tells me that there's no there there on our issues. There are a great many other problems, but his dismissiveness is HUGE.
All this said, we were both planning, absent something major, to vote for him in the primary. Unfortunately, "something major" occurred yesterday, and now we really don't know who'll get our primary vote. We manifestly do not want Clinton (but will hold our noses and vote for her if she's the nominee, recognizing fully the greater risk and evil here). But our primary vote has to be held to a higher standard, and right now, neither of them has earned it, and it will take a lot for either of them to do so at this point. I've never been about letting the perfect be the enemy of the good - we wouldn't have survived this long without being practical - but there are some places where there's choice but to take a stand, and our primary votes are one of them.
Well, it is what it is. As I've said all along, it's always up to the candidates themselves. They either earn enough votes or they don't. I suspect that if Sanders doesn't, a large part of it will be failing to understand what folks of colour want. After those last few tweets, it really doesn't sound like he's even got anyone on staff advising him about how not to compound his errors.
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