Nigger

It's an easy walk from the word Negro to Nigger. As a matter of fact, some white folks gleefully skip from one to the other, which is why, frankly, I have now decided that Negro needs to be banned from the public conversation as well.

Here's what changed my mind: yesterday, as Civil Rights Movement veteran and friend of Martin Luther King Jr., Congressman Lewis was leaving the Cannon Office building, Tea Bagger protesters gathered outside of the building started chanting kill the bill, nigger.

Let me repeat myself in case you missed that.

WHITE Tea Bagger protesters started shouting at a man that had his skull broken by police in Selma, Alabama, "KILL THE BILL, NIGGER." And they did so in chorus while spitting on Congressman Cleaver from Missouri, another member of the Congressional Black Caucus.

But wait....there's more...the same protesters saw Massachusetts Representative Barny Frank and greeted him with a rousing refrain of FAGGOT.

Don't believe me? Here is a link to an article written by my acquaintance John Nichols from The Nation.

Here's a report from McClatchy Newspapers.


Even Fox News deigned to report on this issue. Though you will note they declined to actually use the words that were hurled at the members of Congress, which, I find, suspect.

Republican Uncle Tom Chairman Michael Steele had the nerve to condemn the actions of these Tea Baggers without declaring a complete and total break from the "Tea Party Movement." How many more racist incidents have to happen before it becomes unconscionable for Republicans of any stripe (well any stripe short of Dixiecrats and the resurrection of Strom Thurmond) to associate or accept any sort of support from these racist individuals?

How many more racist incidents will have to happen before the "leadership," of the Tea Baggers call off the entire fucking parade because their rank and file are RANK and firing hateful slurs at members of Congress doing their jobs and working to provide support for the American people? Tea Baggers overwhelmingly identify as fundamentalist Christian, and the Bible commands that we provide the most for the least, and yet when members of Congress are seeking to lift up and provide healthcare for the least of the least of Americans, they buck their Christianity and become rabid fascist brown shirts.

How long before some Tea Bagger assassinates a member of Congress or takes aim at the President or First Family? Is that what it is going to take before people wake up and recognize these people for the threat they are? What are the FBI and Homeland Security doing about these domestic terrorists? Are these people on No Fly lists? Is Janet Napolitano using her wire tapping powers to monitor the conversations of the Tea Bagger leadership? These are the questions I want answered before someone is murdered by these selfish, hateful, self-absorbed, over privileged white people.

The Tea Bagger movement is racist. It is fascist. It is corrupt. And the Republican Party needs to be pulled down and ripped apart for continuing to accept the "grassroots" support of these rabid jackasses.

And truthfully, I feel sorry for the Republican Party.

Yesterday, I was sitting at the home of a New York lawmaker, and I got to know the young queer Republican that ran against him in the last election. This young man was sweet, articulate, and genuine. Though we did not talk politics, my guess is that he is one of those old school Republicans that simply wants smaller government, fewer taxes and a business friendly climate. There were Republicans, once upon a time, that believed that Civil Rights were not antithetical to their world view, and this young man was one of them. Unfortunately, his party has gone so far past that common sense and compassionate point that it simply can not be pulled back by a few well meaning good hearted Republicans trying, desperately, at the edges to bring Republicanism back to its roots.

It's time for moderate, good hearted Republicans to break off, form their own party, and let the rest of the rabid hate mongers that consistently show their asses on the national stage crash, burn, and die in a bonfire ignited by their own stupidity and hatred.

And to close, I will quote my dear friend Stacey Parshall Jensen, "I'll head east and take it to the street because my wish for health care reform, for ending the war, for cuttting taxes, for education reform, for giving the middle-class a break, for ending discrimination against women, gays, and folks of color, and for helping the poor all in the name of the FREAKIN PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS DOES NOT MAKE ME A NIGGER. Shoot. The old Black lady in me has spoken."

The old black lady in you has spoken for me too.

Equality March. Now What?

So, I have had a number of people, both in the U.S. and Canada, ask me my thoughts on the Equality March. I was pretty much bombarded in the last 24 hours asking my opinion on the event. Last night I was firm in asking my loving community to give me the night to think about the event, read more of the articles concerning the event, and formulate my opinion.

Here it is.

Let me begin by saying that I did not attend the march for the reasons that I outlined previously. I continue to stand by those reasons.

I will not go so far as Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) who said in an article that he thought the march was a waste of time and effort. For the tens of thousands of people that attended the event, it was an empowering experience and was an energizing moment in their lives. Many people that I care deeply about attended the event, and one of the women that I love and admire, Penelope Williams, was selected as a speaker from the bisexual community. For those people, the event was an important exercise in visibility. I support their participation, and I believe that they got what they needed from the march. Penelope, btw, was invited to speak after intense lobbying by bisexual organizers that, in the last days leading up to the event, found that there was only one speaker from the bisexual community scheduled to address the crowd. You'd think by 2009 the marginalization of bisexual members of our community would be a thing of the past. Whoops.

Unfortunately the community at large and the movement specifically will find that the march was not productive in the least in terms of pushing forward a policy agenda. Obama is dead on right that the economy, the two wars, and health care are much more important issues than the rights of queer folks to openly serve as a part of the U.S. war machine, the marriage battle, or any number of narrow issues that are very important but nowhere near as important as ending war, rebuilding the economy, and establishing a national right to affordable (should be free) healthcare. The reality of politics is that the President has only so much political capital to expend at any one time. The more deft politically Obama is now the more room he has to push a more progressive agenda later. A bevy of polls in recent days have shown that his popularity is climbing again, topping 56%, and he has managed to not only contain but also turn around the spin of the massive conservative publicity machine.

Giving the Right base mobilizing, religious fervor fodder right now would not only retard the movement forward with healthcare and the economy, it would gut any real progress on LGBT liberation in the future. No one is asking our community to wait our turn...what is being asked is that we recognize that ending war, rebuilding the economy, and healthcare reform ARE OUR ISSUES AS WELL!

We are not separate from or outside of those issues and for queers that are progressive, we understand that those issues are at the top of our queer political agenda as they should be. What good is the right to marry if I can't afford a wedding? What good is the right to serve in the military if, after being awarded for service by life long mental health damage, I can't afford to go to the ER (and don't get me started on VA Medical services)? It is time for our community to grow up and learn some political sophistication.

If Obama wins on healthcare, the economy, and successfully gets us out of Iraq...his popularity will skyrocket, and members of Congress will not have the political will to oppose him on issues that, right now, would paralyze the political process and end up setting our justice movement backwards.

And let's talk about justice versus equality. Another failure of the march was the name: Equality. I am not interested in equality. I have no interest in being equal to a cultural system that awards racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism and ableism (which, incidentally, are truly at the core of our community's marginalization). I have no interest in joining a system of exploitation in exchange for the right to marry, be sent to war and die for oil, or bring my houseboy in the country legally through narrow immigration reform.

I am interested in liberation ad justice, which necessitates us dismantling systems based in oppression and replacing them with agreements that respect the inherent dignities of each person without creating a new hierarchical system of oppression and privilege in order to maintain those new rights. That means tearing apart the institution of marriage and replacing it with a system of legal union that is not based in centuries of sexism and case law that favors the wealthy over the poor, men over women, or in the case of child custody, women over men. It means looking at the military industrial complex and making a decision to create laws that stringently outline when a President can order troops to war, ends war for financial gain, restricts war time profiteering, and abolishes the poverty and racial draft once and for all. It means health care reform that ends in single payer universal health care.

Unfortunately, we have been trained from the gate and through the non-profit industrial complex to accept crumbs instead of a slice of the pie. Guess what? We deserve the whole damn pie. Until we get it, we need to fight for the biggest pieces first, the ones that will feed the most, sustain the most, support the most and will feed us and strengthen us to make further charges, and harder fights, possible and winnable.