Home Again Home Again Jiggity Jig

So, I am sitting in the lovely home of Betty Tisel and Sarah Farley, in the Kingfield neighborhood of South Minneapolis. I love this home. It is so warm and welcoming. It's a beautiful structure, inhabited by a caring family, and the energy is bright and clear. Betty and Sarah, along with their children Owen and Nora, have welcomed me into their home a half dozen times in the last couple of years, and I am always cognizant of the gift.

I am in welcoming home, in a city I love, on a beautiful day that began with a love filled morning when I met my beloved Susan Raffo for coffee. Susan asked me a question this morning about home, and if I thought of New York as home now. I had a complicated emotional response, but the answer, for me, is clearly no.

I love New York. I do. I feel comfortable there. I have managed to learn her rhythms and seasons. I can navigate her with ease, and I understand the dangers and the gifts that she can offer. She is less of a Big Apple and more of a Big Onion. I am constantly peeling back her layers and discovering new, wonderful, and terrible things about her. I am beginning to understand her governance structure, and I am integrated into community there in a way that I have not been in any other place except for Minneapolis.

Except New York isn't home. Minneapolis is. Yesterday, I was driving around with my childhood friend, Dr. Dawn Anderson, and I was struck again and fell in love again with the beauty of Minneapolis. Tree lined boulevards framing beautiful and architecturally distinct homes. The Minneahaha Creek bisecting the southside of the city, graceful bridges spanning its breadth. The streets covered in emerald canopies, wildflowers and sculptured gardens in front yards and along the curbs.  In a city of 22 lakes, the creek, the Mississippi River, and designed so that no resident lives more than a half a mile from a park, and you can imagine that in the summer, it is a gracious and gorgeous place to be.

We won't talk about the winter right now. But, I actually love Minneapolis in winter too....but I like to love it from inside a heated building.

From the people, to the way community is built here, the access to arts and performance, the education of the people, the diversity of the populace, the amazing food, and the more amazing friends, all combine to make this star of the north my home. It's in my blood and heart, and although it has been four years since I moved away from this place, coming back is like stepping into a favorite pair of pants, worn enough to be soft and to conform to my shape and shades, and it feels like love to be here.

Who knows if I will ever return to Minnesota as a full time resident. With the trajectory of my life as it is right now, that is seeming less likely. But Minnesota, and Minneapolis in particular, will always be a part of my heart, it will always be home, and it will always be a place where you will find me, from time to time, wandering its streets, dancing in its bars, and loving its people.

This is what home feels like. xoxoxo.

A Love Letter to Minnesota

Dear Minnesota:

You have been going through it lately, haven't you? You, my beloved homeland, have been having a Hell of a few months (after eight years of being abused by your former governor, that asshole, Tim "Satan's Bitch" Pawlenty). I thought maybe when my old boss, Mark Dayton, was elected governor, perhaps you would get some TLC, maybe a little therapy, and perhaps, with Betty Tisel's community sings bringing people together, some good old fashioned healing time.

But a peculiar thing happened on the way to the polls. There was a mass outbreak of schizoid behavior in Minnesota (I blame solar flares and rampant Tea Bagging), and even though Emmer had his ass handed to him and Dayton was handed the keys to the governor's mansion, the same folks across the state, for the first time in modern memory, gave majorities to the Republicans in both houses of Minnesota's state legislature.

(I am still not convinced that this irregular behavior wasn't the direct result of a massive bad batch of lutefisk served up to the good Lutherans just before Election Day. In fact, I suspect GOP foul play and will be asking the FDA to formally investigate).

And true to form, once the GOP took over in the state capitol, despite a massive budget crisis in Minnesota, disregarding ridiculous unemployment, and turning their back on a Minnesota tradition of justice (imagine what this country would be like if Hubert Humphrey had never been born), the GOP have decided that their top priority is to spend all their energy and resources getting an amendment proposal on the 2012 ballot to ban same gender marriage in Minnesota.

Pardon my French, L'Etoile du Nord, but WHAT THE FUCK?

Ignoring a poll a couple of weeks ago stating that a strong majority of Minnesotans favor gay marriage and oppose the amendment, despite allowing a hatemonger minister INVITED by the GOP to give the opening prayer at the state capitol, despite Prop 8 being smacked down, despite the 14th amendment and Artcile 4 section 1 of the U.S. Constitution, despite the Navy, for a brief moment--though it has since been rescinded, ordering its chaplains to perform gay marriages in states where it is legal, despite ALL THE REAL WORK THAT NEEDS TO BE DONE, your wayward and fucked up children have decided that fighting the love of two individuals and their fundamental right to enoy the privileges of marriage (don't take my word for it....read the 1967 Loving v. Virginia UNANIMOUS Supreme Court opinion establishing marriage as a fundamental right that can not be abridged based on an arbitrary classification such as race) takes priority over the economic and general well being of the people of Minnesota.

And now, social justice organizations that should be spending their sparse resources on truly fundamental issues are going to be forced to spend their time fighting a hateful amendment that, in the end, will either fail or be struck down by the courts, will create rifts and divisions in a time when we need unity, and will mean that broader and more impactful issues such as health care, immigration reform, democracy reform, and other broader peace and justice issues will be neglected. And, seeing as how Minnesotans are the best educated people in the country with the best public schools, I know, Minnesota, that you know that this is EXACTLY what the Republicans want. If we are too busy dumping millions of dollars and all of our energy and focus in fighting this ballot measure, we won't have the time, energy, or attention span to watch them closely as they try to really fuck the people.

And if that weren't enough my sweet Mother. Last weekend a tornado tore through one of the poorest neighborhoods in one of the poorest sections of Minneapolis, killing at least one person, wounding many others, and leaving thousands with damaged or unoccupiable homes, including the parents of several of my good friends. The community has pulled together and folks from all of the city are doing what the GOP in the State Legislature doesn't conceptually get....they are pitching in to help and support strangers, folks they don't know, and people that they would otherwise never have met...BECAUSE IT IS THE RIGHT THING TO DO. Or, should I say..the Left thing to do.

I love you, Minnesota. Even though I am now living over a thousand miles away in another city and another state with its own set of troubles and worries, my heart and soul belong to Minnesota. I'll be back one day, but until then I am going to encourage folks to send thoughts, prayers, and money to you to help rebuild North Minneapolis and to help defeat this Hate Amendment that will be on the ballot in 2012.

And, listen to your gay prophet, Minnesota. In 2012, Michelle Bachmann will lose her seat in Congress, Barack Obama will carry Minnesota, the DFL will retake both houses of the legislature, the marriage amendment will be defeated and you, Minnesota, will finally get a chance to heal from a decade of abuse and neglect by the very people elected to love you and care for you best.

Miss you tons.

Love always,
Brandon

PS If you see Betty, Sarah, Susan, Rocki, Luca, Cathy, Dawn, my Mom, Pete, Deb, Jesus, Xtina, Pookie, Wifey, or any of my other loved ones...please give them a big old Land O' Lakes hug from me.

Raise My Taxes Please!

A brilliant woman that I do not know half as well as I would like, but I do love and appreciate for her work supporting queer families, Betty Tisel, posted on her Facebook page a status that read

I was thinking about Republicans today - and the tea partiers — and I was thinking that they have FREEDOM and GREEDOM mixed up — please speak up if you disagree. I love good infrastructure and the only way we have good infrastructure is with taxation. BRING IT ON.

I totally agree with Betty, and more than that, I have always maintained that I am delighted to pay out most of my earned income in taxes if I have a short list of 10 things guaranteed by the federal government.

Let me state publicly that if the U.S. government in partnership with the states and local municipalities can guarantee the following 10 items, I will gladly pay out 80% of my income in taxes, and I will do so with a smile:

1) Anyone in the United States regardless of status would receive full and free healthcare including unlimited mental health care including drug/alcohol treatment,

2) An extensive mass transit system in every major metropolitan that was quick and affordable including FREE transportation for the homeless and the working poor,

3) Rapid rail lines connected every major metropolitan region of a state AND bullet trains in between major metropolitan areas from state to state connecting the entire nation in a web of super fast/green travel,

4) Free, quality, elementary, secondary, and post-secondary education through the PhD level (with every school receiving even a single federal dollar required to enact a decision making structure, including financial decision making, with equal representation from community and school based constituencies: students, instructors, professional staff, union staff, administrators, and representatives from the geographical locale in which the school is located),

5) Federally guaranteed maternity and paternity leave, for each parent or a guardian of the parents choice, with two months fully paid salary with the cost to be split between the federal and state governments with a 1/3 covered by the employer.

6) During recessions or other economic emergencies anyone that loses his or her job would immediately qualify for state funded re-training in a new vocational field OR a new post-secondary degree in a field substantially different than his or her original and/or one full year of unemployment payments for any employee that wishes to remain in his or her field of choice but is let go from a position for anything short of willful malfeasance that would qualify as materially damaging to the organization/company or is punishable as a criminal/civil offense,

7) A minimum livable wage requirement with mandatory cost of living adjustments AND merit pay increases except when a company could prove to a labor relations board comprised ENTIRELY of wage workers and union representatives that it would be an undue burden to the company to increase wages (also, in any year that a company has laid off workers, executives in that company would be banned from any level of bonuses including long term stock options,

8) Any military expenditure would have to be matched dollar for dollar by domestic entitlement, federal grants to nonprofit organizations, block grants to states, aid to local governments, and social safety network spending that directly supported the lives and well being of U.S. residents specifically excluding now and forever abstinence only education programs,

9) Long term low interest or no interest loans for first time working class home buyers REGARDLESS of credit history as long as a steady income stream is proven and has been maintained for at least two years, and

10) A constitutional amendment to ban anyone from public office for all time that voted for, is related to, or ever had a relaxing dinner at home with anyone connected to the Bush family. (I am willing to be flexible on this one).