What Bernie Could Have Said

I'm having a hard time thinking and writing about politics lately. Mostly because so much political news is organized around the Republican primary right now and it's just so ... sigh...stupid. We need a vigorous second (or more) party. We need serious conversations about policy. We don't need reality (cough) TV.
I'm a registered Democrat but I don't really identify as one. I just want to be able to vote in a primary. And the political news on that side isn't inspired.
Yesterday there was a lot of chatter about Bernie Sanders being interrupted in Seattle by a group of Black Lives Matter activists. I'm not interested in talking about whether or not they should have interrupted him. Because. Ya know. Why not?
Sanders said - I am disappointed that two people disrupted a rally attended by thousands at which I was invited to speak about fighting to protect Social Security and Medicare,” Bernie Sanders said in a written statement. “I was especially disappointed because on criminal justice reform and the need to fight racism there is no other candidate for president who will fight harder than me.
That feels like old tired White whining. It makes me tired.
All lives matter? Of course they do. Saying that now is completely beside the point. Because right now we are trying to focus on the systems of social injustice that encourage the deaths we seem to hear about every single day. Deaths at the hands of people who are supposed to protect and serve. Death when someone knocks on a door in the night to ask for help. Death when someone doesn't like the sound of someone else's music. It's not new. It's the original sin of our country. Men wrote lofty ideas about liberty while owning slaves and ignoring the men and women who had been living on the land they were claiming as their own. Our founding declarations and documents are like a palimpsest. Something had been written underneath. We built systems of law, property and commerce with our original sin in the background. It is the exception in our exceptionalism.
This is a specific time with specific characteristics. It is true that Sanders articulates politics with which generally agree. I'm not overly excited by his campaign. He is more progressive than Clinton but so was Obama. I feel like Obama got more done than he is given credit for but he hasn't been able to do as much as as he could and life inside the beltway has not changed much. It's a system that will take so much to repair. Sanders has a great critique of that system but he has been part of it for years.
Sanders could have said - I know that as a White man living in this country at this time I have had access to opportunity. As a result I am here today with a public platform. I'll have lots of opportunity to express my opinions and put forth my political agenda. I've been on national television and I will be again. I'm happy to let these young people have this platform at this time because they are expressing things we all need to be thinking about right now. Especially today on the anniversary of the death of Michael Brown. I'm sorry if the people who came to hear me are disappointed but I encourage you to listen. I encourage you spend some time every day thinking about what the Black Lives Matter movement is saying and why it exists.
If he had said that (or something like that) he would have been truly, deeply progressive. It would have been a moment in which he could have modeled an active awareness of the need to set aside rhetoric (Social Security and Medicare) and listen to each other.
So today he has a new plank in his platform and a new hire. And OK. What ever. Yeah. Yeah.
There may be a conversation about tactics but I'm not interested. I am interested in conversations and demonstrations of real leadership. Really, the head pounding coverage of you know who is numbing. But the moment when two young women of color take the stage and are met with "disappointment" just pisses me off.    

A Girl Walks in a Bar

When I was three or four or five I was walking down West Liberty with my Uncle John. Maybe we were walking home from church, or maybe we went to Islay's for chipped ham, or maybe we were just walking. I was following him, keeping my eyes on his pant legs in front of me. I must have looked off for a minute.
I remember there was a hobby store on West Liberty with plastic models in the window one of which was a scene from the Pit and the Pendulum.  There was a man tied to a table and a pendulum swinging above him. There was another man watching. I think he was a monster but I'm not really sure what I mean by that. I had not read The Pit and the Pendulum. Still haven't. But I was always compelled and terrified by that model. What would happen to the man on the table? I might have been looking at it.
I looked back and started following the pant legs in front of me, which turned and walked into a bar. I didn't really know it was a bar. I remember looking up and seeing a bunch of men staring at me. My Uncle John walked in, laughing and asked if I wanted a beer. Everyone laughed.
For some reason this story is in heavy rotation in the mommy's head this week. She tells me over and over and over. Sometimes she thinks she dreamed it. She adds and subtracts details. There is no doubt my very Methodist grandmother would not have been happy about it. Some times (in Mom's version) Uncle John tells me not to tell her. Some times he swoops me up and carries me home.
My own memory may contain falsehoods. I remember the pants and looking up and Uncle John laughing.
I've always loved bars.