Friday, June 24, 2016

I Didn't Say It ...

John Lewis, Civil rights icon and Democratic congressman from Georgia, on the sit-in he staged on the house floor to demand action on gun control:

“We can no longer wait. We can no longer be patient … Sometimes you have to do something out of the ordinary. Sometimes you have to make way out of no way. We have been too quiet for too long. There comes a time when you have to say something, when you have to make a little noise. When you have to move your feet…Now is the time to get in the way. We will be silent no more. The time for silence is over.”

No more moments of silence for the dead.
No more prayers for the dead.
The dead demand that we do something to stop the violence.
Bravo, Representative Lewis, bravo!
Van Jones, commentator and political activist, on [t]Rump's call for “racial profiling” of Muslim Americans:

“I just think it’s really interesting that we’re talking about racially profiling in the context of mass shootings [because] the vast majority of the people who are doing the mass shootings in America aren’t Muslims at all. You are seven times more likely to be killed by a right wing extremist — a racist or an anti-government nutjob — seven times more likely than a Muslim, [but] if I came on TV and said let’s start racially profiling white men, let’s start racially profiling young, white men who are loners with bowl haircuts, people would think, ‘Wow, that’s a pretty unfortunate conclusion for you to come to.’ If a Christian shoots somebody, we don’t say a Christian shot them. But if a Muslim shoots somebody, we say a Muslim shot them. I think that’s starting to muddy the waters.”

Finally, someone said it. Look at all of the mass shootings in this country and see all the white men who perpetrated them. Shouldn’t we be profiling white men, too?
Sidenote: gosh, Van Jones is hot … I’m shallow like that.
Chris Murphy, Democratic Senator from Connecticut, on the failure of those four gun bills this week in the Senate:

"I'm mortified by today's vote, but I'm not surprised by it. We learned in the months after Sandy Hook that the NRA has a vice-like grip on this place. Even when 90% of the American public wants change." 

And even when We The People demand change, the GOP refuses to budge because of the NRA and its deep pockets.
Vote.Them.Out.
Corey Johnson, New York City Councilman, destroying Chris Barron, founder of the gay conservative group GOProud, and his assertion that The Gays will vote for The Rump:

“I think it’s funny that just because [Trump said] the four letters LGBT that [he is] somehow the champion of the LGBT community. He met today in New York with a thousand evangelical leaders — a who’s who of the gay right — people who have made a professional career of demonizing and denigrating gay people. Donald Trump is against marriage equality, Donald Trump says he wants to remake the Supreme court and make it even more conservative. Donald Trump has never been there for the gay community — he is a megalomaniacal, arrogant crazy person.”

Yeah. What he said!
Frank Ocean, on the Orlando shooting:

"I read in the paper that my brothers are being thrown from rooftops blindfolded with their hands tied behind their backs for violating sharia law. I heard the crowds stone these fallen men if they move after they hit the ground. 
I heard it’s in the name of God. I heard my pastor speak for God too, quoting scripture from his book. Words like abomination popped off my skin like hot grease as he went on to describe a lake of fire that God wanted me in. 
I heard on the news that the aftermath of a hate crime left piles of bodies on a dance floor this month. I heard the gunman feigned dead among all the people he killed. I heard the news say he was one of us. 
I was six years old when I heard my dad call our transgender waitress a faggot as he dragged me out a neighborhood diner saying we wouldn’t be served because she was dirty. That was the last afternoon I saw my father and the first time I heard that word, I think, although it wouldn’t shock me if it wasn’t. 
Many hate us and wish we didn’t exist. Many are annoyed by our wanting to be married like everyone else or use the correct restroom like everyone else. 
Many don’t see anything wrong with passing down the same old values that send thousands of kids into suicidal depression each year. 
So we say pride and we express love for who and what we are. Because who else will in earnest? I daydream on the idea that maybe all this barbarism and all these transgressions against ourselves is an equal and opposite reaction to something better happening in this world, some great swelling wave of openness and wakefulness out here. 
Reality by comparison looks grey, as in neither black nor white but also bleak. 
We are all God’s children, I heard."

Tears. Just tears.

5 comments:

  1. Five powerful posts, each of them a heartfelt plea for sanity and an antidote to despair.

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  2. I like Van Jones too ;-)

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  3. So grateful for those brave souls who are speaking up, and out. And so articulately. Bravo!

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  4. all these people deserve our praise!

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  5. I say bravo to all these people for putting their heads over the parapet. The sad thing is that the white world is turning right, as the bigots get older and crush anything or anyone different from themselves. Vive la difference!

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