connecting*the*dots

(originally uploaded by LeggNet)

On Dying In Virginia
The Black Iris of Jordan

I was kind of shocked and saddened to hear about the shooting in Virginia Tech that has dominated western media in the past 48 hours, especially the Internet. I tend to pay close attention to how such incidents unravel in the media and the public eye. The number 30 was splashed across home pages of the BBC and CNN for quite some time and it’s just one of those things where one cannot help but take a step back and realize how important those 30 lives were. I mean for instance 30 is the new 20 in Iraq; daily bombings and slaughters inspire at least that much.

One could easily cast this aside as another orientalist view of the world: that their lives are worth more than our lives. I mean I’m sure it plays a role, after all, a day after the shooting the “30 dead� headline was replaced with “South Korean gunman�, as if origin mattered; as if this was the opportunity the US was waiting for all along to invade North Korea (because their names sound suspiciously similar). But maybe there’s more to it.

In between hoping the gunman isn’t Arab, there is a common denominator to consider.

There’s something to be said about the storm that breaks the quiet; when tranquility is disturbed and replaced with chaos, which of course inspires fear, confusion and anger.

When you’re used to chaos, more if it is simply nothing new. One becomes accustomed to death. If I turned on the TV to hear that there were no new deaths in Occupied Palestine or Iraq or Darfur, then I would rush to the window to make sure the apocalypse wasn’t being ushered in with falling meteors from the sky.

You get used to certain things.

But then Virginia isn’t Palestine.

Virginia isn’t Iraq.

And yes, an American isn’t a Palestinian, isn’t an Iraqi. If anything, the media makes sure to remind us of that time and time again.

The irony of this I suppose is that if anyone on the face of the Earth right now knows what it means to have innocent life taken from them; to know what it feels to have that tranquility disturbed, if anyone right now knows that feeling, those people are in Iraq and Palestine.

The only difference is hope.

The US seems to have plenty of it. There is always that light at the end of the tunnel; the recovery, the moving on, the getting over the initial shock, the coming to terms with it, coming to grips with it.

Here in the Middle East, hope is as scarce as water these days (i.e. roughly half a century to be more accurate). There is no getting over the shock; there’s just not enough time to recover from loss before another comes along to replace it. There are no recovery stories here. No learning-how-to-move-on tales to be told. Yesterday is today; today is tomorrow.

Hope doesn’t live here anymore.

Maybe there should be a cultural exchange: we could teach Americans a thing or two about how to deal with the shock of loss and maybe they could teach us a thing or two about hope.

Being that they control the world supply of hope: maybe they would be kind enough to just lend us some.

Just for the weekend.

30 is 30, just as 30,000 is 30,000, just as insanity is insanity.

While I fully realize I live in a much more stable world than a majority of human beings on this earth — that the chances of me or my loved ones falling victim to random acts of violence are slim at best — I still feel the need to cling to my sense of hope.

Because for me, that sense of hope isn’t relegated solely to my circle of friends, family and neighbor’s well being — it’s continuously extending outwards to people who deal with depravity and destruction on a daily basis.

This week, it’s extended to my neighbors in Virginia.

Every other week, it seems to bounce between folks caught up in the system at home and folks caught up in the violence around the world, particularly in the Middle-East and Africa.

And I know I’m not alone.

Hopefully, Nas and his neighbors will one day receive a pause from the cycle of violence to breathe in and digest this reality.

Hopefully.

(stencil created, shot and uploaded by asboluv)

Update: The original artist makes contact in the comments:

when I did this stencil I had some text to accompany it which simply read:

BUSH BABY

during the act of spraying it onto the wall in my local town (Ipswich UK, where it still remains today) I broke the stencil with the text so only the image went up which in retrospect is more powerfull on its own than with the text which would have had a more direct and obvious message

[…]

I’m more proud of the fact that after 35 years of living on this planet and now working 9 to 5 and living the life of a parent, husband, car owner and home owner I still have the passion, anger and inspiration to want to challenge and comment what is going on in the world by sitting down for a few hours designing this stencil and getting up at 4am to spray it up on the street!

[…]

Artist: De La Soul
Song: Stakes Is High

==========

(sounds of a craps game…)

Stakes is high, you know them stakes is high, when you talkin’ about…
Stakes is high, you know them stakes is high, we be talkin’ about…
Stakes is high, you know them stakes is high…

[POS]
The instamatic focal point bringing damage to your borough
Be some brothers from the east with some beats that be thorough
Got the solar gravitation so I’m bound to pull it
I gets down like brothers are found ducking from bullets
Gun control means using both hands in my land
Where it’s all about the cautious livin’
Migrating to a higher form of consequence
Compliments
Of strugglin’ that shouldn’t be notable,
Man every word I say should be a hip hop quotable.

[DOVE]
I’m sick of bitches shakin’ asses
I’m sick of talkin’ about blunts,
Sick of Versace glasses,
Sick of slang,
Sick of half-ass awards shows,
Sick of name brand clothes (word)
Sick of R&B bitches over bullshit tracks,
Cocaine and crack
Which brings sickness to blacks,
Sick of swoll’ head rappers
With their sicker-than raps
Clappers and gats
Makin’ the whole sick world collapse
The facts are gettin’ sick
Even sicker perhaps
Stickabush to make a bundle to escape this synapse

[POS]
Man life can get all up in your ass baby you betta work it out
Let me tell you what it’s all about
A skin not considered equal
A meteor has more right than my people
Who be wastin’ time screaming who they’ve hated
That’s why the Native Tongues have officially been re-instated

(Vibes…. vibrations)
Stakes is high (Higher than high)
You know them stakes is high (Higher than high)
When we talkin’ ’bout the (Vibes….vibrations)
Stakes is high, you know them stakes is high
When we dealin’ with the (Vibes….vibrations)
Stakes is high (Hey yo, what about that love?)

[POS]
Yo, it’s about love for cars, love for funds
Loving to love mad sex, loving to love guns
Love for opposite, love for fame and wealth
Love for the fact of no longer loving yourself, kid
We living in them days of the man-made ways
Where every aspect is vivid, these brothers no longer talk shit
Hey yo, these niggas live it
‘Bout to give it to you 24/7 on the microphone
Plug One translating the zone
No offense to a player, but yo, I don’t play
And if you take offense, fuck it, got to be that way
J.D. Dove, show your love, what you got to say?

[DOVE]
I say G’s are making figures at a high regard
And niggas dying for it nowadays ain’t odd
Investing in fantasies and not God
Welcome to reality, see times is hard
People try to snatch the credit, but can’t claim the card
Showing out in videos, saying they cold stars
See, shit like that will make your mama cry
Better watch the way you spend it
‘Cause the stakes is high
Y’all know them stakes is high
When we dealin’ with the (Vibes….vibrations)
Stakes is high
I think that smiling in public is against the law
‘Cause love don’t get you through life no more
It’s who you know and “How you, son?”
And how you gettin’ in, and who the man holding
Hey yo, and how was the scams and how high
Yo what up, huh? I heard you caught a body
Seem like every man and woman shared a life with John Gotti

[POS]
But they ain’t organized!

[DOVE]
Mixing crimes with life enzymes
Taking the big scout route
And niggas know doubt better
Than they know their daughters
And their sons
(Oh boy)

[POS]
Yo, people go through pain and still don’t gain
Positive contact just like my main man
Who got others cleaning up his physical influence
His mind got congested
He got the nine and blew it
Neighborhoods are now hoods cause nobody’s neighbors
Just animals surviving with that animal behavior
Under I who be rhyming from dark to light sky
Experiments when needles and skin connect
No wonder where we live is called the projects
When them stakes is high you damn sure try to do
Anything to get the piece of the pie
Electrify
Even die for the cash
But at last I be out even though you wantin’ more
This issue is closed like an elevator door
But soon re-opened once we get to the next floor where the
(Vibes….vibrations) Stakes is high
Y’all know them stakes is high
When we desalin’ with the (Vibes….vibrations)
Stakes is high
Stakes is high
Come on…

Salon
What They Went Through
by Garrison Keillor

It was painful to hear the woman in anguish on the 83rd floor of the World Trade Center, crying, “I’m going to die, aren’t I? I’m going to die.” Melissa Doi was 32, beautiful, with laughing eyes and black hair. She was lying on the floor of her office at IQ Financial, overwhelmed by smoke and heat, calling for help. And then there was Kevin Cosgrove on the 105th floor, moments before it collapsed, gasping for breath, saying, “We’re young men, we’re not ready to die.” And then he screamed, “Oh my God” as the building started to collapse. It’s in their voices, what they went through.

[…]

This is an amazing column by Keillor and something that I personally needed to read (thank you, David).

For hours upon hours after the towers went down, I watched my neighbors leaping to their death on TV and on that day, I couldn’t, I wouldn’t turn away. I studied every moment. I did so because I inherently recognized that for every detail I could make out of their silhouetted images dropping through space and time towards their moment of blackness, I felt as if I was with them… and they weren’t alone.

In those fleeting seconds, their humanity was my humanity and mine — as much as I could will — was hopefully theirs.

As the moments and hours turned into days, which quickly turned into weeks and months, and life resumed to some form of normality in NYC, I began to lose such perspective.

Every day for the next 18 months, I commuted directly past the remains of the WTC on foot. I watched street vendors sell Ground Zero t-shirts and hats to tourists, while photographers — amateur and professional alike — lined up to document their moment in the aftermath of tragedy. Over time, as I walked past the classic NYC particle board, blue construction walls that lined my path to Jersey City on the south side of the mass graveyard, I watched them gather with graffiti expressing the raw emotions of New Yorkers concerning 9/11, the victims and the impending wars. Ten months in, they were all painted over by the city, just to be thought “vandalized” once again.

Somewhere within that surreal period of time, I stopped looking at images of that day and lost track as to why that person leaping from the tower meant so much to me, and much more importantly, why my attention hopefully meant something to him or her in those fleeting moments heading towards eternity.

I needed to say that out loud.

A Red Line Connects Us
by Abby Sher

“I no longer wish to live my life as usual without acknowledging the widespread violence in the world today and memorializing those killed and injured in the many wars and other conflicts taking place. I chose this very public expression of my concerns in order to provide others who feel the same need a means of expressing their concerns too. As you will see on this site, there are many ways to participate in this project – some very private, and some public – but all conducted in silence. My hope is that together, through our shared participation, we can create a shift in consciousness, where no humanity is devalued and human life is held sacred.�

(via ScriptingNews)

Exactly eighty-one years before the mess of 11/3/1979, a coalition of white leaders and white supremacists took to the streets in Wilmington, North Carolina, killing over a hundred black people in the process of performing a coup d’etat.

The Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 was tragic on three distinct levels:

1. A group of white political and business leaders stole an election, where black people had successfully served in positions of local government just 25 years following the end of the Civil War.
2. Not content with the speed of the political change over, the newly “elected” powers overthrew the established leaders by launching a riot, resulting in the murder of more than a hundred black people, while driving numerous more out of town.
3. The progressive nature of black citizenship and inter-racial political cooperation in North Carolina absolutely preceded the national civil rights movent of the 50’s and 60’s; this one event completely reversed the course of civil rights in all of North Carolina and served as a signal to the nation that blacks continued to have zero civil rights.

Fun fact: The next five governors of North Carolina had all participated in the coup and riot of 1898, including former governor Charles B. Aycock. Greensboro residents are distinctly familiar with that name.

The 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission released their report just five days after the Greenboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report went public. Considering that the events of ‘79 pale in comparrison to the massacre - coup d’tat of ‘98, and based on the often chilly, local conversation surrounding the GTRC report, I can only guess how many supposed “progressive” North Carolinians will view the recomendations of the State President of the NAACP, let alone the final recommendations to come later this year.

Not to sound like a PSA, but our collective, understood history too often defines our future actions in defining community. For those of you with limited time to investigate this issue, take a listen to this amazing State of Things broadcast, which dissects the history of the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot, provides context to the political and cultural isses of the day and discusses how the NC State legislature might proceed from the soon-to-be published recommendations.

(hat tip: Andy)

Phillip Toledano, How To Spread Democracy

Naomi Schaefer Riley - WSJ Editorial Page
Ladies, You Should Know Better

Word came out this week that Darryl Littlejohn, the New York bouncer charged in the Feb. 25 rape and murder of graduate student Imette St. Guillen, has been linked by a DNA match to an October sexual assault on another woman. This latest revelation will no doubt (and rightly) lead to more angry cries about the failure of Mr. Littlejohn’s parole officer to keep track of his violent charge and about the negligence of bar owners who do not check the backgrounds of their employees. But it should also serve to remind women, yet again, that it would be a good idea to use a little more common sense.

A police investigation has confirmed that on the night of her murder, Ms. St. Guillen was last seen in a bar, alone and drinking at 3 a.m. on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. It does not diminish Mr. Littlejohn’s guilt or the tragedy of Ms. St. Guillen’s death to note what more than a few of us have been thinking–that a 24-year-old woman should know better. Yet there are forces in our culture (writing letters to this newspaper even now) that find this suggestion offensive.

[…]

Radical feminists used to warn that men are evil and dangerous. Andrea Dworkin made a career of it. But that message did not seem reconcilable with another core feminist notion–that women should be liberated from social constraints, especially those that require them to behave differently from men. So the first message was dropped and the second took over.

The radical-feminist message was of course wrongheaded — most men are harmless, even those who play lacrosse — but it could be useful as a worst-case scenario for young women today. There is an alternative, but to paraphrase Miss Manners: People who need to be told to use their common sense probably didn’t have much to begin with.

First of all, the Duke rape case isn’t about harmful or harmless men; it’s about a mob mentality, peer pressure and a code of silence. Period. No anti-feminism, strawman argument fits squarely into these social dynamics. What, you don’t think those dynamics could lead to the rape of, say, a mentally retarded girl?

And “behave the same as men” is the post-radical feminism, modern day feminist rallying cry? Is that what consciousness raising groups espoused?

Hey there, nice to meet you, sister. Feeling oppressed? Me too. Ok, let’s go home, drink, curse, grab our crotches, and basically, do whatever the fuck we want. Consciousness raised!

As far as I know, feminists (or any other evangalists of ‘isms’ for that matter) have yet to reduce the complexity of their message down to a singular, easily digestible elevator pitch. If they could, the “ism” wouldn’t exist as a debatable social construct. Such simplistic dialog comes from the opposition of these “isms” (whether it be capitalism, communism, socialism, etc.).

It’s completely out of line to turn this incident — or any alleged rape — into a study of the effects of feminism on the modern day woman. If we allow that line of thinking, we submit ourselves to inherently believe that women can avoid being attacked if they only dressed with multiple layers of clothing, stayed on well lit paths and wore aprons from dawn to dusk.

That’s like trying to argue that if you mind your business and remain “in line” in Iraq, you won’t get randomly assassinated.

Fucked up shit occurs in this imperfect world through the hands of fucked up individuals — sometimes affected by peer pressures, sometimes by crazed ideologies. Within this context, common sense is an incredibly loaded term, especially when spilled from the mouths of the unaffected.

UPDATE: Speaking of Schaefer Riley’s mouth, Jennifer Pozner of AlterNet places her position into a clearer perspective:

If you’re wondering who are these “more than a few of us” who’d look at a brutal assault such as the one against St. Guillen and think, “Wow, what a stupid dead girl,” it’s worth noting the company this Wall Street Journal opinion writer keeps. Her prior work on religion was financially subsidized by the John M. Olin Foundation, a right-wing foundation which — before it closed shop — placed hundreds of thousands of dollars into media programs designed to convince the public that feminists whine too much about rape, that date rape is a “myth” and that the Violence Against Women Act is unnecessary. (For example, Olin was a major funder of Christina Hoff Sommers’ error-filled screed “Who Stole Feminism? How Women Have Betrayed Women,” a highly inaccurate, widely debunked polemic that nevertheless garnered a heap of press coverage about feminism’s supposed failures.)