I woke up on this last Sunday here in London thinking of my return to America on Wednesday and what faces us as a country in November - a choice between a theocratic white authoritarian version of fascism or those of us standing against it and offering a different vision of our country which is to remain a constitutional republic with its underpinnings of democracy and a hope to be a better and more inclusive place where welcome itself does not become alien to its being and to ours.
To defeat this fascist uprising in the GOP will take coalition politics. We also need to take back the narrative that is fed to us by the media as witting and unwitting conduits of GOP propaganda - but conduits nonetheless - as so many members of the media have begun to tell us that the GOP, where such fascism has always festered and is now in full poisonous bloom, is in a strong position to take back the Senate and the House.
I refuse to buy into that narrative.
I assert this one: America is not the place that will hand over the reins of legislative power to a party that stole a Supreme Court in order to overturn Roe and demand dominion over the bodies of women and to stand with voter suppression laws, a political party that espouses the same racist “replacement theory” manifesto of the fascist terrorist in Buffalo who slaughtered African Americans and that stands with gun manufacturers after the latest massacre of school children in Texas. I refuse to believe that America will reward such a party. But Democrats - the only alternative right now to the GOP - have to stop wringing our hands and buying into the woe-is-us narrative. The GOP is not only good at asserting its right to power - not governance: power - but also is brilliant at gaslighting us into buying into the trope that it has that right and there is nothing we can do about it. Get up. Get out. And do. Volunteer. Vote.
(Above, Image of Audre Lorde from Penguin Classics.)
Because I woke up thinking about all that, I also woke up thinking about Audre Lorde and James Baldwin and the conversation they had at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, that was published in Essence magazine in 1984. It will be THE WEEKEND READ in a couple of weeks. But here is an excerpt:
JAMES BALDWIN: One of the dangers of being a Black American is being schizophrenic, and I mean “schizophrenic” in the most literal sense. To be a Black American is in some ways to be born with the desire to be white. It’s a part of the price you pay for being born here, and it affects every Black person. We can go back to Vietnam, we can go back to Korea. We can go back for that matter to the First World War. We can go back to W.E.B. Du Bois – an honorable and beautiful man – who campaigned to persuade Black people to fight in the First World War, saying that if we fight in this war to save this country, our right to citizenship can never, never again be questioned – and who can blame him? He really meant it, and if I’d been there at that moment I would have said so too perhaps. Du Bois believed in the American dream. So did Martin. So did Malcolm. So do I. So do you. That’s why we’re sitting here.
AUDRE LORDE: I don’t, honey. I’m sorry, I just can’t let that go past. Deep, deep, deep down I know that dream was never mine. And I wept and I cried and I fought and I stormed, but I just knew it. I was Black. I was female. And I was out – out – by any construct wherever the power lay. So if I had to claw myself insane, if I lived I was going to have to do it alone. Nobody was dreaming about me. Nobody was even studying me except as something to wipe out.
BALDWIN: You are saying you do not exist in the American dream except as a nightmare.
LORDE: That’s right. And I knew it every time I opened Jet, too. I knew that every time I opened a Kotex box. I knew that every time I went to school. I knew that every time I opened a prayer book. I knew it, I just knew it.
Who Said It Was Simple
by AUDRE LORDE
There are so many roots to the tree of anger
that sometimes the branches shatter
before they bear.
Sitting in Nedick’s
the women rally before they march
discussing the problematic girls
they hire to make them free.
An almost white counterman passes
a waiting brother to serve them first
and the ladies neither notice nor reject
the slighter pleasures of their slavery.
But I who am bound by my mirror
as well as my bed
see causes in colour
as well as sex
and sit here wondering
which me will survive
all these liberations.
The truth hurts and it must be answered.
So serendipitous. I’m currently reading her book “Your Silence Will Not Protect You.” Thank you for this 🙏🏽❣️✨