Dear Langston

Langston Hughes

I, Too, Sing America

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.

Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—

I, too, am America.

—Langston Hughes
From The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes.

I feel quite audacious, to answer one of America's greatest poets with a poem of my own. But for words to become poetry, they must be audacious. I'm sure others have answered, but I must answer too.

Dear Langston

Dear Langston,
Please, please come,
come sit at the table.
We see, now, how beautiful,
how beautiful you are,
how wretched are we.
We are ashamed.
You are, you are our very own.
Please, come sit.
Without you we cannot sing,
we cannot be
America.

—Mary Ray Worley

Freedom Is Never Free: It's Our Turn

In the last few days I have been so damn tired and discouraged and overwhelmed with sadness. I know I'm not alone. There was no justice for Trayvon, and there's not likely to be any. In the struggles for racial justice and reproductive rights, it feels like we're sliding backwards—and we are. A bit. Because freedom is never free, it's never safe, it's always under threat. If we are less than vigilant, our precious freedoms are eroded.

The events of the last few weeks drive home the reality that our freedoms are under threat. But this is nothing new. They are always under threat.

Many lives were utterly transformed by the civil rights and women's movements of the twentieth century. The work of those lovers of justice, their sacrifices, were not in vain. They accomplished so much. The recent Supreme Court decision on the Voting Rights Act, the verdict in the Zimmerman trial, the NSA spying on Americans, the erosion of reproductive rights in states all over the country—none of these diminish the accomplishments of the brave freedom fighters who went before us.

Some of the best gave up their lives, went to prison, suffered horribly. Their sacrifices and dedication were not for naught. Many of us experience and remember the transformative power of those sacrifices. We have read and heard about them, studied and sung about them. We have ridden on the waves of those sacrifices to experience previously unimaginable freedoms.

Now those freedoms have been not only imagined but lived. We have lived them and tasted them and breathed them in, made them a part of the very fabric of our being. But we have also taken them for granted. We have fallen prey to wishful thinking that those wars were fought and won once and for all, that those battles are behind us, that those freedoms are secure. Sometimes we even forget the high price that was paid for them.

We naively thought that because we ourselves had been transformed by those freedoms, so too had the rest of the country. We failed to recognize the power and determination of the untransformed, the unconverted, the recalcitrant, the small-minded and mean-spirited. We failed to recognize that although progress has been made, our lives are still permeated by systemic injustice—it poisons and plagues our every breath, every step. No one is free of it.

It's time for us to step up and build on and strengthen the progress made by the freedom fighters who came before us. Although it may seem like a heavy burden, although we may have had other plans for our lives that didn't involve struggle and sacrifice, and although it may seem that the obstacles before us are insurmountable, in actuality, this work is a privilege. It's a high and sacred calling. It is the very stuff of life to build communities and networks of activists. We march arm-in-arm with all who have fought for justice throughout history and with all who fight for justice today all over the world. Not only are we not alone, we are in mighty, illustrious company.

For much of my adult life, I have felt wistful that I missed the glory days of the civil rights movement. I would have given just about anything to march with the throng to Montgomery and sing with the Freedom Singers. Silly me. I didn't miss my chance. My voice, my work, my presence are needed. Now. Not only is it not too late, but now is exactly the right time.

It will never be too late to walk in the footsteps of Harry T. Moore, Rosa Parks, Dr. King, Margaret Sanger, Mahatma Gandhi, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Nelson Mandela, and Susan B. Anthony. We still have so much to learn from them. It will never be too late to follow their example, to add our voices to theirs and our sacrifice to theirs. Not only is it not too late, but now is the time. It's our turn. The baton has been passed, and we must not fail to take hold of it. They are counting us, that mighty company, to continue their work and pay the price for freedom. Because God knows it's never free.

Freedom Never Dies: Songs for Days of Grief

Since I heard the verdict in the George Zimmerman trial Saturday night, two Sweet Honey in the Rock songs have been going through my head over and over again. One is "Ella's Song," by Bernice Johnson Reagon. It echoes the words of civil rights activist Ella Baker, who said this in 1964:

Until the killing of black men, black mothers' sons, becomes as important to the rest of the country as the killing of a white mother's son. We who believe in freedom cannot rest until this happens.

Saturday's verdict is a body blow to every mother, every parent, everyone who ever held a child in her arms. Some were surprised by it, but many were not. The unsurprised are the ones who confront racial hostility every day, who send their black children out into the world and every day fear the worst.

We failed Trayvon, just as we failed Emmett and so many, many others. On Friday I had dinner with a precious three-year-old black boy and his family. I pray to God we don't fail him too. I fear for him, and I grieve that he must make his way through the racial morass of fear and ignorance that continues to plague us.

The other song I can't get out of my head this week is the "Ballad of Harry Moore," based on a poem written by Langston Hughes. Like Trayvon Martin, Harry Moore lost his life because of Florida's—and the U.S.'s—entrenched racism.

From Isabel Wilkerson, author of The Warmth of Other Suns:

May we never forget the history of Sanford, Florida. How could so much happen in one place? It was in Sanford that Harry T. Moore, pictured here, the NAACP's lone man in Florida and the first casualty of the modern civil rights movement, took his last breath after his home was firebombed in 1951.

Moore, a teacher by training, risked his life in the 1930s and '40s, long before Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks came on the scene. He investigated lynchings, protested segregated schools and taught black people how to vote in a state where the NAACP was a banned organization, where, according to his biographer, "no restaurant would serve him, no motel would house him, and some gas stations wouldn't let him fill his tank, empty his bladder or even use the phone."

On Christmas night, 1951, a bomb exploded under Moore's bed at his home in Mims, Fla. It was his and his wife's 25th wedding anniversary. The closest hospital was 35 miles away—in Sanford. There was a delay in getting the couple there. Then there was a delay in getting a black doctor to attend to them. They both died in Sanford. No one spent a day in jail for their murders.

One of Moore's recruits was George Starling, a citrus picker who led strikes in the groves for better working conditions; the work was dangerous and the pay was nickels for a day's labor. It was in Sanford that Starling had a final standoff with a grove owner that set in motion plans to lynch him. He fled to New York for his life.

Decades later, it was in Sanford that 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was walking home in the rain, while being followed by George Zimmerman. Harry T. Moore and George Starling would have been deeply saddened by the Zimmerman verdict, but not surprised. The scenario, to them, would be all too familiar. History is with us always. May we learn and gather strength from it and be inspired by the courage of men like Harry T. Moore. May their sacrifices not have been in vain.

Amen. And amen. Again I say, amen!

An Open Letter to Tammy Baldwin: Save Postal Service

Senator Baldwin:

As I said to you at the bloggers’ meeting at the Wisconsin Democratic Convention in June, the US Postal Service is destroying its ability to serve the people of Wisconsin and the rest of the country by decimating its infrastructure: stopping some or all mail processing at plants in Madison, La Crosse, Eau Claire, Wausau, Oshkosh, as well as Kenosha, Portage, Rhinelander, Rockford IL, Duluth and Rochester MN, and Kingsford MI. Of 14 processing plants in and adjacent to Wisconsin, the USPS wants to continue full service at only two: Milwaukee and Green Bay.  And the Milwaukee plant is a leased building; the lease is up in 2015; the building is flimsy and not designed for heavy equipment. It shakes alarmingly whenever a train goes by.

USPS is destroying its entire mail-processing infrastructure.

At the same time, private presort houses such as Pitney-Bowes are expanding: building new plants and moving to larger plants.

Your constituents and the American people need your help to stop the destruction of the US Postal Service.

The leadership of the USPS itself wants to self-destruct. Why? Management has been captured by profiteers: the big advertising mailers like Val-Pak coupons—who don’t need first-class service; the big contractors like Pitney Bowes; and competitors like UPS.

If you don’t help to stop them, these profiteers will drive USPS to destruction and insolvency.

USPS is rushing toward privatization of all mail-processing operations.

Once Pitney-Bowes and others have been hired to do all of the mail processing USPS once did (1) the revenue will be gone: taxpayers will again have to pay for letter carriers to deliver mail; (2) there will be no service such as first-class service used to be.

This is not theoretical. It is happening as we speak. There were roughly 500 processing plants just a very few years ago. About half of them have already been closed or are in the process of being closed. The regions that used to be served by the now-closed plants no longer have what we grew up thinking of as first-class mail service. Instead of one-day service to a nearby town, it now takes several days to mail a letter across town.

The “savings” are a fiction. Destroying the service will give the revenue to private operators. Then there will be no revenue to pay for “last mile” delivery.

The purported “savings”—although more than offset by payments to trucking companies and private sorters—are money taken from the postal workers in Madison and other Wisconsin cities (and all across the country) who will lose their livelihoods.

This is the main thrust of the privatizers’ plan: to replace union jobs in the USPS with nonunion jobs at profiteers’ plants: replace living-wage jobs with non-living-wage jobs; replace jobs that offer benefits with jobs without benefits.

Senator Baldwin, what kind of America will you help create?

Will you help the plunderers, privatizers, and profiteers destroy the nation’s infrastructure, in order to destroy the last remaining living-wage, union jobs?

Or will you stand up for the Wisconsin and American people, fight to preserve their post office and to preserve at least a little of the middle class?

When I said to you in June that USPS is being destroyed in the service of the big mailers, what you said to me was, “Some of those mailers are in Wisconsin.”

The implication is that you may be willing to see the permanent destruction of essential American infrastructure; the permanent dismantling of the ability to provide first-class service, so that a Wisconsin corporation can reap more profit.

Who are your constituents? The big mailers? Or the Wisconsin people? You can’t serve both.

You must choose.

Choose to side with the people of Wisconsin and the rest of the country. Choose the middle class. Choose rural communities. Choose people without broadband Internet. Choose the small businesses for whom receiving checks today rather than 2 to 3 business days from now means quick enough cash flow to stay in business.

Privatized mail service, coming to the U.S. with blistering speed, has already happened to Europe, with dire results.

Likewise, closing post offices especially in rural areas devastates the rural communities and saves essentially nothing.

I see that you have not yet signed on as a sponsor of S.316, the Postal Protection Act of 2013. Will you take this first crucial step? Not only sign on, but persuade your colleagues to do so also. Even the Republican ones. Postal service should not be a partisan issue. We all need it. A world without postal service is a poorer world.

S.316 would undo some of the financial damage inflicted by the 2006 PAEA, and would reiterate USPS’s obligation to maintain current levels of service.

Much more must be done to remove the vultures from the postal eagle’s nest. 

For now, will you co-sponsor S.316.

Can I count on your leadership on this crucial issue?

Thomas Ray Worley
worleydervish.blogspot.com/search/label/USPS

A Heartfelt Thank-You to the Solidarity Sing Along

Today Amy Goodman posted a perfect Fourth of July piece called "This Independence Day, Thank a Protester."

Independence Day should serve not as a blind celebration of the government, but as a moment to reflect on the central place in our history of grass-roots democracy movements, which have preserved and expanded the rights proclaimed in the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence: Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Musical agitator Tom Morello, friend of protesters everywhere and especially of the Solidarity Sing Along, echoes Goodman's sentiment:

I am enormously proud to be an American. I would say that the things that our corporate-controlled government has done at best are shameful and at worst genocidal—but there’s an incredible and a permanent culture of resistance in this country that I’m very proud to be a part of. It’s not the tradition of slave-owning founding fathers, it’s the tradition of the Frederick Douglasses, the Underground Railroads, the Chief Josephs, the Joe Hills, and the Huey P. Newtons. There’s so much to be proud of when you’re American that’s hidden from you. The incredible courage and bravery of the union organizers in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s—that’s amazing. People of get tricked into going overseas and fighting Uncle Sam’s Wall Street wars, but these are people who knew what they were fighting for here at home. I think that that’s so much more courageous and brave.

So this Independence Day, from the bottom of my heart, I want to thank the most freedom-loving, determined people I know, a community of activists I'm enormously proud to be a part of, the Solidarity Sing Along. Thank you for showing up more than 700 consecutive weekdays to sing your outrage. Thank you for singing in the bitter cold, in the pouring rain, in the blazing heat.

Thank you for coming armed with creativity and solidarity and perseverance. Thank you for not backing down, for not being intimidated, for still being there. With every fiber of my being, I thank you, not only for all that you do but for who you are. You will never know how much you inspire me, how much hope you give me, how much you have energized me and transformed my life. I will never be the same, thanks to you.



# # #
Many thanks to Rebecca Kemble for the outstanding video.

What's Next in the Fight for Women's Reproductive Rights?

Some practical suggestions about stepping up active involvement in the fight for women's reproductive rights.

Join, get involved in, and donate to local and state organizations such as the following (I'm listing Wisconsin organizations, but you get the idea.)

Planned Parenthood Action
Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin
NARAL Pro-Choice Wisconsin
League of Women Voters of Wisconsin
Emerge Wisconsin, which identifies, trains, and encourages women to run for office, to get elected, and to seek higher office.

Stay informed about what's happening.

Talk to others, especially other women, about what you're doing and discovering. Develop your own network of activist friends and then invite others into that network.

Show up! Whenever you can. When there's a meeting or an action, be there. And bring a friend.

Well before the next election season, sign up to learn how to help others register to vote. We will need to mobilize like never before.

Take good care of yourself and have fun. We're in this for the long run.



From Texas writer and women’s rights activist Katie Sherrod:

On the eve of the Fourth of July, we all need to remember that "the price of liberty is eternal vigilance" (usually attributed to Thomas Jefferson, but which Jefferson probably got from the statement "The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance" by the Irish statesman John Philpot Curran.)

Remember, we all knew from the beginning that nothing will stop this draconian anti-abortion legislation from eventually passing in the Texas Legislature because the Rs have a majority in the House and the Rs in the Senate will not enforce the 2/3s rule in the Special Session. (I love the way the pundits keep pointing that out, as if we hadn't noticed. We women just need so much help, don't we?).The point of the protests is to fight back as hard as we can to put the Rs on notice that there will be a cost extracted for what they are doing to women.

So what happens after it passes?

Court challenges in the short term, and expanding voter registration, voter education, voter turnout in the long term. The numbers of young women and men who have been galvanized by this issue are important, and now the job is to keep them involved, engaged, and turning out. This is especially true in the Hispanic community, in which young people are much more progressive than parents and grandparents.

So Texans have their work cut out for them.

What can an outsider do? Donate to groups who are organizing this. Donate to Planned Parenthood. Donate to the Texas Democratic Party.

And pray. Pray that we have the necessary strength, courage, and stamina this will take. We can do this. We will do this.

Yes, we will.

Something in the Air

I'm still recovering from pneumonia (not fun, I assure you!), but I just have to write a short note to tell you that I feel something amazing in the air, ripples in the space-time continuum, awesome mojo from the universe. Women are waking up. Waking up to their power. Waking up to their voice.

Texas is only the beginning. Senator Wendy R. Davis and the women of Texas and the men who stand with them are pointing the way. The misogynistic laws Perry et al. intend to pass in Texas look just like laws being pushed and passed (sounds like a not-very-pleasant bodily function, doesn't it? how apt!) in states all over the country, including right here in Wisconsin. Women standing up to misogynists in power are sending a clear message: we're going to clean up this mess. We will no longer tolerate the intolerable.

I don't think, once we get going, that we'll be content to stop with restored reproductive freedom. There are plenty of other messes that need the attention of fierce, determined women and their allies willing to roll up their collective sleeves. The Supreme Court just made a huge mess of voting rights. Our environment is groaning under the weight of corporate greed. Wall Street is regulating Washington instead of the other way 'round. Big money has corrupted our government and shredded the democratic process. There's work to do, and we are the ones to do it. One inexorable step at a time.

There's a change in the air. Can you feel it? I swear I can smell it. It smells like spring, like a freshly cleaned house with all the windows open and a lovely spring breeze drifting through. We're done with misogyny. We're done with patriarchy. We're done with hate. We're done with political bullies. You've way overstepped your bounds, and we're putting you on notice. Get the hell out of the way. We are the ones we've been waiting for, and we're here to clean up the gigantic mess you've made.