Ulimozinefaktree | Someplace between the between that is between here and there.
On Juneteeth
Here we are, now in the now, as we've always been (at least as best as we have thought that we might be able to think we are), on a day when what was once "now" in Texas had been "two and a half years ago" not too many miles east of the present seat of my delimited knowledge.
How does today change us? Does it change you? Does it change me? It isn't just a simple thing like rearranging the furniture (which, honestly, isn't all that simple when one thing pushes the next thing against the next). What does it take to realize freedom, equality, liberty, and justice for all? What needs to move next?
If you spend more than a minute in either the civil or criminal wings of the legal system, around lobbyists, with ambitious politicians, or aside near-retirement bureaucrats, it's quickly apparent that the mechanics and platform for our government and administration of justice get quickly gummed-up with the disingenuous word games, strategic obfuscations, and mendacious interpretations of everything that might have been said to have been said by whoever might corroborate what someone else wants to hear. At least in what I've seen, the gumming-up mostly serves to feed corrupting want of greed and power, the glittery and iridescent slime that makes the world appear so very slick but just starts gluing our feet down in convenient and defined box.
Things could be more clearly cut, less bedazzling. For instance, the XIII Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America has been a recent topic of more thorough discussion thanks to Ava DuVernay's documentary 13th and the broader conversations and conscious-raising in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by officers of the Minneapolis Police Department. DuVernay's work illustrates in a clear and thorough way how a 14-word clause in an otherwise straightforward sentence can undercut the liberty and freedom of generations of people. The XIII Amendment reads:
Section 1: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2: Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
How different would our present moment be if the clause "except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted" had been excised from the sentence that forms Section 1 of the amendment? DuVernay's documentary illustrates how those 14 words gave rise to the mass incarceration of black Americans and, as it has permutated through to our present moment, the mass imprisonment of not only Americans but citizens of other nations who have sought refuge in what we once advertised as the land of liberty and limitless opportunity.
Or thinking of that second section, to what ends have we seen the deployment of the "power to enforce" the article and what, exactly, constitutes "appropriate legislation"? It's a notable thing to look at the variance between the adjective and verb forms of "appropriate," the difference between what is "suitable" vs what we might "take" (from someone else). Whose lives have been appropriated (and to what ends and whose benefit) through the enforcement of laws that serve the powerful and not the weak? Whose franchise in this nation has been revoked? Who is next if we fail to change the trajectory of this nation?
Now that we're talking, about now we could also talk about this notion of history (or herstory (or ourstory (or theirstory))), which is not a matter of nostalgia. Nostalgia provides a salve against reality and honesty, the kind of thing that gives rise to monuments for which people forget the meaning and intent. If we're talking history (albeit a term lacking inclusivity), then we're talking what awareness we bring along, what we choose not to forget or whitewash. It's a point of admission and perspective, and that perspective shifts as we move, read, write, art, and politic around the subject of our being together, bringing into our field of view what we didn't yet know how to see.
So here we are at Juneteeth in the year 2020 of the Common Era. Even now trees bear the strange fruit of hatred. There is a deep and earned distrust of the governing system we have inherited, and while the system is flawed, I reserve the greatest degree of distrust for the people who hold and seek to retain power. Who has sought to appropriate your life? Who gets to define "duly"? Who cries out with the most indivisible statement and what parties seek to condition that statement with what elides the point?
Black lives matter. Though the privileged and powerful long denied and worked to obscure that fact (and though a frightful plenty of Americans continue to deny it), all along black lives mattered (even if the privileged and powerful said otherwise). So now, today, at this moment, might we appropriate the legislation that empowers us to elect the individuals who best represent our interests and stand united, one nation, indivisible, and reclaim freedom, equality, liberty, and justice for all.
A lone vote isn't enough. Protest isn't enough. More words, more art, more music, more action, more expression isn't enough. However, connected and unified, perhaps it will be enough, so this day and all days I hold hope and believe we can change together and wholly reach the promised good, the more perfect union.