#twibprime

This week is Elon James White’s birthday. For those who don’t know, Elon is the founder of This Week in Blackness and TWiBMedia as well as a frequent guest on CNN and MSNBC. If you’ve never checked out his show, I suggest that you do. It’s on Free Speech TV, also, wish him a happy birthday, he deserves it.

When Donald Trump started running for office I chose not to give him any publicity. He was a loser in business, a joke as a celebrity, and a racist *BEFORE* he started running for President. But Republicans love losers. Richard Nixon was a loser, he lost to Kennedy, Ronald Reagan was a loser, he lost to Ford, George H.W. Bush was a loser, he lost to Reagan, George W. Bush was a loser, how many businesses went bankrupt before he became a welfare queen? So, of course, the Republicans would elect the biggest loser out of a collection of losers, whiners and has-beens.

Part of it was how Fox, MSNBC, CNN, and CBS gave Trump all that free media, too, which is why I focused on making Clinton and Sanders better candidates.

Sadly, that hasn’t worked out.

So here is what I am afraid of: The laziness of the Clinton campaign for 1) not getting the base excited for her, only taking down Trump (Which she does well) 2) alienating the left by reaching out to Republicans and war criminals and 3) not laying out a vision for the country.

All three of those problems are going to depress the vote for her. That’s before we get into the Republican disenfranchisement of the vote.

Trump may be a used car salesman who thinks because he inherited a lot of wealth, he’s self made, but he understands that he needs to get his base excited for him, by reaching out to the far right and bringing the Nazis and the Klan into the Republican Party, he’s laid out a Dystopian vision of a fascist America that his supporters can rally behind.

Only *NOW* are some Republicans starting to distance themselves from him, and mainly because he is overt with his sexism against white women. Where were they when this begun?

Oh yeah, every Republican was running to be President.

Now they are embarrassed because he refuses to use the dog whistle.

Happy Birthday, Elon.

Some of you are probably upset at the title, however, I am making a reference to something that hasn't come out yet. I co-wrote, penciled, inked, and lettered a short story with Aaron Rand Freeman, co-host of TWiBPrime that will appear in a graphic novel called "APB: Artists against Police Brutality." (It's coming out October 1st. Preorder it here.) One of the other co-hosts of the show is Imani Gandy.

And she, like me, is a bit of a bomb thrower.

I have seen a crap ton of people who see  an ally as contingent on those you are supporting acting "respectably."

That's bullsh*t and you know it. Being an ally isn't just something you say you are, it is what you do. You boo someone who takes the stage because she has a good chance at being shot when they are crying about getting shot, you are not an ally. You say things like "I don't like her tone." You are not an ally. To actually say "But what about the rights of those who came to see Bernie Sanders speak?" You are an awful person AND you're not an ally.

I have heard more than one person say that last example.

An ally is several things. You are someone who is there to support the cause. When you say "I support the BLM movement, but..." you are not an ally. You support them. If you don't like how an activist plans out a protest, don't go, but if you agree with the cause and you are being inconvenienced, shut up about it. An ally listens. A moment of silence for someone who was the catalyst of a movement is not a chance for you to yell abusive comments, because you are not listening, and you are not an ally. Finally, an ally can move through white spaces and stick up for people of color who are not there.

That is what I am doing with these graphics this week.

I am white. I live in a white city and sadly I rarely see people of color. To me, the one major problem with this town is a certain lack of diversity. Medea Benjamin was in our neighboring town to give a talk, in the middle of it, and I am paraphrasing, so forgive me if I get this wrong, she said, "I've interrupted a lot of people at events, show of hands, how many people felt uncomfortable when (Bernie Sanders) was interrupted?" The majority of the room raised their hands.

I do appreciate the honesty of those in the room, what came next was Medea explaining why they were wrong. Yes she connected it back to her issue, but so what? She was moving in a white space (About 50 people were there and 3 were people of color.) and she did it without taking agency away from the families she spoke to around this issue.

That is what an ally is.

My job is being an artist who makes these graphics. I don't have the way with words that Medea has. If it was up to me, I wouldn't write these and not respond to ignorant comments all over social media. I'm blunt, crass, and cranky. However, not enough people are moving through the spaces I do and doing work like I do.

If you say "we are on the same side, but..." you are not an ally. Because your support does not come with conditions. To be an ally, you have to love black people. I love Ben Carson because his life matters to me. I don't support his politics, I don't want him as president and I don't even like him personally, but I show my love by saying he matters.

That was a radical thing to say.

Let's end saying Black Lives Matter is a radical thing, by loving black people. Because when we do love black people, we will all show what it means to be an ally.

Share if you agree.

I do apologize.  I’m dealing with some personal and professional issues so my activity is still a bit off.  Anyway, I’m going to take a moment to say something I feel like is important.  This is specifically directed at my white followers and white progressives in general.

We’re fucking up.  We need to fix our shit.

For context:  I’ve engaged with a couple of people here this week over the Blacklivesmatter protest of the Bernie Sanders event in Seattle.  I’ve gotten some messages from folks making claims about the legitimacy and tone of the protests and I responded.  I’m going to be a little more in-depth about this.

More context:  I literally just started listening to podcasts this week (as I finally have a phone capable of handling them).  Today I listened to #TWIBPRIME with Elon James White #726, recorded yesterday.  This is the first time I’ve ever heard this podcast so I know nothing at all about them, but I heard some important shit in this episode and I think you would benefit from hearing it too.

About the protest:  I saw a video of the initial interruption.  My immediate knee-jerk reaction was that it was unnecessarily aggressive--and I was wrong.  White progressives:  it is not our fucking place to tell black people how to protest.  It is not our place to police their tone.  If you are white, like me, your voice and your opinion do not fucking matter in this discussion.  Black people know how to run their own fucking movements.  They’ve been doing it for over half a century.  And our white version of progressivism still often ignores structural racism.

There is a perceived danger here about a divided progressive movement, but the fact is that this is still primary season, and the Blacklivesmatter movement is protesting at Bernie’s events specifically because he is accessible and he (and supposedly us white progressives) can be reached.  If you consider yourself a progressive or a black ally, your only purpose here is to elevate black voices.

This is two hours long, but it’s important.  Listen to it.  

It’s not over. It’s still happening, it’s just changed form. We aren’t safe. The state keeps extrajudiciously killing us, every 3 days another black body is gunned down in the street by the state and they rnt held accountable, although most instances we’ve not done anything wrong.

So many black bodies tortured and killed by police or in detention facilities that America can’t even remember all their names because there r just SO many.

It wasn’t all that long ago. 50’s & 60’s the civil rights movement worked to end Jim crow and segregation, a system under which thousands of black bodies died, many of them men leaving single mothers behind, and then condemning them for being single mothers.

Then came Vietnam, more talk of single mother’s cuz black men were disproportionately killed b/c they made up a lot of the fighting force, b/c most couldn’t get the service wavers for college or marriage; many ppl came back from Vietnam self medicating with heroin for the ptsd they got from the awful things they’d seen.

The 80’s & 90’s brought the drug war which incarcerated yet another generation of black men, while doubling down on the single mom shaming. At present it’s murder by cop on top of mass incarceration.

We make up 13% of the population. But over 75% of the prison population. Most for non violent drug offenses. And not because we do more crime, but because our neighborhoods r more heavily policed.

All this in a structured institution designed to, and predicated on, the inferiority of black ppl.

Meanwhile we’re conditioned to always be conciliatory when on the receiving end of harm from those working for the government and those who still believe in the “old” ideals of the south. Always trying to protect white ppls’ feelings surrounding guilt about the past, their perception that we’re blaming them directly and saying that they owned slaves or propped up Jim Crow.

No one is blaming white ppl today for the actions of their forefathers, or trying to make u feel guilty as though u were responsible for them. That guilt doesn’t exist for ppl who see and acknowledge, and accept the structural racism and white supremacy that was built into our country’s functioning at its inception; the now subtle ways its woven itself into our society. It’s the elephant in the room.

We can’t begin to deal with anything if ppl won’t recognize what larger things r at play, and how they entwine each other and intersect with all parts of our society.

We can’t feel safe anywhere. I see cops and I get nervous. I don’t know what citizens hold those racist ideals and who doesn’t. Any white person I meet could pull out a gun and shoot me dead and I wouldn’t know till they pulled it out. We don’t know who we can trust. And seeing these events happen over and over again, and repeating news broadcasts with no real information, its just disaster porn; It traumatizes us all over again and reminds us how unsafe we r constantly. We’ve been terrorized for generations.

R white ppl scared knowing that if they were in our shoes they’d have already burned this shit down? The same way straight dudes freak when a gay guy hits on em, like they’re worried that gay guy will treat them the way they treat women?