the differences

are palpable.

working class responses are not usually measured, even. we scream, we rant, we kick and we rumble. we are loudly outraged. unless we have been broken.

yes, sure, i have been broken, but my shards cut still. i'm not done. i can still get up.

and when i get up i'll still be yelling. you may not like yelling. does it grate on your ears, make you worry something might be wrong? does violence violate your genteel sensibilities? are you worried that violence will not accomplish the goal, will alienate the opponent?

who are we, then? are we negotiating while people die? are we pleading at the bargaining table with folks bleeding out under the boss' heel?

i cannot help you, friend. i believe in helping others get to the place of understanding our demands, using love to help them see. BUT. they are shooting people in their cars in front of their children; gunning people down while they try to earn an extra dollar to put food in their kids mouth.

but i can't be calm and measured in this historical moment, with these circumstances. we must, as organizers, use the urgency of the moment, the rage of US, the sadness and the helplessness, to offer an opportunity to put hands and arms and mind and muscles to the ending of this violent, scared white supremacy. let's not encourage people to be calm, let's encourage people to take their anger and their fear and take ACTION.

now is not a time for calm, now is a time to FIGHT.

and don't get me wrong. we need the cops. ON OUR SIDE, FIGHTING. Those who stay on the other side can get what they get as the tide rolls in.

why create

something new when something old fits the purpose.

2016. So many years. I feel so old. And today so worn out. I can't figure out who I am anymore, in the tumult of everyone else, in the aether of my children and my business, it's just me reacting hoping doing cleaning loving raging. I read in a novel recently that if you don't know what you're going to do, you could do anything. this could be both very scary and very hopeful-- i worry, though, that for me it could just be scary.

how, though, do I predetermine my reactions?

perhaps, not react. learn to calm the inside and manage from my heart. i have been realizing lately that my working class upbringing is very difficult. it's angry and it's scared and it's dragging me through the mud and it's so hard to defeat, i can't be the measured sweet proactive person that maybe it's easier for middle class people to manage, i'm so close to the edge of not dragging us all through safely that i just want to scream, holler, throw things, and sometimes i do. and i feel like a complete failure as a mom. i feel like i'm doing to them what was done to me. maybe even worse, because i'm my dad and my mom all rolled into one, the darkness and the depression and the addiction, and i feel so guilty and overwhelmed and alone.

i'm not saying i don't try, because i really do. sometimes i can feel proud of who i am. it's just that lately i look at my daughter and i see how much she needs me and i feel numb and incapable.

so there's that.