So I’ve had a couple of interactions recently in which the people I’ve been talking to have indicated that they didn’t support a cause because of one face or another of that cause in the media. In one case, a friend in Britain is on the fence about the EU referendum on Thursday but dislikes the negative campaigns on both sides. (Image below nicked from Stephen Watt on Facebook.)

  
Disclaimer: My bias might be obvious. For a variety of reasons I support the UK remaining in the EU. There’s a personal interest in that my residency in the Netherlands is currently tied to being the partner of a non-Dutch EU citizen. My partner is English. Should push come to shove, we both have ways to stay in the Netherlands (where we purchased a house four years ago), but she’s not keen to give up her UK citizenship either.

That said, my friend who dislikes the negative campaigns on both sides is one of the sharpest tacks and has been roped in to the media version of the campaign. The problem is that those who can afford to get their position across to you in the media are arguing their own interests, not those of (in this case) the people of Britain. And I’m not the first person to note that the very rich these days won’t be affected negatively no matter the outcome, but they stand to gain quite a lot if the vote is in favour of leaving. Boris Johnson, for example, might pull off being the UK’s next prime minister. Rupert Murdoch sells lots of papers whipping people into hatred of some group or other (in this case, immigrants). He’s been quoted as follows: ‘When I go into Downing Street, they do what I say. When I go to Brussels, they take no notice.’ Murdoch’s papers aren’t denigrating EU membership on their front pages daily because of any principled editorial stand; they’re doing so because British leaders are afraid of how they’ll be portrayed. (Note: This is one of the reasons I like Jeremy Corbyn: He could give a monkey’s what the tabloids call him – he’s got bigger issues to tackle. I’m also an old-school lefty.)

Somewhat less recently, a family member in the US expressed exasperation and some degree of hostility at the Black Lives Matter movement. Said family member is damned smart, politically savvy, and almost as left as I am. She’s for Hillary and I’m for Bernie (for what that’s worth). I’m not so steeped in the US media as this person, and my understanding of BLM is that it’s a movement consisting of a large number of people with different agendas, different levels of media savvy, and a whole lot of frustration, anger, and grief. It’s not a monolith anymore than the Republican or Democratic parties are monolithic. A news outlet showing a few images of Black people with BLM placards protesting or trying to disrupt a gathering is doing nothing more than selling advertising. And those people with the placards aren’t any more clones of one another than Howard Cosell is a clone of Roy Cohn just because they’re both dead white men.

One more example: A few years ago during riots in England, a photo made the rounds of a young man in a hooded sweatshirt and jeans kicking in a shop window. It was only after about a week of seeing this one photo repeated in several stories as if it was representative of the behaviour of multiple people, that I saw an uncropped version of the same image: One person indeed kicking in a window surrounded by about 20 photographers. 

Again: What you see in the papers and on the news reflects the interests of the people who own the media or have bought a portion of its time, not yours. 

Just because we don’t yet know the scale of the atrocities committed by Islamic State doesn’t make the events of their happening any less atrocious. We didn’t know the scale of those committed by Assad, Pinochet, the Khmer Rouge or Franco either.

The problem of comparison is that it diminishes for us what we address now. IS might be underequipped and relatively small – it surely lacks the engines of war machine construction that fueled Germany in the 30s. And the numbers they subjugate surely can’t match the 11 million destroyed in the Holocaust. Yet.

That said, let us try to keep before us that the scale of a persecution may be great or small, but it is the existence of persecution that should horrify us, not its scale.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/in-iraq-i-raided-insurgents-in-virginia-the-police-raided-me/2015/07/24/2e114e54-2b02-11e5-bd33-395c05608059_story.html

In this opinion column, Alex Horton, a gentleman who served two tours in Iraq at the height of the fighting recounts a raid on the apartment he was occupying in Virginia. Horton survived his encounter and was able to convince the officers there was nothing wrong. He then compares his training and the different strategies used in Iraq with those of the officers in Virginia. The long and short is that community engagement in both places saves lives, while an aggressive protect-the-badge-at-all-costs approach costs lives, generally those of civilians.

In a followup tweet, Horton notes ‘Some folks said being white helped. Probably true. Cuffs weren’t tight. They were cordial after I said I taught a college course.’

Indeed, whiteness probably saved Horton’s life, given his description of the home invasion he experienced.

I don’t have much to add to the current debate on police tactics and brutality. The world in which Sandra Bland was murdered a couple of weeks ago is the world I grew up in. The LAPD’s record on race relations was appalling and only started to become less so in the aftermath of the Rodney King beating. And even then, the changes started to occur only because of a recording. I look forward to the day when all police behave as though their actions were part of the public record, whether or not their actions are recorded.

The Son of Baldwin page on Facebook cross-posted what I saw as an excellent response to murders of black people in police custody. Actually, he posts them daily, but a couple of days after Bland’s death, he shared a post from Diallo Kenyatta who suggests the Black community do four things to combat these murders. My feeling is that, as with the Civil Rights movements of the 60s, we should all participate in these. Kenyatta’s posts are also well worth following as well.

1. Cancel the following Pro-Sport season, shut that shit completely down. We would not watch one game, hold one gathering or party, spend one red cent on any sports memorabilia, for an entire season for every single atrocity. Every single Black Ball-Chaster that played in a “Shut Down Season,” would permanently be Persona non grata in the Black community and culture; permanently. We could also develop the Pan-African Games, and Black Community Leagues the keep the talent and resources that emerges around sports within the Black community. We could do without even missing out on the athletics we love because there are countless opportunities to play and watch sports in our local communities.
2. We’d target the biggest corporation or industry for any particular product or service for permanent sanctions. We’d, as a Race stop buying Nike; we could wear any shoe but Nike; then Adidas, then Puma, and on down the line. As we start our “Trickle Down Sanctions,” we invest the millions in savings in Black owned manufacturing infrastructure in Africa and the African Diaspora. We’d do the same for computers, cell phones, essential services, clothing brands, furniture, food products, etc. If they keep committing atrocities we keep adding permanently sanctioned companies, while preparing to fully replace the products or services with one offered by a Pan-African, cooperatively owned enterprise.
3. We’d Implement a Holiday Divestment Program. We would shut down any holiday, refuse to observe or spend one fucking dime for every atrocity they commit, We don’t show up for the parades, we don’t buy presents, we don’t buy chocolate bunnies, or Valentine cards. We shut down and divest our time and money from any holiday that followed any atrocity. If that means we have to abstain from any Western Holiday, or Observance day, so be it; we take the funds we would have spent on that shit and roll it into building the Pan-African, cooperative manufacturing and service economy. We can also take that time to develop Pan-African Holidays, Rite-of-Passage Celebrations, Ancestral Feast and Festivals. We could strengthen our current cultural festivities and develop even more if we are not fucking around with European Whole-Lie-Daze anyway.
4. For every one Black atrocity we can vow to divest from and close 1-10 non-Black owned businesses within our communities and vow to replace them with a Pan-African, cooperative enterprise; such action would only cost a few dollars per household.

I’d be surprised if we had long to wait for the next such atrocity, but I’m absolutely willing to put my money elsewhere in concerted effort with such boycotts.

Part of what we hear in the debate over police on civilian brutality is that the police have the right to protect themselves. I absolutely agree with this to a point. Members of the police force used to sign up, ostensibly, ‘to protect and serve’ (the motto of the Los Angeles Police Department). Now it seems that departments far and wide (though probably not all – there are a *lot* of police departments in the US) offer live action video games to officers (and in one case I read of recently, though can’t seem to cite in the moment, donors to the department). As a nation we buy into it because we consume this steady diet of fear. Is there that much to be fearful of? Real crime is at per capita levels not seen since the 60s. Less than one half of 1% of Americans were victims of violent crime in 2011 and 2013 (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States). On the other hand, in the first 204 days of 2015, there were 204 mass shootings – crimes in which more than four people were injured by guns. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/07/24/there-have-been-204-mass-shootings-and-204-days-in-2015-so-far/

There is very little will at the top of the media food chain to lead a charge away from violence. The old editorial maxim, ‘If it bleeds, it leads,’ is truer today than it was when it was popularised in the late 80s. (I was sure the phrase had to date back to the 60s, though it was coined in ’82, the sentiment goes back at least to the days of Heart’s yellow journalism.) As with Kenyatta’s boycott, the only thing that will truly change the argument is our pocket books. Think of all that could be done with the hours we spend on line and in front of the TV.

I didn’t eat fish with scales until I was about 30. A friend took me for sushi (something my then newly ex-wife never managed in almost 8 years of dining together) and I learned that I liked yellowtail and tuna and quite a few more. I happily prepare salmon and tuna (and very recently added cod to the list). But the oily fishy tasting fish I still claim not to like. 

My wife and I are now trying a new diet which includes occasionally eating those fish I’ve always so disliked. (It also involves dropping white bread, pasta, and potatoes.) Mackerel this evening. Big ones. Barbecued with a sauce of chili, lime, ginger, garlic and sesame. Aside from being unpracticed in removing the bones from an unfileted fish, and the meal therefore being a lot more work to eat than it should have been, I found it quite edible. However, as I was preparing the sauce and then eating the fish, all of these old emotions came up, nearly unbidden. Food traumas associated with the commune we lived in for three years until I was ten, and then later ones as my parents and I fought to get me to eat more foods than I wanted to. Struggles, I learned much later, that were skirmishes in the proxy war between my mother and father. 

Recently I was talking to my sister, and the subject of old embarrassments came up – these memories of interactions that the other person surely can’t remember. I exclaimed, surely there’s a statute of limitations on these things. Something I said when I was 15 shouldn’t still affect me, right? She said that when she turned 50 (last year) she gave herself permission to let these things go. And that I didn’t have to wait (21 more months), if I didn’t want to.

So I raise a glass to dropping old traumas and eating new foods.