Wednesday, July 03, 2013

Existing in New York City: Independence for One; Reservations for the Others

Foto by tgw, New York City, 2013
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White Independence; Black Slavery; Red Massacre 





Independence Day

"We soon found that the white men were growing rich very fast, and were greedy." Chief Joseph

"I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought light and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony."  Frederick Douglas


July 4th

The only thing Independence Day ever meant to me was a day off from work.  Yes, I've felt independent all of my life, but not because of anything my White people ancestors did.  My White people ancestors stole this land from its aboriginal people.  Savages, my White people ancestors called them.  One of my White ancestor generals, old Phil Sheridan, said, "The only good Indian is a dead Indian."  Then in order to make this nation work, my White ancestors enslaved hundreds of thousands of free Africans and shipped them in slave ships to this stolen nation's shores and forced them to put in the foundations on which the White man built this nation.  I live in New York City, a city built originally on the backs of the slaves of the Dutch and British and eventually my White forefathers. George Washington depended on his slaves to grow his marijuana and tend his crops and cook his meals and harvest his crops and wait on him hand and foot.  Thomas Jefferson depended on his slaves to build his dream house, to work his plantation fields, harvest his crops, wait on his lazy ass hand and foot, and his slaves' young daughters for the fulfillment of his erotic sexual demands. 

I grew up in the South where its Native Americans were forced marched from their original homelands up a Trail of Tears to be imprisoned in areas of this nation that the White man thought were valueless, the wilds of Oklahoma and the deserts of the Southwest and the frozen lands of the far North.  In my home state of Texas, my White ancestors stole this state's vast lands from its original Mexican natives; from East Texas out to West Texas, my White ancestors got wealthy off the backs of enslaved Blacks and "wetback" Mexicans.  Though the Blacks were freed (according to the Emancipation Proclamation) in 1863, my White Texas ancestors kept that news from Texas Blacks until June 19th, 1865, which is still celebrated in Texas as Black Independence Day.

Even though Blacks were freed in 1863, my White ancestors through Jim Crow legislation kept Blacks enslaved until a White President from Texas signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1965, an Act that currently my White people are trying to repeal, the White-controlled Supreme(ly Dumb) Court (of Jesters) recently gutting the Voting Rights Act of 1965 so that the Republican-dominated State legislatures can now block Blacks and Latinos from voting. Racist White-dominated legislatures in those states still fighting the Civil War (which my grandmother taught me wasn't "civil" at all...she called it "the War Between the States") are already at work gerrymandering districts away from Black and Latino majorities and putting into law poll-tax-like measures like having to have a photo ID and proof of citizenship to vote, even if you've been voting for several decades past.  The racist founder of the racist ALEC organization in a speech before his racist goons stated he was totally against everybody voting, that the fewer people who voted, the easier it would be for his organization (now ruled over by the racist Koch Brothers) to wreck our economy, deprive unions of collective bargaining rights, control who can vote, and privatize as many public programs as is possible using the White man's greatest power tool: MONEY to get these dirty deeds done.

I one year attended an Independence Day party in an apartment that overlooked New York City's East River where the Macy's Independence Day fireworks were exploded from the Brooklyn Bridge uptown to the 59th Street Bridge (I refuse to call it the Ed Koch (Crotch) Bridge).  The awesomeness and thunderous boomings of those explosions were to me like the sounds our stupid soldiers suffer at the heights of the many wars started by my White ancestors and my present-day White brothers and sisters (remember, President Obama is HALF WHITE).  The whole flag-waving bullshit ceremony was military to the core, our stupid veterans, especially those without limbs, were honored, while our crookedest White politicians prayed to the Jewish/White Christian God, Jehovah, thanking him for our White forefathers and the "freedoms" We the White People of the United States enjoy...it was totally a White privilege celebration.  I don't recall one Black person being on the podium that night.

thegrowlingwolf
for The "Independent" Daily Growler  


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