Dimming visions and paling genes

Allen Ginsberg began his radical revolutionary poem, Howl by saying, “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving, hysterical naked-” So if I may begin this essay by saying, “I saw the best minds of my generation dimming their vision and paling their genes. The revolutionary furor that sparked the seeds of rebellion to sprout and to grow in the heady days of overthrow are lost. Then succumbing by inactivity, losing sight of the larger picture, shattering our new world dreams allowing it all to wither and fade away like unwatered plants on a hot summer day. Lost to all that calls out normal. Lost to the “just like you, straight man, except “giggle giggle,” what we do in bed.” A generation that seems to be tiring out, burning out, getting old, failing in the promise that was made, excepting what those who once were the enemy have to offer, curtailing the vision and turning as normal as normal can be. All this just when every hand is needed now more than anything else. Has everyone grown up and left me behind? A poor old revolutionary working for the day that will never come. I wonder if this is happening around the country or only here in Connecticut? Now I shouldn’t make it sound like everyone is retiring and sitting in a rocking chair, waiting for old man death to take them away. For that is not the case.

I’m getting a bit cranky with those lgbt people who only see the issues at the tip of their nose. We all know them. Working for civil rights for the lgbt community blast off everyone else. Not forming coalitions with others who are in the same boat as we.  It get so damn tiring to be getting their e-mails about their latest fundraiser (usually to pay themselves and their staff, their new training sessions, or what their issue is doing to promote their issue. We once held a vision that through our liberation that others would be liberated also. That we were here there and everywhere so all issues were and are, our issues. We would never consider assimilating into the main stream. We were too free for that. Too free to look and act just like those who opposed us. We knew we are different and we were proud to be so. We once knew our stories and rejected those who took those stories away from us. We held the keys to the secrets and were beginning to learn how to apply these to the everyday. We took off our masks and walked freely. We knew that an injury to one was an injury to all and that all of us in all walks of life, in all communities had something in common with each other and something worth fighting for. An end to oppression. Forward to liberation! ALL for one and one for ALL.

Soon I am going to ask to be taken off of everyone’s e-mail list. Piss off you dusty old one issue crapatory. Stop sending me anything in the mail too. And I will tell you one reason I am so pissed off. When ever this blog, which deals with multi-issue has something of interest going on, something that needs to get out to people who don’t stop off here everyday I send the article out to the e-mail list. Now on this list are some of those one issue gays and lesbians. All are good people, lovely people. People that just may need a spark to start their fire within. Good people but stuck in the mud of one issue reform, stuck in the making money mud, stuck in their brand of reform. So I send them a little of this and a little of that. Do you think they ever respond? NO! Do they read the articles? NO! Some articles pertain to all of us interested in furthering justice for all. Let me give an example. An excellent article was written by Socialist Feminist Linda Averill concerning quality, affordable childcare. Here is the title and the opening statement from Linda’s article, “Far Too many children left behind: how the U.S. government has failed working parents.”   Linda begins, “Anyone who says that women have arrived, or that there’s no longer need for a working class feminist movement hasn’t considered the state of childcare in the United States. It is a barometer that paints a mean picture of deprivation for mothers.”

Now I know if I were a woman, a feminist, a radical, a liberal, someone who wanted to build a new day and this type of door was presented to me I would jump at the chance to read the article and get my mind going. But what did  most of the women and men on QWB e-list do. Not even take a look. I know, I look at the stats daily. Why I wonder? Is it because it was written by a Socialist Feminist? Is it because our readers are not interested in the problems that working women with children have in finding and affording childcare? Do they think that QWB is not for them so anything we publish is a big bag of radical shit? Are they really those white affluent middle-class women who burned their bra’s and think the revolution has been won. Have I been reading them wrong all these years, as I was under the impression that our people, progressive or liberal women and men where all great defenders of all women, of all people. Have some slumped to the bottom and now carry on with, “if it doesn’t affect me, screw it.” Where has sisterhood gone? The above is just one example of the turn the head crowd. Now of course not everyone who is given a heads up rejects the reading of the article and to them I say thanks, let’s get it rolling and keep it rolling.

 Come out to the meeting, we need you!

Today I got an invition to come on out for some training. Good Dog, Rover, jump up, sit down, yap, yap, roll over, play dead! Come out and hone your skills or learn some new skills so you too can work on campaigns in this state they tell me. Campaigns brought to us by politicians. Let out a good belly laugh! I don’t even vote for those bastards. Well, we all know what honing ones skills so you can work on campaigns means. Working for either the filthy republicats or the dirty demonrats. Twin parties no matter how one slices it. But wait a minute some will say to me. Our demonrats here are the nice clean white liberal fluffy kind. The kind that love gays. ( I just love it when they say that. Gay Rights, Gay Marriage, with lesbians, bisexuals and transgender missing in action.) Another thing about this invite that surely puts me in my place says this,—

Here in Connecticut, this election is an opportunity to elect our General Assembly’s first pro-equality majority ever.And we need you to get involved to make that happen! Join LMF and Connecticut TransAdvocacy Coalition members, and other progressive activists for an interactive campaign training:

- Learn how to be an effective campaign volunteer
- Understand the basic stages of a campaign
- Meet other activists from Greater Hartford
- Refreshments will be served/ No experience necessary

Oh mother help me, if I don’t care to get involved am I no longer a progressive activist? Poor old me, dropped the ball and get kicked out of the game. To the dug-out Doreen. Wonder what the refreshments are? 

You know my yearly dig on marriage has been stalled as of late but I am sick of this rush to expand our access to marriage. Sorely lacking is any radical critique of marriage and with the attacks by conservative opposition it has become awkward to oppose the right to marry. We are almost looked at as traitors to the gay cause. But I must asked here who are the real traitors to our people. As friend  Mattilda writes, “A gay elite has hijacked queer struggle and positioned their desires as everyone’s needs-the dominant signs of straight conformity have become the ultimate signs of gay success.”  And as Kate and Deeg remind us in their #1 essay, Marriage Is Still The Opiate of the Queers. “Gay marriage might give some married gay people access to health care, tax breaks, and immigration rights. But shouldn’t our community be fighting for us all to have access to health care, whatever our “marital status?” What assimilationist gays are really asking is that heterosexuals share some of their privilege with queers who want to be like them.”  Harry Hay once said, “Assimilation is the way you excuse yourself. It absolutely never worked at all.” 

I love a real debate but this isn’t one at all.

The other invitation was to come on down to New Haven and join in a “real debate” featuring the heads of the Demonrat Party and the head of the Republicat party. Good thing we aren’t in late 1700 France or we all know where their heads would be. Come Out, Come Out join and debate on the issues pertaining to the diverse community of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender people. Hey wait a minute! I am pissed off about this one. Some real good people representing some very good 3rd parties are running in this state for elected office but have not been invited to give their two cents worth. Let’s open this up sponsors and stop confining people to only the big two parties. Shouldn’t people be made aware of all the choices? Of course this is how it would be if this event was brought to us by a struggling people who aren’t just shrills for the demonrats. But this invitation is just what I need to hear. I gave up crumb gathering years ago and don’t care to have a circle jerk with any nasty republicat or any fluffy demonrat. As far as I am concerned they smell. Everything about them stinks. Their reformist banners that wave on high promise us this and that but only this and that within the confines of the death trap of the Capitalist System. We have been screwed so many times before by them that it isn’t even funny. We all know one will tell us everything they think we want to hear, and the other will play Mr. Bad Guy. Same old merry-go-round crap. Spin me dizzy I have to puke. The game Wrong Road comes to mind. The politicians convince enough people that we all are on the road, the right road, and it takes time, and here is a crumb, and here is a little this and a little of that, just wait your turn. So the people go along with it. In the meantime rights or what we have been lead to believe are rights are doled out a little bit at a time as if we all are on a diet. Sometimes not doled out at all. The someday soon, the okay it will be all right takes over and people go back to what they do every day. Meanwhile time has been wasted, the work hard activists are exhausted, we are no closer to liberation. (does anyone talk that anymore, with all of its possibilities rather the the boredom of equality, that stop, that halt), and the politicians have us knocking on doors for them and believing they are such a lovely fluffy lot.

Two Things Come to My Mind.

One is a total rejection of the electoral system as far as the major parties are concerned. If you go into that booth leave a piece of raw liver and get out of there as fast as you can. Getting on the road that is being created all over Americka outside of the political dreams and follies of the rich who run for office and run us all into the ground. Join with those who are creating a movement of people who challenge. Who challenge not only the republicats but also the demonrats. A flowing movement that challenges the everything that is presented to us as the way things are and should be. Somehow we have to get off being hypnotized and marching along the wrong road, the same road, the road within such strick confines. A movement and thinking that will not dull any senses. A movement that doesn’t ask you to dim your vision or pale your genes.

Now I want to put myself in mind and you in mind of this problem.

People I know and love dearly, real freedom fighters, in the gender identity and gender expressions communities have no rights. NO RIGHTS!! Our sisters and brothers can be fired from their jobs, denied housing, denied their children, denied access to medical care, access to medical decisions for partners, laughed at, pushed around, beaten on the streets, murdered and many are homeless. They can not wait until the glorious days, of revolution to be free. They can not wait to be granted the things in life that many of us take for granted. To be free now not tomorrow but now! This is a fight that must be fought any way that we can. A reformist path must be taken. We must get dressed up, carefully hide what we really think, be nice, be sure to brush our teeth and take a shower, play kiss kiss with politicians whom we can’t stand, pat the ones who are fluffy and love us on the back and say, “Oh Thank You Sir and Missy, thank you, thank you,” get the others off the fence and moving along our road to freedom. Goodness, I can’t believe that I just said that. Am I growing up Lucy Lobbyist? Am I ready to play I will show you mine if you show me yours? Gotta be careful with this bowing and scraping this please sir. Gotta be careful with this rimming of authority. And I will remember that if I play kiss kiss with some of my friends who do not like this bowing to authority, don’t like the smell of ass kissing and do not want any of these germs smackarooed on their cheeks that I kiss only the air. This road can only be a side road one taken for only a very short period of time. We can’t remain pawns in the game of the legislators. We can not accept small freedoms within the large injustice of the Capitalist system. But we must remember how, when some people get what they want, once a crumb has been dropped from the master’s table or they get that piece of love pie they think all is hunky dory with this system, the world is all right, the birds all sing, peep, peep, flowers bloom, and its a swell day, God Bless America. Then those who still have nothing have to start all over again banging on doors, rattling windows, and screaming loudly to get those with something to realize that there are others with nothing. Put a good scare into the somethings to jump start their action kit.

Buddies Won’t You Help Me Out?

I will have to ask my Trotskyite and Leninist friends, some of my Anarchist friends to weigh in on this. What do we do as we await the new day? Is reform helping to turn the old world to ash so the new world can be born? How can we be reformist and revolutionaries at the same time? Does reformism put us on the wrong road, dull our sense of revolution and what is the right road? Will reformist politicks only tire one out so when the real deals come along, Miss Tired will be napping? Can reform be part of the vision?

note: This old revolutionary stands in awe of my comrades, sisters and brothers in the gender expression and identity communities,our young queer/straight radicals that I know in this area, in love with our youth in Bash Back, Radical Homosexual Agenda, Gay Shame, in solidarity with Radical Women and other feminists, and any and all around this world who fight for justice and a new day.