In 1968 there was a huge anti-war student movement coupled with a civil rights movement. These two movements backed 1 democratic candidate in the democratic primaries but that candidate didn’t win the majority of votes. As a result activists felt so fed up that they decided to protest the presidential election leaving the Republican candidate Nixon to win. 

Nixon had campaign as the “Law and Order” candidate who would be able to put an end to all the protests and civil unrest in the streets. 
Years later Nixon’s top aide, John Ehrlichman, would admit in an interview: (the following is a direct quote):

“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. … You understand what I’m saying?

We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. … We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

Nixon’s rhetoric about black people and anti-war activists set him up to be able to jail, exile, and even kill activists with full approval from the general public. It also set the stage for Regan’s “war on drugs” and all the subsequent policies that appealed to outraged white voters and resulted in the mass incarceration of our communities of color.

Trumps rhetoric is far more hyperbolic, far more overtly racist, and far more erratic than Nixon’s was.
And it’s not “just words”. 
Because those words build the story we tell our society to justify the way our government treats its citizens. 

If we walk out on this election we set back any progress we’ve made on civil rights, women’s rights, workers rights…etc. 
If we sit out this election we don’t bring the revolution. We sink deeper into a denial of our collective history, misinformed outrage, and life-wrecking public policy. 
And we leave the most vulnerable and least represented among us to bear the fallout. 

Go Vote. 
#GetInvolvedStayInvolved #NeverTrump #Imwithher 

I came out at school today.
It’s stressful every time and it normally consist of me having a normal conversation with someone I’m getting to know. I’m about to relate to them about some trivial nuance of life when the weight of disclosure settles in around my words. How long can I go without slipping and using the pronoun “she” to describe my “partner” and do I really want to laboriously edit my contribution to the conversation as I’m speaking? The answer is inevitably “no”. Often I try to casually refer to my “girl friend” and continue along as though I’m not bracing for a sudden shift in their perception of me.
Sometimes, however, I simply decide to not to speak. The haunting emptiness of pretending not to exist as you are has but one silver lining. It protects you from people who stop seeing your humanity once they know your identity.

The truth is I’m never totally in the closet. I never misrepresent who I am when asked. But I am very aware of every first disclosure I make to a person and sometimes I choose not to. Even among a few long time acquaintances my identity is often a polite secret we keep from each other. Like a silent mutual agreement that it’s unkind of me to make them reevaluate their moral perception of the world around them.
Implicitly agreeing that your existence is rude is a bad message to send yourself but one always has to choose ones battles and sometimes pressing the issue is not worth the fallout. More importantly, sometimes not disclosing buys you enough time for others to see your full humanity.

Tonight I am haunted by the horrible duality of having witnessed another persons humanity laid bare and knowing it’s still somehow invisible to others.
Another shooting of an unarmed black person. This time in my town.
He was mentally ill and his sister called 911 to help get him to safety. Instead the police showed up and shot him to death.

We can argue the particulars of this case just like every other but the pattern which emerges day after day (and is well documented decade after decade) is that we perceive unarmed black civilians as an a threat and when we act with deadly force we cite our fear as justification.
When I think about black people in this country I think about my friends and family members. My step father, sisters, brother, aunts, and cousins who don’t live near but aren’t ever far from my heart.

When I introduce myself to another person for the first time I have the option to buy time so they can see me as a human before they see me as a stereotype.
This isn’t true for my family.
When I call the police I’m never mistaken for the suspect. I wasn’t raised with the understanding that the police may kill me at a routine traffic stop.
I don’t have to live with that terror and then witness our societies collective agreement that it’s all perfectly reasonable in context.
This isn’t true for my family.

There is generally a hostile response to bringing this kind of thing up.
As though calling for police training in de-escalation, better mental health services, and holding abusive cops responsible is somehow bad for police and bad for white people.

But we have an obligation to speak up about institutionalized racism and police brutality. We have an obligation to find better solutions because it’s unbearable to hear another woman say “I call you guys to come help. Not to kill my brother!”.

#AlfredOlango #NotOneMore

1. Remove items from cabinets and litter them haphazardly around the house.
   (This project will only take a couple days so there’s no need for forethought here.)
2. Dismantle cabinets
   (Throw all of the hardware in a plastic grocery bag. Don’t label anything. Only people with OCD do that.)
3. Make the kitchen into a plastic fort! Tape plastic drop clothes to the walls and ceiling completely seal off the kitchen as you will be filling it with toxic saw dust.
   (Note that your kitchen will be completely unusable throughout the sanding process. Motivate yourself to sand faster by purchasing lots of perishable food items before you begin the sanding process. You’ll be so happy you did once you finally get to open that fridge again.)
4. Sand till you drop! Everyday. Until it’s done.
   (Neglect you family, interests, and friends. This may sound unreasonable but really it’s only going to take a couple of days. You’ll be done before you know it.)
5. Once you’ve finished sanding it’s time to sweep up the saw dust, vacuum everything from floor to ceiling, and wipe everything down with a damp cloth.
   (You should now be on week 3 of your 2 day project, but you’ve totally cleaned everything so at least that’s over now. )
6. Take the plastic down.
   (You’ll now notice that more dust had settled but thanks to the plastic it’s been contained in the kitchen.)
7. Go over everything with a vacuum again, and a wet cloth.
   (Once you’ve completely finished note that the vacuum has served to distribute a thick layer of very fine sawdust all over the contents of your home. Literally everything. Including the plates, glasses, and utensils haphazardly strewn around your living room.)
8. Prime the kitchen
   (If at all possible try to have family stay with you while you do this. You want them to see and smell all the ways that this project is dominating your existence.)
9. Time to pick a paint!
   (Definitely don’t have a paint picked out and ready to go until you’ve been living in squalor for several weeks and are desperate to take home any paint of any color that might return some sense of normalcy to you life.)
10. Tape up everything in the kitchen and start painting.
    (Make sure you have all of the trim finished before you realize that the paint you’ve chosen is grotesquely glossy and you can’t live with it.)
11. Select a new paint!
    (Methodically compare and contrast paint samples.)
12. Paint as though this paint is the love of your life.
    (That nagging doubt about the color you’ve chosen is just weakness of character. This paint represents your resolve to be confident and firm in your decision making. This paint is a statement about how comfortable you are with yourself and if you get a headache every time you look at it you’re probably just reacting to paint fumes and not the way it clashes with your floor.)
13. It’s now 72 hours since you’ve finished painting the entire kitchen and it’s time to come to terms with the fact that the color you’ve chosen is so aggressively peppy that you can’t comfortably enter the kitchen with your eyes open.
14. Select a paint that you used on a previous project.
    (It’s like an 80’s romantic comedy where you realize that what you’ve been looking for has been right here all along. It’s calming, stable, and so understated you didn’t even consider it even though it’s %$^&ing painted on one of your walls already. Plus you still have a big already-paid-for gallon of it sitting on your floor.)
15. You’ve finished the cabinet frames again! For real this time! And it feels so good.
16. Remove the tape, wipe the dust from the cabinets and start washing dishes to put them back where they belong.
    (This is the correct time to inspect your paint can more closely and see that it is in fact Flat Enamel and therefore not suitable for kitchen cabinets.)