A Day of Remembrance
The message that the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. sent rolling down through history hope, persistence, no retreat and no surrender is today best expressed through the musical genre known as hip hop. Despite the obscene objections on the right, the rise of the Tea Party is nothing if not a direct expression of racism in America. From the dread Middle Passage, through Slavery, into Civil Rights and on to the 21st century, rap and hip hop express rage, outrage and resistance is the face of the many crimes American society has visited upon the African-American community. And at the same time a sizeable portion of that same society aspires to a cultural heritage it can never reach. That must really piss off white teenagers, raised racist, riding around in Daddy’s car listening to 50 Cent. Oh, the irony! Ah, the cognitive dissonance! When we talk about disenfranchisement and minorities in America today, we’ve got to be very sure we are making a clear distinction between those who came here of their own free will and those who were torn up by the roots, suffered inhuman brutality in unbearable squalor, families torn apart, institutionalized rape, murder, torture… And yet hip-hop – in all its incarnations – is fundamentally a political uprising. The real “gangstas” are running numbers on Wall Street and selling War on one of the Pentagon’s many corners…
The Columbia River, it has been said - does not so much divide two states, Washington and Oregon - rather it unites Cascadia. We share a single bioregion. So what happens in Longview Washington does not stay in Longview Washington. And in the case of the proposed coal exporting facility, we are all in this one together. It happened so fast, no one saw it coming. The papers of record in both states report that the permitting process is complete, the documents are in order. Has anyone asked to see the Environmental Impact Statement? Anyone followed the Yellow Brick Road to find out where the profits are really flowing? Do we have adequate medical facilities and resources to handle the public health fallout from this one? But the biggest question of all: How much more can the Columbia River take before the whole ecosystem collapses?
- KBOO