Ridiculous Opinion Column Proves Need for Movement

Charlie Kraebel, managing editor of the Troy Record and the Saratogian had a little “showing his true colors” accident in an opinion column this weekend, in which he was mighty distressed at the launching of the Upstate NY Black Lives Matter chapter. Before you read it, I recommend having a cushion nearby for when you feel the desire to bang your head on something hard.

He has basically three main arguments: First, that black people can’t demand that cops stop killing them for no reason until crime committed by black people against other black people is eradicated. Second, that Black Lives Matter activists don’t really care about Dontay Ivy’s family, just their dastardly agenda. And third, that the Black Lives Matter movement nationally has been all about causing riots and defending “thugs.”

Let’s take these one at a time.

Is History Destiny?

Don’t tell anyone, but I recently abandoned my longstanding resistance to both podcasts and NPR and binge-listened to a bunch of Planet Money episodes on a couple of bus and plane trips where I couldn’t really focus my eyes on a screen. There was one about the difference in attitudes toward absenteeism in Northern and Southern Italy. Somewhat astoundingly, the most credible argument for why there is this difference extends back hundreds and hundreds of years.

Making Reparations

I bought my house with the help of a downpayment from my parents. My parents got help to buy their house from my father’s parents. At the time when my father’s parents bought their house, a black family in most of America could not have gotten a traditional mortgage, certianly not an FHA-insured one, no matter how credit worthy, and probably could not have purchased in the neighborhood they did.

I am a direct beneficiary of explicitly racist government policies and the pervasive white violence that supported and surrounded them.

10 Books to Blow Your Mind

It’s a good reading season, this six-more-weeks-of-winter-at-least time of year. So since I’m in the middle of book that makes me repeatedly collar whoever is in the room with me to share the insights it’s making, I started to think about other books that fall in that category for me.

Making Space

Performing this poem at the GottaGetGon folk festival, for which it was written, Saratoga County Fairgrounds, Memorial Day Weekend 2003.
Photo by Howie Eskin

for the Pickin’ and Singin’ Gatherin’