.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Besides being a teacher myself, I knew many people who were, some members of my own family by blood and marriage. The oldest of us had arrived at the point of having a new student that had the same name As a wonderful student she had had her first year teaching and learned the new student was that former student’s daughter.

Having more than one generation of a family was common in the days of less mobility and experienced by many teachers. I knew a teacher that had had three generations of the same family during her long career.

The hope was that the returning family had been doing well since the initial encounter.

On Parent/Teacher nights, you only got to see the parents of the kids who were achieving while the ones you needed to talk to only showed up at the office with complaints based on their child’s reportage or to the school board demanding a teacher’s job because they are teaching things the parents don’t know.

These are the parents who want to control all children’s education.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

How do we love thee?

Let us count the ways.

We love thee to the depth and breadth and height our souls can reach, when:

We oppose reforms that a majority of Americans want because they would make life in the United States better and more in line with “We the People” like raising the minimum wage, ensuring paid family leave, and instituting student debt relief.

We continually condemn the citizens of the United States who live in major cities when we need a scapegoat and claim only we can make things right against the druggies, criminals, and lazy people who somehow make enough money to pay big city rents, yet, while appealing to rural citizens to join me in this hatred of cities, we have tried to block Medicaid expansion that would benefit rural communities and cut its funding, and to slash funding for rural infrastructure and development. We continually attempt to cut social programs, like food stamps that rural Americans depend on. 

As far as the land upon which the citizens live, Trump undid more than a hundred environmental regulations and opened about two million acres of culturally significant federal land to oil drilling, and we were there supporting him.

We GOP are attacking freedom of speech with book bans and laws restricting freedom of assembly by establishing stricter laws about protests. and we are rejecting the separation of church and state.

We have been denying election results, the votes cast by fellow citizens because we believe the voters did not vote correctly because they chose the other, non-GOP, candidates in federal, state and local elections, and unseating elected representatives because they have a different take on issues. We are making voting very difficult in many states to control who gets elected in the first place..

We have spent time removing the rights of minorities, women, the Gay Community, by passing laws and acting like the scientists we are not, basing the needs of U.S. citizens on our chosen religious beliefs.

We love children while protecting a fetus but take no real action to protect a living, breathing child in school and citizens in general in what have been until now safe places as we oppose any reasonable gun laws, claiming the Second Amendment is the crux of the constitution and the only one so sacred it can be twisted and edited for our convenience.

We boast of our support of the troops even as many of our legislative actions have reduced the finances of many of the troops and their families while defending a man who endangered the very troops we support by taking and potentially showing people classified material taken from the White House and, as was evident on the audio recording, showing people what could endanger troops if the enemy were to see the plans lying around in bathrooms and ballrooms.

That’s how much we love you.

We are protecting you from what you should really have.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

This past Sunday, Marjorie Taylor Greene explained in detail why the Biden administration is a failed attempt at socialism and a danger.

This slide to socialism is something that did not start recently but in the past with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, expanding when LBJ was president, and is continuing under Biden.

As MTG explained,

“His big socialist programs were the Great Society. The Great Society were big government programs to address education, medical care, urban problems, rural poverty, transportation, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and welfare, the Office of Economic Opportunity, and big labor and labor unions.

Now, LBJ had the Great Society, but Joe Biden had Build Back Better, and he still is working on it. The largest public investment in social infrastructure and environmental programs that is actually finishing what FDR started that LBJ expanded on, and Joe Biden is attempting to complete, socialism.”

These three programs, those of FDR, LBJ, and Joe, had been and continue to be guilty of “killing the American dream.”

Thank God Marge is here to save us from our own good.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Perhaps my experiences are too immediate, so I am confused by the complacency. In reality, in spite of my 73 years, I have only had my full civil rights for all of 12.

Concerned about the slow loss of rights that had been finally acknowledged after years of fighting to make that happen, I invited people to join me for a 2 hour sit-out action that would consist in standing, or sitting as I bring a lawn chair, at the city’s major downtown intersection where the main North/South streets and a state highway cross to hold signs in order to register our opposition to actions in D.C. regarding the Gay Community that affect us locally. 

In Massachusetts the stripes of the Rainbow Flag have had their protections and rights for decades now, except the Trans people who were thrown under the bus by national organizations in order to gain a victory for the majority of the Community so that they could crow about that and fund raise off of it, leaving the locals to undo that damage and get the Trans People their rights also, through subsequent actions.

In spite of its being in a good spot, the Gay Community should react publicly with some open and public actions, from small to large statements as federal laws could adversely affect Bay Staters here, eventually if not immediately, and federal and various local laws could already have residents here entering confusing territory when travelling to other states with their patchwork of rights recognition.

“We The People” get pretty sliced up based on our locality.

Such an action, besides showing solidarity with our brothers and sisters in the less fortunate states, the types in which I have lived and so know through experience how few rights others have in other places, and also points out that locally, friends and neighbors, even family members will be affected by what the Bay state now recognizes as stereotypes and false tropes if certain ideological agendas gain power or, worse, those who will be most adversely affected throw up their hands and by not voting relinquish their futures over to those who should least control it.

Such an action is needed.

Recently there was a high school walk-out because it was revealed just days before an election that a few years previous a city council candidate had posted some puerile jokes on his social media page which, besides showing a lack of maturity, were totally uninformed. A local social justice group, who had endorsed this candidate’s opponent, had found the offending posts just days before the election, giving it to the parent of an activist-in-waiting Gay student who did as was clearly expected, telling her activist child who then, as was to be hoped, organized the walkout that could very well have influenced to election had it been done more timely, perhaps before as opposed to after the election. The sudden belated “October Surprise” had no real affect except, perhaps, the students were used as a tool for an organization that should be an ally to hopefully influence an election not feel they had found a way to get their candidate into office even after the election an action that was rightly condemned by most people and which left the students looking rather clueless and their issues forced on the public in an attempted political move.

As wrong as this was, at least it showed people do pay attention when the Gay Community speaks, so long as it speaks from an informed position and that this has been noticed even if the attempt was made to improperly use the students’ organizing for its own ends not what was truly best for the students.

Although the walk-out was powerful and adults were smart enough to stay in the background to let the students have their moment, some students may have thought the election should be negated because of those posts, and perhaps their naivete was thought to be potentially useful as they demanded what the organization knew they would not get, and blaming any negative reprecusions on the sins of innocent, exuberant youth while sustaining no scars itself or, perhaps, rile the community up enough to demand a re-vote even though that was a ridiculous idea known as such by adults but not so much the students. The reality, known to the organization, was that the council member had won the popular vote and that if the information was to have been truly effective, it should have been presented long before the election as opposed to coming across as using the Gay students to promote an endorsed candidate by proxy and get that person into office claiming a faulty vote.

The students looked uninformed as those who instigated it all and attempted to use the students, simply went into the shadows like Homer Simpson into the bushes and pointed at the squirrels.

The only way forward was for the students to keep an eye on this council member, noting anytime he showed his original posts were more than just bad jokes but expressions of deeply held erroneous beliefs, beliefs that will affect the whole city unless corrected through education.

School got out for the summer and with it seems to have gone the air in this balloon.

On multiple occasions on social media I have announced and held sit outs. These usually last for two hours when held which has been either once a week for a number of weeks, or five days in a row for one week on more than one occasion. They take place either at the previously mentioned location, called the Octopus because of the many intersecting streets, or further down the main street by the Federal Building and District Court.

Either place has heavy traffic especially during the two hours that cross through lunch hour when mid-day traffic is heavy.

In 2017, a five day sit out was held with papers being handed to anyone who stopped, listing #45’s actions showing his intention to roll back Gay Rights and his assigning someone in his administration to do just that.

When Clarence Thomas suggested that all un-enumerated rights be re-litigated, threatening same-sex and his own interracial marriage, there was a second sit out protesting this.

On two separate occasions, after Trans people and Drag Queens became the threat du jour, there was a sit out at the two buildings and one at the intersection.

The purpose of these was to inform not to discuss or argue, so on most occasions along with answering simple questions, if someone began the false equivalencies and making unrelated comparisons, they got a piece of paper with my reasons for my  being there, and that was all I would discuss especially if the person cannot define simple terms correctly.

I may choose to sit there, but I do not choose to engage with those who are uninformed and resist the offered information.

On the five occasions of my weekly or daily sit-out, most people had nothing to say while others asked questions that showed they wanted to learn and not protect preconceptions. Some told me about members of their families to whom these repressive actions applied, with one man telling me that in spite of his not getting it fully, his nephew is now his niece and to him is the same kid she always was just dressed differently now. She even still does the guy things they used to do together like fishing and watching sports.

A clerk at a local store came stomping out during one sit out because a customer had told her there was a man outside promoting ant-Gay propaganda, and, as the butch Lesbian she was, the clerk was determined to make things right. She came around me from behind and, having been in her position a few times, that of someone who had had it up to here with bigotry, I recognized her intensity which soften as she read the sign and then laughingly told me her original intention then going back to inform the customer, who had good intentions, that not all Gay related protests are anti, some are pro.

Once, and only once, in the now 6 years I have had these protest, while I was being interviewed by the local press about my “issues”, a pick up truck (it always is) slowed down just enough to yell, “Fucking Faggot.” before speeding off. The reporter asked if that bothered me so I explained that as I spend my time sitting in a folding lawn chair holding a sign while reading a book on my Kindle and sipping laced ice coffee, the weaker person would appear to be the one in the pick up who yells and speeds off while I would have had to get out of my chair, put my sign, coffee, and book down, and chase him down 6th Street on foot. Things would be different if he had pulled over, gotten, out, and then assaulted me, but in close to 50 years as an activist for either for labor or Gay rights, the most vocal people were those who made sure that once they yelled something and felt good, they had the advantage of a fast escape.

And, I have been called much worse.

Another reporter at a later event was present when, again, a pick up truck slowed down and this time the driver yelled “Queer” with the usual, follow-up acceleration and I gave the same explanation to his question I had given the previous reporter.

All in all people have been receptive to my presence and most, if they engage, converse on the topic and learn that some of what they have been led to believe is political propaganda.

As symbolic as it may seem, there is a practical reason for choosing my spots. 

At the major intersection, the mayor’s response to those turning signs at the intersection was the placement of Belgian stones at odd angles to make standing at the better spots next to impossible in order to reduce panhandling rather than addressing that which creates the need for it. People gather with their signs and each seems to have a specific location to which they regularly report when they are present. They have their problems and I mine, and they have seniority so I make sure I do not set up my chair in an established territory, but set up on a corner bad for collecting coins but good when it comes to the most visibility and length of time to read signs.

All told, I have been out there over 30 times and each time I have invited people on social media to join me. It would appear, however, and this is a good thing, that locally every stripe on the Rainbow flag is gainfully employed and does not eat lunch as no one has joined me other than a homeless man, new to town, who just needed someone to talk to and asks a lot of questions about his new location, and will do that anytime his wanderings bring him my way.

If one is easily dazzled by statistics and might be too lazy to identify the variables etc., my sit outs very often meet the ideal complement of Gay to Straight in a situation calling for allies.

To date, the sit outs have been attended by equal numbers of Gays and Straights at a 50/50 ratio.

My requests on social media for people to join me are met with a lot of “likes”, but what good is that? If they are there to make me feel good, people’s presence would be a much better approach as I have come to that point in my life I am happy with me so far and “likes” mean nothing if there is no back up action.

Perhaps it is shock, perhaps it is lack of direction, but either way it is terrible that people seem all right with the loss of rights.

Sinking ships get to the point where they cannot be saved.

.

.

.

.

.

When I was growing up, society assigned a term to me that I had no say in and as part of that acceptance, I also had to abide the attitudes and the treatment that came from those attitudes. Regardless who I really was, I would be treated a certain way, because the term assigned me and to avoid the term being applied, be carefully not to do something I naturally would but did not fit the mold into which Baby Boomers were put in order to be the Ameticans who could win wars.

One of the most difficult things about self acceptance, realizing who you really are, that form of intuition of being, was that, regardless who you knew you were, you were held to be what the assigned term decided.

Too often to be ourselves, the closest we could get would be to the point at which those things in which we showed interest fit in well enough with those around you while you tamped down showing interest in those things that were not decidedly what you were supposed to.

Hating baseball but placed in right field on my Little League, my getting distracted by a butterfly, the following of which allowed for a single because I was at least fast enough to get the ball to second base to stop the runner’s progress when the butterfly got blown away by a gust of wind, but Twinkle was the name that struck until, after being hit squarely in the face with a line drive without much of a physical reaction like I was unaware it was supposed to hurt, was changed by the coach to Jasper for some reason.

Housing, employment, social interactions were controlled by a word assigned to you, a word with a definition that came totally from those who knew the least about those to whom the term was applied while making sure people understood they themselves knew no one, nor would want to, to whom they applied the term. There was no guilt by association.

Like many, my problem in self-acceptance was that I was not what people assumed me to be or expected me to be, yet I was not what I was told that difference meant.

I was me, yet my life was navigating around a term someone else assigned and defined.

In retrospect, things might have gone a lot smoother had I been able to accept signs, and there were many, so many, that were whisked away for not being in concert with who I was supposed to be, and had the resources to go to to ask questions without getting accusatory or biased answers and not just have a term applied to me rightly or wrongly which would influence the rest of my life.

I have been cautioned by too many DJs who have had to silence the music to tell patron who had just been dancing not to leave a club alone, or at all, until those out for a night of Bashing Queers left the area.

For over 40 years I worked with people all over the country trying to ensure that ours was the last generation to have to deal with the assigned term and its power, during which time there was a conscious effort  by religion and government to allow as many of us to die as possible.

Eventually, we got to choose our own term, a term that describes us as we are, not as people want to portray us, and it was under our term that a surprising amount of liberation and equality were accomplished.

In spite of history, the trauma of the treatment and struggle, dealing with assigned death while fighting for equality, the raids, the arrests, the personal physical, verbal, and mental attacks, the beatings, the killings, we made progress under the term for ourselves that we chose ourselves not the loaded one that had been assigned.

I am now a 73 year-old, cis-gender, White, Gay male with activist cred that has been recognized and found I had actually accomplished more that I had been aware I had, and I am proud to have been someone among so many who got us away from the assigned terms and canceling what it was used to justify and perpetuate.

Sadly, however, I have been informed that I stand in the way of progress because I ask young members of the Rainbow Community to not refer to me as “Queer”.

I am Gay and fought as a Gay man. The rights the Youth have were gotten by Gays, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender people, and all those in the past who were themselves though specific terms would come later and worked as a single united community who escaped the world of queer,.

Respect that.

There is no taking back of the word as, in order to do that, you would have had to have had the word in your possession in the first place. We did not at any time choose that assigned word. It was never our word, it was always theirs. In essence all that is being done is our accepting the term that had been used against us after being assigned to us and had been rejected by those subjected to it who got the rights the young have.

At least wait for us to die.

After all the progress and struggle which seems to be taken for granted now, we agree with the use of the derogatory term assigned to us and not those who fought against the word and all connected to it. 

Too many proudly announce they accept the term and would prefer those who used it in the past do so again without ascertaining if this is actually progress or capitulation. Are people educated enough to know that the old meaning is dead and there is a new one now?

Or, is that growth merely assumed without study, opening us to unintended consequences.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.