It isn't the happy anniversary we'd like, but I couldn't start the month with Kent State 50 and not mark its midpoint with the Jackson State rejoinder.
These two guys didn't get a song, and no iconic rock star anthems were written about their plight.
They were dead before the CSNY song about the Kent killings was even released... it's as if when David Crosby screamed "How many more?!?" at the end of that tune, the pigs were like "Here's a few more, bro. What you gonna do about it? Have another rail and enjoy the show, son."
The murdered kids in this case weren't even actively protesting the war as at Kent, so much as defying white authority in a region where such things don't end well for the melinated.
That the events of the evening of May 14 and the early morning of May 15th, 1970 took place largely on a block named Lynch Street is sadly all too appropriate.
For a lotta folks, these two events, taken together, form the beginning of the end of any America worth caring for: the moment when the divisions became homocidally toxic and irreparable and the unresolvable hatreds laid bare.
Let's not equivocate: racial animus is the mother's milk of this country, and the reason among reasons we can't have nice things.
We see it now, writ large by the rednecks protesting having to stay home. For them, slavery never ended, and it's not that they want to go back to work, it's that they want their perceived servants and lessers at the nail salon and the hairdresser's back at it, and if they die so what?
It's all race. They only called this phantasy shithole "America" because "Fuck you n*****r, I got mine! Get a job!" didn't fit on the map.
Even the preposterous, phony Liberals here are so shot through with virulent bigotry they don't even know they have, all they can do is self-segregate themselves in places where they'll never have to interact with a single nonwhite person as long as they live. And then virtue signal to their peers about how "down" and ultra-inclusive they are.
It'd be hilarious, if it wasn't helping direct our whole pathetic species into imminent mass extinction within the next 50 years tops.
Anyway that's my little polemic for today. I wish I didn't feel like I do and know what I know, but I do so fuck it. This country is a shameful, omnicidal shitshow and it's headed for the dustbin of history, where the most shameless hypocrites go to moulder.
Really I hope every racist, inbred authoritarian pasty pig meets the big BBQ grill that's coming.
You're all invited to the cookout when that great day comes.
This gorgeous and highly appropriate concert from almost exactly four years ago -- streamed off the European Arte.tv webchannel as it happened and never seen since -- featuring Jackson native and Jackson State alumnus Cassandra Wilson testifying alongside avant-funk jazzers Harriet Tubman, is dedicated to Philip L. Gibbs and James E. Green, who died on this day 50 years ago at the hands of some unnecessary, lowlife pigs with badges they still think make them de facto slavecatchers.
Harriet Tubman & Cassandra Wilson present “Black Sun”
Moers Festival 2016
Festival Hall
Moers, Germany
5.14.2016
01 Thought of the Sun
02 Hither
03 Tomorrow Never Knows
04 Overcome Someday
05 Black Sun
06 unidentified title
07 Run the Voodoo Down
08 Taller
Total time: 1:27:45
Cassandra Wilson - vocals & guitar
Brandon Ross - guitar, banjo & vocals
Melvin Gibbs - bass
J.T. Lewis - drums
mp4 of an HD stream from the Arte.tv webchannel
1.59 GB mp4/May 2020 archive link
I'm back on Monday with a happier anniversary, as we hit the back side of the merry month of maybe.
Today is for but one purpose, however, and that is to pause to reflect on this tragedy and to tell the truth about it on its 50th anniversary.--J.
R.I.P. USA
July 1776 - May 1970