Come On, Now!

I love the many varieties of old houses — Victorians, elegant 40’s buildings, the absolutely drop-dead gorgeous Art Deco tiled buildings downtown, and those sweet cozy 20’s and 30’s bungalows. I love the exotic old-fashioned plants that grow in all the residential neighborhoods. People have enormous old palm trees, host to a carnival of wildlife; some of them are date palms and even bear viable fruit!! I have seen many banana plants, often in bloom, and I know one that bears fruit also. In Oakland! Amazing.

Banana flowers are so beautiful — they look a lot like a bird-of-paradise flower, but they hang upside-down, and they’re purple and white. And MUCH bigger. There are palmettoes here, and tree-ferns, and trailing arbutus, and hydrangeas in nearly every color. I know a place where there’s a massive hulking bush-thing of maidenhair fern. I know where to harvest my own fennel seeds, rosemary, red sage, citrus fruit, plums, blackberries — all growing wild.

Oakland has skaters, pyrate punx, snobs, NIMBYs, black folks, white folks, both kinds of Indians, every kind of asian, anarchists, separatists, “neoliberals”, lovers, haters, aggros, ho’s (and don’t think I didn’t agonize over how to spell that), players, gamers, gangstas, lots of cops, and every damn thing else there is. We have become what San Francisco used to be — a town with long roots into a messy but colorful past, every conceivable kind of people living in close quarters, and yes, rich and poor folks together.

About the one thing everyone has in common is that we are all angry about something. There’s the former mayor. What a dirty lying dog he turned out to be! A sheep in wolf’s clothing! Reflecting a deeply frightening trend I have been watching for some time now — Republicans campaigning as Liberals, only to reveal their true, traitorous agendas after they are elected. In our case, he campaigned sounding like the anarcho-underground radio-free-oakland power-to-the-people beret-wearing leftist mofo of your wildest dreams…. and then once elected, started catering to the smallest selfish whims of realtors and developers, hiring legions of cops, harrassing the homeless and teenagers and poor folks, and just generally acting like a ruling-class semifascist. Which started me saying, “Breeding will out.” Those born to affluence and advantage seldom betray their class, no matter what kind of pretty speech they spew.

So lots of us were angry about that. Then you have the war, the lies, the election. Gas prices, layoffs, the Oakland Riders, and the Oakland Raiders. (you don’t want to get those last two confused!)

We have some truly fine teachers here; yet all the same, I think most kids that went to school in the flats (where the not-rich people live) would say that they don’t feel that their education was really a priority with the government — not when it came to budget allocations — and that no one seemed to give a damn if they ever got a job once they graduated. Kids in the flats don’t have the electronic toys and high-quality textbooks in their classrooms that kids in the hills have. They don’t go on the fancy fieldtrips, they don’t get to be exchange students, they don’t have crisp shiny band uniforms. Hell, my son’s elementary school teachers had to buy their own paper and pencils for the kids to use.

There is a high murder rate here; I wish to God it never touched or involved any child at all, but it does. Homicide is currently the leading cause of death among Alameda County youths — in 2001-03, the homicide rate among 15- to 21-year-olds in our county was 21 per 100,000 people.

From where we’re standing, in this time at this place, I’m sure it looks to a lot of us like the bottom of a deep dark pit. No getting out, and no getting away, so what the hell.

Ordinarily, at this point I would insert one of my impassioned speeches about the beauty of life, the presence of the Divine all around us in Nature….about the brave and triumphant power of the human spirit, and kittens and flowers and pasta. And kittens. Not this time. This time, Oakland, you and I have got to have a sit-down. Because I am finally starting to lose my temper. You see, I have the feeling that maybe some of my fellow Oakland-dwellers have had some gaps in their consciousness-raising.

Here’s the problem: When people have said, “No Justice, No Peace”, I don’t think that they meant, “Make disparaging remarks to passers-by.” Or, “Make fun of complete strangers on the bus.” You know that thing, where you watch someone approach, kind of on the under so it seems like you’re not looking, and then just as they get a few feet away you casually leap into the way? And then say, “OH, EXCUSE ME!!” like you didn’t see them or something? Well, I got to tell you, I don’t think that shit is actually advancing the cause of racial and economic parity, much.

And that other thing, where as someone approaches you, and once again when they reach that golden spot a few feet away, that magic spot which is the maximum-effectiveness zone for all interpersonal derision — when they get a few feet away, you suddenly lift up one foot and examine the bottom of your shoe, as if you smelled dogshit? I don’t think the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Junior did that. I don’t even think Miles Davis did that. It’s puerile. It kinda looks stupid. After all, you’re the one with dogshit on your shoe.

See, the “No Peace” part is referring to the peace of people who can actually do something about the oppression. I believe the kind of people whose peace we want to disturb are people like corporate executives, and elected officials. Have protests. Hell, have sit-ins — if you’re not afraid of going to jail. Better yet, organize large-scale boycotts of things that offend you. They REALLY, REALLY hate that. Money is, after all, the only consideration for a lot of the worst kinds of people. So hit them where they live.

And please, please, don’t stop insulting people. Insult the smug, self-righteous fucks who think they know so much about you, and they know nothing. Insult the sickening greedheads who bought your Grandma’s house in foreclosure and put her out on the street, so they could turn around and sell it a month later for $400,000 more than they paid for it! For the love of God, don’t forget to insult the president and all his selfish, coldblooded cronies, who have sent thousands of poor folks and people of color and young people to their deaths in this war and all the others.

But look, you’ve got to cut me a little slack. For one thing, I’m on your side. And I can just about guarantee you, I’m poorer than you. I am making $2.00 an hour right now, babysitting for someone who really needs me, and can’t afford any more.

Besides, if you don’t cut it out, ahmo’ have to hurt you.