Parallel Grief
The racist demagogue who continues to hold Americans hostage with his petulant demands, along with one who acts like his concubine, refuse to honor the late Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., on this national holiday. There are no White House events even scheduled for either man today. Last year, the “fearless leader” golfed.
VP Pence, who names the name of Jesus at every opportunity when it’s expedient for him, linked the Orange Menace to one of the great leaders in our nation’s history: all for the purpose of justifying a wall.
Here’s what the vice-president said after he took a quote out of context from King’s “I Have A Dream” speech:
“I think it is an act of statesmanship on the president’s part to say, ‘Here is what I’m for.’…We believe it provides a framework for ending this impasse, securing our border, and reopening our government,” Pence said.
A wall is not freedom, nor is it an effective means of corralling humans. King went to Berlin in 1964 and spoke out against walls. He said that they were a means of separation, “from their brothers.” Those who support a wall think of their Central American brethren as less than human, worthy of being herded like animals, or worse.
Today is a difficult day for me and my wife. It is the second anniversary of our son’s death. The past 24 months have felt like a nightmare that I can’t wake up from.
Missing Mark Baumer: anniversary #2 of his death. (Mark being arrested at Textron, 2016: he was protesting the manufacture of cluster bombs)
This nightmare has been amplified, also. Living through this parallel experience of loss while seeing our country and 200+ years of governmental infrastructure unravel due to the machinations of an angry, fearful president make life feel intolerable at times. I wish I could ask Mark how best to live in this new epoch.
I had great admiration for my son, Mark. He was called a “vegan superhero” by others. His death became the fodder of countless news features in most of the nation’s daily newspapers as well as The New Yorker magazine. That’s small consolation for me, his father, who misses him each and every day. My mourning following the intensity that comes from the grief and loss accompanying the death of someone like Mark will never end.
Back to Dr. King as I close out my post. I offer a reminder to those who may not remember the past, or choose to remember it differently than it happened.
Dr. King, marching for the rights of workers, days before he was assassinated. (AP photo)
Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated while in Memphis, marching with striking black sanitation workers. He believed the struggle in Memphis exposed the need for economic equality and social justice that he hoped his Poor People’s Campaign would champion, nationally. This was “a fight by capable, hard workers against dehumanization, discrimination and poverty wages in the richest country in the world.”
What a contrast to our president’s ploy to exploit federal workers, forced to work without pay, while he pontificates and continues his outright lies, to obtain something that’s symbolic at best, but worse, a waste of resources on something that won’t even address his flawed understanding of immigration.
