Here’s coffee darling, I remember how you take it. And you have to eat breakfast before you go, you can’t save the world on an empty stomach.

I’m glad you listened to me with an open mind last night. I’m sorry the Fred Hampton piece gave you nightmares, you should have seen the ones I had when it happened. It pains me to be the one to tell you about such awful things, but if you’re going to devote yourself to the life you are choosing, I am a) qvelling with pride and b) trembling with fear for you. You have to know that changing the world is not a game, and you need to know what the stakes are.

The only truly free choices are informed choices. When they murdered Fred Hampton he was only 21, sleeping in his bed with his 19 year old girlfriend who was pregnant at the time with Fred Hampton, Jr. So as harsh as it is, you need to learn how to keep yourself and your comrades as safe as possible. And — no offense — but you have a way to go in that respect.

Stop getting upset, I am not blaming the victim in your case or in his. But it has been made clear what the moral issues are where Occupy and it’s forebears are concerned. You know now that police will beat the crap out of people, spray gas in their faces and possibly even risk people’s lives or kill them with little or no provocation.

I can tell you that as sickening and frightening as it has been to see, it isn’t new. If they’re loud and annoying enough to the 1%, it can happen to college-bound white kids. For a lot of non-white poor people, it’s “Welcome to my world, and the park I get beaten in has no exits.”

At the beginning it advanced the protest, and a lot of people were willing to suffer police violence. But after a while it no longer helps and, in fact, hurts the cause. How many times does one sustain blunt force trauma to the head before s/he stops looking like a hero and starts looking stupid?

If you offer no way for an 84 year-old activist to contribute other than by getting a face full of pepper spray, if black and brown people, who are always at higher risk, have no other means of contribution but to go through that repeatedly, you haven’t built a movement. And if you don’t build one beyond the steps already taken, Occupy will have squandered a chance to change the world. It will have been a flash in the pan and fodder for right wing propaganda.

Remember: when you make a choice in a crowd, you have made a choice for those near and around you as well. Someone who represents an example by extension of that is Scott Olsen. Only he can know how “worth it” it was or wasn’t. I’ll bet he’d have preferred the movement matured into Occupying things like The Indoors, Voting Booths, Halls of Congress, The Courts and other places in which protest might actually accomplish change. The truth is the “Powers That Be” would love for you to freeze your ass off outside all winter getting busted, beaten, gassed. Just because they might say you “backed down” wouldn’t make it true. Privately they would be saying you got smart.

My friend A. and I agree on this. In my case having been diagnosed with a neurological condition late in life has made me very sensitive to what it is to live with deficits. In her case she ran into a few right wing fascists a few years ago. With her skull. Repeatedly. Living in the aftermath of serious traumatic brain injury, she knows that neurons and, contrary to appearances, dendrites don’t grow on trees. And no cause was advanced and none of those fuckers ever did serious time for trying to kill her.

On the topic of infiltration, the good news is you have no need to implement any preventative measures at this time. The bad news is that’s because it’s too late, you’re already infiltrated to the tits. You have a serious problem distinguishing among friends, allies, unaffiliated but generally supportive types and extremely dangerous enemies who only mean you harm!

When the Oathkeepers offer to do security at your events it is not because they are your friends!! When the Ron Paul followers show up he doesn’t stop being a racist, misogynistic, homophobic Rand Paul siring freak. They don’t stop being a scary cult! I personally have argued until my temper got out of control with a Tea Party maniac who salivated to all her Facebook fans about the “young minds” she “would get” by infiltrating Occupy. They want to get you saying things like “Occupy and the Tea Party have a lot in common.”

Don’t say it. Here is what you have in common with the Tea Party: You can both sometimes be very loud, and neither of you is clear on what comes after “Step 1: Express anger.” Nothing else. Despite the fact that it seems recent history, you weren’t even born when the Tea Party (the Frankenstein’s Monster of the GOP) was really created, so I don’t expect you to know about them. But I do expect you to find out who and what they are before you let them tell you that they’re part of the movement. Before you throw the doors open to them.

On messaging: Stop saying you really have no one message. A) You will not succeed that way, and B) it’s crap. You have had a message from day one. Every successful social movement has one, maybe two clear things to say, and you need to get your message into simple words.

So what’s your message?  ”Get the money out of the political process.” Want it shorter? “Overturn Citizens United.” Want to punch it up a little? “Smash the Corporatocracy!” It doesn’t make you a fascist to identify a unifying message and to ask people to stay on it. One reason the GOP has been so successful at dragging the country to the right is they know how to stay on message. It’s easier for them because they just care more for what their corporate masters want them to say.

I have cared deeply about saving the whales since before you were a tadpole, I have wished for Mumia’s freedom for at least that long, I truly wish someone had brought Death to the Patriarchy before I was born into it. And if you wake me up in the middle of the night, I can name 50 other issues I care about passionately because we are leftists and that is how we roll. But none of that means I need now to mention any of it or carry a sign about it. When you are at a demonstration you are there to bring attention and focus to, ideally, one issue.

That is, if you want the kind of clarity that brings results. Virtually every one of these social problems would be lessened if not eliminated if we could “Get the Money Out of the Political Process.” Sheesh, it could be so simple and you’ve made it so complicated.

Alright sweetie, I’m gonna stop. I’ve tired myself out talking again, I have a way of doing that. And I know you have to go meet your friend and try to fix your tent. I’m proud of you and I love you, and I know you’re smart. You always remember to feed the cat and not to carry any you-know-what if you might get busted. I know I taught you right. I’m not so sure about your friend — the nose-ring, it looks infected. Alright, I’m stopping.

(Fake) Mother loves you! It wouldn’t hurt if in between taking pictures of police brutality you used your phone to call me!

Come in, sit. I’ll make you something to eat, don’t be silly, it’ll take me two minutes. I wasn’t gonna say anything, but you look a little thin.  I know you had a slice of pizza at the demonstration. but that was hours ago. You’re so hopped up on adrenaline you didn’t even notice. Believe me, I remember how that feels. I still get out to the barricades now and then, but by the time I get home my hip is killing me, especially if it rains.

A couple of days ago I turned 57. I decided to give myself the gift of self-indulgence, so I started to write this post. Being childless by choice, any pseudo-maternal urges were always sufficiently met by the presence of lovers and cats in my life, and I never expected to love a movement like a mother loves her child.

But that was before your tortuous and precipitous birth! And because you were unexpected, a “miracle baby” with such beauty and promise from the start, I was flooded with love and pride when I saw you! Then I saw you start to make some pretty obvious errors which is inevitable when you are new at something, how else can you learn?

So I tried to keep my mouth shut — who cares what a (fake) mother thinks, anyway? Like most real mothers around the world though, I struggled with raging over-protectiveness when I saw you start making the kind of mistakes that can get you killed or badly hurt before you know any better. These kind of mistakes, in combination especially, are also the kind that can kill the hopes and dreams of movements, and I want you to live for a long time and be successful, only partially because your dreams for America and mine are the same.

I know you’re barely more than two months old, but in today’s world you need to grow up fast. It’s because of the internet, and everywhere there is right wing crazy these days: there are guns, except for where there are bombs and guns, and people with apparently raging hard-ons to use them. And there’s the inability to just stfu about it for five minutes.

Some of us, though aware that the vast majority of this stuff comes from the racist right, have become very sensitive to violent rhetoric regardless of the source. If you were only old enough to remember, you’d know that the last time it was like this around here JFK, RFK and MLK. Jr ended up dead, as well as others who were not so well known. We older lefties have a “compare and contrast” example in our memories of a time that’s more like the present than any other before or since.

. . wow, for someone who wasn’t hungry, sweetie, you sure ate that fast! Here’s some more…no? You sure? OK, I’m wrapping it up for you to take with you. What? What if you get hungry on the train?

So, let me finally get to the point. Basically you know (fake) mother loves you. But I see three areas where there is some room for improvement. Some of my historical examples will come from the civil rights movement because of that whole ‘refusing to learn from history dooming you to repeat it’ thing. That goes for us too, not just the other side. And if you say you’re a serious, capable and committed activist for social change but you don’t know or care that every movement borrowed or learned at least something from the civil rights and early labor movements, please don’t say it out loud. You’re embarrassing me.

Violence

Messaging

They’re listed in descending order of how hysterical I get when I think what could happen! Oy gevalt! You know what, I talked so long I’m too tired to give you the details now. Here’s an idea, why don’t you stay the night, you can Occupy Your Old Bedroom? They can take the park again without you tonight. You know what will happen when you get gassed again with your allergies!

Good, I’m glad you decided to stay. In the morning I promise we’ll have coffee before you go, and I’ll tell you the rest. Meanwhile, read this, and tomorrow we’ll compare and contrast. It’s just a Wikipedia page, but it’s pretty good. At least it’s the way I remember it happening. I was about 15 at the time.

Well, I may be an old broad with a chip on her shoulder about the military industrial complex, but I’m not dumb — I just stretched my present to myself into another day! You know, my mother used to say, to my constant amusement, “I’m cold, go put on a sweater!” As funny as that sometimes was there were a few times I wished I’d listened to her. She had an uncanny ability to predict when it might suddenly get colder. I guess because she’d lived through so many more winters than I had.

Sleep tight and don’t get any nightmares from reading that page, more tomorrow…

. . read part two HERE . .

Well kids, I warned you about this a little while back, and so the fun begins.

At least two volunteers working for the campaign to recall Walker in the wake of his passage of a controversial anti-collective bargaining law reported getting anonymous, early-morning phone calls last week.

“They said, ‘If you don’t stop circulating recall petitions, we will kill you,’” Tom Peer, a volunteer for the recall campaign, told Wisconsin’s WISC news of a call he received at 2 a.m. Thursday.

That’s what I love about the GOP (Greedy Old Prick) party, the way they always play fair no matter what is at stake.

I’ve never even been to Wisconsin, and lately I’ve been fighting the urge to go there and slap the hell out of someone. And is it me, or does Scott Walker look like he is mouth-breathing in every pic and public appearance? I really am not trying to be mean, I just think he looks and sounds too dumb to dress himself, much less run a state. Presumably the Kochs pay someone else to do both for him . .

If you thought like me that Herman Cain was the strangest black man in the Republican Party, you were wrong. Months ago, when I called Allen West a ‘Walking Anger Management Problem,’ I sensed that he was even more…unique…than that. At the time, he was completely losing his shit over the diminutive, post-cancer chemotherapy patient Debbie Wasserman Schultz. The optics may have been bad, but he really had no choice. She is a woman and she questioned his authoritah! He is A Real Man.

But remember this? He got mad at NBC, too:

West has denied NBC News’s reports of his involvement with the gang, and recently told Hotline On Call that the story can’t be true because the Outlaws do not “accept blacks, Jews or gays” into their ranks.

The West campaign has responded to the reports, denying their veracity and accusing NBC of a biased reporting:

“In what can only be described as a political hatchet job by the liberal mainstream media, NBC News – through reporter Lisa Myers – made an outrageous claim that LTC(R) Allen West condones criminal activity. Myers clearly has an agenda to try and stop good people like Allen who oppose the far left policies that are wreaking havoc upon our country.”

Turns out he just gets mad. Ask him about Herman Cain:

Scott Hennen: Is it an attack on a black conservative because he’s a black conservative?

Congressman West: Oh come on, I mean you know I was the only black member of a white supremacist motorcycle gang, so liberals and there are certain others I would say even within our party that are not comfortable with strong black conservative voices, and I would say there are people that feel very threatened by that because we do stand on principle. We are someone or entities that are out of the mainstream, if you want to call it that, so liberals are definitely going to come at you.

So I guess Herman Cain is not the only black man in the GOP who would get a special kind of thrill if somebody called him “Cornbread.” Or something. This is why we can’t have nice things, like participatory democracy. It is also why the following is all over the interwebs these days:  “2012–It’s Not Just an Election, It’s a Restraining Order.”

One thing is sure, we are going to have to stop cracking jokes about Michele Malkin winning the award for being the white supremacist with the darkest skin.

You know why the GOP/Tea Party will not win in 2012? They keep picking candidates who are too nice, too moderate. Perry is gone (too accommodating to death-row inmates). Bachmann is toast (coddling homosexuals who haven’t married her).

But what about Cain? He sure looked like he had what they were looking for. Rachel Maddow was not wrong when she said his is not a real campaign but a brilliant piece of political performance art. ”Call me Cornbread” was giving the right wing crowd what they craved. He saved the GOP from having to play the race card by agreeing to be the race card and let them play him. And that was even before his recent problems with foolish women who have no sense of humor and think sexual harassment is a real thing.

Somewhere in the whirlwind of, by my count now, 450 pre-primary Republican debates, the real talent got lost. They ought to be running THIS guy:

Some “Joke”: GOPer Calls Nancy Pelosi the C-Word (and More) on Twitter
Lauren Kelley | Alternet | Nov 10 2011

It was bad when Herman Cain called Nancy Pelosi “Princess Nancy” during last night’s GOP debate. But the reaction of former South Carolina Republican Party leader Todd Kincannon was even worse. Via HuffPo’s Amanda Terkel, here’s Kincannon responding to a Twitter user who objected to some of Kincannon’s remarks about Pelosi:

Amazing that they haven’t tapped him yet for 2012, or at least put him in charge of getting out the women’s vote. Maybe they’re still holding out for their ideal candidate. I’m picturing someone with a documented childhood history of setting fires, torturing small animals and wetting the bed.

A person shouldn’t spend a lot of time on the Magic Book of Faces drinking coffee, staring into space (cyber and otherwise), and giggling at his or her own jokes. On the other hand, if I hadn’t spent this morning doing just that (ok, it’s 25 after twelve, quit nit-picking), how would I have stumbled upon this?

Pin-ups for Ron Paul. I thought it was a parody but…it wasn’t. I don’t even know what to say. I guess if there are people of color and liberals who can find reasons to support him, there are women that misguided as well. Like a chicken voting for Frank Perdue.

There are only two partial explanations for this display that I can come up with.
1.) Ambition. The GOP seems, in its Insane 2012 Death Spiral Dance, determined to graduate from “just plain nuts” to “eeeewwww, gross and nuts.” 2.) Yuck. I remember a guy I knew years ago that told me “Crazy chicks are hot.” I didn’t take that as a compliment since I was sleeping with him at the time. Although, in retrospect, since I chose to be with him, maybe he was right.

I guess some women need to see what life is like when they go ‘self-respect, optional.’ Calgon, take me away.

I thought I would try something completely new. Nine times out of ten, when I get the urge to blog, I am VERY, VERY ANGRY. Today though I am going to see what comes out when I am the polar opposite of angry, when I am walking on air, happier than the proverbial porcine in poo. And all because I love the smell of spilt Tea in the morning!

At the risk of sounding like Howard Dean, do you know what happened in Ohio and Mississippi and Arizona and North Carolina and Maine and, and, and, and . . . yeeaaaarrrrgggghhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!

We’ll tell our children and grandchildren about our long national nightmare and the night that it finally began to lift, the night of Referenda on Teabaggery Across the Land!

So dance, rejoice, if you like to drink, now’s the time to have one, if a fattie is more your style, smoke ‘em if you got ‘em. Last night the 99% began to show the 1% and its useful idiots what’s what and what will be. Now rest up for the real fight ahead, in 2012. We’ll have some SERIOUS right wing ass kicking to do. Tonight, the only thing I wouldn’t do is get between John Boehner and a bottle.

I am not a conspiracy gal, but, in fact, I am out to get Ron Paul as his eyebrows might be the most genuine things about him. People think he is more of a joke than a threat because he has a slightly smaller chance of winning the White House than I do, but here is what’s important about him:

1) For a guy who can’t really win an election, he has been taking up a seat in Congress for around 30 years, voting no on virtually everything because he is “against government.” Way to collect a fat (government) paycheck for doing the people’s business without actually doing any work.

2) Most important, some of us have been watching Paul for some time and are aware that the avuncular Libertarian thing is an act, albeit a successful one. He pulls in lots of pigeons, I mean followers, who can’t see past “End the Wars” and “Legalize Drugs.” Many of these political morons, I mean Americans, who are entitled to their own point of view spend all their time splitting the Left on behalf of their Libertarian Savior and getting very nasty when you attempt to point out that it directly aids the extreme Right.

3) It is now WELL documented that Paul is a serious career racist and has been since well before he began his career in Congress. His writings and associations over this time come from his deep involvement with the worst of the worst: basically, white supremacists and neo-Nazis. If you really want to see his most solid and consistent fan base, check out the threads about him on Stormfront.org and vdare.com. Oh — also, he is down with the John Birch Society. Takes money from, does photo-ops with, speaks at functions of, etc., all of the above. BTW: he hates women, LGBT people and poor people as much as he does people of color, but, if I get into all of that now, I’ll be in “new post” territory instead of comments [*boing* --ed.]. His writings and speeches were much more overtly racist in the past — he’s stealthier now, but, sadly for him, his past garbage has been preserved and is being re-distributed.

4) Even if none of the above were true, he is partially responsible for the existence of RAND PAUL. I rest my case.

As far as the eyebrow thing it is also possible that Dr. Paul has health issues that contribute to their disappearance, but, if I knew anything about, that HIPPA laws and patient confidentiality would prevent me from revealing it at this time. All I can say is Ron Paul is a very, very bad man despite any appearances to the contrary. American politics is very much about appearances, but, in Ron Paul’s case, a little peri-ocular merkin situation might be the best thing about him.

Cheers!

Memo to Clarence Thomas:

Could you now please STFU until the end of time?  THIS is what a  “high-tech lynching” looks like . .

Let me start by introducing myself. I am nycgrlupstate and my blog is My Left Hemisphere. I am totally grateful to my good friend toma for inviting me to come on over and blog, and especially for positioning me, as it were, right behind the Santorum; it is hard not to look good when juxtaposed with anal lube and fecal matter.

This column will be a regular exploration of the kooky, crazy world of women on the extreme white right. If you are a regular reader of My Left Hemisphere you are part of an elite group of four to five people who know that among contemporary rank-and-file American fascists, wimmen folks is scarce. In a seeming contradiction, though, there are more and more women emerging individually as stars of the hate community. Just like the women of the, um, decent human being community, some shine in their own right and some in support of their men and children, with spirited debate among the SSisterhood about one’s appropriate role. I am Woman, heil, I mean hear me roar.

Couple of last details: much of what I post here will end up cross-posted to my blog (duh) and to One People’s Project, where my other good friend Daryle Lamont Jenkins has generously invited me to blog. If there were any justice which there is not DL J would be a household name: nobody covers the waterfront like he does when it comes to racists, anti-semites and the like and I expect some of my Belligerent Babes to end up in his Rogue’s Gallery.

BTW, don’t think of all of this cross-posting as lazy, think of it as “Reduce, Re-use, Recycle” for the Information Age (if that’s what it’s still called).

I don’t like to brag but in 30 or 40 years of intensively studying the hard right I’ve managed to earn not one cent or academic credit; how many people like that do YOU know? That’s what I thought. Even when they are not all meth-addled and inbred-looking (and fewer and fewer of the visible ones are) they are endlessly fascinating. If it weren’t for all the, you know, killing people and getting people killed, they might even be entertaining at times. Also, they are incredibly scary so it’s nice to stay on top of where they are and what they are doing (to people).

I’ve already gone on longer than I meant to so I’ll stop here. Next time I see you will be in “Really, Really Mean Girls I.” where I will tell you all about the Truly Unique Laine Lawless.

Cheers!