Someone needs to tell Donald Trump that he's got his suburbs on backwards. Sure, they're not one size fits all, but their style has changed. Suburbs no longer wear uniforms; they're colorful and varied, even subversive at times. I know, because I live in one.
Determined to eliminate a fair housing law established under Barack Obama, President Trump is warning that Joe Biden's zoning policies will "abolish our beautiful and successful suburbs." He thinks he's scaring us by saying that crime rates will rise and property values decline. It's all code, of course, easily deciphered, for Black and Brown people moving in. "Suburbia will be no longer," he says.
The trouble for Trump is that suburbia isn't so White anymore. Nor is it Republican. In fact, Democratic households outnumber Republican ones in my north Durham neighborhood, where people of different colors, ages, and genders have lived together for years. Many of us detest Trump's endless race baiting, and we denounce his response to protests in support of Black Lives Matter.
Interestingly enough, protesters in Portland have employed one of suburbia's trademark symbols--the leaf blower--to counter tear gas attacks from federal agents. It's as if urban and suburban citizens have joined together to demand civil rights. Whereas Trump wishes to pit the two against each other, we've teamed up to stand him down.
So on this Sunday in July when the body of John Lewis crosses one last time over the Edmund Pettus Bridge, soon to be renamed in his honor, let's remember what he said: "I believe in freedom of speech, but I also believe that we have an obligation to condemn speech that is racist, bigoted, anti-Semitic, or hateful."
Racist appeals to suburban voters meet the Congressman's definition and must be condemned at every opportunity.
Sunday, July 26, 2020
Sunday, July 19, 2020
The Emerald Ash Borer
A brief thought on this hot July night. . .
Having noticed many dying trees in our neighborhood this summer, I asked an arborist what was wrong. He said that the Emerald Ash Borer is killing ash trees in north Durham, and for some reason I thought of Donald Trump.
Like this metallic green beetle, President Trump destroys rather than renews: he's dismantled our Constitution the way the ash borer disrupts nutrient pathways, and he's managed to do this in 3 years--the time it can take for an ash borer to kill a tree. He's small (minded) and shiny like this nasty bug, and evidence of his subversion can be found both directly and indirectly. He's on the move wherever ash trees can be found (and beyond).
Where the analogy doesn't hold up? The ash borer is a non-native species. Donald Trump, unfortunately, is as native to this country as you and I. He sprang from our values and thrived in our culture, understanding how to wreck the very systems that helped to create him.
I hope that we're more successful in defeating him this November than we've been in defeating his Coleoptera counterpart, for it will take more than insecticides and hardwood quarantines. It will take votes and votes and more votes.
Having noticed many dying trees in our neighborhood this summer, I asked an arborist what was wrong. He said that the Emerald Ash Borer is killing ash trees in north Durham, and for some reason I thought of Donald Trump.
Like this metallic green beetle, President Trump destroys rather than renews: he's dismantled our Constitution the way the ash borer disrupts nutrient pathways, and he's managed to do this in 3 years--the time it can take for an ash borer to kill a tree. He's small (minded) and shiny like this nasty bug, and evidence of his subversion can be found both directly and indirectly. He's on the move wherever ash trees can be found (and beyond).
Where the analogy doesn't hold up? The ash borer is a non-native species. Donald Trump, unfortunately, is as native to this country as you and I. He sprang from our values and thrived in our culture, understanding how to wreck the very systems that helped to create him.
I hope that we're more successful in defeating him this November than we've been in defeating his Coleoptera counterpart, for it will take more than insecticides and hardwood quarantines. It will take votes and votes and more votes.
Sunday, July 12, 2020
Education 101
Saturday's editorial in The New York Times, "Reopening Schools Will Be a Huge Undertaking. It Must Be Done," elicited almost 2,000 largely oppositional comments. In it, the editorial staff argued that public schools should open this fall with unprecedented federal funding and with imaginative use of outdoor space. As one reader noted, the word "teachers" appeared only once, in the second-to-last paragraph.
This says it all to me and, at the same time, doesn't surprise me. "What do our teachers think about re-opening?" seems like an obvious question. Yet for too long our society has discounted the role and expertise of its teachers. We don't pay them enough, we don't support them enough, and we don't consult them enough. . . but we ask them to solve society's problems that society fails to solve.
Consider for starters poverty, hunger, racial disparities, and economic inequality. We expect our teachers to overcome these challenges and ensure that all of their students achieve at a defined level-- despite low salaries, marginal benefits, and often poor working conditions. At a most basic level, the schools that my kids attended lacked soap in the bathroom dispensers, doors on stalls, sufficient cleaning supplies, working windows, and mold- and asbestos-free classrooms. Even when there's no coronavirus circulating, many Durham schools are neither safe nor clean.
Just as the pandemic has exposed the failure of public health and elder care in the United States, so it exposes public education. How did we get to the point where teachers buy their own paper? Need subsidized housing? Work second jobs? Crowdfund surgeries and new equipment? Why do we tolerate dilapidated buildings and aging school buses? Why do we short-change our children and their teachers?
It's past time to ask these questions. Covid-19 will eventually resolve, but the ills that plague our schools will not unless we demand something different. As fellow citizens protest policing and racism, let's add public education to the conversation. It's related, after all, and it serves our future and our national treasure: our children.
This says it all to me and, at the same time, doesn't surprise me. "What do our teachers think about re-opening?" seems like an obvious question. Yet for too long our society has discounted the role and expertise of its teachers. We don't pay them enough, we don't support them enough, and we don't consult them enough. . . but we ask them to solve society's problems that society fails to solve.
Consider for starters poverty, hunger, racial disparities, and economic inequality. We expect our teachers to overcome these challenges and ensure that all of their students achieve at a defined level-- despite low salaries, marginal benefits, and often poor working conditions. At a most basic level, the schools that my kids attended lacked soap in the bathroom dispensers, doors on stalls, sufficient cleaning supplies, working windows, and mold- and asbestos-free classrooms. Even when there's no coronavirus circulating, many Durham schools are neither safe nor clean.
Just as the pandemic has exposed the failure of public health and elder care in the United States, so it exposes public education. How did we get to the point where teachers buy their own paper? Need subsidized housing? Work second jobs? Crowdfund surgeries and new equipment? Why do we tolerate dilapidated buildings and aging school buses? Why do we short-change our children and their teachers?
It's past time to ask these questions. Covid-19 will eventually resolve, but the ills that plague our schools will not unless we demand something different. As fellow citizens protest policing and racism, let's add public education to the conversation. It's related, after all, and it serves our future and our national treasure: our children.
Sunday, July 5, 2020
Random Thoughts, 4th of July Weekend
I've always wanted to see Mount Rushmore, in part because I like Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest. But not anymore. The land belongs to the Lakota, the sculptor was a white supremacist, and the carved faces (a quartet that's never made sense to me) insult the lives and history of native Americans.
If Donald Trump wants to call his opposition an angry mob whose behavior defines the word "totalitarianism," then he can very well learn how to pronounce it.
The Washington Redskins should have changed their name decades ago. Given the recent outcry of protest across the country, FedEx and Nike have pulled their support, and it looks like the name will finally change. Two of the team's main corporate sponsors, their money made the difference. I guess we should celebrate this?
Mandy Cohen, North Carolina's Secretary of Health and Human Services, lamented our state's lack of chemical reagents to run more coronavirus tests, but we need help from the federal government to do so. "We can't solve that problem from the state level," she said. In the midst of this pandemic, do Trump's idolatrous crowds in Tulsa and the Black Hills have any idea how morally and criminally negligent his administration has been?
My mother and I watched two episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show on Friday night in memory of Carl Reiner, who produced the show and occasionally appeared in it. Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore are two of my favorite comedians, and we laughed and laughed. It felt good.
If Donald Trump wants to call his opposition an angry mob whose behavior defines the word "totalitarianism," then he can very well learn how to pronounce it.
The Washington Redskins should have changed their name decades ago. Given the recent outcry of protest across the country, FedEx and Nike have pulled their support, and it looks like the name will finally change. Two of the team's main corporate sponsors, their money made the difference. I guess we should celebrate this?
Mandy Cohen, North Carolina's Secretary of Health and Human Services, lamented our state's lack of chemical reagents to run more coronavirus tests, but we need help from the federal government to do so. "We can't solve that problem from the state level," she said. In the midst of this pandemic, do Trump's idolatrous crowds in Tulsa and the Black Hills have any idea how morally and criminally negligent his administration has been?
My mother and I watched two episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show on Friday night in memory of Carl Reiner, who produced the show and occasionally appeared in it. Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore are two of my favorite comedians, and we laughed and laughed. It felt good.
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