Posted in Poetry, Politics, tagged Campos, Cáceras, CBP, Díaz, DHS, Domíngues, Good, ICE, La, Minneapolis, Minnesota, modern poetry, murder, noem, Poetry, Pretti, resist, Stephen Miller, Trump, Yáñez-Cruz on 29 Jan 2026| Leave a Comment »
three shots, maybe four
from her ‘I’m not mad at you’
to his ‘fucking bitch’
five shots, maybe ten
to go from ‘Are you okay?”
to oblivion
two deaths plus six more
this winter of ’26
merely a month old
Cáceras, Campos,
Díaz, La, Good, Yáñez-Cruz,
Domíngues, Pretti
remember their names
that their dreams and hopes and joys
are not forgotten
Posted in Culture, Politics, tagged civil rights, ICE, prejudice, Renee Good, Serenity on 12 Jan 2026| Leave a Comment »
I am a white middle-class sixty-something hetero male living in America. I am arguably the possessor of the highest level of entitlement in the less-than-billionaire world. I have lived my life in two of the bluest of blue demographic regions in the nation. I have never known any discrimination beyond those deserved by my own flaws.
I grew up, though, during an era of intense racial strife. My family and teachers brought the concept of civil rights into my young life. I learned that our nation had a history of treating people differently, based on how they looked. I learned that, though I did not personally feel the effects of prejudice, others in the world definitely did. I learned that the presumptions made about me were not necessarily made of others, if their skin was darker than mine, if their religion was different than mine.
And I was asked, did that seem fair?
It did not.
As I grew older, I discovered that it didn’t even matter if our skin was pale. If you were a woman, you could be treated differently, also as “less than.” Having been schooled by women, having been raised by women, this also did not seem fair.
But while I was able, as a teen ensconced in my bluish-ivory tower, to intellectualize all of this and say “Oh, yes, that is bad,” and, “That is wrong and we should work to fix that,” it took many more years before I realized that this unfairness, this prejudice, this smoldering (if not outright) racism and sexism, this misogyny, this antisemitism, this idea that pale skin imbued one with an inherent supremacy, imposed a level of stress and daily anxiety the like of which I had no concept. I had no idea what it was like to fear men on the street. I had no idea of what it was like for someone to take one look at me and decide my worth, my value, my humanity.
I did learn of it, though. It wasn’t a difficult assignment. All I had to do was open my eyes and pay attention for a brief period, because it was all there, easy to see if you simply looked around.
These days, though, it’s even easier to see. Now, you have to actively look away in order not to see it.
And many of us are doing just that.
If you aren’t, though … if you are paying attention and watching what is going on and seeing what is happening out there, in our nation, in our name, I ask you this:
Be extra kind. Take care to take care of those around you, be they neighbors or strangers or just folks in the checkout line at the grocer’s. People are on edge, and tempers are near the breaking point. None of us know what the person next to us in line has g0ne through today, or this week, or this month. They might be in pain, scared, angry as hell, and just barely holding it in.
It’s fucking chaos out there. So we need to be kind to one another. Just so we can all see tomorrow.
Together.
k
Posted in Culture, Politics, tagged blame game, civil rights, congress, freedom of speech, government shutdown, ICE, politics, senate on 05 Oct 2025| 2 Comments »
Republicans are blaming the Democrats for the shutdown and, following the standard congressional “I’m rubber, you’re glue” playbook, Democrats are blaming the GOP in turn. That’s a weak, schoolyard response, and I’m sick of that game. Here’s what I want to hear from Democrats:
“You’re goddamn right we’re responsible. We are shutting this shit-show down, using every tool we can muster, using the power of the minority (just as you have done so many times over the years) to obstruct, to delay, to thwart, to frustrate, to discomfit, to drive a wedge between y’all and your base, to amplify our voice and blast our message, and our message is this: We will not be complicit!
“We will not be complicit in making health care unaffordable for millions by raising premiums and cutting services (and don’t trot out that bullshit lie about us wanting to provide health care to undocumented immigrants, because you know folks need an SSN to apply for Obamacare, and the undocumented, by definition, don’t have one). People are having a very tough time, right now, and we won’t help you make it worse. We won’t. You’ll have to sit down with us. You’ll have to take the damned meeting. You’ll have to negotiate. You’ll have to fucking govern instead of strutting around like a bunch of mooks in cheap suits running a protection racket.
“Moreover, we will not be complicit in supporting your destruction of our society. We won’t support this rogue militia you’ve created out of ICE and CBP, a force that rappels from BlackHawks down into American cities to round up people indiscriminately, en masse, without warrants, destroying property, terrorizing communities, citizens and immigrants, adults and children alike. No. We won’t.
“We’re not going to just stand by and wring our hands and think back fondly on gentler times while you erode our most basic rights. No, JD, we’re not going to be ‘civil’ in the face of your incivility, we’re not going to be silent and meek when one of the tenets of our founding documents enshrines our freedom to tell you that you’re wrong and we’re right and why.
“And we’re not going to just bite our tongues when you call everything an ‘emergency’ so you can raise the cost of goods with tariffs, withhold funding appropriated by law, extort businesses and universities into silence, prosecute individuals because they made you look bad, and slap the ‘terrorist’ label on anyone exercising free speech.
“No. We’re not. We’re going to shut this down, and we’re going to do it loudly and unapologetically. We’re going to make governing this nation as difficult as possible until you come to the table, sit down, and negotiate. We are doing this because of the real and lasting harm you are perpetrating against our nation. We are doing this because we fucking can, and because the American people need someone to protect them, to look out for their needs, their health, and their lives.”
That is what I want to hear. That is what I think we need to hear.
k
Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 