“All the news that’s fit to print” or It’s not a conspiracy when it’s just shallow stupidity
My whole life I have loved reading Time and Newsweek and The Economist magazines. But I have always noticed that while the articles are always imminently readable, and while they sound very intelligent, when they are about a place that I know well they always sound somehow torqued…the stories just aren’t fully true, with any deep contextual meaning. I saw this phenomenon first when I lived in Nairobi as a 15-year-old girl. It used to upset me. The writers weren’t really lying they just weren’t telling the whole messy truth either. Lots of spades were being called clubs in the name of politeness. I saw it again as a 35-year-old woman living in Dhaka. I began to come to terms with the deeply parochial way that western media portrays the developing world. It’s all sort of insulting to the subtleties of historical realities if I say so myself. Of course, some inter-ethnic hatreds must not be spoken of, and certainly systemic sexism, classism and ageism are brushed over but there is more to it then that. I haven’t been quite able to label what has always happened with the media, but I am beginning to think that it is a form of oligarchical colonialism in our mindset, in what we call polite.
Meanwhile I have been reporting on my school in Kawangware and have often been slapped on the wrist for not being ‘feel good’ enough. Or for disturbing our American sensibilities. This parochialism in the name of politeness is understandable and not at all mean spirited. But I believe that the media has kept it too light for too long in the name of peace. It’s like we don’t want to say that some people are really destructive of humanity, for fear that they will read what we say and be insulted. I’m old enough to know the path to perdition is paved in good intentions myself. This story is explaining a simple case of when the media didn’t tell the whole story – read the painful truth – in Sacramento in 2017.
We lived in Davis, California, this spring and I immediately knew I had to report this story from my grass roots first hand view as soon as I could calm down enough to do so…. A couple years later a friend of mine told me her story from that day, but she was young and way too traumatized to write it up. I have asked her write it up – and you know who you are dear – I promised to edit it and publish it to a larger audience. My young friend had a much more dramatic story then I did, she had tears in her eyes as she told me her story, so it is not mine to tell. But maybe if she reads this mild report A can find the strength to tell her truth from this day as well.
Remember that in 2017, Americans had a new moral low to deal with in our public life. It was embodied in our new bully clown president, and we were all feeling the anxiety.
There had just been a mass murder of a bunch of queer young people at a nightclub in Florida from which we were still reeling, for example. My church had given us each a placard to post in our front yards, with the names roughly 25 names of dead young people who had been snuffed out in our “land of the free” by an angry person with a cheap gun. On the backside of the placard, it said Love trumps Hate. (wishful thinking?)
In June, when Sadie met a young man who told her that ‘everybody’ needed to go to Sacramento the next day to face off against the Neo-fascists who were demonstrating at the state capital building that seemed very reasonable to us all. Of course, Terry went along. But Lew and I decided we were too old for the drama. The young’ens caught rides early in the morning with some students who were excited about this gathering of idealists, which they were calling Antifa (short for anti-fascist).
Lew and I just stayed at home in the air-conditioning and wished them luck, grateful that each of them was equipped with a working cell-phone and that we didn’t have to go out in the heat to face off against the dozen or so fascist ex-cons, who were getting mounted police protection in the park around the State Capital Building in downtown Sacramento. It was a nice warm day and the police up on their horses looked picturesque after all.
But at around 1 pm Terry called and said “yeay its getting ugly here. They seem to be stabbing people of color” as if that were a normal thing to have happening. His dad asked if he was ready to come home and Terry said yes. But we could not reach Sadie.
Lew and I rented a Zip Car and drove the 20 miles to Sacramento to pick up our kids.
When we got down to the Capital Building the police were out in force looking very imperial and there were a few hundred people right up next to the state capital itself – all dressed in black.
I grabbed the placard that I had taken from our front (postage stamp sized) lawn and marched past the police up to the line of black clad strangers.
As I marched with my placard toward the crowd, I got a look down from a police officer on horseback that was pure hatred. He didn’t say anything, maybe because I was old enough to be his mother, and I was a white woman. But he hated me alright – as I carried my love placard. I stared back at him with my well-practiced “and watcha gonna do about it bro?” look
I thought I was facing a few hundred fascists, and though I was shaking all over I shouted “you all are a bunch of scared old men who are just trying to bully us” as loudly as I could muster.
I think I was pretty loud actually because a very young man responded by getting all up in my face and saying “do I look like a scared old man to you?” I said “No, An angry young man. But why do you think you can terrorize us.” I was getting confused indeed. These black clad people didn’t look like I expected fascists to look. No fat old red necks anywhere. Then some young women started shouting at me about ‘of course we are angry’ and “who do you think you are?’ and stuff like that. Luckily, I was carrying my placard because another young women didn’t take long to shout louder than anybody else: “Heay guys we are on the same side here!” That was a welcome sound to me because I was really confused by now…..and the kids were mad. “You are a UU aren’t you?” (meaning Unitarian Universalist) she continued and we both started laughing.
They were all laughing at me now and I was like: “Aren’t you the fascists?” and I began to mentally process the fact that everyone was young and fresh-faced, if angry.
“No we are Antifa.”
“Why the heck are you wearing black and where are the fascists?”
“So the police don’t know who we are of course”.
The laughing broke my tension (I had been almost in tears) and theirs as well.
By this time however, Terry had found Lew’s car circling the state house (nobody was allowed to park because the police were keeping the citizens of Sacramento away from the fascists). Luckily Terry and Sadie had got there very early in the morning before the police knew how endangered the fascists were. The guys called and I asked them to wait a few minutes while I handed off the placard to my savior from within Antifa and ran to a predetermined street corner. The Policeman had moved on.
We didn’t reach Sadie until we had returned our zip car and walked home in Davis. Terry explained that he had been enjoying himself, all 6 ft 3 of himself. He had touched nobody, but the fascists had clearly been scared of him as they literally fell over each other on the stairs while retreating into the statehouse. I guess their strategic retreat was why the horseback policeman had pulled closer to the building. I honestly think he wanted to hurt Antifa, but couldn’t find an opportunity.
Sadie was hiding from the police because the fascists (also of course wearing black – all twelve of them, ex-cons mostly) had been sneaking into the Antifa crowd of idealistic young people and stabbing people of color. I am not making this up.
Sadie was helping get some nursing care to the injured people while the police did nothing. In fact, everyone was scared of the police who were riding around on horseback spraying pepper spray randomly at Antifa.
Sadie had even bumped into an old friend from her Nairobi Kenya high school who had been called in on an emergency from San Francisco as a medic. Nobody from Sacramento would help.
By this time both fascists (I mean literally there were about 12 of them) were hiding inside the capital building with guards at the door keeping out the Antifa responders. Even though not one of the fascists had been hurt, except for the dude who was pushed down the stairs, probably by a brother-in-arms, while running away.
Here’s what Wikipedia says about it:
Ten people were hospitalized, all for multiple stabbing and laceration wounds,[1][11] including two in critical life-threatening condition.[6][13] Only one of the TWP and GSS members was stabbed.[14] The capitol was locked down.[5] Streets were closed. Over 100 police officers responded in riot gear and on horseback. They used rubber pellets and pepper-spray balls.[1]
See that’s what I mean, in an attempt to be ‘fair and balanced’ they neglected to mention that every person who had multiple lacerations was a person of color from the counter demonstrators. Sadie came up to one of the bleeding people and he said “a guy snuck behind me and stabbed me”. But the police were notably protecting the fascists as those old fat white men cowered in the statehouse building itself (remember the Alamo anybody?)
A friend from Britain called the next morning to ask if she had seem me holding a placard with a bunch of names on it and wearing a salmon colored shirt while I shouted at a bunch of people in black. Sky news covered it.
The Sacramento Bee had a picture of Terry, wearing a brick red shirt, walking past a couple of fascists losers sitting on the stairs to the state house. One of them was bleeding from his fall on the stairs and it looked like Terry had punched him. But he had not. I imagine that the Sacramento Bee wanted it to look like a fair fight. Also we Fulton’s were the only people with any color in our clothes.
When I told Sadie earlier the other day that I was going to write up this story she said that was perhaps the worst day of her life. I know I was shaking for days. As the Antifa kids did crowd funding to cover their hospital bills, presumable the fascists went back to their parole counselors.
Its hard to see evil prevail. And it would be MUCH BETTER if the mainstream media explained things better.
Then Maybe Trump wouldn’t have been re-elected.
The View from a Broad 