“Pressure Drop”: Barbes to MOMA, Losing Toots and RGB, and Elizabeth Owens and Stanley Crouch

ACT UP 29 Action. April 2016,

 Elizabeth Owens RIP. 

Elizabeth Owens RIP, Photo by Erik R. McGregor

Online classes all week and trips out afterward, fall was in full burst.

Greg,  Emily and  I gossiped outside at Barbes on Tuesday.

Carline and I with Jeremy on Wednesday at Barbes.

Thursday, I zipped by the demos at City Hall,

Friends from Extinction Rebellion, Rise and Resist out in force.

Missed the Democracy Dies in a Police State demo.

Still, they had a poignant message.

Brennan and Austin,  Babs and I talked about what happened to us at 7B,

A lost parent here,

what might happen if we won.

 

It almost felt like we were getting back to things.

Still, forebodings made their way through the crisp fall air.

Word of Toots passing, and the Clash playing,

“Pressures gonna drop on you.”

A dialectic from reggae to punk,

Island to the  world,

Toots to The Clash.

“when it drops,

You gonna feel it.”

 

We were gonna feel it.

We were about to feel it, again.

 

Friday, Ken and I rode to the Met.

In the past three falls, we’ve been in DC for the Kavanaugh hearings or the budget vote or fighting for the affordable care act, one crisis after another.

Its so nice riding with you instead of going to DC, I said to Ken on the way to the Museum.

Walking through Dorothea Lange show, images of workers and migrants, sharecroppers and emaciated bodies,

Greeting the Goat in the Sculpture Garden.

The Brancusi sculptures.

These old friends remind me to think of colors, lights splashing through the city.

Off to 303 to say hi to Lisa

Snapping photos, walking the highline.

Up to a favorite bookstore on  41^st,

The city is opening  up again.

Looks like those buildings are next, says Ken,

Pointing at the townhouses amidst the skyscrapers on 9^th Ave.

“Pressures gonnna drop on you.”

 

And down to Brownsville, we ride.

8.2 miles from Bryant Park.

Brooklyns not a sacrifice zone.

Ken passed me as we rode.

There and back.

String quartets play in the street,

People rushing to service.

 

Watching movies  with he  little  one.

About to go to sleep., the little one had some news.

“Dad, Ruth Badar Ginsberg died.”

Tears of rage

Terror

Its all falling apart.

Why didn’t she step down under Obama?

The checks and balances gone

I remember her coming to court in 1993, before it all fell apart

Before the center crumbled.

Couldn’t hold.

Later that night, Ken sent me  the old Yeats poem.

I’m not sure a second coming is on the horizon.

“Surely some revelation is at hand….”

Fascism looming.

No gods, no masters.

“Vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle.”

 

First sad, then accepting.

Either you kill yourself says Camus, or

Embrace the absurd.

That’s what  the  myth of  Sisyphus is all about.

Find the freedom in motion, the freedom is knowing nothing is guaranteed.

 

Kids were out playing stickball in Dumbo.

Old Brooklyn coming back.

Jay Walker invited me to a vigil for RGB:

“This is not about what’s next, though that is important. This is about needing a space for collective mourning for Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

This weekend, we hold space for mourning. Monday, we pick up the fight.

…Her words, her decisions. Let’s lift up her memory together.

…light a candle and honor her memory in your home.”

 

I remember  when she joined the court I told Alexis D at Washington Square Park.

Recalling those early days with Bill C.

Its going  to be a rough run.

Mitch has the votes to put them on the court.

No  checks and balances.

They can kill whatever they want.

Civil rights on the ropes.

“"What the fuck is going on?” said Jenny. “I've always said I thrive in fascism...."

 

Everyone get to dc, I wrote.

Mourn RGB, and Fight for the Living, says CPD.

Get to dc. If thousands and thousands of us show up, we might have a chance. …

We need to swing a few votes. They are all on record as saying they oppose votes for justices in election years. Lets hold them to their word and be smart about it. We lost with Kavanaugh. We have to win this one. And get Mitch out, swing the courts, and win back democracy.

 

Friends drop by that night.

Going to bed I check my messages.

And see word of Elizabeth.

A post from VOCAL announced:

 

“We are devastated to share that our beloved Elizabeth Owens has passed away.

Elizabeth joined VOCAL-NY in 2010 as an outreach worker and soon became a full-time community organizer, where she built the power of our organization for the last decade.

If you’ve met Elizabeth you’ll remember her. She greeted you with a loud “thank you for coming to work today!” and gave you a big hug, never a handshake. She talked to everyone on the street or the subway, breaking the monotony of a commute to work with her infectious smile & laugh.

She was particularly proud of She’s So VOCAL -- the women’s organizing project she dreamed up and ran for the last several years. She created a beautiful, affirming space for women in our organization to come together to strategize on campaigns, and to lift each other up.

Elizabeth always showed up as her full self - a drug user, formerly homeless, “gay as hell” and a powerful advocate for her community. She was never afraid to be on the front lines of a protest & spent hours knocking doors across the city to recruit & inspire ppl to join our fight.

She will be deeply missed. We love you Elizabeth!”

Elizabeth, last time I saw her was at the VOCAL fundraiser last fall.

Or any number of demos, where she always brought

Hugs for me, welcoming me as a brother from another mother.

Welcoming my kids.

It’s the most important thing you could share with us, your kids, she said.

News and tears.

She’s so VOCAL.

Thanks for coming to work.

Bringing her whole self.

Drug user.

Gay as hell.

Thank  you for coming  to work  today.

We laughed about show world, laughed about being alive, doing the work.

Lots of laughter.

She rejected shame and showed us we could be kind.

Too much  loss.

My mind flashed back to her at ACT UP’s 29^th anniversary demo.

“My friend Elizabeth, of VOCAL, spoke about pharma greed.

 

“This is not a joke to me.  I have hepatitis C and they think that my illness is not critical enough,” she explained. “This is not an April fools to me.  I wanna live till tomorrow and the next day. And I’ll be damned if I let anybody make a joke of this. Hepatitis C is very much among low income communities.  Its more than car accidents.  I don’t see any reason to be joking about this.  I wanna live. I don’t give a damn how long it takes.  I’m gonna stand right here and make sure Pfizer and every other corporation knows.”

 

“We got your back!” we screamed.

 

“Lower prices now!  Lower prices now!”

When she finished speaking, I greeted Elizabeth.  And as she always does, she gave me a hug.  I introduced her to my kids.  And, she gave them hugs, thanking them for their support and asking them to come again.  This is signature ACT UP and VOCAL. Lots of love and lots of anger, desire, hope, grief and burning ambition.   It makes a beautiful, smart, sexy, combustible, pulsing movement, three decades and still churning forward, impacting corporate pricing, as well as media, and city and state policy.

 

My daughter wrote a paper about the high hepatitis C drug pricing, speaking with Elizabeth about this problem.

For Elizabeth and members of ACT UP and VOCAL, this is about their lives, our lives, everyone’s lives, those no longer here and those at risk ACT UP has always made this point.  Its about everyone.  Its not over till its over for everyone.”

 

That old feeling grasps me.

 

Sunday, the worries.

Barr and Sedition.

No checks and balances.

Its all lined up.

The little one and I zip about the city.

Into the country.

Listening to tunes.

That afternoon, How We Fight for Our Lives in book group, chatting with my friends about what it all means, to read, to live, to think together.

“Somewhere between the fact we know and the anxiety we feel is the reality we live,” says Mamie Elizabeth Till Mobley in the epigraph.

The reality we live,

The anxiety we feel.

Its with me all the time.

All I’ve, all we’ve worked on, hanging on a precipice.

 

Sunday Jazz.  We sat out listening on Smith Street.

I find myself thinking of Stanley Crouch, another hero, who passed this week.

Back at Vassar in the fall, I found his liner notes, thinking about jazz and democracy, play and politics, aesthetics that could convey the negative.  

The last time I saw him was on Smith Street.   He always reminded us jazz could be a conversation about democracy. “The demands on and the respect for the individual in the jazz band put democracy into aesthetic action,” said Crouch. “The success of jazz is a victory for democracy, and a symbol of the aesthetic dignity, which is finally spiritual, that performers can achieve and express as they go about inventing music and meeting the challenge of the moment.”

We need the conversation to expand, out  into everything.

Fall days, Pressure drop. Pressure is gonna drop on you.

 “The ceremony of innocence is drowned.”