Bearing Witness, On Peace Marches, Marching Bands, and a Vortex of Violence
"Never again is now!!!"
"Cease fire now!"
"Not in our name" say activists, many with JewishVoiceforPeace, calling out for peace. "There is no lonelier place on earth than the hospital bed of a kid who lost their parents," says a doctor in Gaza. Cease fire now, we scream, standing in the rain, outside the New York Public Library, one of any number of protests and marches, sit inns and direct actions taking nightly, across the city and the world.
In between it all, the @youngfellazbrassband pumps up the soul and funk at Barbes, NOLA brass, old Marvin Gaye songs, Nights in Tunisia, two tubas, two drums, trombones, brass, bodies in streets, the sounds of bands from New Orleans, protests on streets, cities, everywhere.
“Peace now,” we scream. “Cease fire now!!!” Chants careen between buildings, into the sky, through the days, my mind on the Oslow Accords from three decades prior. Two state solution and peace, that was the dream, a place where kids grow up traveling to each others’ countries instead of parents stop burying. They found it Ireland, even in Rowanda. Peace can work. Why couldn’t they just make it work? What happened, I think, images of friends here, protests from years ago, myths of eternal return, repeating there across the city and time.
"We outta do this more often," Amber Hollibaugh declared, standing by a burning police car, during the 1979 White Night Riots in San Francisco. I remember that fierce energy she brought to questions about sexual civil liberties, organizing to beat back the Briggs Initiative in 1978 California Proposition 6. For her to it was really a fight against fascism, she confessed in her book My Dangerous Desires: A Queer Girl Dreaming Her Way Home. I think about her conversations with Allan Bérubé and Eric Rofes and Carmen Vasquez. RiP.
I think about her crossing the bridge to the city, over the water, through Chinatown, exploring the tenements and gardens, old squats and poets of the Lower East Side, riding West.
Thoughts chase me on the way to Judson, the teenager growing up, no longer attending services with me, grief deep inside, knowing they are on their way, flying into the next step of their life.
“What new songs are you called to sing,” asks Micah at Judson.
“God always behaves like the people who created him,” says Zora Nealle Hurson, on the bulletin.
I can’t stop thinking about the teenager, at home, playing the banjo, charting their own path, Hold with an open hand, we always said. And now they are off
“I want the intersections of of struggles to fuel resurrections of our spirits,” says Micah, preaching.
Some days I feel it. Others there are not many new songs not making their ways inside me, just the old Blaze Foley tunes, clay pigeons, wondering what happened to the stranger, or the old singer.
I sit in the park, with a slice of pizza, reading about the war.
Colin’s waiting to hear from an editor.
Frank is on his way back from services in the Bronx, off to a building occupation.
I find myself wandering along Rivington Street to Bluestockings, picking up a graphic novel about Red Rosa, reading about her adventures, calling out the horrors of the first world war, the revolution that followed, crushed. Peace now. Its Barbarism or socialism, she warned, before someone put a bullet in the back of her head.
Randy tells me about Times Square, Cruising the Deuce, a trick slipping their hand into his back pocket, lifting his wallet, taking the cash, only to return it with finesse.
I guess it means you’ve got some good luck coming your way.
Jack is busy digging out rats from Le Petit Versaille Community Garden on Second Street.
How are you holding up with the craziness of it all, I ask, the wars.
We gotta live our lives, says Jack. He’s been here before. Surviving the aids war, the war on queer kids, still maintaining a queer public space.
At Earth Church, on Ave C, Dasha is tired of her kid jumping on her, catching up with her buddies in town from London. I sit chatting with with JK about explosions of feelings, Billy about lost fathers, Eileen about lost parks and poems, and Dasha about kids, and Father Frank about good news, Earth Church to Judson and UK Tompkins and back.
JK gives me a stone from Stromboli, the volcano still erupting, as it has been since 1934 “explosions and incandescent ejecta…”
We talk about kids growing up and away,
It’s doomed love, she tells me, doomed from the beginning, always about to disappear. She used to listen to the stranger, the old Billie Joel album with her kid. And now he’s gone. The song still reminds her.
The piano is playing, slow and steady.
Beautiful earth, the choir sings.
Billy recalls his father’s funeral, a stranger greeting him, from childhood, telling stories about lost bird’s nests, from years and years ago, finding forgiveness and abundance. Find the last of freedom buried in the ground. Mother earth will swallow you, burying you in the ground. Lay your body down.
Beautiful earth.
We are all wearing black, we’re all waiting for that invasion, says Billy, lamenting the impending violence.
The ditchdigger and I watch baseball, chatting about novels.
And the cats find new sleeping spots.
Mary Oliver reconnects with her friend Walt, reading poems in the woods.
The teenager and Caroline laugh about Fleabag, breaking the silence at Quaker service with the prophetic words:
“I sometimes worry that I wouldn't be such a feminist if I had bigger tits.”
Friday, I take the train uptown, strolling through the park, greeting old friends in the medieval cloisters and its unicorns which arrived via the Netherlands the year mom entered this world.
"I'd forgotten the impact" says Mom in front of the unicorn in the garden with her traveling buddy Melanie. I could just sit here all day.
Mom and I talk about Massacio’s Expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden wondering about the shame.
My students and I unpack a history of prohibitions, the rise in abortions after Dobbs.
“The surprising data that has followed the repeal of Roe v Wade…abortion rates increased,” says Anne-christine d'Adesky. “It must be stressed that there are myriad and serious harms endured by women post the repeal of Roe, including reports of pregnant women forced to carry dead fetuses to term to deliver them, and other terrible health outcomes ... And also the denial of abortion to women after rape and jailing of others who chose abortion after the repeal of Roe. And all the other women forced by the law to endure unwanted pregnancies. Just to say: criminalization can be deadly and here, was intended to punish women seeking abortion which has occurred. That punishment has been harsh even if criminalization has not achieved what anti-abortion backers wanted. So the Anti-women set have not achieved their goal but they have hurt and destroyed many American families by rolling back Roe….”
The violence feels like it's spreading.
“7,700 dead in Gaza since Hamas terrorist attack on Israel- as of tonight- as Netanyahu says Israel is settling into “a long and difficult war” in Gaza,” notes Anne-christine d'Adesky. “Everyone agrees women and children are the majority of civilian residents.
They have no food, water, electricity…. How is this not a war crime on top of the Hamas war crime?
Speak out: CEASEFIRE NOW!”
Hundreds of activists disrupt Grand Central Station to make the point on Friday night.
Violence begets more violence. Its hard to read it all:
The worlds going off the rails.
Still, Lucinas singing the Beacan, regaling us with stories of her dad's meeting with Hank Williams, her brother's love of Shakespeare, his propensity to disappear for days, homeless, a love of boudin sausage, gumbo, red beans and rice, and tales of misfit friends, Blaze Foley’s comings and goings,"Sittin' in the kitchen, Loretta's singing on the radio, Smell of coffee, eggs, and bacon…” I can almost taste it.
Lucinda is a story teller like few others.
My favorite is “Car wheels on a gravel road”.
I must have done something right in an earlier life to have the good fortune to be doing this, she tells us.
Each day, a different story.
A kid run over by a tow truck, a mass shooter in Maine.
Saturday,
Frank and I talk about the city of god, the good news we find when we connect with others, the struggles through the years, teaching, looking for something in the squats, where neighbors find homes. Every Sunday he preaches about the gospels in the Bronx. What about Matthew? It's not a hard sell up there. The guerilla theology is abundant, Father, son, and holy ghost animating the space in between us. And, of course, Mary's Song, says Frank, the Magnificat. Mary speaks of her soul and what God saw in her, a servant of the working class, who the world would come to regard as blessed. F
On we chat about poetry, Breton and the philosophy of Surrealism, mixing this life and the dream world, a revolution in consciousness, rational thoughts teetering on a seesaw with an unconscious realm.
But what of the hard times?
“There are a couple of places in that vortex of violence” says Frank, acknowledging the violence of our every day life here.
Stil we push back against it.
Down the street at Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center, Joe and the Boxcutter Collective is sharing the story of “The Possession of Judy” – “a puppet show for the very strange times we’re all living in….Judy (a tough-as-nails New York City grandma) rejects the false binary of the left/right political rhetoric, and joins a coven of activist witches to take down the billionaires and tech bros! … our only hope for the future: angry old women!”
In Brooklyn, people are marching by the museum.
Ceasefire now, they scream.
Enough. Not in our name. Enough.
And a friend from Israel writes back upset.
We hear more and more stories about casualties, hospitals turning into morgues.
I take the subway into the night, looking at everyone, the ladies in smexxy gear, boys in costumes. Brass bands roar through the evening at Rubulad Holloween, Pet Sematary, sweaty people adoring the strange music, conversations about unions and friendship, the loopy dancers, shaking it, the dressed up kids, looking sexy and super, drunk, going out for more, pouring into and out of train after train, club after club, some passed out, still out for more, scenesters in cat ears and snakeskin. Strange days and Halloween moments from the Gowanus to Barbes and back.
Yet, it all feels odd after all these years, the kids growing up and away.
The whole world is watching episodes from the old 90’s sitcom, Friends, with its star who shuffled off, after years of trials, with a lost love, a friend in a bottle.
After all, writes Patti Davis:
The teenager and I talk about Blaze Foley, who Lucinda was singing about on Friday, wondering what happened, why anyone would take out their pain on this troubador who lived in a treehouse.
Every once in a while, everyone’s gripped by that loneliness.
Whens it too much?
The world changes, and we make our way.
My group work students try to, so do my trauma students.
So do my union comrades, chanting on Dia De Los Muertos, at Jay Street Borough Hall.
@psc_cuny says: “No more gouls, no more fools, bring funding back to our schools.... no more zombie budgets, no more zombie contracts!!!!”
Mom’s celebrating her 86th birthday, my brothers passing through town for the occasion.
We all meet and toast to her.
It's been years of Thursday meetings, Sunday meals, on and on, growing up, growing on.
Thursday, I join climate activists at City Hall, meeting everyone outside on Murry Street and Broadway.
"No delay for Durst!" we chant. Big real estate cant delay local law 97. It's been five years of inaction. We can't have any more delays. Close the loophole. This is about the law. It's about our lives, our future, our climate. Enforce local law 97. We need to see compliance. Enforce 97, they insist, engaging in civil disobedience. "Landlord Adams, shame on you. We deserve a future too."
As we’re chant “arrest Adams”, the FBI is raiding the offices of the fundraiser for the Mayor.
“It provided a great contextual moment for our observations on how corrupt this pay to play administration is,” said Ken.
Watching the protests, I greet Monica, in town for now, heartbroken by the war, Ken on his way to jail.
Ady is on his way to parts unknown.
It's a strange thing, our bodies. They work, then they crumble. In between, we all need healthcare. It was amazing to see the activists who came out to illustrate the need for healthcare for all, making the case for it, defending, putting those bodies on the line for healthcare for people with disabilities, for people with HIV, for people with hepatitis. When the republicans decided to go after the affordable care act, people from across the country came to washington, getting arrested in the halls of congress, fighting for healthcare. One of them was Ady, fighting with his last breaths as ALS ragaged his body, still creating a poetry within his protest, in a life well lived. “That’s the paradox of my situation,” he told The New York Times in 2019. “As my voice has gotten weaker, more people have heard my message. As I lost the ability to walk, more people have followed in my footsteps.” RIP Ady.
We feel that connection, but then it disappears.
PEMA CHÖDRÖN| writes:
“When you wake up in the morning and out of nowhere comes the heartache of alienation and loneliness, could you use that as a golden opportunity? Rather than persecuting yourself or feeling that something terribly wrong is happening, right there in the moment of sadness and longing, could you relax and touch the limitless space of the human heart?”
I guess we all could.
Still, we look for each other, in the parks, the hospitals, at the demos, in the clubs.
Caroline and I walk through the Village to say hi to Glady at Beth Israel.
She didn’t tell anyone she was sick.
Three years ago.
Six months to go, her doctors told her.
And she’s on her way.
All we could do was sing and remember, all those Beatles songs, telling stories the Frank Sinatra concerts she went to, the movies and books we shared. That Jean Genet was hot, so was Moby Dick. We talk about Strawberry Fields, singing sharing with each other, glad to have met, shared a thanksgiving, a book group, a celebration together.
Reading new books, connecting with old paths and new.
And make my way up to North Brooklyn, into the night,
VROOOOOOM!
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The Brooklyn 500! At The Lot Radio …
Red lights and fog machines, techno and house thumping at this queer house party, with two floors, outdoor hanging out, people tripping, swaying, peaking, holding each other, dancing into the night, despite it all, still trying to connect. I made friends with this funny duo taking K. They offered me some. Nahhh I demure, the crowd was super cute, sweaty bodies together.
Always connect.
And so we do.
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