Self-Organizing Man

Christianity meets Whiteness. Or, Christianity Meets Transsexuality. Or, Christianity Meets White Transsexuality.

You decide.

What I know is this: At Mrs. Rosa Parks funeral yesterday, Rev. Al Sharpton mentioned the countless numbers of black folks who sacrificed themselves in the fifties and sixties to make a better life for us today.

People like: Medger Evers, shot to death in the driveway of his home for attempting to organize black folks.

The four black girls who died in a church bombing (which prompted Martin Luther King Jr.’s statement, “all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.”)

Still, black folks, and some white folks (many of them Jewish) forged onward and continued to love and fight for themselves and their children, born and unborn.

So when certain white people, like sex columnist Dan Savage, tell me that it is, oh so tough right now during George Shrub, Jr.’s presidency, I think, how convenient. How easy for middle-class white folks like Dan to pick up and leave when things don’t seem to go their way for awhile.

How easy for evil to triumph.

I wonder how different our world would be if Myrlie Evers Williams and Coretta Scott King and Julian Bond and Charlene Teeters and Cesar Chavez and Rosa Parks and Ed Roberts (the father of the disability rights movement) had said, “fuck it! We’re moving to Paris.”

So lets all move to Paris, then. And let the James Crow, Jr, Esq. (the son of Jim Crow - hat tip to Rev. Sharpton again) grind up our poor queer kids and poor old folks and the all the permanently disabled coming back from Iraq who are white and black and brown and red and yellow.

Let us let evil triumph.

Yeah, fuck it! Let’s leave ’cause we never really cared about these folks anyway. That’s why we loved Bill Clinton so much. He made us feel comfortable in our numbness and disorientation.

Me. Me. Me. Me…..and evil triumphs, again.

So I take my cue from Henry Rollins, who, unlike Dan Savage, never once during his live show, spoke of leaving the U.S. Instead, he spoke about his belief in the American people and his love of all the great many things our country has produced like the Ramones, and Louis Armstrong. He shared about his numerous U.S.O. visits, including two to Walter Reed Hospital.

With every fiber in his body he spoke of the power of staying and fighting and loving and laughing.

It is also no surprise to me that he, among many things, really gets white privilege. He understands that he is part of a larger community. A community of people who have stayed on and fought for more goodness in the world long after it is fashionable, who aren’t whiners, or worriers or do-gooders.

Thank the goddess they have stayed. If we had left the civil rights movement up to folks like Dan Savage, we’d all be fucked.

And since I’m not willing to let evil triumph, I’m staying put. Right here. Right now.