Do the Wes!

Last week for all of ten minutes you could have thought Real Change was a cult. Almost all us "staff" showed up around the big table for the monthly staff meeting. We're collectively reading Class Matters, a book about class and class-activism by Betsy Leondar-Wright, and working through the discussion questions. That's like Number 5 amid the Top Ten Signs you are in a cult.

[Above: Typical Real Change staff meeting.]

We were pretty much in agreement about everything, talking about identity politics, when the illusion that we were a cult was shattered by an exchange that condenses to: "White People don't have a culture," "Nuh-uh. Do so," "Like what?" "Give me time, I'll think of some." I won't say who any of these people were, because it would only distract me from my goal, which is to (figuratively) dance around the question raised, gesticulate at it, and run away laughing insanely.

I wasn't going to do it, but then Saturday I saw the AP story about the 5 high school students in Galesburg, Illinois, who were denied keepsake diplomas at graduation because their friends and family cheered them too much. And I read that the 5 consisted of 4 Blacks and 1 Hispanic.

Now, there's no evidence that Galesburg is unusually racist. Within two years of being settled, the first Illinois anti-slavery society began there, and it became a stop on the underground railroad. Also, Carl Sandburg was born there, who never owned a slave, unlike George Washington, who had 364.

Still, it makes you pause. You've got a population that's roughly 84% White and yet it's 5 non-White students that get denied diplomas. The odds of that happening at random is around 1/100th of 1%. What up?

The first thing everybody did was ask themselves if the problem was that the White People of Galesburg weren't taking the cultures of Black People and Hispanics fully into account. Here's where I do my weird dance, where I fling my hips out, fly off the ground and land on my head (figuratively) and say, no, they aren't taking White People's culture fully into account. I say it's White People culture that says everybody should be quiet and respectful while the names of the graduates are read off.

Think about it. They say it's a matter of not being able to hear the names read out. But why should the ceremony be set up so you have to be able to hear? Why couldn't they have some clowns or mascots or whatever run around the stage holding up big cardboard signs letting people know who's who? Then they could play music through the whole thing, people could cheer and shout all they wanted and dance in their seats and in the aisles, and you'd have something to remember.

They can't do that because they're too White, that's why. So, yes, Virginia, wherever there are quiet boring ceremonies that drag on forever and put you to sleep, White People Culture lives, in our hearts, in our souls.

Now for the running away laughing insanely part. I can't resist pointing out that racism is a cultural artifact. So to the extent White People are overtly racist, that's culture. Conversely, take that overt racism away, as has genuinely happened in the 57 years of my lifetime, and you create a big void. So the fact that Whites are seen as cultureless can be a good thing.

Oppressed People's Cultures always seem richer. This is usually explained by saying that being oppressed makes your people more interesting somehow. So, Christians got interesting by being martyred. Blacks got made slaves, so now even I listen to Hip-Hop, it's so interesting.

I say, rubbish. The truth is, Christianity took hold because Rome had became mind-numbingly boring as soon as it was politically-incorrect to throw Christians to hungry lions.

If your culture is largely about social domination, then as that piece falls away, it leaves a vacuum. Anything looks better than a vacuum!

[Right: Me, looking better than a vacuum, a quarter-century ago.]

Meet the New Wes

Real Change is not a cult. New recruits are NOT brainwashed immediately, the same night they join, so that they become zombie clones of, say, me. Sometimes I think this is a pity, because zombie clones are fun to tease and make great playthings. Also, if everyone in the office were a zombie clone of me, I wouldn’t hear so many complaints about my garlic breath.

Still, though the office does NOT consist of zombie clones of me, or whoever, people who work here seem to be in remarkable agreement on one matter: if there is anybody at Real Change who could become the next internet equivalent of the chubby-lightsaber-wielding Star Wars Kid, it’s me. They all have faith in my potential to become famous for fifteen minutes by acting unbelievably weird in public. “You do it around here,” the reasoning begins. It continues with nitpicks about past behavior and my past choices of beverages.

For the record I have sworn off malt liquor entirely, and I don’t see why everyone has to keep bringing up the Bad Art Show post-party of 1997. I wasn’t the only one who said “I love you, Man, you’re aweshum” to the cat that night.

All this including the cat bring me to this point: I am currently engrossed in updating my “internet presence.” As a result I am totally distracted from most of the usual things I obsess about. I am not thinking about the war. I am not thinking about homelessness. I am not thinking about how to save the planet. I am thinking, how can I get the Real Change cat, Sidney Vicious, to do something adorable on video, so I can upload the result to one of my three new blogs, just so the billions of people in the world who will not look at any of my three blogs, ever, will have something to miss.

I just lied slightly. I AM thinking about homelessness a little. That’s because I’m trying to get stuff I’ve written in the past neatly loaded on one of these blog thingies, including an article I wrote in 1996 entitled, “So - You're About to Become Homeless.... or How to Hit the Street Feet-First Not Face-First.” This was the piece that tried to offer advice to people poised upon becoming homeless for the first time, while at the same time helping others understand how much of a pain homelessness is.

The trouble is, the article is totally out of date. For example, it turns out that the cutting edge homeless person no longer bothers with cheap voicemail, when he/she can score a cheap cell phone that has Internet browsing with email, music playback, a personal organizer, a camera, a camcorder, games, radio, and wakes up everybody in the shelter when it rings Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries at 3 AM.

The article mentions “Walkmen.” That’s Old Man Speak for “iPods and the like.” There’s a discussion of the relative merits of backpacks and shopping carts, but not one word about rolling suitcases!

The original article hinted that you could find storage spaces that weren’t actually intended for homeless peoples’ use. Those places still exist, but even to hint that anyone avail themselves of them would be inappropriate now. You can all forget about hiding bags in unconventional places, unless you like the little plastic handcuffs and answering loud angry questions for 17 hours.

The 1996 article makes me laugh when I read how it advises readers to look up crisis information on the internet. It says use a library computer to telnet to it. It’s like giving someone two sticks when they ask for a light. Ha! No, you don’t do that. Instead, you go to www2.ci.seattle.wa.us/crisisclinic/ in your “browser,” and then you “navigate” to the information you want.

And, if you want to miss seeing Sidney Cuteness Vicious, continue to NOT set your browser to the one of my new blogs that’s at www.wesrunoff.blogspot.com and find the February 8 entry.