POST
MRR COLUMNS
Column 17
by
Mykel Board
"always
have the police on your side...one of the things you learn in the
mazes of life.” Louis-Ferdinand Céline
ARRRR-ARRRR-AH-AAAARRRR, screams “the
rooster” in my talking alarm clock. THE TIME IS TEN THIRTY. I slap
for the off button...WHACK... I miss it. ARRRR-ARRRR-AH-AAA, it
screams again... WHACK! Got it! Caught in mid-caw.
Body
point by body point... the muscle pains from yesterday's half-hour at
the gym return. Back, neck, calf, thigh... Rumble by rumble, the beer
from last night's Peculiar Pub adventure returns. Stomach to small
intestine to large intestine to colon... pushing against the
sphincter with a pain more intense than my need to sleep. Synapse by
synapse, I remember that it's Saturday... a day off... a day of
rest... and then...
Fuck!
The second Saturday in December. A day worse than Christmas... worse
than Independence Day... worse than any flag-waving, death-loving day
that passes for a holiday in the United States. Memorial Day,
Patriot's Day, Columbus Day, Lincoln's Birthday for God's sake... all
the horrible holidays pale in comparison to this second Saturday....
SANTACON.
In
2013 The Village Voice
writes,
“SantaCon was a day-long
spectacle of public inebriation somewhere between a low-rent Mardi
Gras and a drunken fraternity party.” That was an insult to Mardi
Gras. Wikipedia tells
me that SantaCon started as an art
project... and grew out of a Danish group that took toys from store
shelves and handed them to kids as Christmas gifts... leaving it up
to the store managers to pry the gifts from the crying kids' hands. A
nice metaphor for capitalism... and one worth imitating.
But
the American version, of course, lost its politics and became a
drunken frat party. The skimpy Santa dresses worn by big-boobed girl
Santas do not compensate for the trail of
macho-man-shouting-girl-piss-screaming-pukesters that make the
holiday unbearable... and they start at 10AM!! Santacon: a good
argument against gun control.
FLASH
TO FERGUSON MISSOURI: A grand jury refuses to indict a cop who shoots
an unarmed black guy. The victim raises his hands and says DON'T
SHOOT! After the shooting, ABC News pays the cop half a million
dollars for an exclusive (rehearsed with acting lessons, paid for by
the MO cops) interview about how he felt threatened by the unarmed
man and IT WAS HIM OR ME!
FLASH
TO NEW YORK CITY: A grand jury refuses to indict a cop who strangles
a guy for selling loose cigarettes on the street. This, the result of
Police Commissioner Bill Bratton's BROKEN WINDOW policy, where crimes
like simple drug use or graffiti are more important than murder or
the white collar theft of millions. The grand jury refuses to indict
the cop although the victim is videotaped hissing I CAN'T BREATHE
eleven times before he dies. The man who takes the video is himself
arrested by other cops. He is not killed... yet.
FLASH
TO CLEVELAND OHIO: A cop shoots a 12 year old brandishing a water
pistol. Jury indictment results unknown.
BACK
TO MY APARTMENT IN NEW YORK: My phone vibrates. It's an SMS from
Jody:
Mykel,
are you going to the march against police violence? It leaves after a
rally in Washington Square Park. Moves out at 2.
Shit!
I had planned NOT to go out today... I don't want to face those
Santas. But these murders are just too much. I gotta put up or shut
up... and I'm not one to shut up.
I
stumble into the bathroom... evacuate last night's Yuengling... brush
my teeth... put on my Russian navy coat and detective hat... walk
over to meet Jody and go to the park. It's packed.
And
what a mix! There's someone giving out leaflets from the
Revolutionary Something-or-Other Party... a bunch of white
college-agers with bad taste in headwear... colored young people...
colored old people... signs galore, most with #blacklivesmatter
someplace on them.
A
lot of the signs look professional. Corporate printing with boring
designs... mass produced:
STOP
POLICE BRUTALITY AND MURDER or LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL. Not very
exciting...
One
Middle Eastern-looking guy has a sign that's more a manifesto... it
takes me awhile to read it all:
Down
with the racist police who kill Blacks and Latinos in America And
down with Barack Obama Police Chief of the world who kills more
innocent people in the Middle East with his bombs and drone missiles
#Arabslivesmattertoo
I
wonder if everyone being systematically killed has his own hashtag. I
also wonder if, given the liberal/leftist tendency to attack each
other, there's going to be a fight... or several of them. Wait,
here's a guy in a yarmulke... holding up a sign... maybe something
suitably anti-Arab?
I'm
(pleasantly) surprised. His sign says I
CAN breathe, and when I do I smell racist injustice.
Oh
yeah.
The
best thing about this crowd is that THERE ARE NO SANTAS!!! Not one!
No red-pants fratboys, walking through the crowd with dripping cans
of Bud! Yowsah!
“Hey,”
I tell Jody, “the crowd is thinning.”
“Look!”
she says pointing to the arch. “They're leaving, walking up Fifth
Avenue. The march has begun.”
“Follow
me!” I yell, like Custer leading the charge against the Indians.
“Full speed ahead!”
We
shoulder our way through the mass of masses. Little kids in
strollers... black teens in hooded sweatshirts... a gray-haired man
walking arm-in-arm with his gray-haired wife... both serious and
organically thin.
STOP:
Before we go any further, I want to give you my take on all this
police stuff.
Imagine
you're on a grand jury. You're white... your friends are white... the
cops are white... which side are you on? Vote to indict a cop... and
your ass is an extremely well-mowed lawn. The DA, who needs the cops
for his job, is the guy “presenting the evidence against the
police.” I'd have voted the same as those grand juries. You can bet
your grassless ass I'm not going to indict a cop. I gotta live here!
The
problem is not this or that jury or this or that town-- or even this
or that cop... but the jury system itself. The system of PEERS... the
openness... the possibilities of revenge... retaliation. In New York,
the guy who videotapes a cop murdering a man for selling illegal
cigarettes... is arrested by other cops. Can you imagine what would
happen to someone who actually voted a cop guilty of murder? Who's
gonna trust the courts? The jury system? Not me. Make something up...
sneeze... anything.. I'll vote NOT GUILTY!
It's
illegal to advocate rioting or destruction, so I won't. If it WERE
legal, I might say DO IT! Right now, the police get away with murder.
The consequences are a few days in court, and then the life of Riley.
But, what would happen if every time a cop killed an unarmed black
guy, a bank got burned down? Or a different cop got shot? Murders by
cops would have consequences-- real consequences-- that might have
the deterrent effect the law is SUPPOSED to have. No grand juries on
this one. You shoot LeRoy and BLAM, good-bye Starsky and Hutch.
Of
course, I'm not saying people SHOULD do this. I'm just asking what
would happen IF.
Extra
Note: All cops are not murderers (though a code of silence®
makes all cops accomplices). There are cops who enter the force for
idealistic reasons... who really expect to help people... who have a
view that the world would be a more dangerous place without them.
During the World Trade Center aftermath, the compassion, spirit, and
volunteerism of all the police was a testament to their basic
decency. Cops are not good or bad. They're mixed-- like everyone
else. Sometimes one aspect wins, sometimes another. The focus
shouldn't be on these cops, but on a grand jury system that makes it
nearly impossible to bring ANY cops to trial. That's what's got to
change. In the meantime, all consequences for police actions now take
place OUTSIDE the realm of trials and grand juries. The consequences
are on the streets.
BACK
TO WASHINGTON SQUARE: Jody and I shoulder our way through the
crowd... past an NYPD ARE THE
BROKEN WINDOWS sign and another that says:
Number
of Americans killed by:
Isis
5
Ebola
2
Police
500
A
not-bad sign shows some understanding of how things are rigged to
prevent indictments: The system isn't
broken... it's working.
Not
a Santa in the crowd. And hey... look at that! Someone gets it right.
A woman with a hand-drawn sign: We
must change the law-- no grand jury.
Yeah!
Now all we need is a little humor and we've got it.
“Mykel,”
Jody tells me, “you can't expect humor. Those guys were murdered...
You can't laugh at that.”
“George
W killed a million people in Iraq,” I say. “And THAT'S funny... I
can laugh at anything!”
She
frowns.
By
now we're through the arch on to Fifth Avenue.
HANDS
UP! shouts a skinny white girl with a very semitic nose.
DON'T
SHOOT! answers the crowd.
HANDS
UP! she repeats.
DON'T
SHOOT! answers the crowd.
This
goes on for the next half a dozen blocks until someone I can't see
begins shouting.
I
CAN'T BREATHE, he says, sounding quite accustomed to chant leading.
ONE!
answers the crowd.
I
CAN'T BREATHE, comes the repeat.
TWO!
answers the crowd.
This
goes up to ELEVEN.
Then
there's an older black guy with a hint of gray-streaked beard. He's
holding a generic #blacklivesmatter sign. He shouts, NO JUSTICE
NO
PEACE, shouts back the crowd.
NO
JUSTICE, again.
NO
PEACE, again.
“I
don't get it,” I tell Jody. “This is a march up Sixth Avenue and
down Fifth Avenue. There's a permit. Nobody is breaking any windows.
Nobody is burning police cars. Nobody is even stepping out of the
parade route. Where is the NO part of NO PEACE? It looks pretty
peaceful to me.”
“It's
just a slogan, Mykel,” she answers.
A
groups starts chanting THE NYPD IS THE KKK!
A
few of the crowd pick it up. I look at the cops on the sides of the
march. They're NOT in riot gear. No horses. No hostility. A few black
cops... a few hispanics... a few women... a few black women. They're
chatting with each other, guns safely holstered. They don't even look
angry.
THE
NYPD IS THE KKK! shout a few more people.
Since
when did the KKK allow Negro and Hispanic members? The NYPD may be
Wall Street, but it's not the KKK.
Uh
oh, here it comes, a flash of red. My Santa-free Santacon is over....
at a protest march. This is just wrong!
Three
big guys in Santa suits-- one of 'em colored. They appear to be
sober. The colored guy moves to the front of the march... raises his
hands... DON'T SHOOT! he says.
Yes!
That's what I've been waiting for. A colored Santa.. hands raised
saying DON'T SHOOT.... THAT'S funny. The whole idea of cops shooting
Santa is funny. Cops shooting a colored Santa is funnier. SantaCon
has done good for once.
The
parade turns on thirty-second street, goes over to Fifth Avenue and
starts going downtown again.
“I
made my statement,” I tell Jody. “Now I need a beer.”
She
suggests Old Town Tavern near Union Square. We split from the Parade
at 20th Street... walk East and have a
couple of Edelstoffs.
We sit among the Santa-less tourists in the place. The two of us
share a burger and something else. Jody pays for it all. After beer
and lunch-- at least 45 minutes-- we go out again. The march is still
moving down the avenue.
We
join it again... for a few more blocks. The newspapers will say
25,000... seems to me it's a lot more. Near Union Square is a guy
dressed in an American Flag. He wears an American Flag kerchief
around his mouth and nose. The skin that shows above the kerchief is
light brown. His sign: USA Your racist
hypocritical judicial system must be changed.
Ah,
someone else who gets it... now if only he could just make it
funnier.
POSTSCRIPT:
Who wudda thunk
it? Four guys attack cops with a flying garbage can. There's a
manhunt. Somehow, when police kill unarmed black guys, that's not
indictable... but let a garbage can fly... hoooey!! I was just gonna
add that to this post when:
TWO
COPS ARE KILLED WHILE SITTING IN THEIR POLICE CAR. The alleged killer
allegedly killed himself in a nearby subway station... denying a
cycle of revenge that may start anyway. Nadav, a pal of mine who
works in the emergency room here in NYC, was assaulted by cops when
he tried to enter his workplace. It was the hospital where the
ambulance took the just-shot police. I guess they attacked
Nadav because he looks Middle Eastern. (He's Israeli.) But the cops must've been in a state of shock... where ANYBODY looks like the enemy.
The
police clearly are on an easy tripswitch... high alert... and I'm
having second thoughts. What if, instead of considering their
actions, the police just gone on even MORE of shooting spree? What if
revenge brings revenge... blacks and cops the 21st
century Hatfields and McCoys? I don't know.
On
the other hand, if someone were to always provide consequences for
police murdering unarmed people, it might make them think twice
before they do it. Riots and bank burnings may be less likely to
invite retaliation than cop shooting. Of course, I'm not advocating
any of this, I'm just considering the IFs.
ENDNOTES:
[You can contact me by email at god@mykelboard.com.
Through the post office: send those... er... private DVDs..or music
or zines... or anything else (legal only!) to: Mykel Board, POB 137,
New York, NY 10012-0003. If you like my writing, you can be notified
when anything new is available by subscribing to the MYKEL'S READERS
Yahoo group readmboard-subscribe@yahoogroups.com]
-->Give
it away dept: Ten different school districts in Texas have
received free... or low-cost... gifts from the Pentagon. Including 64
M16-rifles, 18 M14 rifles, 25 automatic pistols and fifteen surplus
military vehicles.
Ok,
just try to come in here and hurt OUR kids! I dare ya!
-->Mohammad
and the Mayflower dept: Justice Ray Moore of Alabama spoke at a
"Pastors for Life" Luncheon. "Buddha didn't create us.
Mohammed didn't create us, it was the God of the Holy Scriptures...
They didn't bring the Koran over on the pilgrim ship."
-->You
can see my... and Jody's photos of the march by clicking here.
->Keeping
the Pressure on Dept:
I want to thank reader George Metesky for suggesting a continuing
Bring Back Mykel
effort directed at Maximum
Rock'n'Roll for their
(firing me as a) contribution to the world of censorship. Send your
comments-- to mrr@maximumrocknroll.com
with the subject line: BRING BACK MYKEL! Let me know how they answer.
-end
