I heard Robin Roberts interview George Floyd’s brother, Terrence, on GMA yesterday, along with Rev. Kevin McCall, the moral support of the Floyd family in this personal tragedy and national maelstrom. In the midst of all the rage, sadness and fear that the death of George Floyd has inspired among citizens of all races and creeds in this country, he spoke about the person who died, who George Floyd was and what he stood for. Kudos to these amazing men, Terrence Floyd and Kevin McCall, for their courage in asking us to recognize the values of the man who was murdered. George Floyd, we learn from his grieving brother, is about Peace. What would he want? What they all in the family want, a peaceful call for justice, for unity, for love and for change.
In that interview, I also heard George Floyd described as a motivator; a life-long friend says he was always there for him, to inspire him, to keep going. All the good people whose lives have been marred by police brutality deserve the justice this country is supposed to stand for! If the system fails one of us, it will eventually fail us all. It needs to be clearly illegal for anyone in domestic law enforcement to harass, harm or kill a civilian without checks and balances on such actions. The public is not the enemy. We are citizens, not consumers; we are people, and together we are the community that government and law enforcement serves because we elected them to serve us.
I want to emphasize, that the really bad people in the police departments of this country give the many, many good people who are cops a bad name and a hard time doing their true job. When my partner and I produced “We the Children” a documentary about violence in the lives of inner city children in 1994, we interviewed many Bridgeport police officers, including the chief at the time. They were brilliant champions of their community where many of them were born and raised. We have deep respect for police officers who understand their role as peace makers, as well as peace keepers. We worked with people at every spoke of the community wheel and always came away inspired by the caring and capable work being done in community for the sake of community.
The question is will the “system” continue to protect the guilty and guilt the innocent? At the moment, it look like things could change, especially if we each speak out as the Floyd family requests, powerfully, but with love in our hearts and seeking a creative, peaceful means to the justice we want to see in the end. Because, as they said, we’ve been down this road before, the road of violent rioting and hate, the road of destruction and war; it never helps.
Many of us, of all skin tones, are fed up with the irresponsible deployment of bullies into police work. Remember the Stanley Kubrick movie, Clockwork Orange? As much as I hated the film, it seemed prophetic at the time. Is the irony of the horrible murderous teenage protagonists in the end “reformed” into cops totally lost to our cultural psyche? We can’t allow cops to be bullies, they must be wise and discenrning public servants. More importantly, our presidents can’t be bullies, either. As I heard the Floyd family urge today on the news, please vote and get these bullies and misogynist racists fired from our public offices. The misogynist label is one I added; as Abigail Adams unsuccessfully urged her husband hundreds of years ago, let’s not forget the women. Elect people who really care about people and community, not the lying bags of shit waving bibles, guns and dicks and proclaiming themselves the real Americans.
I want to emphasize that all this tragedy is out of control patriarchy around the globe. We need to pull the plug on our habits of mind that put so much power into the hands of such evil men. The world is full of despicable male dictators wagging their inflated penis at each other and threatening us all with war, famine, assault and destruction. Not a cheery picture; but there is a cheery note to be struck; we are at a crossroads. What every single one of us chooses to do matters. We are creating the energy to either build a new dream for America, one that truly values both genders and all races equally, or return to the old, dead dream of the greedy rich, whose lust for money and power leaves no room in their hearts for love and compassion. America has had her share of tycoons and robber barons; they are often accorded more respect and given more power than is wise for the public good. We’re in one of those bad news moments now. What we can do about that is work to change it before it gets worse. I know it seems like it can't get much worse, but it can. Look around the globe, it can.
Jung said that the psyche, the soul of humanity, is the thread on which our survival as a species hangs. A universal by-product of the patriarchal paradigm is rage, especially among men, but it seems that anger is the go to emotion across the land, from mild annoyance to murderous rage. Our leaders stoke that emotion, along with fear, to play us the way they want, to divide us. Worse, there's an element of out of control rage and wild west gun lust on all sides of the racial divides. We live in an age where the wrong people, and they are all mostly males, rule the roost, whether in government, religion or the many underground cultures, like the vast criminal shadow empires patriarchy supports. In patriarchal think mode, violence is the go to solution to any problem. Those who adhere to that paradigm as a justification for their violent actions are patriarchal dicks. If majority rule is in the hands of patriarchal dicks, how do we, the peace loving people, like the grieving individuals in Floyd’s family, get the change we want? We want it now and we want it peacefully.
I’d love to see real change. We can’t get rid of patriarchal violent, hating mentalities in leadership if we don’t start at the top and get rid of patriarchal religion. The majority of people around the world believe in One All Powerful, All Demanding, All Male God. They gladly go to war and sacrifice whatever to their tyrannical god, and the stronger their allegiance to Him, the worse the lot of women under their rule. As Christians, we’re encouraged to believe in a Father/Son/Holy Ghost, a Divinity Trinity, an all Male and One Bird power triumvirate. However, before this sorry ass patriarchal mucho macho order became the pattern of society, all peoples revered Goddesses and our Earth was the focus of our spirituality. All life is sacred not in the way male governments claim, in order to have legal control of women’s wombs, but all life is sacred because that's how the sacred expresses itself, from the smallest insect to the largest star. I’d like to see us topple the mind forged manacles we call religion and live a spirituality based on love, respect and mutual acceptance. I’d like to see our governments fully diversified in race and gender and our priorities focused on compassionate rehabilitation of faulty systems.
What is peaceful justice? For me it’s writing what I think and sharing it. For me it’s also daring to dream, along with the Floyd family, that if everyone leans in on this one, and in the name of all black lives so unjustly marred by racial hatred, we all, in our own way, our own space, work to build a bond of peace that speaks truth to power. So far, we do have the right to organize and the right to vote; there’s a big election coming up where we can shake the governmental pyramid and prove that our democracy can work peacefully.
I dare to dream that we can get these dry hearted old men out of office. When I hear the president of this land champion violence like he’s at a WWE match, it makes me angry and sad. Can we unseat this man from his throne? I don’t know; how did he get in there in the first place? Can we please elect wise leaders and also, can we please do the best each of us can to eradicate hate, accept our mutual humanity and act human to each other? Can we let our hearts be schooled in community sharing and caring?
Who do I want to lead us? Who has a right to set the tone for this confrontation with institutionalized racial injustice? Not the mucho macho set of any color. How does tearing down your neighborhood help anybody? It lets off steam and gets you free stuff, but are you caring about George Floyd? I don’t know what each person should do with their anger; but I’m tired of spiritless men going in with guns blazing, blighting innocent lives in the name of justice.
I want people like those who think as George Floyd thought to lead our culture. Let’s motivate each other to be way better human beings, to give a fuck about each other based on our common humanity, not our color or our sex. To ask ourselves how skin color or genitals can possibly determine anything important? To ask ourselves how a supreme being who created us in sexual compliments be really only one of those sexes? Doesn’t that hint of some heavy duty tamporing with the facts of life? Spiritual laws are written in our DNA not in patriarchal propaganda tomes written and decimated by violent woman hating conquerors thousands of years ago.
So, when I think of divinity, I think of the unquestionably powerful energy of Love. In Love as compassion and in any true manifestation of that Energy, there is God/Goddess. Patriarchy loves to portray that Love is weak, just like they portray that Woman is weak and definitely not God, but there’s hope, Jesus was a feminist. He was also a rebel; definitely not a patriarch. I wouldn’t call Jesus god, but I’ve always thought he was a stellar example of manhood and humanity.
For a divine example of femalehood, I had to peek behind Mother Mary’s skirts to find the true ancient Mother, in all her fecund sexuality. Religion is guilt with different holidays; spirituality is organic to us and most easily connected to through our dreaming. Of course God is Mother Energy as well as Father Energy, but isn’t it much easier to skip the complexities of other dimensional understanding and just say God is always Love; if it’s not Love, it’s not God.
Let’s dream big. Let’s dream about being a people in America who know ourselves to be a patchwork of everything and who benefit equally by our differences and our commitment to fixing things together. Our country has a golden opportunity to be a community of diversity united by the universal Law of Love, as un-patriarchal as you can get.
And please, let’s keep this one date with destiny this Fall and get the fascist, racist, misogynist leaders that have infested public office like unfettered cockroaches out and replace them with kind-hearted and wise leaders. Don’t underestimate the damage these hypocrites holding up bibles and praising the Lord they don’t really worship, since their god is Money, can do to our spiritual psyches. How can any real follower of Jesus, which is the whole point of Christianity, support these hateful clowns? Let’s dream of a voting public who watches and sees what is done, not what is said, and who will get our country back on the Peace train and out from the clutches of so many patriarchal dicks,
