Coming Apart

Freddy Gray was 25 when he was critically injured due to rough transport by Baltimore police on April 12, 2015.  Gray was a victim of over-policing.  He was arrested for fleeing bicycle cops who thought he looked suspicious who found him to be in possession of what was subsequently determined to be a legal switchblade.  Witnesses described the police as "folding" Gray and pinning him with a knee by his neck in the act of detaining him.  Already injured, when he was placed in the police van, he was handcuffed but not secured to his seat against newly implemented police regulations.  The van was deliberately driven roughly causing multiple injuries to Gray as he was blindly thrown about the metal interior.  From Wikipedia:

In the following week, according to the Gray family attorney, Gray suffered from total cardiopulmonary arrest at least once but was resuscitated without ever regaining consciousness. He remained in a coma, and underwent extensive surgery in an effort to save his life. ... According to his family, he lapsed into a coma with three fractured vertebrae, injuries to his voice box, and his spine 80% severed at his neck. Police confirmed that the spinal injury led to Gray's death. ... Gray died on April 19, 2015, a week after his arrest.

On May 1, Prince released a video for a new song, Baltimore, composed of images of the protests that rocked the city for days as details spread of the part that Gray's deliberately negligent treatment by police played in his death.  

In the aftermath of the Baltimore protests, six officers were charged in Gray's death.  In separate trials, 2 were acquitted, a judge declared a mistrial in a third before dropping the charges, and charges were dropped for the remaining 3 before they were brought to trial.  All 6 officers sued the prosecutor who charged them for malicious prosecution, defamation and invasion of privacy.  The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the officers' suit to be dropped on the basis of prosecutorial immunity.  The City of Baltimore paid a $6.4 million settlement to the family of Freddy Gray.  Because Freddy Gray looked suspicious to a bunch of cops. 

Prince died suddenly, shockingly nearly a year to the day after Freddy Gray, on April 21, 2016 at Paisley Park in Chanhassen, greater Minneapolis, Minnesota. He was 57.  What would he have had to say about the murder of George Floyd last week in Minneapolis?

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Imagining the possibilities of a Sanders presidency throughout 2019 was like a months long dream for me that was rudely interrupted by 2020.  Seeing Donald Trump acquitted in the farce that was his impeachment trial, the way the dems circled the wagons around Joe Biden to keep Bernie Sanders from raising the last serious challenge to the status quo (squelching the last chance of a dying republic), the truly unprecedented way that COVID-19 changed everything overnight and the way it caused our elected representatives to scramble to serve their own kind while giving the finger to the rest of us, and not least, the very precedented murder of George Floyd before our eyes by the Minneapolis Police as a particularly vivid illustration of the violence and injustice and thuggery inherent in the system, it's difficult to sustain the charade that getting back to normal is what we want or need. The curtain has lifted, the chrome paint has flaked off the plastic at the core of the American "dream".  It's not worth the effort to try to sustain it.  I never wanted that dream anyway.  That corny unbidden dream was put in our head by hucksters.  They're very practiced at it and are paddling like crazy with their identical somber piano heart tugging tv spots to keep us thinking they've still got a handle on it, but I'm not so sure they're going to be quite as successful with everybody going forward.

The propaganda arm of the corporatocracy is pushing videos demonstrating the determination of our cities' elected officials to preserve order in these trying times.  It's made me think.  I don't think I've ever voted for anybody as a way a to keep the order.  Why is it always the first thing that any new mayor or local official tries to do?  I'm trying to upset the order when I vote.  This order has got to go, but it's finally dawning on me that voting has not traditionally been a very successful means of bringing it about. Maybe it's not the best way to go about it.  Make those votes count while we've got them, but let's get our masked heads together and figure out how to make the change that we truly seek this time.  Time to quit fooling around. Let's get busy.