The Smile of Hope
This is a picture of a little 13-year-old girl arrested during the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ protest on the Brooklyn Bridge.
The picture tells us something very important, with brutal clarity. When the police are out on the streets arresting 13-year-old kids for peacefully protesting political issues then we know beyond argument something is terminally rotten in America.
When Black woman cops are arresting little white girls and not obviously inflicting any physical harm upon them THAT is when we know “beyond argument something is terminally rotten in America.” Yup. “Brutal clarity” happens when a quirky little white girl smiles bravely at the camera. Not when shit like this happens to little Black girls. No, no.
It tells us that there is hope too, though. The spark of freedom that flickered in the middle-east during the Arab Spring is being re-ignited all over in America. People are waking up from the long, bad dream. They are seeing the lies and exploitation and hypocrisy all around them and saying ‘Enough’.
The battles to be fought are formidable, the forces ranged against us are frightening, but now at least we have hope that a better America, and a better world, is possible.
Ellie
Oh, yes. America is waking up now that shit is starting to hit the fan for white people. Nobody woke up when Aiyana Stanley Jones was murdered for a tv show. Nobody woke up when Detroit was suffering. White people came and cheered on the economic destruction. Still do. They have “urban decay” photoshoots where they take pics of the sad, tragic, yet “beautiful” crumbling buildings. Completely ignore the people who haven’t been able to find jobs or access a decent grocery store w/in city limits in fucking decades.
No, when a white-skinned girl in a goofy hat smiles at the camera while being arrested, THAT is when America wakes up. THAT is a sign of hope. Not the people who BEEN marching and protesting and boycotting. Nawl. This watery-eyed lil girl is our “hope.”
ugh.
When Occupy Bay Street launches in Toronto, I pray to fucking god people have been reading and listening and paying serious attention to these critiques of Occupy Wall Street. But let’s be honest: the odds are pretty damned high that the exact same white-centric structures are going to be replicated, and that the news coverage is going to be just as awful.
First published: the eastReprinted: the west
Comparative Lit and Film. I really enjoy Scott Bradfield, David Foster Wallace, and Kenneth Rexroth.
