The Raised Fist . . .

George Floyd.

I live in a country where citizens are murdered by those meant to protect us.


Attention shifts from random virus impacts to willed execution and protests.  Major cities in turmoil and our President takes to his bunker in the White House last night. Some people have bunkers.  How about that?  And some people don’t and protest . . . fists in the air signifying resistance, the assertion of presence, the refusal to take abuse:

There is that kind of fist in the air.  Then there is another kind, the kind I saw yesterday driving along 30A in Seagrove Beach.  In front of the huge “sleeps 50” rental atrocity decorated with a three-story Trump banner and balcony flags (“Trump 2020”), the traffic stopped for pedestrians crossing to the beach. On the south side of the crossing, a monster truck had stopped.  The driver side window was down, and an arm emerged, fist in the air.  This was accompanied by a cheer for Donald, no doubt prompted by the banner.  His fist signified something too, anger, displacement, fear, or perhaps just tribal support.  Nevertheless, the action looked and sounded both fearful and aggressive.  Fine.  His right.  However, his fist in the air was clearly in stark contrast to the ones seen in the photo above. 


The either-or choice is a fallacy.  It is not a matter of choosing which of these two signifiers we agree with.  There are shades of gray and subtlety.  However, my instinctual response to the fists in the photo was appreciation.  My instinctual response to the other from monster truck man was scorn; I laughed and blew him a kiss.  (He may have missed the sarcasm intended and took me for a “Women for Trump” chick.)


 In either case, the gesture reminds me of something Yeats wrote about a terrible beauty being born.  Turmoil and disruption, now, are necessary . . . because:


(The last stanzas from Langston Hughes’ “Let America Be America Again”)

O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine—the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!

                                                                                                *******

Love,

Joyce