Gar McVey-Russell's Blog

Once upon a time, I had plane tickets and lodging reservations for New Orleans to attend the 2020 Saints & Sinners LGBTQ Literary Festival. It was scheduled for March 27 – 29, ending on my birthday. And then, well, we all know what happened next.

SAS has held virtual events in light of the pandemic. But this year, the venerable queer lit fest met in person in New Orleans–and you better believe I attended.

We all needed it, the hugs (or fist bumps), laughs, music, food, and of course the words. Our words. Our stories. Saints & Sinners remains an energizing event, full of love and spirit, plus the intoxicating aura of the French Quarter. It was also neat to meet folks I’ve known online for years, but have never met in person, like Hans M. Hirschi, who flew in from Sweden, David Pratt, Jerry L. Wheeler, Sukie de la Croix, Ian Henzel, Robert Fieseler, and many more (please forgive any unintentional omissions).

I had the privilege of participating on two panels, one on short story writing and one on writing during plague times (AIDS, Covid, and illness as metaphor). On the short story panel, I shared the stage with writers Vincent Traughber Meis (East Bay Represent!), Eric Peterson, and moderator William Christy Smith (Genevieve Rheams, originally scheduled, sadly could not participate). We had a lively discussion.

Writer David Pratt led the discussion for the Plague Years panel, featuring writers Ken Harvey, Hans M. Hirschi, poet Daniel W.K. Lee, and yours truly. I loved how we met beforehand for a lovely, mellow breakfast to plot out the discussion. I thoroughly enjoyed our event, particularly how we engaged with our receptive audience.

I also had the honor of having a short story appear in this year’s festival anthology. I also appeared in the 2020 edition with the short story “Tom of Boalt Hall.” But this time I had the chance to participate in a live reading during Saturday evening’s celebration of the fiction and poetry anthologies. It was a wonderful evening.

With thanks to friend Robert Green, here is a video of my reading. You can purchase the fiction and poetry anthologies from publisher Rebel Satori Press. Hope you enjoy the video. I can’t wait until the next Saints & Sinners!

(Having embedding issues. You can find the video here.)

© 2022, gar. All rights reserved.

The post Saints & Sinners 2022 appeared first on the gar spot.

The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power is a diverse, non-partisan group of individuals, united in anger and committed to direct action to end the AIDS crisis.

–ACT UP New York’s motto, recited at the start of each meeting.

Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993 is a must-read book. Sarah Schulman—accomplished and prolific writer, playwright, and longtime activist—has written and meticulously pieced together a vital collection of stories, recollections, and remembrances about a turbulent and violent period of recent history, the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 90s. For those like myself—a Black gay man who came out during the age of AIDS—it is a reminder of what the community lived through. For others, it is a needed history lesson about a time when the US government allowed hundreds of thousands of people to get sick and die, and how that harsh reality led some to radical activism.

Sarah was active in ACT UP New York from 1987 to 1992. During that time, she participated “in countless actions, including Seize Control of the FDA (Food and Drug Administration), Stop the Church, and Storm the NIH (National Institutes of Health),” three of ACT UP New York’s best known actions. So some of the recollections in the book come from her own participation in the group’s work as a rank-and-file member who regularly attended the famous Monday night meetings. However, the backbone of the book comes from excerpts of long-form interviews of surviving ACT UP New York members.

In 2001, Sarah cofounded the ACT UP Oral History Project with Jim Hubbard to document and create an archival record of ACT UP’s history. By that time, the actions had largely faded away; the first “cocktails” of protease inhibitors had turned AIDS into a chronic disease and the immediacy that drove ACT UP, all of the ACT UP chapters nationally and internationally, had diminished. (NB: AIDS is still a crisis, still a killer, and still in need of a cure.)

Additionally, many who participated in ACT UP had moved on, or, as Sarah put it, “were licking their wounds and trying to rebuild their lives.” (Sarah herself would go on to cofound The Lesbian Avengers, another direction action group.) Because ACT UP rarely received comprehensive coverage in the media, the group needed a proper archival record of its activities. Otherwise, its true history would die along with its participants. Thus, Sarah and Jim conducted over 180 interviews between 2001 and 2018. Not all of the interviews are in the book, nor are each presented in their entirety. You can find the interviews, transcripts and video, on the Project’s website. The recordings are also available at the New York and San Francisco Public Libraries and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

By relying heavily on the interviews, Sarah brings together a highly diverse group of voices to tell the history of ACT UP. In my opinion, this is the book’s greatest strength. A truly diverse group of people formed ACT UP New York—women, African-Americans, Afro-Caribbeans, Latinx, Asian-Pacific Islanders, trans folks. White gay men certainly contributed to the group, but they were by no means the only voices. Importantly, diverse voices had diverse priorities, leading to a variety of actions. Including these voices helps to form a complete picture of the myriad of activities ACT UP carried out during the six years covered by the book.

For example, we learn that ACT UP New York had a campaign to find housing for HIV-positive Haitian refugees, a brave group of individuals who fled a dangerous and repressive regime in search of healthcare only to end up in detention at Guantánamo. Proof that its infamy predates the early 2000s by some decades.

ACT UP New York also created a needle exchange, setting an example that others would follow nationwide. Indeed, ACT UP East Bay, which started in my Oakland apartment in 1989, established a needle exchange in Berkeley (NEED, the Needle Exchange Emergency Distribution). It was fascinating to read how New York established theirs, since I participated in NEED’s creation over 30 years ago.

A section I found most informative, and infuriating, details the campaign to change the definition of AIDS to cover women. Without recognition of actually having AIDS, women lacked access to benefits and experimental drug trials. The Center for Disease Control defined AIDS by symptoms and ailments. Kaposi sarcoma, which led to purple skin lesions, was an early killer for many men who had HIV. Women, Sarah writes, did not often have this disease, but would often suffer from uncontrollable yeast infections or severe pelvic inflammatory disease. The CDC did not include these conditions in their definition of AIDS.

The campaign, ACT UP New York’s longest, lasted for four years. The opposition they encountered, both from the government and within ACT UP, was huge. It’s an outrageous example of how the medical establishment has continued to place women’s healthcare issues on the back-burner (if they’re on the stovetop at all). 

The campaign’s slogan was “Women don’t get AIDS, we just die from it.” Significantly, while Sarah and Jim interviewed scores of HIV-positive men for the ACT UP Oral History Project, they did not get to interview any HIV-positive women. “By 2001, almost every HIV-positive woman in ACT UP New York, except one confirmed survivor, had died. And that woman did not want to be interviewed because her children’s spouses did not know that she was HIV-positive. She has since died.”

Sarah does not arrange this massive work in chronological order, stating that such an approach would be impossible and inaccurate. It is instead organized “by cohered themes and tropes.” This allows for better storytelling, and since the work relies heavily on oral histories, this is quite appropriate. Repetition of facts occurs naturally by this method, but that allows the reader to see a story from different angles.

Lots of names appear throughout the book, enough to make Dostoevsky blush. That’s OK. To tell ACT UP’s history properly, you need recognize the many who participated. It was a complex organization filled with people who otherwise would have had little or nothing to do with each other. But the sense of urgency created by all the illness and death that overtook their lives brought them together and motivated them to take actions that made significant progress in the fight against AIDS. Many lives have been positively affected by the work of ACT UP.

The book contains humor and hints at what a pick-up scene ACT UP New York meetings could be. But it also includes death, lots and lots and lots of death. One cannot understand ACT UP or the crisis that created it without confronting the fact that a lot of people died while campaigning to bring an end to the AIDS crisis. For that reason, the book weighs heavy, not just from its heft but also its content.

I had to pause many times while reading it, sometimes for a few days. Large books can sometimes intimidate me, but that wasn’t it. I recalled my own list of names and faces from ACT UPs on the West Coast: Connie Norman, Rick Turner, Steven Corbin, Mark Kostopoulos, Earl Baldock, John Iversen, other names I sadly cannot remember now, though I can still see their faces. They came to me while reading stories in the book. I paused and remembered them, their smiles and laughs, their fierceness and fighting spirits, the campaigns we did together—at County-USC Hospital in Los Angeles, at Highland Hospital in Oakland, in the streets of San Francisco.

We fought AIDS because it was killing us and society at large didn’t care. They didn’t care because they thought lesbians and gay men, people of color, trans people, and people who used IV drugs didn’t matter. They preferred our silence. As ACT UP taught us, Silence = Death.

Sarah Schulman’s book is an important triumph. She tells our story as only one of us could tell it. And her work counters the silence of a history ignored and therefore continues the fight of ACT UP to end the AIDS crisis.

© 2021, gar. All rights reserved.

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Within an hour of polls closing, news outlets called the California Gubernatorial Recall Election for Governor Gavin Newsom. We won’t know final results for a while, but the No vote ran away with it. As of this writing, the California Secretary of State’s office is reporting 64% No and 36% Yes. Therefore, it is fair to call the Recall Election a big, fat nothing burger.

Funny thing about nothing burgers. They often cost a lot more than a genuine, substantive burger. And good burgers aren’t cheap. Eater ran an article 6 years ago showing the average price of burgers in cities across the country. New York came in highest at $9.52. Los Angeles was close behind at $9.44. San Francisco will set you back $9.24. Prices have only gone up since then. Today, for example, Barney’s basic burger is $11.95.

Now, I’m a vegetarian and I like a good veggie burger. They aren’t cheap either. Vegan outlet Malibu’s Burgers prices range from $13 for the Plain Kayne to $17.50 for the Ghostown Burger.

But what about the price of our recall election nothing burger? How much for that?

Dr. Shirley Weber, California Secretary of State, estimates that the recall election could end up costing the state $300 million.

Let’s say that again: Three Hundred Million Dollars. And, she says, it could end up costing more than that. That’s a whole lot for nothing.

Going into the recall election, media folks and pollsters engaged in a lot of hang-wringing. Folks are upset. They don’t like the COVID mandates. They have to put a piece of cloth over their faces (to curb the spread of a deadly virus). The effrontery!

Even days before election day, Former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger insisted that this recall election looked a lot like 2003’s, which saw the ousting of then-Governor Gray Davis and Mr. Schwarzenegger’s win. People were angry then and are angry now, Gov. Schwarzenegger said.

I quite disagree, and the election results bear this out. Gray Davis lost his job because he failed to effectively manage the artificially-induced energy crisis, when Enron had the whole state over a barrel. Gavin Newsom, however, has overall managed the COVID crisis efficiently. Gov. Newsom made mistakes–substantive ones, like reopening too soon last year, not silly ones like the dinner at The French Laundry. But overall, he did good.

The other difference between 2003 and now: today’s Republican Party is fucking nuts.

Say what you will about “voter anger,” this recall challenge clearly came from the right. And the Republican Party supported it. But only about 24% of registered voters in California are Republicans. To overcome that, as many have noted, the recall campaign needed convince registered Democrats and independents to kick Mr. Newsom out. The best way to do that would have been to bolster a candidate that would appeal to Democrats and independents.

Only a centrist like Arnold Schwarzenegger would have a chance of doing that. But today’s Republican Party would never support such a candidate. And while the California Republican Party declined to support any one candidate to replace Gov. Newsom, the one who came out ahead was Larry Elder, a Trump-clone. Trump lost California by about 30 points in both 2016 and 2020. And so far, the recall has failed by about 28 points.

Mr. Elder clearly came out on top, holding around 47% of the vote among the replacement candidates. But since the recall lost overwhelmingly, he has a long way to go to convince folks to vote for him, should he decide to run again next year in our proper gubernatorial election. (Which seems likely.)

All of this is to say that the recall election was a complete and utter waste of money. An obscenely expensive nothing burger. With the economy still recovering from the deadly COVID pandemic, the state could have put $300 million to far better use than on a quixotic recall election, just one year before Gov. Newsom faces reelection anyway. An old-school, fiscally conservative Republican would never have countenanced such an expenditure.

But then again, today’s Republican Party, a very dangerous type of nothing burger, has a different set of values. And using California’s flawed, and perhaps unconstitutional, recall election system to try and win an election fits their crazy agenda.

© 2021, gar. All rights reserved.

The post The $300 Million Nothing Burger appeared first on the gar spot.

My agent got me a gig on a public service announcement about Juneteenth, a 30-second ad to recognize and celebrate the new national holiday. Who’s doing it, the government? I asked. After a pause, he answered Step Right Up, Inc., real quick, like at 80 MPH. When he talked fast, that meant he wanted to hurry up and get off the phone with me, which meant he didn’t want me asking too many questions. So, of course, I persisted.

You mean the parent company of BargainsGalore.com?

Yeah, yeah, he said. So I was like, why would SRU wanna do a spot about Juneteenth?

Look, I don’t know. Why would I know? It’s a gig, alright?

Without seeing him, I knew he was hella puffing on a cigar, which he claimed to have given up years ago.

Alright, I said, so what’s the part? He said I would play some character called BL, that it was crucial to the ad.

This could lead to all sort of possibilities, my friend. Don’t let this one pass you by. It’s a good one.

Oh, how many times had I heard that one.

So I went, an 8 am call, regular make up and hair, no wardrobe. Just wear your regular street clothes, they told me. They’d augment if necessary. So I wore my Vans, blue jeans, a grey T and my navy blue hoodie, cause it was slightly chilly for the time of year.

Not too many Black folks on set, as in just two, myself and the make-up artist, a sister named Davissa. She primped me up and I pumped her up for more info.

Only just added to the crew last night, she said, so she couldn’t tell me anything about BL and what I was supposed to do.

Didn’t they send you the script?

No.

Oh, she said, dabbing my face with her brush.

The initial email telling me what to wear, etc., said that the script would follow later. It didn’t. I asked her what she thought about the Juneteenth holiday. She gave me the eye, that look that Black folks made when they had a mouthful to say, but couldn’t because mixed company. Maybe we could catch up for coffee later, I thought, wishing to hear her thoughts on it.

As I walked out of make up, a white woman with frizzy red hair and dark rim glasses, clutching an iPad, rushed towards me.

You an extra or the BL? 

Uh, I’m here to play BL.

Oh, OK, good. Come on.

We dashed like running a marathon, me trying not to trip over any of the cables strewn around, she mad typing on her tablet.

 And you’re wearing a hoodie, she commented, still typing. Perfect. Come on.

Uh, excuse me, when do I get to see the script?

Didn’t you get the email?

No.

Well, we sent it yesterday.

I had wondered. Scripts arriving at midnight the night before a shoot was not an uncommon thing, especially for little gigs like this. Knowing this, I had my iPhone set to ping loudly for incoming emails. Of course all I got were ads, mostly from BargainsGalore.com. Once you buy something from them, they’ll send you 87 emails about all the other versions of the thing you bought. Like I needed 87 other brands of razors or underwear or whatever. But no script. As we dash across the set, I checked my spam folder, but still didn’t see an email from them. I told this to Dashing Red, who gave me an annoyed glance. She kept pounding on her tablet.

Wait here.

I took a seat next to one of the lights, started to look around. I began to wonder if I was on the wrong set. I saw wheeled stages for a kitchen full of the latest in home appliances. Another for a pimped out bathroom. Another for a backyard, with a hot tub, barbecue pit, and lounge chairs. Another for with a bedroom set. It just went on and on and on. 

A tall, bald-headed white dude pushed between me and the light, stepping on my foot. Before I could call him out, he started barking orders in a megaphone.

Right! Let’s do a dry run before the BL gets here, alright? 

A bell rang. It got real quiet.

ACTION!

A heavy bass backbeat started playing: Boom-Boom-BOOM! Boom-Boom-BOOM!

Then the sets started whirling around like amusement park rides. Each one took a turn in front of the spot light.

JUNETEENTH SALE!

JUNETEENTH SALE!

JUNETEENTH SALE!

DON’T MISS IT!

Appliance techs skated around on roller blades, up to the kitchen to connect a dishwasher. A gleeful housewife stood nearby, beaming.

Then the bedroom set came around. Installers entered doing somersaults. A mattress came down from out of nowhere. They reached up and guided it onto the bed, a beaming husband and wife looking joyfully at their new playpen. 

Then the dining room set came around. Acrobats started whirling in the air, flipping from trapeze to trapeze, catching each other. Cannons went off. Then this chandelier floated down, another happy het couple grinning from ear to ear over their latest purchase.

JUNETEENTH SALE! (Bargains Galore!)

JUNETEENTH SALE! (Look what’s in store!)

JUNETEENTH SALE! (The freedom to buy!)

DON’T MISS IT! (My oh my!)

My eyes popped and my mouth gaped as I stared at the biggest BargainGalore.com ad ever, even by their own gaudy standards. This outdid their last four Super Bowl ads.

What the hell does any of this have to do with Juneteenth? 

Everything froze. All eyes looked at me. I thought I had said that to myself, but I guess I said it aloud. Well, maybe a bit loud. OK, I was screaming at the top of my goddamn lungs. 

The Director yelled take five and walked over to me.

Who the hell are you?

I’m here to play BL?

Oh, you’re the BL? Ah, good, you’re wearing a hoodie. But that isn’t the line. Did they change the script?

Before I could tell him I didn’t have a copy of the script, he started yelling for someone to get him the latest version. My phone pinged. An email. The script. I guess somebody forgot to send it last night. Maybe Frizzy Redhead. I opened it and sure enough, my opening line was “What’s all this about?”

And I read more. 

“Juneteenth isn’t about new kitchen appliances or mattress sales. It is a celebration of freedom. When Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, African-Americans across the country rose up in celebration. They could remove their shackles and begin to enjoy the freedoms that this great country offered. The right to buy land. The right to own a business, or take a job of their choosing, not one imposed upon them. It may have taken two years for the message to reach everyone, communication being what it was before cellphones [SMILE], but when they got word, [RAISE VOICE DRAMATICALLY] they began holding jubilees all over this great nation of ours, with lots of good food, singing, and dancing. And when they did, they were the first generation of African-Americans to shout those sacred words: [HOLD HAND UP LIKE MLK] ‘Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty! We’re free at last!’”

“And that’s what Juneteenth is about” was my last line.

BL. The BL. At last I figured it out. I was the Black Linus, the one who came out to explain the “true meaning” of the holiday, like on “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” I was to feature in its sequel, “A Black Linus Juneteenth.”

As I stood there frozen, unable to move or think or anything, the director walked over to me. He said that my alteration fit, so it was a keeper. Then he turned around and spoke through his megaphone.

FORGET THE PINK PAGES, EVERYONE! WE GOT THIS. GET READY TO DO IT FOR REAL.

You ready? he asked me.

What should I tell him? That no, that wasn’t how it worked. That folks didn’t start holding cook-outs, eating watermelon and fried chicken. That folks in the 19th century found out the result of presidential elections fast enough, even without cellphones, and that slaveowners in Texas deliberately withheld the news of emancipation. That Reconstruction failed because the racists made sure it would fail, and then they donned white hoods and started hanging Black folks left right and center. That Black folks didn’t get 40 acres and a mule, but sharecropping and Jim Crow. That Woodrow Wilson set back the Black middle-class in DC by purging every Black person who worked in government, no matter how menial the job. That white folks in Tulsa destroyed Black Wall Street as a lesson to what happens to uppity Negroes. That white America wanted no part of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. until he was dead, buried, and gone, and then they could make him what they wanted, a tamed lion that performed tricks when needed. Do I tell him any of this shit?

You ready? he repeated.

Without thinking, I pulled the hood of my hoodie over my head. Is this how Black Linus does it, with a hoodie instead of a blanket, when he wants to hide from the world? 

© 2021, gar. All rights reserved.

The post Juneteenth™️ appeared first on the gar spot.

Photo taken by the author at the Oakland Marina, March 10, 2020.

The last sunset before the world changed saw me at the Oakland Marina, hanging out, waiting for the start of a show at Yoshi’s. Such gorgeous colors filled the sky, reflected off the still water. A gift or a warning? Did I know then what this sunset would portend? Did any of us?

I had a ticket to see Mary Lou’s Apartment at Yoshi’s. Bought it months earlier. So looked forward to it. The group is named for the famous salons jazz legend Mary Lou Williams hosted in her Harlem apartment in the 1940s. Jazz giants visited: Tadd Dameron, Hank Jones, Jack Teagarden, Dizzy Gillespie, so many others. They all hung out at Mary Lou’s, woodshedding, trading ideas, playing cards, drinking, smoking, living. Mary Lou was den mother to the next generation of jazz musicians, feeding, nurturing, caring, teaching. An all women jazz ensemble, Mary Lou’s Apartment is the rightful heir to a great legacy: Mary Lou Williams, Melba Liston, The International Sweethearts of Rhythm. And wow! Can they swing. Their music brings life.

It became one of their last live gigs for the year. They didn’t know. None of us did. We heard reports of the spreading novel coronavirus, COVID-19. Wash your hands. Use hand sanitizers. Avoid touching door knobs and elevator buttons. At work, I had grown adept at pushing elevator buttons with my knee, turning door handles with my elbow. I already had a habit of washing my hands regularly, thoroughly, to ward off catching colds. A ready-made life skill about to receive the ultimate test.

Meetings at worked moved into large rooms, to afford us distance from one another. No hand shakes. Sanitizing wipe containers on the desks. Zoom options appeared for those who wanted to stay in their offices. And then, the following Monday, March 16, the order came. Stay home. After the order dropped, I sat at my desk, shuddered. What does it all mean? Just last week, I heard Mary Lou’s Apartment in a crowded Yoshi’s. I walked along the estuary at the Oakland Marina, saw the red and pink sunset, the still waters reflecting all.

Life shutdown, then began to fade away, by the tens, then hundreds, then thousands. 527,000+ gone now in the US, over 2 million worldwide, all of them alive and going about their lives the day I took the photo of the sunset. The day I saw Mary Lou’s Apartment perform at Yoshi’s.

A year later, we try to put life back together again. Vaccines. Curbing the spread. Reopening. Renewal. Bring the bands back to the bandstand, where they belong. Bring life back to our lives. I can’t wait to see them again, to see all the musicians I love doing their thing. Bringing life through music.

In the meanwhile, wear your mask. Wash your hands. Keep your distance. Get vaccinated when you can. Watch the sunsets to remember why we’re doing this, why it matters. Remember those who didn’t make it. For them, we must keep on living.

© 2021, gar. All rights reserved.

The post The Last Sunset appeared first on the gar spot.

I’m very excited to moderate Black Literature, Black Lives as part of Noe Valley’s Word Week 2021 on Wednesday, March 10 at 7pm (PST).

Black writers have explored the many shades of Black lives for centuries, reflecting and reporting the hopes and challenges of the community. This panel will present readings by three contemporary voices in Black literature: bestselling nonfiction author Julie Lythcott-Haims (How to Raise an Adult, Real American); poet Dr. Ayodele Nzinga (The Horse Eaters, Sorrowland Oracle); and novelist Maurice Ruffin, who’s debut work We Cast a Shadow is a New York Times Editors’ Choice. I will moderate a discussion with these power writers after the readings.

Please join us!

This event will be broadcast via Zoom on Wednesday, March 10 from 7pm to 8:30pm (PST). Get the Zoom link by RSVPing on our Facebook event page or by emailing wordweeknoevalley@gmail.com. In response, you will receive the Zoom information. Audience size for this event is limited to 100 people.

Please also support the sponsoring bookstore for Word Week, Folio Books, in Noe Valley, San Francisco. You can purchase books by all the authors at this event from them.

Hope you can join us!

© 2021, gar. All rights reserved.

The post Black Literature, Black Lives at Word Week appeared first on the gar spot.

A doorway away from chaos.

White privilege committed a putsch at the US Capitol on Wednesday, January 6, 2021. Backed into a corner, fearful its unquestioned authority faced total erosion by the reality of a multicultural world, white privilege took their grievances to the home of American democracy itself, with the goal of destroying it. Based on footage of what actually went down inside the halls of the Capitol, the country was a doorway away from mobs attacking the Members of Congress. A doorway away from utter chaos.

White privilege panicked upon the election of Barack Obama in 2008. Those threatened by a Black president disparaged his wife and children, calling the dignified family all sorts of names. And chief among the charges leveled against President Obama was the birther business. He’s not American, they said, meaning he’s not one of us: white. An old trope, its roots dating back to slavery and the Dred Scott decision, which ruled that Blacks could never be US citizens. The 14th Amendment overturned Dred Scott, granting former slaves and their American-born descendants full citizenship. But 153 years later, the rights of full citizenship remain elusive.

Donald Trump leapt upon the birther conspiracy, nurtured it, and kept it afloat. Thus, he became the darling of white privilege, its chief spokesperson. A fitting role for him. His whole life has been the best example of white privilege at work. Trump lacks political or military experience, typical credentials for any presidential candidate. He had a mediocre career in college and his history as a businessman includes numerous bankruptcies. Though he shares writing credit, his “coauthor” Tony Schwartz wrote his most famous book, The Art of the Deal, in its entirety. Despite this parade of mediocrity and failure, Trump won the 2016 election, albeit with the aid of America’s peculiar presidential election system, the Electoral College. He lost the popular vote by over 3 million votes.

With a lackluster background and an election win aided by an antiquated voting system devised to keep the then-slave states happy, Donald Trump is the poster child of white privilege. Small wonder he became its champion.

By contrast, the first Black president was the first Black editor of the Harvard Law Review and graduated from Harvard Law magna cum laude. He was a member of the Illinois Senate and later of the US Senate. In 2008, detractors ignored all that and simply labeled him a community organizer. Erasing the accomplishments of Black folks, to fit a certain agenda, is nothing new. For years after becoming a Nobel laureate, I continued to see Toni Morrison referred to in newspapers as a Pulitzer prize winning author, as if the higher honor never happened.

None of this mattered, however. Trump represents a reclamation of white privilege, a return to normal for those who ardently support him. “Normal” means a society where Black lives don’t matter, where LGBTQ lives don’t matter, where only immigrants from Europe matter, where women know their place.

When threatened, these defenders of white privilege lash out with evil intent. (Look up the rise of the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction.) January 6 should not come as a surprise. A group of insurrectionists plotted to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer last summer. Violence is their calling card.

Donald Trump knows this. He has continuously lied and used inflammatory language to incite the worst instincts of his supporters. His speech at the January 6 rally amounted to a call to arms against the Congress and even his own Vice President, labeling them all traitors. His words directly sparked the putsch. 

Here’s the thing, though. Trump and his followers want to overturn the election for two different reasons. Though Trump is the poster child of white privilege and a long-time racist, his main reason for wanting to stay in the White House is to avoid losing his immunity from criminal prosecution. Despite his incessant lying, he knows what he’s done, how much he owes to different individuals and entities, including the US Treasury. He knows he will face a world of hurt the moment he steps out of office.

His supporters, though, see only his position as the mouthpiece for their white privilege. “Make America Great Again.” “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” Trump spoke their language, and for that they are willing to support him, even if it means kidnapping a sitting governor. Even if it means invading the Capitol and endangering Members of Congress, Senators, and the Vice President.

Police officers stand guard as supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump gather in front of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, U.S., January 6, 2021. REUTERS/Leah Millis TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

Importantly, the insurrectionists’ own white privilege allowed them to get as far as they did with the putsch. Black folks would have been summarily shot on sight the minute they started running past barriers and towards the Capitol. While many officers fought hard to defend the Capitol and the Congress (one officer died), some officers stood aside and allowed the insurrectionists access to the building. Some took selfies with them. And some gently escorted them out during the aftermath. I’m reminded of when police took Dylann Roof to Burger King after he slaughtered nine people in cold blood. By contrast, police in Baltimore did not take Freddie Gray, who had not committed murder, to get food.

While at UCLA, I heard History Professor E. Bradford Burns say many times that oppressed peoples will not go into the 21st century shackled to the institutions of the 19th. Folks wedded to the 19th century—lynchings and Jim Crow, the subjugation of women, the utter destruction of Native Americans, the invisibility and denial of LGBTQ folks—know this. That’s why they will fight like hell to keep the world from changing. Even if it means burning down their own house, our House, the People’s House, to do so.

© 2021, gar. All rights reserved.

The post The White Privilege Putsch appeared first on the gar spot.

Michael “Misha” Guleff, 1958 – 2019

Michael, or Misha as many of us from UCLA called him, and I were in some cafe in the South Bay long ago when Beethoven’s Third came over the speakers. We paused our chatter to listen from time to time. What a badass piece this is, we concluded. We both had heard it countless times, of course, yet the enthusiasm we shared that day, commenting on its nuances, its subtle and profound changes, made it feel like we were experiencing it anew. It felt like a true bonding moment for us.

When Misha told me last November that he had Stage-4 cancer, my mind flashed to the cafe. We were both single, 30 years younger, still figuring out stuff, making plans.

Misha played music, guitar and vocals. He also wrote hundreds of original songs. He had a definitive style, one heavily influenced by George Harrison, a mutual favorite. Misha, seven years my senior, went to one of the Harrison concerts in the 70s. A sort of Concert for Bangladesh on Tour, it featured Billy Preston, Tom Scott, Jim Horn, and Jim Keltner on the one hand, and Ravi Shankar, Alla Rakha, Hariprasad Charuasia, and Shivkumar Sharma on the other, a split between rock and Indian Classical as the original benefit concert had been. I was awed that he had a chance to go.

We played music together, him on guitar and me on tabla. He liked to hear some of the ideas I had to accompany his songs. It felt good when we clicked.

The second thing I thought of after he told me about the cancer was that he was the first person outside of my family that I called when my brother Robert died of the same disease in February 2014. It was a surreal moment for both of us. He loved Robert and admired his bass playing and musicianship. He gave me a recording of a piece of his to play at the concert we had honoring Robert. I still have it on my iPhone.

Misha kept to the periphery of the activist gang at UCLA. A friend to many of us, he watched the demonstrations from afar. It wasn’t that he didn’t have strong political beliefs. He did, and he wasn’t shy about sharing them. But he felt more comfortable just slightly out of the limelight. He tended to live on the periphery, too, as I often teased him about the out-of-the-way places his lived. He really only put himself in the center of things when it came to music. 

Misha could rock out with the best of them, but he also studied classical Spanish guitar at San Diego State. One of his teachers was Celin Romero of the famous guitar playing dynasty that includes Pepe Romero and the patriarch Celedonio Romero. He and his wife invited me to San Diego to see three of the Romeros play, Celin, Papa, and Celin’s son Celino. That was a wonderful treat.

Misha missed the final chapter of the Trump travesty and of course he missed COVID-19. I can only imagine the songs he would have written in response to all that was 2020. But he checked out before it all went down, passing on New Year’s Eve, 2019.

How fortunate that we were able to gather in Misha’s name in January, to comfort the family and each other. Just a couple of months later and we would not have been able to do so. Music featured heavily during the service, including his own. He laid out a set list of his originals he wanted played. In addition to playing tabla, I even dragged my sitar out of mothballs. I think he would have been pleased.

For over 30 years, Misha and I lived a life together, always within phone or text distance, if not physical distance. I met his first wife Kathy when he was at UCLA. I was best man at his wedding to his second wife Gina and became friend with their two kids Sasha and Olivia. I followed them around and visited as they moved from one corner of California after another. A beautiful family. We had good times. 

On this first anniversary of Misha’s passing, Beethoven’s Third has been on my mind a lot. I’ve been humming passages from the first movement, my mind going back to that little cafe somewhere in the South Bay where we fell in love with that masterpiece all over again together.

© 2020, gar. All rights reserved.

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I remember the morning after more clearly. My father had the whole month of December off for vacation, so he was home that day. He drove my sister and me to school. We went to a magnet school and normally rode a school bus. It was a four and a half mile drive. Dad had the car radio going, can’t remember which station. They played some Beatles music, but I mostly remember hearing his latest album, the last he would live to see release.

I’m just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round

I really love to watch them roll

No longer riding on the merry-go-round

I just had to let it go

Like most of America, we heard the news from Howard Cosell during Monday Night Football. And we all sort of froze, wondering if we had heard it correctly.

It felt real the next morning, with the music and the tributes. And yet it didn’t feel real at all. The sky felt different. Colors looked different. All turned psychedelic, pastel, flashy, bright, as if the world had tripped into Strawberry Fields. Or Lucy had descended from the sky, her diamonds blinding us with brilliance.

I was just getting into the Beatles music and history at that time. So I knew about the acrimonious breakup. And yet, when I heard Paul McCartney’s first words (“Drag, isn’t it?”) I didn’t hear a flippant answer from someone still holding a grudge, as most of the media tried to portray. Even at 15, I could hear in those words a man at a loss, shocked, probably in more pain than even he knew at the time. Decades later, Sir Paul participated in one of the many marches for gun safety after Parkland. When asked by the media why he was marched, he reminded them that he lost a friend to gun violence.

The music played and the tributes continued that morning. It was a surreal car ride. Even though I barely knew anything, I still felt numb by it. Probably the thing on my mind most at the time was the question, why? 40 years later, on this day, a part of me is still sitting in my father’s car with my sister. And still wondering, why?

© 2020, gar. All rights reserved.

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Ask me who instigated the plot and with hand raised timidly I have to confess my guilt. We were at the Mulholland Tennis Club celebrating our friend Suzanne’s bat mitzvah. A bar served drinks; us kids were consigned to non-alcoholic of course. I had Shirley Temples, probably one too many. A group of us went to the bar and asked for a banana daiquiri. It was a for a friend, we said. Then we went to the DJ and asked him if he could play “Yes! We Have No Bananas.” It’s for a friend, we said. Fortunately, the DJ had it in his collection and squeezed it in between the more contemporary dance music he played. Once it started, we proudly marched the daiquiri to our friend, all smiles—or should I say shit-eating grins.

Jeff Robbins looked at us with those gentle brown eyes, smiling beneath his thick, woolly mustache and beard, and shook his head, keeping whatever profanities he had under his breath. Jeff hated, hated bananas. But he loved a good joke and laughed mightily at our wit and cheek.

My history with Jeff goes back to the Temple, as we old-timers say. 1977, the year the Center for Enriched Studies (CES, as it was known then) first opened in rented classrooms in back of the Wilshire Boulevard Temple. Jeff held forth in rm. 228. I had him for Photography. We took pictures of objects, buildings, the playground, each other. We even learned how to develop film in a dark room.

But Jeff taught us much more than that. In each subject he taught, he infused all of himself, his myriad of interests. Thus, the Photography class contained more than a small dose of history. In particular, he taught us about Mathew Brady and his importance documenting the Civil War. He also taught Architectural Math, Music Appreciation, and Comparative Religions, among other subjects.

Thus, Jeff was a true renaissance man. His subjects blended together, each informing the other. His broad width of intelligence and interests, along with his taste for bad puns and his wise-ass-but-kind demeanor made him one of the most popular teachers at CES.

We had to do a project in Photography, pick a subject and do a photo essay on it. I cheekily picked Jeff himself. To my surprise, he invited me to his home. That’s when I met his wife Nancy, a wonderful companion for Jeff with an equally wide range of interests and a formidable wit of her own. She also taught in the LA schools and welcomed me into their home as she did all of Jeff’s kooky students. In time, I would meet the two wonderful people they brought into the world, Ian and Courtnay. A man of great passion, it was beautiful to see how much he adored his family.

During that first trip to Jeff’s house, I discovered his great love of trains. His basement office looked like a turn-of-the-century train depot, replete with mounted train schedules, signaling lights, station plaques, everything. Many years later, as a retired counsellor and teacher, Jeff’s first novel, The Layout, would focus on trains and rail enthusiasts. 

We had many mutual loves and interests, music, astronomy, antiques, history. He followed me and my growth over the years, including my studies of Indian classical music. I’ve played both sitar and tabla at their house. And Jeff’s stereo is something I’ve tried to emulate for decades. It had such a lush sound, filling the room with warmth.

While I often say that I wish I had had History with Jeff at CES, in reality I learned much history from him outside of the classroom. He introduced me to Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. And like his colleague and close friend John Otterness, like all of the best CES had to offer, he taught independent thinking, free thought, and curiosity. These tools made me the person I am today.

Jeff treated us like humans, not children. Thus, our 43 year relationship really only changed because we as humans change over the course of time. The last time we spoke together, in June of this year, felt like many other times we spoke on the phone over the years. We asked about each other, gave updates, laughed at the absurdity of everything, kvetched about he absurdity of everything.

Not being one to focus on his health challenges, he did not say anything about his current state, nothing to lead me to believe or think that he would be leaving us in a few month’s time. Instead, when I said to him how wonderful it would be for us to meet at the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento, that he would make a badass docent, he paused a bit and agreed what a wonderful meet up that would be. Perhaps when COVID-19 passes, we thought, we hoped.

We met when I was 12 and he was 32, both kids, really. Part of us stayed kids, I think, to the very end. I could still see his boyish smile and twinkle as we spoke on the phone that last time.

You were loved, Jeff, by countless students you shepherded over the decades. I love you, more than I can say and I’ll miss you horribly. My deepest condolences to Nancy, Ian, and Courtnay.

Thank you for all the lessons and your friendship.

© 2020, gar. All rights reserved.

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