Have been talking much recently with my dear friend and confidant, Dr Lenora Jean Daniels who is a nationally syndicated columnist with the Black Commentator (and if you are not regularly reading BC, you REALLY ought to be).
She went to Philly about five years ago, from Madison, where there was the academic equivalent of "ethnic cleansing" in the air, University of Wisconsin, Madison, so greased by US government military research funding that no how, no way, does the university administration want ANYTHING resembling a return of the 1960's, when ordinary Madisonites joined with U.W. kids in protest of the American War, Invasino, and Occupation of the Vietnamese Peoples and Lands, which had been on-going since 1946 (first American military casualty of the war was 1946, first American POWs were taken in 1953, first U.S. protest of U.S. military presence in Vietnam issued by U.S. Merchant Marines who were INCENSED that they were being forced to return captured Japanese Generals to assist the French in their attempt to regain France's old imperial glory (always an illusion), by regaining France's old territories in the Far East. The U.S. people too, ordinary citizens were incensed that we had already fought a war to defeat totalitarianism, and imperialism, and here we were, supporting the French in their totalitarian, imperialistic efforts; Congress critters too had the courage to up and RAIL about the injustice of it all, and the violation of all the things this country was (supposedly) founded upon; all the myths we learn at such a tender, impressionable age in grade school, junior high school, senior high school, and then discover we must unlearn, purge from memory, forget forever, if we are fortunate (or stupid) enough to continue to receive a liberal arts college education.
RECOMMENDED READING TO YOU: Vietnam and Other American Fantasies, H. Bruce Franklin
http://www.amazon.com/Vietnam-American-Fantasies-Culture-Politics/dp/1558493328
So, anyway, Lenora escapes (she wrongly, as events transpire, thinks) to the greener Quaker pastures of Philly, where, a woman with HER perspective, willing to speak truth to students, simply CANNOT BE TOLERATED, and in short order, she is de facto forced into seeking more "greener pastures."
She goes to an interview at Drexel, foolishly (at the time - by now she has learnt that since you can't please everybody, you've got to please yourself, and pretty much be in-their-faces with your politics, because, sooner or later, it WILL come out, and nobody likes to eat shit kow-towing to the trappings of ower) carrying her Eduardo Galeano book outside her hand bag. Her interview with the department chair begsin, "Is that the book you're reading now?"
"Yes."
"Oh, I see."
And, not at all surprisingly, she never heard from him again. Not even a pro forma, "Thank you for your interest. We are sorry there is not at the present time a good fit here. Best wishes for your continuing academic success. Sincerely, xxx"
SEE ... it ain't all that frickin' tough.
So, the longer Leanora has to get to know Philly, the more disheartened she becomes. "Mark," she says, "This is a corporate town. Comcast owns it all. And the people are HAPPY! They want it this way. They don't wanna talk NO politics, no how, no way. They hear you say 'Bill Cosby' and they equate him with Mumia {about whom no one is writing any more}. See, the kids, they are IGNORANT. They have no good education; they have no good schools; only the Quaker school which has security all over, but so far out of the way, you never notice; it has kids of all ages walking all over the campus, carrying their book bags, engaged in conversations about history - politics, economics - the most amazing thing. And they are all in uniform, and smiling. These are HAPPY kids, you see, IT CAN BE DONE!
IF YOU GOT $40,000 to pay for your kid's education, and the black folk here, the old ones, they are all, "hush, hush, don't go talkin' 'bout 'dat; we got it good here; we got shopping malls; we got a black mayor; don't make no waves; don't go stirrin' up no trouble."
"Mark," she continues, "Bill Cosby, that man was so wrongly villified, because what people don't know, or don't remember, or simply choose to ignore, was that when he MADE those comments, they were made in a VERY specific context of time and place, when he returned to Temple University to get his PhD. He was talking about PHILADELPHIA youngsters, with no respect, who dressed like punks, like outlaws, like drug dealers, whose mouths just spewed filth, who go out of their way to intimidate their elders. Mark, it was Philadelphia Bill was talkin' 'bout. And he should have been more specific."
So Lenora is trying desperately to escape, to return to the midwest (she was born and raised in Chicago - "Mark, can you imagine either one of the Daly's letting a corporation call the shots in Chicago?" - and understand how it works, how you must go about getting that 3 foot deep pot hole fixed, not because some little girl might fall in and kill herself or be crippled for life, no, not that, but because IT MAKES THE CITY OF CHIDAGO LOOK BAD.
And God Dammit to hell, if there was one fire you could light under a Richard Daly ass to get something done, it was the pointing out that unless an issue was addressed and SOON, it would make Chicago look bad, to all those tourists, to all the conventions.
The City that WORKS!
Let's hear it now, for the city that works! With Rahm at the helm, his man OBUMMAH in the Caucasian House, gonna be a BIG next four years! BIG BUCKS - money makes the world go round (chicago too) the world go round (chidago too) the world go round
and on
and on
and on
and on
Good Luck Lenora Jean
Philly, I visited you in 1996, and really liked what I saw,
But, it was the Spring National Bridge Tournament,
And I didn't see much
And I didn't hear anything
Although, I was not listening
I trust Lenora's judgment enough
No reason to return to the city of brotherly love
Where, as long as the Afro-American brothers are kept employed
And can shop till they drop
They are comfortably uncomfortable in their consumption
Of material goods and services
But oh, how that je ne c'est quoi,
How it lingers
Tapping, rapping, on the roofs and walls of the mind
Of the window to the soul
Something is wrong in Philly
Melancholy, melancholy Philadelphia
I laid me down, and I picked me up again.
(From the band Mara Loves
(Which performed at the small auditorium theatre
(at Western Illinois University in Macomb, Illinois
(back in the fall of 1969
(when I was young, and first on my own
(and loving every drunken minute of it
(and even to this day
(I think back fondly, except, of course
(for those bleak winters, when I was forever
(wanting to withdraw
(until I found contract bridge and duplicate bridge
(and Jim and Helen Schaedel took me in
(like a Joseph, looking for a manger.)
With Love to All, and ALL YOU LOVE,
Mark
