Memoirous

I left off my last post in the Bebelplatz in Berlin, atop the glass covering the Empty Library below. The swirling colored lights bouncing off the buildings added to the hallucinogenic feel to being there. I wasn’t quite sure where I was. Yet, watching the movie Origin , I recognized the location and déjà vu—personally and historically—washed over me. It’s happening again. Book banning. Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste , upon which Origin is based rests on the premise that the othering of Jews in early 20 th -century Germany and how we treat people of color here in the States informed each other, The writing and examples in the book are irrefutable. The end of the film goes back to an interview Wilkerson did with a subject who as a young boy, white, growing up in what is presumed a southern town, though I guess it could have been Illinois, when his Little League team wins a championship and is rewarded with a day at a town pool. The whole team goes, even the star player who score...

I went to see the fictionmentary: Origin written and directed by Ava DuVernay based upon Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste: Origins of our Discontents . It takes a particular skill to adapt nonfiction to the screen; you’re actually telling a couple stories at once and most or all of it has to be TRUE. On a personal note: I couldn’t stop crying through the entire viewing. Am I highly emotional? Maybe, but I’m the kind of person you want in the middle of a disaster because I tend to keep my head without panicking. But once you start intuiting a lynching—I’m gone, and the movie opens with the murder of Trayvon Martin, the young man/teenager who was killed merely for walking home in the rain on a dark night wearing a hoodie. You know the end of this story before it even begins, and you get a sick thud in your belly just watching the Skittles slide across the convenient store counter. It’s all going to go so bad. It is a complicated story to tell, weaving the history of black oppression in...

When They See Us Ava DuVernay, director, screenplay When I say “Central Park 5” you know what I mean. When I cryptically mention “wilding”, you get it. Same thing if I say southside or westside. Code words for African Americans. POC, people of color. In mid- to late-April there was a news story about groups of roving black kids downtown. A warm April night (a rarity this past spring, not even goin’ to get into the fact it’s June and we’ve barely broken into the 70s yet) add social media and the mayor and the police chief were calling an emergency. According to the Chicago Tribune: What happened? About 500 teenagers  gathered downtown  early Wednesday evening. Police were ready for them because of social media posts, strategically staging patrols and calling for transport vans. The teenagers spread out across Millennium Park and near the Lake and Grand Red Line stops, passing packed restaurant patios. Some teens got in fights among themselves. In one case, po...