…from the desk of RE Vanella
What a day! I’m not going to rehash many details of what was a very satisfying Carney bashing yesterday in this space. We use the adjectives corporatist, neo-liberal as adversarial accusations. To see the show up close and personal is a physical experience, stomach-churning. The reputation well earned. It was like he was channeling Larry Summers. But my bitterness was held at bay for an hour last evening.
Network Delaware had its full public debut at the Christina Cultural Arts Center. Standing room only in the theatre and overflow in the first floor gallery. I was really moved by the people who turned up – both numbers and diversity. I’d estimate 200. I saw our neighbors and from all walks of life. Beautiful. Eugene Young made some rallying remarks and I felt inside myself, where the Carney-induced nausea had been, what I’ve heard described as hope. I hesitate to summarize words I listened to but may misstate in a retelling especially when emotion is involved. However, I think it’s fair to say that the politicians and organizers and community leaders associated with this organization are sincere about this effort. The “Delaware Way” was mentioned, but as something holding us back not moving us forward. Personally, I’ve always used it to accuse an adversary.
I do want to take a moment from my pitch here to note. On the other thing, we’re all in that together. If you’re willing to go out in the street to oppose our vile embarrassment of the world’s most dangerous clown then we’re comrades in that. Zero questions. Also, and for the record, just vote for Hansen in the 10th. Now’s not the time, like in the voting booth, to have the argument, and you know why.
The fight is about people. There’s deep-rooted, systemic marginalization that needs to be addressed today. Peter Tosh says, “400 years, or more.” The income inequality of a new gilded age is all over the internet and looking worse by the minute. If we don’t start taking care of people we’re not going make it. This could get us before the climate does. I sincerely believe that. I hope all the freedom and liberty and George Washington and Enlightenment magic baked into this actually works. Bicameral legislatures, civics, etc. We need every bit of it. Whatever you have that you don’t know how to use, they know how to use it.
So use the internet to check it out. www.thenetworkde.org
Somebody once wrote it only works if you work it.
Eugene closed with a story about taking a youth group to Memphis each summer to visit the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Hotel. One of the inscriptions reads:
And they said one to another, Behold, this dreamer cometh.
Come now therefore, and let us slay him, and cast him into some pit, and we will say, Some evil beast hath devoured him: and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
— Genesis 37:19-20
Resist.