alternatives
the alternatives .
often won’t fix the problems .
we’re told are problems
There’s a certain smugness in passive-aggressiveness — like the sign in this photo or the, “Oh, I don’t watch TV,” response to a conversation about some televised cultural touchpoint — that I find amusing. Protest should make one stop and think; it should open the door for a dialogue. And, while anonymous signs, bumperstickers, or spray painted phrases can do that, more often than not one is just left wondering who took the time to make that statement.
In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, there was an outpouring of spray painted emotion around Minneapolis. Most were angry, many were poignant. One, though, left me a bit baffled; on the Midtown Greenway bike path (a paved, former railroad bed that cuts across South Minneapolis from the Mississippi River on the east to the western city border and then beyond) someone voiced their frustrations, “Death to colonizers! Yes, that means you!” After walking through the emotions and the history (the destruction of native peoples and culture and environment, naming natural features for slave owners — the list is quite long) and so much else that is behind that statement… what I was left with was the questions, “When? And who is going to do it?” To make a threat like that without any intent of following through is like pulling a gun with no intention of pulling the trigger because that would show the gun was never loaded.
So, go ahead, tell me to smash my smartphone. But the smartphone isn’t the problem, is it.
