Longing for the truth

As we cooked the usual feast for Turkey-Day, and I began my annual passionate, heartfelt and long-winded rant on the fucked-up-ness of this "holiday", my mom causually looked at me and said, "Why are you so angry? You seem so unhappy, why is that?" I asked her why she was so complacent, and in a time where social security and public assistance programs are cut to provide more funding for a war that benefits the rich and luxurious, why weren't more poor and working class people raising their voices for thier own futures? Why, I asked, are we continuing to allow ourselves to be medicated, drugged, and hynotized, to both the financial and social benefit of the ruling class, in order to feel some sort of false happiness? Why don't we all get angry and fight for our, and our children's and our grandchildren's futures, by demanding our security, rather than blaming the useless politicians or Bush's dumb ass? Of course, she just sadly shook her head as she continued to stir the bowl of sweet potato pie mixture. Of course, I stomped off into my room to read a bit of Audre Lorde, and convince myself that I wasn't insane or even wrong in my anger towards injustice.

Now this morning, as I sit at my horrible job (yet another thing to be angry about, I sure know how to be unhappy), Sonja's blog brought me to this article which helps to validate my feelings of disgust, hopeless and grief towards the actions, thoughts and carelessness of this country. The text is profound, the comments disturbing. Commentors berate this author for attempting to "destroy" their holiday. Others urge the poster to "get over it." I embrace my anger towards injustice and I urge you all who feel rage in your hearts for those who cause harm in the name of their longevity, to join in my rage and continue to put voice to our unhappiness with what occurs So on the day after Thanksgiving as I sit in my deserted office, I want to print this out and put it on every co-worker's desk:

Simply put: Thanksgiving is the day when the dominant white culture (and,
sadly, most of the rest of the non-white but non-indigenous population)
celebrates the beginning of a genocide that was, in fact, blessed by the men we
hold up as our heroic founding fathers.

Some aspects of the conventional story are true enough. But it's also true
that by 1637 Massachusetts Gov. John Winthrop was proclaiming a thanksgiving for
the successful massacre of hundreds of Pequot Indian men, women and children,
part of the long and bloody process of opening up additional land to the English
invaders. The pattern would repeat itself across the continent until between 95
and 99 percent of American Indians had been exterminated and the rest were left
to assimilate into white society or die off on reservations, out of the view of
polite society.

This article reminds me that there is a choice we all have in how we choose to live our lives. Whether we choose to historicize, or contextualize the way we live today, by comparing it to where we come from. More importantly, as those who aren't the most powerful in this country, how do we support a heirarchy which continues to devalue us. How do we resist this inequalities of power, how to we challenge the current social structure and demand an honorable exisitence for everyone? I think articles like the above, which deconstruct popular myths and bring to the forefront the imperalist and colonialist actions of this nation, are ways we can resist the myopic representations of the United States's not so "united" history.