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Poetry for An Election

You know what to do to find out more.

Morning After The Election by Regie Cabico

I can’t control
the vanishing
of bees

but I can control
the honey I swallow
to soothe
the vocal cords

I can’t control boys
bully-tumbling
another boy

in the classroom
like they’re
in a mosh pit

but I can remember
rolling on hills
with boys being the bully

I can’t change my major
from drama to global peace

but I can write
similes of serenity

& poetic sermons
in temples
of matrimonial fanfare

I know the bombs, the explosives,
and Molotovs are overhead

and I can’t control
the lottery, the multiverses,
and tomorrow’s astrology

but whatever tarot card I pick
or whatever
gets thrown
at my face:

Hangman
or Fallen Towers

I can express
my weathering emotions

to sing while hoarse
to control air placement
to find the chakra

the right amount of air
to pass through my throat

oh sing with me
the octave between

blade & nectar
rubble & clouds
ash & mountain

Music for Good Causes

(I was not aware of some of these until I read this. -A)

Hero of 2024: Charity Music, Which Was Actually Good This Year

Women Doing Good Things

Nice Time: MacKenzie Scott Pissing Off Elon Musk With The Billions For The DEIs And Abortions by Rebecca Schoenkopf

Making right-wing chuds real mad is icing on the cake! Read on Substack

Billionaires are mostly despicable Montgomery-Burns type people. But then there’s MacKenzie Scott, one of the few ultra-rich who doesn’t deserve to get tarred and feathered in the coming revolution! She’s the third-wealthiest woman in the United States, 38th in the world, and has now given away $19.25 billion (with a B!) in 2,524 charitable gifts, with a focus on racial equality, LGBTQ+ equality, democracy, and climate change.

She and her small team seek out nonprofits operating in communities facing high food insecurity, high measures of racial inequity, high local poverty rates, and low access to philanthropic capital. And then she gives away the money with no strings attached. Which is unusual in philanthropy! Also unusual, she’s pretty quiet about it. She has a web site that shows what she has donated to, but there’s no MacKenzie Scott ribbon cuttings, or buildings with her name on them when she drops a check. She donates, then she dips. And she plans to “keep at it until the safe is empty.”

Scott’s given to community centers, the ACLU, historically Black colleges and universities, food banks, Planned Parenthood, YMCAs, dance theaters, Native American groups, legal aid centers, to paying off medical debt, legal funds for transgender people. It is truly an inspiring list!

You may be wondering how she got there! Then-MacKenzie Tuttle went to Princeton and studied under Toni Morrison, then got a job working at the hedge fund D. E. Shaw. Where, in 1993, she met Jeff Bezos, a 30-year-old with thinning hair. But she liked his laugh, and he liked that she was resourceful. “The number-one criterion was that I wanted a woman who could get me out of a Third World prison,” he once said.

And even though she was just 23, MacKenzie was that kind of can-do woman! They married, and there would be no Amazon without her. They moved to Seattle, where she helped Jeff get the company off the ground from their garage. She wrote Amazon’s business plan, did the company’s accounting and toted its early orders to the UPS Store in their minivan, while also raising their four kids, and writing novels. She won an American Book Award for her first one, The Testing of Luther Albright, which she wrote in the bathroom for 10 years in between everything else she was doing.

All seemed happy in the Bezos marriage for 25 years, until 2019, when the National Enquirer tracked Jeff and his (also married) ladyfriend Lauren Sánchez “across five states and 40,000 miles, tailed them in private jets, swanky limos, helicopter rides, romantic hikes, five-star hotel hideaways, intimate dinner dates and ‘quality time’ in hidden love nests.” They even somehow got his personal texts and shirtless bathroom photos, which seems potentially not legal. And then, according to Jeff, AMI content officer Dylan Howard tried to blackmail and extort him. (You may remember that creep from the Trump trial, as the broker of catching and killing tales of Trump’s affairs, or from catch/killing stories about Harvey Weinstein.)

And Jeff refused to play ball with the Enquirer. The story came out, and MacKenzie and Jeff announced their separation, as did Sánchez and her husband, Patrick Whitesell. And MacKenzie got 400 million Amazon shares in the divorce, which she has been selling and donating to charities ever since. But don’t worry, she’s still got about $32 billion left to make do with!

Anyway, now Bezos and Sánchez are reportedly getting married this weekend in Aspen. Mazel tov! Bezos been living flashy, with a $500 million yacht, buoyant fiancee, and apparently imposing his Trump-sympathies onto his newspaper.

And MacKenzie’s been living more quietly! She changed her last name to Scott, and married one of her children’s teachers (though they have since divorced). Otherwise, she’s been laying low, though she’s been known to sometimes gal-pal around with Melinda French Gates, Bill’s ex, who has pledged $1 billion over the next two years to US nonprofits working in women’s health. I’ll bet those two have a lot of fun!

All of this lady-giving mightily pisses off Elon Musk, who has a charitable foundation with zero employees, that for three years has failed to distribute even the 5 percent minimum required to be eligible for a tax deduction, putting him potentially in hot water with the IRS, OOPS.

Musk bitched in March that “super rich ex-wives who hate their former spouse” could contribute to the decline of Western civilization, and more recently Xitted that Scott’s contributions were “concerning.” Which rather just draws more attention to those ladies’ good works, in contrast to what a shit person Elon is, unable to donate a wooden nickel unless it might benefit himself, somehow, and fucking over his exes in whatever way possible.

We call this “divorced dad energy” and he is rich in it for sure.

After his snotty comment, MacKenzie Scott gave away another $600 million, the end.

[Yield Giving/ Wired/ Vogue/ Medium/ New York Times archive link]

The “Mighty Mite”

Winter Wren

True Facts: Rays, The Floppy Sombreros of the Sea

A Few Weeks Ago, We Discussed The Situation of Inequity in Education,

and there was quite a comments thread either here or on Jill Dennison’s place, (I think it was a little in both places, and the link to Jill’s is not that thread) about resistance and community teaching. Here’s an example, right there in Florida. All the links within are pertinent and worth clicking to read.

News That Will Drive You To Drink

A racist history shows why Oregon is still so white

https://www.opb.org/news/article/oregon-white-history-racist-foundations-black-exclusion-laws/

By Tiffany Camhi (OPB)

Portland, Ore. June 9, 2020 9 a.m.

Americans across the country have demonstrated for over a week now against systemic racism and police brutality. For many people, the protests have forced uncomfortable conversations about white privilege and the generations of prejudice against Black people and other people of color in the United States.

A group of KKK members parades down the streets of Grants Pass, Ore., in the 1920s. The KKK had a strong presence across the state in the early 1900s, with Oregon Klan leaders claiming 35,000 active members in 1923.

Lloyd Smith Collection

These conversations are happening here in Oregon, too, a state that — no matter which way you cut it — has deep roots in racism.

Here is a refresher: Oregon began as a whites-only state, through a series of Black exclusionary laws that were designed to discourage Black Americans from living here in the first place.

Walidah Imarishais a writer, educator, public scholar and spoken word artist.

Pete Shaw

“[These] laws point to the fact that Oregon was founded as a racist white utopia,” said Walidah Imarisha, a Black studies educator and writer based in Oregon. “The idea was that white folks would come here and build the perfect white society.”

In 1844, when Oregon was still a territory, it passed its first Black exclusionary law. It banned slavery, but it also prohibited Black people from living in the territory for more than three years. If a Black person broke this law, the consequence was 39 lashes, every six months, until they left.

The territory passed another Black exclusion law five years later, in 1849. This one barred Black people who were not already in the area from entering or residing in Oregon territory.

The final exclusion measure made it into the Oregon Constitution as a clause when the territory became a state 10 years later in 1859. This clause went further than the territory’s second law by also prohibiting Black people from owning property and making contracts.

“It speaks very clearly to the ways that this place was founded to center whiteness, not only at the exclusion of folks of color but at the brutalization of folks of color,” said Imarisha.

These laws were rarely enforced but they did the job they were created to do: establish Oregon as a majority white state. And it’s why Portland, the state’s most populous city, is still known as the whitest big city in the United States.

According to 2019 estimates from the United States Census Bureau, Oregon’s population was nearly 87% white. (The figure for the Census category of “White alone, not Hispanic or Latino” was 75%.) The state’s Black population was just over 2%.

Although the laws were repealed almost a century ago, the racist language in Oregon’s constitution wasn’t removed by voters until 2002. But, Imarisha said, it’s important to note — just 18 years ago — 30% of voters elected to keep the racist clause in the constitution.

Sign in the window of a Portland restaurant circa 1943

Photo Courtesy of Oregon Historical Society, CN 0034



“This is an ideology that is not only alive, it’s serving as the foundation for the institutions of Oregon,” said Imarisha. “Oregon is a useful case study for the rest of the nation because the only thing unique about Oregon is [it] was bold enough to write it down. The same policies, practices and ideologies that shaped Oregon, shaped the nation as a whole.”

But with things like Portland Public Schools ending its contract with the Portland Police Bureau and the Oregon Legislature looking at police reforms, it seems as though some of these racist pillars are beginning to form cracks. These actions, along with a renewed Black Lives Matter movement, are giving hope to many people like Imarisha who have been fighting for systemic change.

“This movement, which is led by Black youth, is incredibly inspiring,” said Imarisha. “I just really want to say thank you to the leadership who have created this movement.”

Ultimately, Imarisha believes this movement and the conversations we’re all experiencing now can bring about profound societal changes for Black people and other people of color.

“If you believe in freedom, if you believe in justice, if you believe in liberation — now is the time to act,” said Imarisha.

Hear the full conversation with Walidah Imarisha in the audio player above.