re: #13 Decatur Deb

Let’s win the battle. Then we can squabble over the campaign ribbons.

Malcolm X was once asked by a little girl during a march, “What can we do to help?”
He reportedly told her, “We’ll help ourselves!”

As a disabled man, I know what this means. We make up 20% of the population (some estimates are 25%—1 in 4!) We also are very concerned with our well-being and our identity. We have a phrase, “nothing about us, without us.”

Blacks have every right to want to be recognized, to not be overridden by the white Anglos who would “take over from here”. But at some point, when you’re a minority of the population, that goes only so far.

We are compelled to solicit the support of nondisabled people. Some of them will understand us. Some of them not. Some of them, obnoxiously, are there to be woke and to virtue signal. But we can’t do it ourselves.

Unfortunately, neither can Black people. I wish it were otherwise. I have an extremely low opinion of my own white origins. Many white people have been threatened by our administration. Many others have joined our minority group with debilitating disabilities as a consequence of the virus.

These are foot soldiers you can’t turn away. We are always saying, “someday you’ll be in the shit and you’ll know what it’s like!” This is the reality for many people. You may ask deference, but these people are in the fight. Don’t we want the mass of people to recognize an existential thread? And act once they do?

People are energized. We need to sustain that, rather than argue how “worthy” they are to man the barricades.

P.S. As a disabled man in public housing, I have the opposite problem: I cannot protest. I could lose my apartment. Felony convictions are grounds for eviction. And the police and and prosecutors have free reign on what to charge me. It is not up to me. I can only shut up and hope for good attention from an overworked, burned-out pro bonolawyer.