Easter in the City of Saint Francis

Oh, Pope Francis. What timing! Of course, we were just talking about you, which doesn't happen that much around here. 

This Easter, as with all so far except those cancelled by COVID, included our annual outing to Hunky Jesus. My eldest has never known an Easter without drag queens, and so each Easter morning I have my little sermon: 

I remind him about the biblical story of Jesus, and the pagan elements of spring's resurrection from winter's apparent death, how bunnies and eggs got involved with empty tombs and whatnot. Then I talk about the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, and how they stand up for what's right, after explaining about nuns being female priests in Catholicism. 

Since my kiddo is getting to be old enough to understand more and more of the swirling complexities and imperfections of the adult world, I filled in some details this year about how the AIDS crisis made a lot of people in our city very sick, and that so many died. I explained that, even though a lot of religious people talk about love, that the people that were sick and dying from AIDS were often alone when they most needed family and love, and that's part of the work the Sisters still do. 

I also had to explain popes, and said they are basically the kings of the Catholic church, but sometimes there's a really good one. And I said that we were lucky to have a good one right now, who was trying to stand up for what is right in lots of ways, too. 

Then we spent the day in joy and also kind of peaceful protest as well as celebration with our friends in the park, as colorful nuns organized photos with the Easter bunny and games for children before more adult festivities rolled on in the afternoon. Hunky Jesus seems to always guarantee gorgeous weather, and everyone sparkles in that glorious sunshine while the music plays and the park thumps with music and mischief. 

And then, I woke up this morning to the news that Pope Francis had delivered one last Easter blessing, shaded our shady vice president, and then passed. 

Obviously, I am a heathen. There's no need to correct me on matters of dogma, it's not my thing. There were a million areas where we would not have agreed, I’m sure. But with the vast weight and reach of his position, he tried to move an enormous structure of power and prayer in our world toward more acceptance and understanding. I will miss his huge counterweight against the forces of craven self-interest that particularly govern this country right now. 

In his absence, who will speak for the migrant? Who will embrace non-judgement in the face of traditions that demand old oppressions? 

Honestly, it will have to be all of us. Who knows what comes next, or what change in leadership follows? We'll have to resolve to embody radical kindness and inclusion ourselves to transform the world around us. 

It sure does matter that we speak up, though. Thank you, Pope Francis, for sharing your fumbling path with us, imperfections and all, as you tried to take an ancient thing and make it work more in service of compassion and care for people here right now than it had before. I'm sorry to see you go.

Someone's Baby

God, those photos of the men stacked up in a concentration camp in El Salvador... Piled up like commodities, made faceless, dehumanized by their captors both foreign and domestic. 

Each one of them was someone's baby. Now grown, they are heaped upon each other, discarded, hope stolen, kidnapped from their own families. 

Part of the beautiful, terrible magic of parenting is that all children somehow became my children. One of the daily horrors of the previous Trump administration was protecting my own tender, gorgeous infant in my arms as babies his age slept in cages, wailing for their own mothers, standing alone in court, parents lost to them in an extrajudicial system that has expanded to horrifying overseas operations in this term. I couldn’t save them all. I could only hold onto one.

Now, we are given this vision of adulthood for men. Trump's supporters continue to dehumanize migrant men, framing them as dangerous criminals to justify the lawless detention and abuse they are suffering, when in actual fact so many of them came to our country to escape violence. They trusted us to be better than the criminals they endured.

And each of them was someone's baby. 

How can I look at my own sons, brilliant and beautiful, and not fear that they might also someday be treated with such disregard and hatred? Am I really supposed to trust the capriciousness of racism to protect them from such a fate, knowing how racists are motivated by their own extreme insecurity and fear? 

Racism protects no one. Insecurity and fear breed only violence and spasms of dominance. Relying on whiteness leans into the same dehumanization that delivers the results we're seeing now. Racism overspills the imaginary lines constructed by those that cling to it; it’s coming for all of us, eventually, regardless of our skin color or the content of our character. We all become faceless before it, reduced to the meanest calculation of our value. The only answer is to see it for what it is, and tear it down.

I look up at our administration, and see an array of broken men, insecure and fearful, drawn like moths to a flame toward the biggest bully. Tortured by their own fathers, hating their own mothers, beating their own wives, neglecting their own children. These criminals--some subject to the very due process denied to the men of CECOT--we tolerate, as they rain down further abuse in hopes that someday, finally, they might feel strong enough. 

And each of them was someone's baby, too. 

Many of them are famous for their stories of human failure. We don't have to guess at what made this administration this way, because their politics of grievance spell it out each day. They can never be stronger than the abusive fathers that tormented them as children or abandoned them, but they work each day to keep women under their heel and a hierarchy of racism available so they can feel taller as the bodies stack up. They can steal someone else’s father and throw him away like garbage, but they can never repair their own fractured souls by doing so. They can sell fear, but they can never feel safe.

What will it take to ensure that my own sons won't be failed men in this way? Will my daily work be enough so that they see others as fully formed individuals, each with their own dreams and difficulties, and emerge into adulthood with their empathy intact? 

They are my babies. I see them with hopeful eyes, wrap my love around them, and grieve for all the ones I cannot reach. With the spectre of failure looming large, I try my best to fight this fight on many fronts. 

We were all someone's baby. May we hold each other gently, and grow beyond this hateful brokenness of insecure men with too much power.

Of Trials and Taxes

Today held an emotional morning of civic responsibility. Perhaps mourning, too. At the risk of seeming susceptible to seeing my own life as a movie, the timing felt significant. Maybe that’s just the poetry of life, though, the synchronicities and symbolism. 

I was on standby for jury duty this week. I have wanted to serve on a jury, and I often feel disappointed or even disdainful of folks swapping tales of weaseling out of this call to service. However, I have still yet to make it to the point of serving, and the journey to today’s visit to the courthouse was a long one. 

The first time I was called years ago, I had a new baby and I didn’t know what to do except bring him with me. When I showed up with an infant on my hip, they let me know there is actually a way to be excused for this without the adventure of hauling the little one all the way to the courthouse.

Then, I was called just before final exams for my interior architecture courses. With no guarantees that the trial could be concluded before I needed to sit for my tests, I could not serve, though the judge talked to my as if I was his own recalcitrant teenager trying to evade responsibility. I let him know that, if I felt I could reasonably attend to both duties, I would love to serve. But, little matter. Dismissed.

My next postcard came just before my second child was born. I was heavily pregnant, and, again, no guarantees about the length of time, neither the trial nor impending labor. Working with the clerk (over the phone this time) I was advised about postponement to a future date to allow time for birth and breastfeeding a baby. 

So, today. I got the call, and I gathered my supplies: A book to read while waiting, snacks and tea, but also my most portable breast pump and a chiller bottle for milk—because my baby is still nursing, and attending to milk supply is both a nutritional concern for him and a comfort and health issue for me.

When I arrived today, the clerk at the jury assembly room let me know that the trial looked like a short one, but also that I had a valid reason to request being excused. He invited me to sit down and watch the introductory videos with the other potential jurors.

I nearly cried as the reels played. I am sure I’m not the only one carrying a lot of stress from the daily disarray we’re seeing from the federal government. The uncertainty, the disappearances of those who speak up, or who are viewed as “other.” As a judge spoke of the right to a fair trial, of our ability to serve justice in one of our three branches of government, I felt part of my heart break open. 

Not long after, we were all called to a courtroom, where the judge spoke eloquently of her thanks to us for being there, and also of the few duties of citizenship: mainly, taxes and jury duty. 

“And here we are, on Tax Day. But what we’re asking of you here is for your time, and for your careful consideration. It is a privilege to be able to be here, and you may ask how you were so lucky to be chosen.” She explained how the pools of potential jurors are assembled, “a cross section of our beautiful city,” and reminded us all how important it is to show up for each other in this way. 

Those fractures in my heart sang again; I don’t think very highly of paying taxes today, at least on a federal level. Many of the agencies that mean the most to me have been deliberately destroyed, their dedicated staff scattered to the winds, their work undercut or abandoned. To the extent that I can see what I am paying for, there are abductions of people seeking hope in America, and frequent golf trips for an egomaniac while food aid and medical advances are nixed from the program.

But, wow, I care about the judiciary. Of those aforementioned three branches of government, one is viciously lawless, one has completely abdicated its duty as a check on executive power—and yet one stands. The courts are holding the line, more often than not, enraging those that would seek to make the orange oaf our mad king. His allies gnash their teeth and pull their hair as rulings land that hail back to those constitutional constructs meant to balance our governing bodies. 

The scales are delicate, imperfect, and yet they hold. Due process matters. Resisting violence with resolve and clear eyes matters. These are some of our highest accomplishments in civilization. We bend the moral arc toward justice not only in the streets, but in the courts, too.

Our judge asked anyone who could serve to take a ten-minute break outside the courtroom. Anyone requesting consideration of a hardship was to remain. I stayed, ready to discuss my circumstances, but not yet convinced I should present them as a barrier to service. We sat in the seats later to be used for the selected jurors, and in a row we passed the microphone along. 

First, a woman with a crucial conference before the week’s end. Dismissed. Then, a student with an impressive course load nearing the end of the academic year. Dismissed. A mother, scheduled to fly on Friday to her son’s university orientation. Dismissed. For each story, the judge listened, asked more questions where needed, and congratulated the big milestones and hard work of those receiving dismissals. 

Then, me. I took the mic, and said that I am currently breastfeeding a baby. The judge offered me a dismissal, too, but I said that I felt strongly about serving, and that if I could be accommodated to pump then I could probably do it. 

She smiled and said, “This is a special time.” And, my god, it matters to have a woman present to adjudicate these things, both legal and where that intersects with the personal. This was no cold analysis of the rules, but a moment of empathy, delivered with the awareness that my youngest will only be little once. 

I thanked her, gathered my things, and left. I missed my baby. I felt a little deflated that my contributions could not be greater in this moment. Always, the timing. Upholding so many duties, some fleeting and essential, both biological and bureaucratic. 

Where we show up matters. I’ve said many times recently in private conversations that I wish Americans would understand voting as a civic responsibility, akin to paying taxes; not always exciting, perhaps mostly not, but a duty and a privilege. Today, with checks to write and the erosion of our highest ideals plainly before me, I held in my hands for an hour or so the ability to bolster our last bulwark of co-equal powers. And, gently, I was told that I was probably needed elsewhere more, because time is short. 

I walked past the square where less than two weeks ago, I donned my patriotic finery and protested alongside my family: No Kings. We the People. I want my children to see this, and know that we need to stand strong in these moments. I passed Abraham Lincoln, sat seriously in bronze, inviting me to consider it all in front of City Hall, where I’ve voted, yes, but also witnessed weddings and celebrated arts in our city. So much in this beautiful building.

Our life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness have their best chances in a framework of mutual care. That framework requires a sense of responsibility, and it requires us all to show up as we can to maintain it. 

I walked on, home to my child. I held him close. This time is special. 

On Tariffs

 I don't feel like this is being said enough, so I'll take a stab at it myself:

Tariffs hit the poor harder. They are a regressive form of taxation, as opposed to a progressive one that would demand more money from the rich. 

Why is that? Well, think about it: One of the privileges of being wealthy is that you can pay other people to do tasks for you. Those are services, and tariffs are charged on stuff, things being imported--not on services that people perform for you. 

The less money you have, the more of it you spend as a proportion of your income on actual things: Groceries, clothes, technology, you name it. This is part of what is powerful about the spending power of average people, that those dollars keep moving through the economy in a flow of business that creates local jobs and keeps stores open in your neighborhood. 

If you live paycheck to paycheck, it's because you keep spending your paycheck. Your money isn't locked away somewhere, because you need it now for things like food and rent. 

Now, obviously, the rich also spend money on physical things--sometimes really big physical things, and sometimes so much money there isn't any left. 

But the really big game in wealth is having so much money it can be put away, siloed into different investments for years or decades at a time, quietly growing. If you have enough money that you don't have to spend it all each month, you can slow some of it down, put it away for later, and find ways for it to accrue interest and become an even bigger pile of money. 

To bring it back to tariffs, whacking up the price of food 25% has almost no impact on the rich, because their food budget is such a small proportion of what they're spending. For the average American, who cannot withstand a financial shock of a random bill of $1,000 one month without serious consequences, a 25% increase in the price of food jeopardizes the ability to pay rent, and thus be housed, or to pay for some other essential item. 

Tariffs don't raise money off of foreign governments, they wring money out of average consumers. Think of them like a sales tax, an extra cost mandated by the government that gets passed straight on to customers. 

Trump idolizes a particular moment in American history when a huge amount of revenue was generated by tariffs, before income taxes came in to even the burden by asking the rich to pay their share. That's what he wants to take us back to. (He also loves the leverage that he gets when he creates difficulties that people have to make personal deals with him to avoid. That's the extortion racket bit.) 

Finally, the richer a person is in the USA, the less likely they are to pay even income tax. This is what I think is the most infuriating part: All of this chaos and cost is being borne by us to privilege a group of people who are already dodging most of their tax obligations. 

If you're wealthy, one of the many services you can pay for is an accountant to advise you on investments to make to lessen your taxes. You can create trusts, write down losses, shuffle debt, and shift money around so that you appear to have little to no income. Sometimes, this is overtly fraudulent, like Trump's gaming of his properties' values, where he told banks they were worth more so he could borrow more cash, and he told the government they were worth less so that he would have lower tax obligations. 

So, to bring it home: If you're poor, you have to go buy your own soap, sponges, mops and rags, and if any of them are imported, they now cost you extra because of tariffs. 

But if you're rich? You can pay somebody else to clean that up for you, and no import duties apply.