So Long Ago

by Madeline

I’M DESIGNING AND EDITING THIS ISSUE while listening to podcasts playing the sounds of protesters being cleared from Lafayette Square in D.C. and neighbors attacking each other in Little Village outside Chicago. I guess I don’t listen to uplifting podcasts, but I highly recommend The Daily and United States of Anxiety.

When I hoped to finish this all in time to be the May 5 issue, I thought reading about the 2017 conventions would be a fluffy distraction. I did not expect weeks of protests. To flash back to June, October, and November 2017, though, I have to assume that, on top of knowing the 2015 and ’16 con issues weren’t done yet, I found talking about conventions to be so far removed from reality.

2017 as a year was filled with so many infuriating stories about what was happening at the southern border and around the administration. In 2017, Puerto Rico was hit by two hurricanes, but could not receive aid because “it’s surrounded by a lot of water.” White supremacists gathered with tiki torches in Charlottesville, NC, and ended up killing a counter-protester but it was not okay for professional athletes to kneel during the national anthem.

At this moment, I hope that with all the conversations happening in response to all the protests, we won’t still be explaining why it is unacceptable that a white shooter lives to see the inside of a courtroom while a black person dies at the hands of police. The legal actions taken in response so far are heartening, but fuck Rand Paul. If someone gets in their pickup truck and hunts down a jogger, that someone ought to be prosecuted. The Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill was first introduced in 1918 to establish lynching as a federal crime because locals were not prosecuting lynchers. More than a hundred years later, the Senate unanimously approved an anti-lynching bill and sent it to the House. The House renamed it to honor Emmett Till. Now Rand Paul says he can’t approve the almost literally identical bill. We’re supposed to be cutting back on bad words around here, but FUCK Rand Paul. I’m not about to applaud his proposal of banning no-knock warrants. Local governments were already doing that.

Meanwhile, Trump-appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch writing the majority opinion to protect LGBTQ rights the same week Trump rolled back trans protections is quite the plot twist. I can’t wait to see what’s next.