Which Side Are You On? DILEMMA (video)

This is Episode #1 of the 8-part performance poem Which Side Are You On? from the Mississippi River Suite CD. Entitled “Dilemma” this poem confronts America’s original sin, claiming that “all men are created equal” and behaving and legislating in the exact opposite way. This was where they all agreed…’we won’t talk about that.’

It gives no comfort to call these matters out and reminds me of learning about lying as taught by the nuns who commandeered my grammar school in matters not dissimilar to the Chicago police. A problem starts with a lie, and it leads to another but the second has to be bigger to cover up the first, and the third one has to be bigger still to cover up the second. And the problem compounds and grows like a virus that is out of control. Call it corona? Call it institutional racism? Call it whatever you like, but it is knocking on our doors and in the air we breathe.

I read somewhere that Abraham Lincoln publicly praised but privately cursed the founding fathers for passing on the ‘original sin’ to future generations (aka Abraham Lincoln) to solve. There was a memorial service for George Floyd yesterday, just a few days after the US Senate trumpeted is dysfunctionality in attempting, but failing, to pass an “anti-lynching” bill over arguments about what “lynching” is. We pay the salaries of these people to rule the land, and the results of their leadership thunder through when the local cop’s brutality is informed and inspired by the supposed ‘leader of the free world.’ And then it is endorsed by the deranged, blatant and not-so-sly Fox network.

And the question has been called, Which Side Are You On? Like an unrefereed game in the alley, America is picking sides and the time to choose has arrived like never before.