wait…are we talking about Eugene now?

this town is super big on organic food. its damn pricey, making me broke. town real big on green, on organic, on natural, etc etc. you’re not cool to some types here unless you compost and bicycle. you get me. HyperProgressives I’ll call ‘em for lack of a better word. many of them good people [obligatory "Not All of You™" disclaimer] but that attitude can flourish at times. hey, last night i had a funny/odd moment of conversation when i was out…the person said the great thing about this town is that there are no “ghettos” and well. the talk got a little strained at that point. or we lost our common ground for a moment. there’s just too much to unpack in that fact and that feeling and exclamation in a casual bar talk…tho i tried. ::winces::

It’s that extreme dichotomy that signals the Crossroads for me. Here, in the “most enlightened town” in the country, we can easily go either way.

Thinking about it more, the true test will be when Obama really fucks up (and he will, like all elected officials; he is human after all). What will the reaction be? Will we start hearing cries of “we shoulda known not to give the keys to them negros!” from progressive circles much in the same way that *all* Black and Latin@ people are now singularly to blame for the passage of Prop 8 in California?

I trust that it will get better too, though; and let us not forget that “tomorrow is easy, but today is uncharted.”

really, you had me at Robert Johnson! I have his boxed set and have for..13 years or so. longer, actually. played that shit OUT. marveling at his ability play to melodies and countermelodies with one guitar, on one take. as well as the songs themselves. anyway, didnt mean to get distracted, but he was so badass its not funny.

i like a lot of this post. but i really appreciate what you say about the danger of the crossroad. because i think what its easy to forget at moments is that the palin/mccain rally vibe didnt go away with the campaign season, nor did the nuts who feel extremely threatened right about now. maybe in a year or five the shock will have worn off, the “other”ness washed away by familiarity, which is how prejudice and racism often works. only strong as long as everything remains abstracted. but for a short time, i agree, things are fragile. and its best to be aware. i know i dont feel at all comforted by any election wwith the recent murder of marcello lucero, who got stabbed by a gang of seven, who went out to “fuck up some mexicans.” in fact, i’ve been on edge for years now, keeping tabs on the rising hate crimes against latinos. because people have felt threatened by all the spew coming out of right wing radio and just all the MSM frames the immigrant issue as some kind of threat same as it ever was. so i dont feel we are just entering a dangerous time.

but i think now my afro-descended hermanos y hermanas ramp up their own always-fragile safety level with the dreaded nightmare in every white supremacist’s head coming true: blacks having held the highest seat of power in the USA, power, symbolically, over whites. i know its a tiny group, all things considered. and i think it will get better. but at this crossroad, i think we are all in danger.

then again, we have each other, too. so maybe we are twice as strong as ever.