Anti Apartheid Campaign

First Polit­i­cal Win – Statewide Divest­ment

UNC Chapel Hill and then the entire state of North Carolina

The Anti-Apartheid Divest­ment move­ment which started at UNC-Chapel Hill, even­tu­ally caused the entire state to divest all schol­ar­ship and pen­sion funds in Apartheid era South Africa.  We where the first South­ern pub­lic Uni­ver­sity and first South­ern state to do so.

That’s me on the upper right just under the ‘S’ hold­ing the poster and me on the bot­tom in the front left hold­ing up the roof as we erect the first shanty.  I was the youngest co-founder of the group, a fresh­man, and the only woman.

We put the shanties up, then the Uni­ver­sity tore them down.  Then we put them right back up again and the Uni­ver­sity backed down.  They were a lit­tle con­fused and a whole lot embar­rassed.  They’d never encoun­tered a sit­u­a­tion like this.  It made them (and rightly so) look like racist author­i­tar­i­ans (which of course they didn’t want to do), but also put them directly at odds with the Senior Sen­a­tor of the State, a man by the name of Sen­a­tor Jesse “No” Helms, also the most senior Repub­li­can of the Sen­ate For­eign Rela­tions Com­mit­tee at the time, a Klans­man (although never offi­cially admit­ted) and of course a lead­ing pro­po­nent of what was called “Con­struc­tive Engage­ment.”  Essen­tially an Obama-like term for con­tin­u­ing the hor­rific Amer­i­can for­eign pol­icy of sup­port­ing slav­ery in South Africa, called Apartheid, where the major­ity of the black pop­u­la­tion lived in poverty with no rights, exploited by the minor­ity of whites and rich white Amer­i­can cor­po­ra­tions who took advan­tage of the slave labor to make huge profits.

Obama is doing exactly the same thing these days with things like “health care deform.”  And refus­ing to do the right thing with Wall Street reform and mak­ing the bas­tards pay all the money back that they stole from the tax­pay­ers (and admit­ting how much they got in the first place).  Not to men­tion reg­u­lat­ing the bas­tards instead of let­ting Gei­th­ner go back to his same old tricks.

But nobody’s call­ing him on it yet because nobody’s fig­ured out how to do it yet or brave enough to call him the Black Rea­gan.   Although the Nobel thing unleashed some pretty pent up frus­tra­tion at a man who hasn’t done crap­pola except fuck us all over (except for his bud­dies and his next cam­paign contributors).

Great rhetoric and act­ing skills, but hor­rific poli­cies so far.  F– is my grade to date buddy.  You’ve got a long way to go to make up for lost ground.

So any­way, the Uni­ver­sity tore the first shanties down.  We put them back up again.  And kept adding.  Which of course the Uni­ver­sity admin­is­tra­tion wasn’t expecting.

SURPRISE!!!!!!

From a dif­fer­ent angle as we got going, the cam­pus began to look like Soweto.  Well, sort of.  But it was pretty impres­sive.  Below is a reverse view, shot from the steps of the cam­pus admin­is­tra­tion build­ing of our shanty town.

The effort gen­er­ated national press, and won strong fac­ulty and com­mu­nity sup­port.  The state even­tu­ally divested all schol­ar­ship and pen­sion funds from com­pa­nies doing busi­ness in racist Apartheid South Africa.  But it took a whole lot of effort and a whole lot of fight­ing.  And a hell of a lot of courage from those of us who were really com­mit­ted (and that wasn’t Ms. Butts).  I lit­er­ally put my aca­d­e­mic schol­ar­ship AND my life on the line.

That’s me above in the back­ground on the left look­ing very pissed after a meet­ing with the Board of Trustees, who ini­tially thought we were a bunch of rowdy stu­dents who would just go away.

They were sadly mistaken.

In this pic­ture above, you can’t see me. I was in jail.  I was one of the first five peo­ple to get arrested for refus­ing to leave the shanties after they tore the first ones down for good, one of the first in a series of arrests that even­tu­ally forced the state to change their minds.  It was pretty scary.  We had no idea what they were going to do.  The Uni­ver­sity ended up drop­ping charges.

This time.

But we got a huge amount of sup­port from both the stu­dent body who showed up and formed a ring around the shanties as we were arrested, and fac­ulty and even town­ies, who even brought their kids.

It was obvi­ously, as these pic­tures show, a highly emo­tional affair.  And shows clearly how much our effort affected both the Uni­ver­sity, the town of Chapel Hill, and ulti­mately the entire state.   WE said NO to Sen­a­tor NO, who didn’t really like it when his con­stituents fought back.  A lit­tle some­thing mem­bers of Con­gress would do well to remem­ber right now.  Espe­cially DEMOCRATS.

But the fight was far from over.   We weren’t giv­ing up or going away.  As the police arrested us that first day, I sat there as I waited for them to arrest me and sang “Amaz­ing Grace” with tears pour­ing down my face, along with my fel­low arrestees.

It’s always been one of my favorite hymns.  And of course, while I’ve never been third world poor, I know what it’s like to lose your house.  Like too many Amer­i­cans are doing these days, thanks to the shame­ful inac­tion of the White House and Congress.

But hey, they’re all rich, and they’re not los­ing THEIR homes, so what does it mat­ter if fore­clo­sures reach ten mil­lion next year while Wall Street rakes in the big bucks and con­tin­ues to fund their campaigns?

I think we’re look­ing a lot more like South Africa these days, rather iron­i­cally, Mr. Obama.  You might take some hints about pro­test­ers, espe­cially those who you can’t char­ac­ter­ize as teabag, swastica wav­ing right wing nut jobs or left wing tree hug­gers.  Or as your slimy ass­holes with no juevos on your pay­roll like to say anony­mously (of course) to the press, “the left of the left of the left of the left” is what is really the prob­lem here.  Or “ter­ror­ists” accord­ing to the DNC, for all those unloyal Democ­rats who don’t sup­port you unswervingly.

Where have I heard that shit before?

Oh, I remem­ber now!

THE REPUBLICANS.

Is that what the DNC is becom­ing?  Because if it is, I’m really going to have to do some ass kick­ing. In the MOST EMBARRASSINGLY POSSIBLE WAY that will guar­an­tee your mov­ing date out of the Big House will come a whole lot sooner than you had planned.

I voted for ya because I stu­pidly believed that you would stick by your guns, but once burnt, twice shy.  I know you like to think you’re a nice guy, but to quote Bill Maher, you’re my Pres­i­dent, not my boyfriend, and I expect both to keep their word.  And kick their asses if they lie.

Metaphor­i­cally speak­ing of course.

I know you think you’re all pow­er­ful, but I got news for ya buddy.

You ain’t.

And you aren’t smarter than any­one else on the planet either, no mat­ter what you like to think.  Or who kisses your ass.  It’s a Wash­ing­ton passtime, don’t you know?  And a full time occu­pa­tion for most of its long time res­i­dents who per­fected the craft a long time ago, when they flushed their morals down the toilet.

You see, while I have respect for lead­ers who earn it, it’s really all about visu­al­iza­tion.  I’m not intim­i­dated by bul­lies (like your chief of staff) because in my expe­ri­ence they are really cow­ards and blowhards.

And from my per­spec­tive, the White House isn’t all that much big­ger than Polk Place, the admin­is­tra­tion build­ing at Chapel Hill where the Pres­i­dent of the Uni­ver­sity kept HIS offices.

And I kicked the last Demo­c­ra­tic President’s ass almost sin­gle hand­edly at the age of 27.  You know who that is, right?  I mean you hired his wife to be Sec­re­tary of State, so I guess you prob­a­bly do.  And he was extremely cor­rupt too.  Some­thing he passed on to his wife who seems to think that emu­lat­ing her husband’s cor­rupt south­ern ways and play­ing it like the boys is really the way to get some­where.  I got news for ya.  Clin­ton and Co. are just as respon­si­ble for the mess we are in as Bush was.  And you are too at the rate we are going.

When are you going to STOP?  That was, after all, the point of you run­ning.  Or so you told us on the campaign.

You promised to change things, not more of the same.  But that’s what you’re doing and things are get­ting worse.  Despite repeated warn­ings you chose to ignore.  And that is not some­thing I’m going to stand for.  Along with the really crappy, elit­ist, racist, sex­ist atti­tudes of your staff.

And you for that matter.

So that’s why I am doing what I am and I plan on being in your fuck­ing face for as long as it takes to get your atten­tion and embar­rass and har­rangue you until I get that god­damned meet­ing I’ve been requesting.

From my per­spec­tive it’s an act of patriotism.

I would sug­gest you don’t ignore me any longer, oth­er­wise we’ve got a date in court to look for­ward to.

Actu­ally two.  That would be crim­i­nal and civil.

And I know you really don’t want that.

Because that’s REALLY going to be embar­rass­ing and some­thing that while you weren’t in the room for, you are cer­tainly respon­si­ble for, so I would set up that meet­ing I’ve been ask­ing for pronto, on that pro­posal to hire lots of Amer­i­cans I sub­mit­ted to Cas­san­dra Butts lit­er­ally just after the inau­gu­ra­tion.   Along with alot of your other staff who also haven’t both­ered to call me back.

It’s not that I want to meet you or shake your hand.  I’ve lost any respect for you per­son­ally given what I’ve seen to date.  This has more to do with stop­ping the bleed­ing and hor­ren­dous suf­fer­ing I see all around me every day, but you seem com­pletely obliv­i­ous to.

Which is absolutely appalling.

Where’s the lead­er­ship?  Where’s the change?  Where’s the audac­ity of hope?

Or were you just sell­ing soap?

I mean it would be a good idea since your advis­ers don’t seem to have a fuck­ing clue and the unem­ploy­ment rate is going through the roof.  Along with mort­gage defaults and gen­eral eco­nomic pain.  And health­care deform not only looks like Franken­stein but is going to cost Amer­i­cans who are mak­ing less even MORE MONEY and is appar­ently THREE YEARS away.  And the only rea­son it’s going to cost more money is not that it’s going to pro­vide greater cov­er­age, and bet­ter ser­vice, but because you are cre­at­ing a big­ger indus­try who’s going to make even big­ger prof­its for them­selves, and of course, Wall Street, who you still refuse to reg­u­late.  Which is not only stu­pid but sui­ci­dal.  Because they’re going to do what they did all over again and this time there’s no backstop.

And despite the charm, Goldilocks, you won’t be able to sweet talk your way out of this tsunami.  Or twist enough arms or beat up enough pro­gres­sives.  Or gimps.  Your ass will be grass.

Of course ours will be too, but we haven’t been rak­ing in the dough like you have.  And have been tak­ing it on the chin for a lot longer.

Mr. Reich, remem­ber him , the for­mer Sec­re­tary of Labor under Clin­ton, and hardly a rav­ing lefty, just agreed with me that your Labor Depart­ment is delib­er­ately under count­ing the national unem­ploy­ment sta­tis­tics.  He thinks it’s about 20% of Amer­i­cans that are out of work.  NOW.  With lots of other econ­o­mists agree­ing that more pain is on the way.

I think it’s about dou­ble that already because he’s not count­ing the peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties that could work but don’t get hired due to mas­sive dis­crim­i­na­tion that even you are per­pet­u­at­ing (20% of the coun­try with a 90% unem­ploy­ment rate and accord­ing to judges and case law in every fed­eral cir­cuit have lesser con­trac­tual value than the able bod­ied.  For no rea­son.  Sounds just like an Amer­i­can Apartheid, doesn’t it?   Or maybe slav­ery perhaps?)

The Labor Depart­ment never counts our real unem­ploy­ment rate because of their own hor­rific atti­tudes and dis­crim­i­na­tory poli­cies that haven’t changed AT ALL since you got into office.  Because you share the same shame­ful atti­tude. And haven’t done shit to help this com­mu­nity, even on easy wins like includ­ing us as “minori­ties” in the SBA Stim Bill passed early this year.  That would have been so easy.  What was the matter?

Were you sleeping?

But I guess you’re too busy killing inno­cent women and chil­dren in Afghanistan to focus on Amer­i­can human and civil rights.  Or did you not study case law for gimps under the 1991 Civil Rights Act?  Or has nobody over there at Trea­sury taken time from cheat­ing on their taxes and let­ting Rangel cheat on his to do the num­ber crunch­ing on what it costs to delib­er­ately exclude so many of us from the workforce.

Just a hint.…about the size of the annual deficit in dis­abil­ity pay­ments alone every year.  If you want to save money that would be a ter­rific way to start that beats the shit out of any pro­posal I’ve heard from you, or any Repub­li­can for that mat­ter in cut­ting the deficit.

That’s about $1.4 Tril­lion a year and change plus we’re talk­ing about.

But I guess you’d rather pre­serve the sta­tus quo because you are really dis­crim­i­na­tory your­self and don’t really under­stand or want to take the time to learn how adap­tive tech­nol­ogy lev­els the play­ing field.

Or have any­one on staff who has?

Prob­a­bly not at the rate you are going, because if you had, the idiot who bought his way into his job, Mr Dale, would have not only called me back too, but would have brought this to your atten­tion, rather than pub­licly announc­ing that the issue of dis­abil­ity rights just needs “more study.”

Read blow off, in Wash­ing­ton speak.

And has not sug­gested that PWDs get any­thing but the worst pos­si­ble red­lined jobs in America.

But then Mr. Dale doesn’t have as much expe­ri­ence as I do with dis­abil­ity law, since I was actu­ally work­ing at the ACLU leg­isla­tive office on the Hill when the damned piece of leg­is­la­tion called the ADA was being drafted and passed, not to men­tion I’m in the mid­dle of a small mat­ter of a case that the EEOC has taken TWO YEARS AND COUNTING just to inves­ti­gate when my lawyer and I did all the work for them.  So he’s an idiot too.

More study my ass, when your own Depart­ment of Defense has already told me that my pro­posal your advis­ers are so busy ignor­ing is far ahead of THEM AS AN AGENCY in deal­ing with one of the most com­pli­cated dis­abil­i­ties there is, and I’m just one per­son.  And that’s just ONE of the facets of my pro­posal, which deals with both the abled and those with disabilities.

You see, I don’t dis­crim­i­nate or see peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties as hav­ing lesser con­tract value.  I see them as equal under the law.…It’s very sim­ple.  I look at the abil­ity, not what they can’t do.

You got it right in your cam­paign rhetoric.  What went wrong?  The Ter­mi­na­tor and Darth Vader were both PWDs with some really killer mobile apps.  Why don’t you start focussing on that instead rather than con­sign­ing us all to the worst pos­si­ble jobs on the face of the planet and ignor­ing the issue completely?

Because right now you look as bad as Bull Con­ner, and I intend to make you look that way until you start focus­ing PERSONALLY on this issue and that my dear will entail a meet­ing with me.  Because Dale is out to lunch.

In fact civil rights in gen­eral seem to have got­ten worse for every­one, includ­ing gimps under your admin­is­tra­tion.   And no I’m not just talk­ing FOIA and FISA.  I mean not even under BUSH did I EVER get goons at my doorstep, show­ing up unan­nounced, threat­en­ing me phys­i­cally for com­plain­ing to the IG’s office for dis­crim­i­na­tion at a fed­eral agency.  That Ms. Butts, by the way has refused to inves­ti­gate, along with the fail­ure of the IG to do any­thing about.  Which is, after all, part of her job.

But that’s just ONE agency and there are plenty more to dis­cuss.  You see what I mean about that need for a meet­ing?  You really don’t want any more dirty laun­dry aired on web­sites and in pub­lic to give the Repub­li­cans any more ammu­ni­tion, now do you?  Or leaked to the press?  Like oh, say Fox?  Who will have a god­damned field day.  It would be far too embar­rass­ing.  Much more so than win­ning the Nobel for doing absolutely nothing.…well…correction…giving all the bailout money to the rich­est of the rich, while let­ting the major­ity of Amer­i­cans suf­fer.  And back­track­ing on ALL of your cam­paign promises.

But that’s just a friendly sug­ges­tion if I were you, even if it means putting away the golf clubs.  After all, it’s fall now and you have to do some­thing on your weekends.

But back to his­tory, because it’s very instruc­tive for lead­ers.  Espe­cially pres­i­dents who don’t seem to have any sense of it.  After all, as the old say­ing goes, those who don’t learn the lessons of the past are doomed to repeat the mis­takes of it.  And we don’t need any more of your “oops.”  Sorry, but the learn­ing curve, not to men­tion the Hon­ey­moon is OVER.

I’m pretty sure that I speak for the major­ity of the Amer­i­can peo­ple when I say that we are tired of get­ting fucked, and our col­lec­tive knees are firmly locked together until you guys in DC get your shit together.  We’re not putting out any­more for you for free.  Uh Uh, no way.  Fuck off.  And go away.  And if you come back, well, there’s a tea party in your near future by your own party, who’s tired of the end­less promises and no action.  Oh, and the end­less spend­ing sprees on waste­ful wars and of course your own lux­u­ri­ous life.

But back to his­tory.  Because this is where it gets very inter­est­ing.  And I’m sure it will grab your attention.

As the next step, in our cam­paign to force the Uni­ver­sity to divest, we decided to take over the Administration’s HQ.  That would be, if say the Amer­i­can pub­lic did it because we are really fed up, a citizen’s revolt against tyranny, for exam­ple.  Or a mass deci­sion to refuse to pay our taxes, because, after all, our lead­ers don’t.  Not even the head of the IRS.  Who also just let the Chair­man of the House Ways and Means Com­mit­tee get off scott free with­out pay­ing penal­ties and fines on the huge amount of money HE didn’t pay.  If they don’t do it, why should we?

There aren’t two sets of rules in this coun­try, the last time I checked the IRS handbook.

But back when we were being stu­dent pro­test­ers, to make max­i­mum embar­rass­ment for the Chan­cel­lor, we chained our­selves to the fur­ni­ture in his office.  Yup, that’s me in the pic­ture above, and I’m even smok­ing, although I kicked my habit since.  Do they give Nobel Prizes for that too?  ‘Cause Obama hasn’t even done THAT and he got one.   Damn.  They’re set­ting the bar awfully low these days. And all he did in col­lege was get high and give like one anti Apartheid speech.   Hmmm.…what was that about dou­ble stan­dards again?

But chain­ing our­selves to fur­ni­ture was only one tac­tic, although we got arrested for that too, but the com­bi­na­tion of shanties and arrests worked a whole lot bet­ter.  And as you can see, even the employ­ees and fac­ulty got in on the action and we got alot of sup­port from them too.

As a result, Ol’ Jesse was feel­ing alot of heat, which is why we got so much “unof­fi­cial” harass­ment and why this turned out to be so dan­ger­ous, despite the fact that I’m being a tad sar­cas­tic twenty years after the fact.  That story was never reported in the press of course, but thems the facts, and always the case when real social change you can believe in is at stake.

You have to put your ass on the line.  Not the waf­fling we’ve seen so far at 1600 Penn since the elec­tion, buddy.

That means YOU Obama.  I mean surely, even though you are a politician’s pol, you’ve heard that old saw.…if you don’t stand for some­thing you’ll go for anything.

And that’s not change I believe in at all.

But back to his­tory, and Chapel Hill.  There were many more arrests and many more shanties and things got decid­edly more dan­ger­ous as Sen­a­tor No decided that a bunch of stu­dents weren’t going to make him look like the racist fuck he really was, despite his power as head of the For­eign Rela­tions Com­mit­tee in the Sen­ate.  But of course Melody Barnes and Cas­san­dra Butts decided that this wasn’t really all that important.

Not really.

And so they use that excuse to blow me off these days as some idiot white gimp who has accom­plished noth­ing in her life because I didn’t work for Sen­a­tor Kennedy or go to school with Obama.

Kiss my lilly white ass you hyp­o­crit­i­cal bitches.  Because of my work the State of North Car­olina, not just South Africa, became a far less racist state.  Not just because of divest­ment in South Africa, or con­scious­ness rais­ing in Chapel Hill or even RTP or even North Car­olina, but because as many peo­ple real­ized, African Amer­i­cans’ money was not going to per­pet­u­ate other people’s slav­ery at home OR abroad.  And forced really big Amer­i­can com­pa­nies in the U.S. to face their own racist poli­cies as well, at home as well as abroad.  Includ­ing hir­ing policies.

Which I hear they had a lit­tle prob­lem with at Har­vard too.

Our schol­ar­ships were repeat­edly threat­ened, and we were intim­i­dated phys­i­cally, some­times at gunpoint.

It was often very dan­ger­ous.  Par­tic­u­larly at night, when we slept in the shanties to keep guard.

But it meant a lot to peo­ple as you can see.  Even to the groundskeep­ers who reluc­tantly had to tear down the shanties.  They often told us they didn’t want to do this.  And we all knew they didn’t have the oppor­tu­nity to go to col­lege like us, which is one of the rea­sons our protests never turned vio­lent.  Apart from the fact that we were peace activists and didn’t believe in war.  Or vio­lent tac­tics.  You see that’s the def­i­n­i­tion of Peace by the way, which is what the Nobel PEACE PRIZE is nor­mally awarded for, not for per­pet­u­at­ing more vio­lence and war.  Uhem. I don’t need to say any­thing more on that topic do I now?

They were just as vic­tim­ized as the peo­ple we were fight­ing for and we knew it.  We were fight­ing for them too, and they knew it.  Some­thing you seem to have for­got­ten on your way to the top.  And most cer­tainly have for­got­ten about those who are poor because if you hadn’t you wouldn’t be doing what you ARE doing right now.  Both at home and abroad.

Ms. Butts, now Deputy White House Coun­sel, never did any­thing but showed up for ral­lies, but always puts her “involve­ment” in our cam­paign on her resume.  Notice her con­spic­u­ous absence in the press, much less got arrested.  She just showed up when it was safe and con­ve­nient, and when there was a poten­tial photo op in the works because we let her speak at a few events (we were very egal­i­tar­ian and even though she didn’t do any­thing we believed in let­ting a black woman clearly on the make and so she could put it on her resume, but nev­er­the­less, from the racist South get some atten­tion) even if she didn’t do did­dly squat except read pre­pared remarks at ral­lies she had noth­ing to do with set­ting up or organizing.

Melody Barnes, now kind of laugh­ably, head of Con­stituent Ser­vices for Obama, never even did that.   She had too many soror­ity par­ties to go to.

And these are both African Amer­i­can women who now work in the White House and have refused to even return my phone calls.  Appar­ently you have to be black AND rich, or some kind of celebrity, or some­one they think is a polit­i­cal pow­er­house to be good enough to have a con­ver­sa­tion with them, now they’re both employed in the “Massah’s House.”  Even though they never have done any­thing as dan­ger­ous or cre­ative, or effec­tive, for that mat­ter, as I have for civil, racial or minor­ity rights on many fronts through­out my life.  It’s sort of ironic, don’t you think?  And have always been staffers, not lead­ers.  Unlike me.

Not to men­tion dis­gust­ing given the ‘tude they project.

This was never what affir­ma­tive action was for, some­thing that Obama and the black elite have for­got­ten in their efforts to cre­ate a new “black clique elite.”

We don’t need any more “cliques” in Wash­ing­ton, thank you all the same, but Ms. Butts, and Ms. Barnes, both of whom to this day, think that being on the best dressed list, brag­ging about expen­sive sports cars and back then going to soror­ity par­ties was far more impor­tant than fight­ing for rights even in the State and school they attended, and let the mostly white stu­dents involved in the group do the fight­ing for them.

We didn’t even get the sup­port of the black guys on the school’s famous bas­ket­ball team, that Obama just met with at the White House, I sup­pose to show how clever he was in pre­dict­ing this year’s col­lege bas­ket­ball champs (see all you whin­ers, he HAS done some­thing in office…he cor­rectly pre­dicted the NCAA bas­ket­ball champs this year, and THAT’S DEFINITELY NOBEL MATERIAL THERE FOR YA).

Although the all white foot­ball jocks and frat boys felt free to get drunk and tried to start fights at night while pelt­ing us with beer bot­tles and garbage. And didn’t dis­crim­i­nate at all about hit­ting either the boys OR the girls who camped out in the shanties.

Which was pretty appalling.  Espe­cially because the admin­is­tra­tion knew per­fectly well what was going on and did noth­ing to stop it.

But back to Ms. Butts and Ms. Barnes.  They knew per­fectly well too how dan­ger­ous it was.  And how “icky”.  I mean you had to actu­ally sleep on the ground…eeeewwww.   It was one of the rea­sons they stayed clear.  And never deigned to stay even one night in the shanty towns we built.

“Sta­tus” was far more impor­tant.  At least to them.  A giant FU if I ever saw one, espe­cially today when both of these bitches think that they are more impor­tant than I am.

Think again ladies.

Espe­cially when the first Nobel in eco­nom­ics has just been won by a woman (fuck you too Sum­mers) espous­ing the same prin­ci­ples I do in the pro­posal you keep ignor­ing, you’re kind of screwed.  Espe­cially because she really deserved it, unlike guess who.  One hint if you don’t have a clue.

Your boss.

And you will rue the day, I promise you that if you keep ignor­ing me much longer on that proposal.

I’m far nas­tier and fight far harder when MY rights are tram­pled on than you will ever be and hav­ing a loaded shot­gun held by a Klans­man all too ready to use it, pressed up against MY head fight­ing for YOUR rights is just a taste of what you’re in for if you con­tinue to screw with my rights.  Not that I believe in vio­lence of course.  But just con­tinue this crap and I promise you, you will lose.

So far, in my bat­tles with the White House, it’s Mar­guerite 1, the White House 0, and they had the Pen­ta­gon, the State of Idaho and the Depart­ment of Inte­rior help­ing out on the side, so even Rambo isn’t going to help you on this one.  Sorry.  He was on the oppos­ing team last time too.

Bet­ter watch out, or you’ll be fol­low­ing Van Jones out the door at the Big House.   Because you’re just as fake as he is and you cer­tainly deserve it for sit­ting on my pro­posal for as long as you have (see Work Fair on the tab next door).

Just a hint.  It’s called DISCRIMINATION.  Can you spell it you morons?

After the first arrest, the news went nation­wide, on among other things, AP.  This is a story reported in the town where I grad­u­ated at the top of my high school class, which is why it made the paper.

It shocked the state (which is unfor­tu­nately still pretty racist), not to men­tion the town of Boone, North Car­olina.  Yes, named indeed after the guy who wore the funny hat with the Rac­coon tail on his head, where my mother inex­plic­a­bly decided to move to so she could marry my very abu­sive step­fa­ther when I was six­teen.  And yes, those are safety pins around my neck, not pearls.   Not that I could afford the real thing any­way thanks to the abu­sive screw­ing I got from my so called family.

I lived in rags and an unheated room in the cold­est part of the house because of my drunk mother, and my highly abu­sive and law­break­ing stepthing who tried every­thing he could to make my life a liv­ing hell and forced me to live in an unheated and unin­su­lated room in the mid­dle of moun­tain win­ters and even went so far as to com­mit fed­eral mail and tax fraud (although I know that’s not a big deal to the tax cheats in Con­gress and Trea­sury these days but it pisses off us aver­age peon Amer­i­cans) to try to pre­vent me from get­ting schol­ar­ship aid and from even going to col­lege at all, and gave all the finan­cial help to my lit­tle brother (even though I grad­u­ated at the top of my class).

So it’s kind of ironic that Ms. Butts, after sit­ting on the side­lines dur­ing the biggest protest Car­olina had seen since its incep­tion (and it’s also called the “Pub­lic Ivy” and the old­est pub­lic Uni­ver­sity in the nation) called me “priv­i­leged” from her cushy office in the White House when I called to con­grat­u­late her on her new gig days after the inau­gu­ra­tion now isn’t it?  Not to men­tion hor­rific and really tacky.  And REALLY bad manners.

I still have scars on my arms that make me look like a hero­ine addict because I had to sell my plasma to sur­vive my first two years in col­lege (I tested out of my first two years of classes so I was doing senior and grad­u­ate level work as a fresh­man).  And passed out every time I did sell my blood.  Aren’t I lucky?  Don’t I sound like a trust fund child to you?  And priv­i­leged just because I’m white?  Or maybe that was the reac­tion from Ms. Butts because she thinks I’m not good enough to speak to her now she’s in the Big House.

Um…doesn’t that strike you as kind of hyp­o­crit­i­cal?  If not APPALLING?  And um, RACIST?

I don’t think Ms. Butts had to sell her plasma to eat while she was in school.  Or spoke up to give another woman of a dif­fer­ent color an oppor­tu­nity to be heard, which I did for her at the time we knew each other on a more reg­u­lar basis.  But she won’t do for me now.  What a bitch.  Espe­cially as she got her cur­rent job because of her grad­u­ate school friend­ship with the Pres­i­dent, formed at the finan­cial aid line at Har­vard, where Obama even evaded the real truth about his easy pass to admis­sion there.

Legacy admis­sions to the Ivy Leagues PLUS minor­ity advan­tages make Har­vard admis­sions about as easy as Podunk U, so we’re not exactly talk­ing rocket sci­ence here folks, and of course the admis­sions offi­cers would have been clued in auto­mat­i­cally about his race since his daddy went there first, so his answer on the cam­paign (never picked up by many Ivy League attend­ing media types, of course) went com­pletely unre­ported on.  Like many other omis­sions if not out­right lies.  Which frankly I’m sick of espe­cially in light of the shoddy per­for­mance to date.

Despite the chip on all those minor­ity shoul­ders, which sup­pos­edly jus­ti­fies the ‘tude if not worse, I had nobody to co-sign my loans to get into Har­vard like all those Bup­pies like Ms. Butts and her buddy the Pres­i­dent did, although my test scores always qual­i­fied me for the gig.  Not to men­tion a sup­port­ive fam­ily and a legacy and minor­ity ben­e­fits to entrance.  Which both Oba­mas ben­e­fited from at both Har­vard and Prince­ton.  So let’s cut the shit about supe­ri­or­ity and let’s get down to busi­ness here, shall we?

So save the hypocrisy Cas­san­dra, ‘cause you’re going to get fired unless you shape up.  I’m going to make it a per­sonal mis­sion because this is dis­gust­ing.  Plus you’ve already bro­ken the law by refus­ing to do your job, and I’m not going to stand for that, espe­cially given the other merde com­ing out of 1600 Penn these days.

You’ve just fucked with the wrong person.

My safety pin neck­lace in that last pic­ture, by the way, was my trib­ute to punk rock and Sid Vicious who were kind of my first musi­cal influ­ence when I grew up in Eng­land, but that’s another story, for another day.   And after all, who really wants to go down in his­tory as one of the sheep who puts on the fake pearls AND the drape they force you to wear as they herd you through the High School year­book photo roundup?

And by the way, why didn’t the DTH call YOU up, Cas­san­dra, or even bother to try to find you, if you were so instru­men­tal in the divest­ment move­ment, and already so much more impor­tant than I was in DC, rather than find­ing and quot­ing me, and as you can read, I wasn’t in Podunk, honey.

What I was doing was already chang­ing national pol­icy in Con­gress, but that’s the next episode.

I know you prob­a­bly didn’t know that when you brushed me off with such child­ish and unpro­fes­sional behav­ior, but it’s going to make you make you eat even more shit when you find out about it, which you will, I promise.  Really soon.

Oooops.

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