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Sometimes I remember that I am walking around with what amounts to a Pride flag radiating brightly from my head. Wherever I go, whenever. It's always there. And sure, it's nice to be reminded, as almost always that amounts to strangers popping up to say "I love your hair!" and hug me or bump my fist - or in some other way bond with me momentarily. The nature of that latter is a wonderful form of "soul food." It really is. And I think it's a multi-way street when it's happening. It makes me additonally happy to catalyze that. However, I am also aware of where I live and where I pass by. And that there are vast swathes of this country where, if it doesn't get me mistaken for a rock star, my hair could literally - and I really mean this - it could get me killed. Once a beating starts in this country it usually doesn't end with James Dean getting up, dusting off his jeans, and rubbing a sore jaw. It usually ends with a slow bleeding death with multiple crippling fractures in a sand pit or the edge of the woods. And my hair could easily trigger such an outbreak of violence that it might go past a mild roughing up. I remember when in grade school in the US there was a tag-like game called "smear the queer." That game is still played in many neighborhoods, but by the older boys now. At the same time, I am also aware (and always really have been) of more. In any group of ten or so ignorantly and willingly violent thugs ready to do someone some real bodily harm, there are always three or so really decent human beings who are aware of that about themselves. They are always there. And we can speak. I can speak to their better nature - which ones, I do not know, so all of them. I don't have long but I can buy a little time. I can speak to their better nature. And once those two or three decent ones nod or even speak, all of a sudden two or three more stand tall and shift position slightly. Now, you see, things have shifted to roughly fifty-fifty, with tiny odds, I think I believe, in the favor of "righteousness." Pieces have moved ever so slightly on the board - not even leaving their squares - and are all facing in slightly different directions. And all of a sudden it becomes apparent that people who would gladly have engaged in a violent murder in a ten-to-one "fight" are not so eager to get dirty when it's beginning to look like it could be five-on-six. The beating is a lot less fun when the outcome is less certain, when it might be them waking up sore in jail - or in the hospital - tomorrow morning. This all depended on my being a white male besides to potential "gay vermin" they observe. A woman they would not plan to kill - just to ruin her life. Again. A Black man? A Black man knows not to have stood where I stood, knows not to speak up in a thousand places and times in order to live to work and live another day. I cannot speak to other demographics so clearly, but you see how it was my whiteness and more importantly, my being a male that bought to time to speak (if I was lucky). Keep those numbers in mind, and how speaking up brought them to the surface despite a seeming seven-to-three - or even ten-to-none - majority in favor of "tradition." Minneapolis, and Minnesota in general, have been standing and talking while the country slowly nods and shakes its collective head. People may still be standing in the same squares, but their perspective is shifting. This is a city that could have massacred the government thugs in one night. They have the armaments, they have the organization, they have the passion. They also have the fundamental human decency I was speaking of, and they wear it proudly, every day when the only crisis is running out of something special only to Minnesotans. And so they stand, they talk, they march, they watch. Oh they watch. The watch and protect. They "place their bodies between those who would cause harm and those who would be harmed" and they are getting murdered by government thugs for doing it. And still they talk and watch, they march, their numbers grow. They watch and protect, they talk. They have yet to harm a single man of the violent, pathetically anonymous army of the uncouth who have been caused to invade with intent to harm their city, their state. They talk. And they are winning. They are winning a battle for all humankind that will likely be recorded and taught in history classes far longer than the names of those who sought to bring down a republic by violence and deceit. They are winning without violence and with nothing but the truth to courage to fight with. We - humanity, and more importantly, Americans who have not yet had to engage in this fight - owe them an enormous debt. 2/6/26
© Huw Powell file location: www.humanthoughts.org/minnesota_nice.htm
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