Waukesha's Holiday Parade & Us

This photo is of Milwaukee's 'Dancing Grannies'. Some of them were killed and hurt yesterday. 

11/22/2021

Yesterday, as most of you know, a person in a red SUV plowed through the Waukesha Holiday Parade, killing at least 5 people, hurting at least 40. Today downtown Waukesha is cordoned off because the whole damn downtown area is a crime scene. There is evidence to gather, people’s stuff to be removed from sidewalks– blankets and strollers and so much more. There’s blood to be washed away. Schools are closed today. There will be a vigil tonight at 5PM in Cutler Park which is the green space around the library.

Today is November 22. Many of us remember 11/22/63 as the watershed day when Kennedy was shot. The US we lived in before that happened felt different than the US we have lived in since. The way we believed in and trusted our society before it happened is different than the ways we have trust ourselves since.

The last few years have felt brutal, haven’t they? We try to not be alarmist. We recognize that if we feel less trusting and safe in our lives, this is the shadow of what others have experienced and tried to tell us all along. Black people. Asian people. Many, many (all of us?) women. Native Americans. Our friends and citizens and neighbors with brownish skin and/or maybe with accents. Our friends who are not “straight” whatever that even means anymore. This has never been a safe and cozy nation.

The super-rich have always exploited our diversity. As long as politicians and oligarchs and oligarch-owned politicians can keep convincing us that the problem is “those people” – well, they can keep taking our wealth, resources, labor, and the sweetness of the lives of the rest of us. We need to burn the phrase “those people.”

Once again, it feels as if the big tent we are all living in came loose at a corner. A stake blew up and blew away and once again the floor beneath us is heaving.

I have two things to suggest.

1. Support people who support education.

The fastest way to lessen security in a nation is to cut education. This society has decided, more or less by default, that schools are the place we advance society. It’s where we started with anti-segregation. It’s where we do whatever health education we do. It’s where we (used to, sometimes still do) teach home-making skills and how to fix thing skills and physical education. It’s where we feed kids and provide social workers and nurses. It’s where we teach and integrate kids with mental and physical challenges into society. And yet, all these budgets have been cut and cut and cut again.

Remember when we received annual hearing and vision tests in school? Yeah, that used to be a thing. Remember when college kids could pay most of their own college costs with summer jobs and working campus jobs during the year? Back when states subsidized tuition because educated people were considered our best resource? Politicians cut those taxes and thus cut funding for college and now they tell us our kids should avoid education debt and they list the alternatives - none of which include sending our kids to the colleges that they send their kids to. Hmmm?

Support education. Support taxes for education. It’s where the heavy lifting of this society happens.

Work and vote for people who vote for education.

2. Talk. Don’t preach (unless you are a preacher and they pay you for it). But talk to yourself about what you are experiencing. Talk to your partner, your friends, your kids, your cat. People who come through emotional trauma best are the kids and grownups who process what they experienced. Don’t just zip past yesterday if, yesterday, you were blown back by what was happening. Take the time to write or say what your experience was and is.

If you would like to say your story here – please do. Use the comments section. Even if you usually state your name, feel free today to claim anonymity. Say your piece of the story here. What did you hear? What did you see? Were you stuck in one of the lockdowns? Did you spend minutes or hours worrying?

No one has to answer - but if you could use a place to unload where others will care, here we are.

As always, I monitor comments and will delete names or claims not verified.