Get up and get to work.

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Hey, everyone. Get up and get to work.

We have the means to make a more meaningful difference in our immediate communities than any President could. This peaceful exchange of power shifts the responsibility back to us as individuals to make things better. In a way, it was always on us.

There’s a real message in the results and it is not markedly different than the one Sanders was warning us of: There are too many people in this country who feel left behind. Trump may have been an act of self-sabotage, but who cares?

We wanted the responsibility of raising up our fellow men and women and it was never Trump or Clinton or Sanders who was going to do that anyway. It comes from us, from the way we take care of each other. My most sincere liberal friends wanted to do this before last night and would have done so anyway.

Anyone with a clue knows Trump isn’t going to fix anything with his “policies.” But a large number of people feel like they need to do something radical to improve their standing. Do you hear them? Do you really care? Even if you think their complaints are overblown, they are unquestionably sincere. The poor whites of the rust belt, where I now live, are dying earlier and earlier. Opiate addiction is rampant. Hopelessness is rampant. They need help. The first people to give them their dignity and hope back will have a friend for life. Do you expect Trump to arrive with counselors and nurses? Me neither. There’s a chance to make a real difference.

Does that mean we let anyone target our minority and marginalized allies? No way. Those thugs who have made the last 18 months unbearable? They still need to be fought down. There’s a chance to make a difference.

Look around you. There’s work to do everywhere. Clinton’s loss is a wake-up call. So get up. Get to work.

A Little boy in Aleppo

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I’ve been haunted by this footage all day and I don’t think you should be allowed to have a position on refugees without seeing it. This is what the survivors of Syria are running from. While it is possible, however unlikely, that terrorists might try to slip into Western borders under the guise of seeking asylum, it is no excuse to turn our backs on those who seek asylum legitimately. That, to speak bluntly, is a practical working definition of cowardice. Who knows a child who would not rush into a war zone to rescue that child from such horror? Yet, cowards would refuse this child because of simpleminded and false premises. Fear cannot eclipse our humanity or we concede ours is a savage, ignoble nature.

Little boy in Aleppo a vivid reminder of war’s horror

mrmoth | White Fragility

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This was the last song that I demoed for the PPB. It was around the time that Ferguson and Baltimore were exploding. We were looking for a tune that we could pour into everything that we were feeling about the situation. That said, it wasn’t a good fit for the band. In the end, Tim and I agreed it was mrmoth song and not really a PPB tune. So it got filed away and then, obviously, everything changed quite a bit. Flash forward a year, and the same problems are still with us and I was back to feeling the same frustration. Posting and tweeting what I felt about it didn’t really feel like enough. So I returned to the song as a meditation on the subject. The lyrics are the product of a couple years of thinking so hard about it.

These lyrics aren’t typical for me with mrmoth. I normally don’t do politics as subject matter with this project. That said, maybe that’s one of the reasons why I haven’t made many mrmoth tracks lately. I wasn’t interested in profiting by the song/subject matter, so anything anyone wants to pay for it will go to the national ACLU organization.