Some thoughts, trans-Atlantic, on the arrest of Dr. Henry Louis Gates

Though this episode is to be rightly viewed largely through the prism of race (through the racialized life experiences and scripts borne by the two immediate actors and all of us who witness it in its unfolding as a public, discursive event), there is a dimension that I wonder may be left submerged, even more untouchable. It is the question of the relationship between citizen and armed authority in the U.S., after a prolonged period of submitting, willingly or otherwise, to the national security state and the fear that is its lifeblood. In early responses to the arrest of Dr. Gates, even those sympathetic to his perception of racial profiling noted his mistake in not showing deference to the police officer, in not quietly and completely submitting to armed authority even as it was already established that no laws had been broken. Of course, we won’t know precisely who said what to whom and who overreacted and “played the race card” first and last, but I would guess that it was not only race that impeded an actual functional dialogue between Dr. Gates and Sgt. Crowley. As I read and heard about this incident fresh off the plane from Portugal, I was immediately reminded of some recent encounters with police officers that serve for me as comparison and contrast. Ero told me of a recent trip to the beach in Connecticut with a couple of friends while I was away. After the two-hour drive, they arrived at the parking lot entrance which was cordoned off and stood guard over by a group of police officers. As she approached and rolled down the window, in the hopes of getting a suggestion for where she might park, the police proceeded to aggressively and repeatedly shout at her, “FULL CAPACITY, FULL CAPACITY.” Obviously, dialogue was not an option. This was all they were willing to say, or rather, shout at her. Last year, returning from a conference in Montreal, I had to catch a very early flight, and found myself in the line for U.S. Immigration in the airport well before dawn. Admittedly less than adequately caffeinated and a little slower than usual, I didn’t immediately notice that a window had opened, obscured as it was behind another immigration officer’s post. I can’t say for how many seconds or in what manner the officer tried to get my attention, but what did work was when he very angrily shouted, “HEY! GET OVER HERE!” Though I knew I had done nothing wrong and was perfectly in my legal rights to cross this border, I could not protest the officer’s inappropriate, aggressive, and authoritarian behavior out of an anxiety that he might declare me uncooperative or disorderly. These are, we might say, minor, inconsequential events, and they certainly don’t even nearly rise to the level of authoritarian policing that haunts your average man of color. But I think they speak to a gulf that has grown between citizens/civilians and representatives of armed authority, who, while deserving of our respect, increasingly cannot seem to be expected to return that respect, to be expected to be willing or able to engage in a dialogue. Certainly, there are plenty of law enforcement officials who are respectful and do engage in dialogue with the civilians they encounter through their professional activities, but is this something that we truly expect of them now, or do we simply breathe a sigh of relief when this is what we encounter, expecting the worst? By contrast, I recall a scene in Lisbon. On the centrally located Camões square, normally bare cobble-stones surrounding an imposing statue of the 16th-century poet of the discoveries, workers were laying down sod and setting upon it saplings, creating a lushly novel park-like setting. There were many families and groups of young people taking advantage to lay about the unexpected grass. Near the center of the square, a small group of about 10 anarchist activists had strung up two banners between some saplings. The banners denounced capitalist exploitation of the environment and announced solidarity with Indigenous communities in the Peruvian Amazon who have recently been battling the government over the proposed expansion of oil and mineral exploration. There seemed initially a reasonable coherence to the protest and the laying of the sod, but after a few minutes a group of police officers approached the group of protestors, obviously charged with the removal of the banners (it turns out the sod was part of a marketing campaign for something, and the banner was upsetting the photo-ops). There were at least half a dozen officers, and they could have quite easily just taken the banner down unilaterally. What I witnessed, though, was, from my recent experience in the U.S., quite extraordinary. The group of officers good naturedly stood with the protestors and conversed, for a good twenty to thirty minutes. Moreover, the police officers were for long stretches silent, but obviously intently listening to what the protestors were saying to them, hearing them out, in effect. It was a true dialogue, at the end of which, the protestors removed the banners themselves. Why is it that I cannot imagine this scenario here in the U.S.? I recall that the memory of April 1974, when the Portuguese overthrew a nearly 50-year fascist dictatorship, still weighs heavily there, and perhaps still informs expectations, among civilians and police, regarding the possibility of dialogue with authority rather that absolute, unquestioning submission to it.

stumbling upon poetry in Lisbon

O Valor do Vento

Está hoje um dia de vento
O vento tem entrado nos meus versos de todas as maneiras e
Só entram nos meus versos as coisas de que gosto

O vento das árvores o ventos dos cabelos
O vento do inverno o vento do verão
O vento é o melhor veículo que conheço
Só ele traz o perfume das flores só ele traz
A música que jaz à beira-mar em Agosto

Mas só hoje soube o verdadeiro valor do vento
O vento atualmente vale oitenta escudos

Partiu-se o vidro grande da janela do meu quarto


The Value of the Wind

Today is a windy day
The wind has entered into my verses completely and
Only things that I like come into my verses

The wind through the trees the wind through locks of hair
Winter wind summer wind
The wind is the best vehicle I know of
Only it carries the perfume of flowers only it brings
The music that hangs on the water’s edge in August

But not until today did I learn the true value of the wind
Wind at the moment is worth eighty dollars

The large pane of glass of my bedroom window has shattered

-- Ruy Belo (1933-1977)

Meus vizinhos aqui em Lisboa (os outros ainda nao conheci) -- My Lisbon neighbors (the others I still haven't met)

Pormenores II -- Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga

Pomba Espírito Santo

Pormenores I -- Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga

Pés de apóstolo

Feline inspiration

okay -- I'm wary of the cat-people moniker and try to moderate urges to proclaim the extraordinary specialness of my cat, but hey, Salmon's quirky sleeping habit has made him modestly famous in certain Brazilian poetry circles. That's worth the risk of some crowing, in my estimation.

Here's the link to the poem and the inpirational image:

http://vidamiuda.blogspot.com/2009/06/nirvana-iv-felino_20.html

And here's a quick translation:

Nirvana IV (feline)

Distant from the multitude
of cells that are him,
from desires that inhabit him,
from people that think
they know more than his
feral eyes, from galaxies
that make of him less
than the infinitesimal of dust,
from light-years that will come
and that have gone in the duration
of divinities and theories
that pass for truths,
distant
from the photo that caught him
and from this poem, crooked
and imprecise, he sleeps
(in a bowl)
the precise and simple sleep
of the continuous fury of a body
(by chance) feline.

Last Moments of a pre-post-Bush world

Here we go. The cloud lifting. Hard to say what we'll now see as possible....