Morning Open Thread is a daily, copyrighted post from a host of editors and guest writers. We support our community, invite and share ideas, and encourage thoughtful, respectful dialogue in an open forum.
I’ve come to think of this post as one where you come for the music and stay for the conversation—so feel free to drop a note. The diarist gets to sleep in if she so desires and can show up long after the post is published. So you know, it's a feature, not a bug.
Join us, please.
The Weight of Injustice
Americans have an odd, if not schizophrenic, relationship with violence. Riot is the language of the unheard—so it’s been said. Also, that violence is fear of others’ ideas and little faith in our own. Multiple studies have shown that nonviolent protests are more effective than violent ones. But if you want to learn about state-sanctioned violence, visit almost any jail or prison in the United States of America—it’s what they specialize in and have honed into a fine art of control. Same goes for many of our large, diverse inner cities.
Last night, there were major protests in Minneapolis and Louisville in reaction to the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. In his trademark gasoline-on-fire way, President Trump, in an early morning tweet, threatened to send troops to Minneapolis and start shooting looters; and seven people were shot during the protests in Louisville. Which, of course, only reminds us that violence begets violence. It can also create a tear in a facade of normalcy maintained by fear.
There will be no lecture on violence from me this morning, though, so you can rest easy and get down to the music. I just was thinking about the old joke about the three young men arrested for looting a business without first forming an equity firm. Humor really can be brutal in its own way and momentarily pull back the blindfold of Lady Justice, who (one should never forget) holds a sword in one hand.
I do hope everyone is safe this morning and that humankind’s singular ability to reason will somehow, inexplicably beat us into a state of listening to one another and force us to solve our problems with a look toward that mythical idea of justice.
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Friday’s Lagniappe
This week’s highlight from The Bitter Southerner is “On the Shoulders of Giants” by Amy C. Collins | Photographs by Abraham Rowe.
“Sixty years ago, small-town Alabama musicians, many of them sons and daughters of farmers and sharecroppers, came together in homegrown recording studios in Muscle Shoals, and proceeded to lodge their little town forever in the minds of music lovers. Today, a small Shoals record label, Single Lock, is changing minds about exactly what “Southern music” means — and collapsing the barriers between the hometown legends of old and the music of the young.”
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Grab your coffee or tea and join us, please.
What's on your mind this morning?