“A Tennessee state representative is backpedaling after he suggested adding hanging by tree as a method of execution during a discussion this week in Nashville over a bill concerning capital punishment. Rep. Paul Sherrell, R-Sparta, made the suggestion during the criminal justice committee meeting Tuesday while lawmakers discussed HB1245 and an amendment to the bill that would allow for death by firing squad as an execution method in Tennessee.”
The Tennessean
Every single day I sit at this computer and think of wise words to share with the world. I have only horror to share with you.
This actually happened, and people are completely fucking passive about it. I mean people are passive about a lot of things. And this isn’t an “it can happen here,” because obviously if it can happen there it can happen anywhere, how much more violence do we need to prove that?
I’m frustrated, and angry, because I feel powerless, which tells me that I have no inkling of how my American family and friends feel.
Before the pandemic, I could never have imagined that we’d fall so far, but now all bets are off. I’m not surprised that this white man said the quiet part out loud and I suspect many of my Black colleagues from Writers and Editors of Color agree with me. We aren’t surprised, but we should be damned well angry.
In the 1940s people didn’t think the nazis were a big deal at first, and before you know it they took over and they were putting people in gas chambers, and now it’s happening here and we’re so traumatized and tired that we aren’t fighting back, and yes my friends, that’s precisely how they get you.
This goes beyond voting for the right people, it means understanding how much our vote matters. Years ago – a decade or more really – there was a real push to Rock The Vote. As I am writing about this CNN is reporting that a man has been accused of threatening to kill Jewish elected officials in MI.
This isn’t a surprise, because of course they are coming for the Jewish people, and the Black people, the trans people, the disabled, the infirm, and the infants. They don’t give a fuck about our safety, our protection, or our love. I don’t know how many more reminders we need to tell us that our lives are in danger.
If we don’t start fighting back now, when will we? The constant racism and the reminders of the days of slavery are never going to end until we put an end to them, unfortunately, like just too many of you, I don’t know what the solution is, but I know it’s not to vote more white supremacists into power. Apologies won’t work this time, I want real considerable amounts of justice.
Anything short of that is just paying lip service without offering systemic change.
Sending all my love,
Devon J Hall
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Loud Mouth Brown Girl 
That’s so terrible. I am so horrified but like you say, a part of me is not suprised.
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You aren’t wrong. I’m not surprised either, but being unsurprised doesn’t mean that we’re prepared.
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Yes. They are very different things, the lack of surprise and the lack of preparedness. And like you say, the two together, do not go well. I don’t know what the answer is. People are always ‘raising awareness’ and that’s fine but in this day and age there is no reason or excuse to be ignorant. There is enough information around for people to be well informed. I think what matters is what they chose to do with that knowledge , how they chose to react. I don’t know if people feel helpless, that they have no power to effect change? Or that there are enough stresses going on in their own worlds (caused by these bigger , structural and institutional things actually ) that they don’t have the energy to deal with more of the bile spewing forth from every corner of our existences. I just don’t know.
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You aren’t wrong.
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