the wretched and the damned


An Epistle to the Wretched and the Damned





Dear Citizens,



In the Age of Trump (2018), under the rule of fiction, we have license to commit heresy and treason and other acts of uncertainty with impunity. A fiction can be censored, but it can't be forced to testify against itself.  It is protected by a theory of justice.  We have excellent warrants in the context of imagination to annoy one another with sense and nonsense.  Consider that 21st century heretics are rarely burned at the stake , no matter how many witch hunts are conducted; that the Trump administration, unable to come up with proof positive, will not demand that Russia extradite Edward Snowden; that many of our most brilliant scientists use the principle of uncertainty to make noteworthy discoveries. In the realm of imagination, we are blessed.



When we set imagination aside to dwell in the territory of Realpolitik, we must admit that we are wretched in the sense that David Walker used that word in Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World  (1829) and damned as were the people Frantz Fanon wrote about in Les damnés de la terre (1961). To ignore how swiftly our sense of being in this world is affected by national and international (transnational) politics would be stupid and tragic.  Our best option is to focus our energies on local politics and civic duty. The most appropriate sites for productive revolution are our homes, our neighborhoods, and our towns or cities. Let us be intelligent as we engage the necessity of local politics.



Productive revolution in New Orleans, for example, is not a matter of romance, televised spectacle, and commercial celebration.  It is a matter of research, fact-checking, and relentless inquiry about what at any moment is true or not true in the Crescent City.  It is hard work and public conversations wherein genteel discourse may not always prevail.  The amount of repressed,  pent-up anger and raw trauma in the three hundred years of this city's history is difficult, if not impossible, to transcend.  We must find strength to deal with the obscenity of a truth, to accept that problem-solving is an eternal project.  Yes, we should not reject the possibility that faith and prayer are helpful, but we must also admit that faith has never repaired a broken sewer-line and prayer has not eradicated violence, crime, and blatant racism, nor has it precluded the widening gap between poverty and wealth (between privilege and cycles of disadvantage) that is the hallmark of post-Katrina New Orleans .  Dedicated action in local politics is as necessary as breathing.  Spread the word.



In the Age of Trump, we shall have productive revolution and the slow growth of equity in our city or the benign genocide of the least empowered among us.  We are existentially condemned to make a choice.









Jerry W. Ward, Jr.                            October 7, 2018






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