A Speech and a Documentary And All Those Thoughts Come Rushing Back

Plotnik was reading this morning about Israeli Prime Minister Netenhayu's latest speech, in advance of upcoming talks with Barack Obama. The speech could have been entitled "Palestine Statehood: Oh, Please!"

It reminded Plottie of the gig he did with his Israeli friend Yos two years ago in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. The gig was OK, but getting to Steamboat and back from Denver meant sitting in the car for hour after hour listening to Yos talk about Palestinians like Bull Conner talked about Negroes in 1961.

"They don't work, they smell, all they want to do is go into our cities, rape our women and then run back to their villages where they are safe because nobody will do anything about it."

"They live in an ancient world. They don't want to be like us. They don't care about their life, all they want is to murder us and then go to heaven and get their 72 virgins."

"Their villages aren't fit for pigs. They don't need a homeland. They already have one: Jordan."

Plot hasn't worked with Yos since, by the way. The older Plottie gets, the less able he is to listen to that kind of ignorant, racist dribble.

Then Plot and Duck watched The Freedom Rider movie last night on PBS. This time the bull was served up with a Southern accent, but it smelled the same. "Our nigras is happy. The nigras know the best friend a Southern black man has is a Southern white man."



The question that was haunting Plotnik after the show was over, is a simple one: Where was he?

The freedom rides took place in the early '60s. Plotnik was in High School by then. But he swears to you he never heard a word about them. Why not? The issue was not discussed in his home, none of his friends knew anything about it, there was no mention in school.

What Plotnik knew about black people was that they lived on the other side of town and you didn't want to have to go down there because they would beat you up.

Why? That, nobody mentioned. But it was a certainty that you didn't want to mess with South Central, and you definitely didn't want to go to East LA and f___ with the Mexicans.

Plotnik left LA and went off to college. He remembers vividly that the bus to Berkeley passed down College Avenue and there was a demonstration going on in a market, sponsored by CORE, the same people who had developed the Freedom Rides. Plotnik had never heard of CORE, nor seen a demonstration of any kind. People would go into the market, fill up their shopping baskets and then walk out of the store, leaving the store clerks to put the food back on the shelves. Why were they doing this? Nobody on the bus knew. Somebody said it was because the market had never hired any black workers, but it just didn't make any sense. This was in 1963.

A few years later the world had changed. War will do that. Plotnik was on the streets in Oakland, protesting the army troop trains who would come through Oakland filled with young men on their way, eventually, to Vietnam. The idea was to lie down on the tracks so the trains couldn't pass, but the Oakland police were not particularly cuddly over this issue. They maced and tear gassed everybody.



Everyone was running in all directions. Plot remembers seeing a group of High School kids there. Obviously, they went to a different High School than he had, and learned a couple very valuable lessons that morning: mace really stings your eyes and tear gas makes you gag. And do not mess with the Oakland PD.

All these thoughts and memories -- one speech by a blowhard Israeli politician and one documentary about Alabama and Mississippi fifty years ago brings it all back.