if you don’t see

I’m well satisfied with the opening paragraph of my review of tonight’s American Horror Story: Roanoke.

text: “For the entire run of American Horror Story: Roanoke, I’ve pointed out its fictionalized images of real horrors visited upon black Americans, some for centuries and some more recent. And for the entire run of the installment, some readers have told me I’m imagining a significance that isn’t present in the show. In ‘Chapter 9,’ where a police officer asks a screaming black woman if she’s survived ‘a lynch mob,’ and where much of the footage comes from police body cams, if you don’t see that underlying theme, it’s because you’re determined not to see it.”

I’ll be donating my payment for tonight’s review to The ACLU, because we woke up to a true American nightmare, and I’ll do what I can to make it easier and make it end.

advice

me: I’ve dealt w/[X] for a decade+

dudes: I never encountered it before this instant, but have you tried [Y]?

NAW I NEVER THOUGHT OF THAT

taking action

Thanks to Ijeoma Oluo — who shouldn’t have had to be tweeting out step-by-step instructions through her grief and fear, but who did — yesterday I took more action toward police accountability in my community than ever before.

Thanks to Ijeoma Oluo (writer, editor of The Establishment, pitch-educator, and solid-gold Twitter star), yesterday I searched for information about police accountability and citizen oversight in my city.

4) if you do not know this you can google your city with police accountability/review procedures

— Ijeoma Oluo (@IjeomaOluo) July 7, 2016

Thanks to Ijeoma Oluo, when I found no satisfactory answers, I followed her suggestions (click through to read the whole thread; it’s very instructive) to craft a letter to my mayor and city council members asking for more information and emphasizing the importance — to voters and to community safety — of transparency and communication. If you do the same, maybe my letter will serve as a useful template:

As a concerned resident and voter in ______ , I’m wondering what measures are in place to ensure police accountability for our community’s safety.Does the ______ Police Department have any provisions for citizen oversight? Do they call in a citizen panel to review allegations of misconduct or police shootings? What is the threshold for indicting an officer for misconduct, or otherwise instigating an investigation into a questionable arrest or encounter?

How are indictments and other questionable encounters investigated? How is evidence of officers’ behavior obtained? Do our police wear body cameras? If so, how many of them and how routinely? How often is the footage reviewed and how is it archived? Is there a waiting period, as in the Alton Sterling shooting in Baton Rouge, before officers who shoot civilians are required to be questioned?

Police accountability is good for civilians and for police. It’s good for justice, and what’s good for justice is good for our community and our country. No elected official is doing their job unless they’re fighting for accountability. Please tell me you are.

Their responses pointed me toward our local police department’s citizen review subcommittee, and the eligibility requirements are troubling: Anyone who has ever been arrested or filed a complaint against a member of the police department or who has an immediate family member who has may be summarily disqualified. Intentionally or otherwise, that restriction ensures that those most vulnerable to the system’s ills have no official voice in challenging that system.

Eventually, one of my city council members confirmed that the citizen review subcommittee’s monthly meetings are open to the public. Thanks to Ijeoma Oluo, who made every step of this process so easy, I have now set up a public Facebook event publicizing the time and place of these meetings in our city, and several people have expressed interest, decided to attend, and invited friends.

Thanks to Ijeoma Oluo, yesterday I wrote my representatives in local government, learned about a committee designed to increase transparency, told others about it, and made plans to attend. Thanks to Ijeoma Oluo, I know that even the committee designed to increase civilian oversight is (accidentally or otherwise) skewed to exclude those who most need its protection. Thanks to Ijeoma Oluo, I see how privilege shapes the system even at the local level, and I see a space where maybe, just maybe, I can use the privilege this system allots to me to amplify the voices and concerns of those it excludes.

That was yesterday. Today, I went to Ijeoma Oluo’s Patreon and contributed — modestly, but what I can afford. She made it possible for me to make a difference, however small it may be, and that is invaluable.

[updated July 9th, 2016: I’m also making it clear on all my local postings that I have no affiliation with the police or political system or ownership over this issue. Because Facebook’s interface automatically assigns a page’s creator as its “host,” even for a public event, I’ve pinned a post clarifying that I have no official standing, that I’m just a concerned resident, and that I’d be glad to transfer that “host” position to a community organizer or activist better suited to lead.

 

too far enough

Aaaaaaand here’s the piece I was ranting about yesterday, with that glorious title. Every day, I’m proud and grateful to be work with these whip-smart writers who demand a better world.

day-one plan

The day after police killed Alton Sterling, Hillary Clinton’s Twitter stream looked like this:

Eventually, her social-media team issued one platitude acknowledging Sterling’s killing at police hands. After Philandro Castile’s killing by the police, she doubled down on sympathetic words. But leaders do more than speak in platitudes; they make plans. And they fight for them.

Hillary Clinton has a plan for criminal justice reform. Why isn’t she shouting it from the rooftops? Why is she offering empty words of condolence and talking about the continuing police killings as if they’re a predestined (and therefore unavoidable) “tragedy”?

Leaders don’t just offer thoughts and prayers. Leaders lead. Tell Hillary Clinton that she needs to speak up, speak out, and speak LOUDLY about a day-one plan to curb police violence, ensure civilian oversight, and stop this ongoing assault on black people in the United States.

Lady Dynamite solves racism! Yay!

“White Trash,” the third episode of Lady Dynamite, shows the many ways well-intentioned people do harm. Grappling consciously with her own unconscious racism, Maria manages to perpetuate racism instead, in an episode as layered and complex as Mira Sorvino’s multi-level guest appearance. Read my full review of “White Trash” at The A.V. Club.

follow

me: Hey, honey, guess who follows me on Twitter?

Dennis: Who?

me: Taye Diggs!

Dennis: Really?

me: Verified!

Dennis: Huh. Oh, yeah, look that up — I think there’s a story about how he follows thousands of random people.

me: … WHY WOULD YOU TAKE THIS AWAY FROM ME?

wink

True Detective, S3 (Rachel McAdams, Sabrina Grdevich, Slings & Arrows, Acorn Media)

I’m now working on a female-centered version of True Detective, which I will produce under the name Chick Titzolotto.

Just as the first season was preoccupied with cisgender white men’s desires and the second is preoccupied with their potency, the third season will center around cisgender white women’s bodies, featuring pervasive and powerful vaginal imagery; unsurprisingly, it will take place in the vast subterranean subway system of a major metropolitan center.

The central mystery of Chick Titzolotto’s True Detective S3: Do women exist when men aren’t looking, or do we wink out like a fridge light when you close the door?

[SCENE: A DARK BEDROOM. FEMALE LEAD lies in bed, staring moodily out a window at a light in the distance. Her male companion, whose name is not important, lies propped up on his elbow next to her, listening in attentive silence. She does not look at him.]

FEMALE LEAD: It’s all so uncertain. It’s like particle physics, or like a refrigerator light. It’s all so uncertain. It’s all so uncertain. It’s all so uncertain. Am I a particle or a wave? Do you know where I am, or what, or when? If you stop looking, do I still light up? Or do I just… wink out, like the light in the fridge?

[The distant light goes out. FEMALE LEAD exhales gustily, closes eyes. AND SCENE]

Thanks in advance for the Emmys.

notes: You can read my episodic reviews of the end of True Detective‘s season two at The A.V. Club.

Dennis Perkins gets a contributing creator credit on this project, but only under the stipulation that he’s credited as Penis Derkins.

vortex

Soooo, we’re just straight-up living in Night Vale, right?

frontiers

At The A.V. Club, I examine how Mad Men uses images of cowboys and astronauts as symbols of freedom — and just as often, as avenues of imagined escape:

These superficially discordant visions of cowboy and astronaut are fundamentally similar: exploring a frontier, expanding the mapped world, and returning home to tell the tale. Astronauts orbit and return to Earth. Cowboys ride the range and bring the livestock home. These connotations of repetition and return undermine the frontier’s twin promises of opportunity and escape.

That contrast is at the heart of Mad Men, which asks whether people are capable of change—and whether they want to be. Amid the show’s flamboyant parade of changing styles and social mores and its characters’ shifting families and career trajectories, it’s easy to ignore how often they lapse into repeating old patterns and recreating the relationships they learned in childhood, no one more than Don Draper.