jpmwritesPulling Out of Georgia, Shirley will Understand.
Updated: Apr 18, 2021
MLB baseball pulled outta Georgia for the All Star Game.
That’s a clever way to borrow the national voice of baseball
(And parts of Canada)
And stick it into State Politics.
Each game generates revenue.
For the state and for people.
State provides services like education,
After school programs
Stuff like that.
MLB takes that money away from the state.
Sovereign Nations pinching dictators aside,
Economic embargoes are best left
to the Individual Consumer
(Buy MLB stuff or don't).
And not to be wielded against
We the People
Of any one U.S. State.
Be better off giving more money
To At Risk Schools in the state.
Or Voter Education in the state.
Do that.
But don’t just take away from those who need you most.
Provide education and opportunity.
We already know who needs it the most:
The kids who live there on the map...
and are online learning
for the past year.
__________
I think of Liz.
She was into this All Star game for a 100 bucks.
She’s any parking attendant outside the stadium.
You can bet she’s a mother
And probably single.
Making ten bucks an hour under the hat,
She sells side-hustle bottled water.
After a 10 hour shift
She and the kids will be stoked to eat a bucket of KFC
Or pizzas and cheese fries, two cheese fries!
Then we’ll be living.
She’s black white or brown
Her kids go to urban schools.
They see fights almost every day.
They are prone to violence, asthma, diabetes
Obesity and incarceration.
Their greatest financial success
Is 5-6 grand at tax time.
She’s losing a 100 dollars on what’s supposed to be game night.
Commissioner of MLB and all those players
And state senators and congress people.
Their dinner plans didn’t change much.
Will Smith and the Movie Emancipation pulled outta Georgia.
Just ask Shirley down at the Motel 8.
She thought she’d be cleaning rooms
Until she dies.
She moves slower since her hip went,
then she lost that toe to diabetes.
She gets along alright though.
Marta’s her helper,
they split what tiny tips come from mostly empty rooms.
Marta’s lean and Puerto Rican and fast and happy.
She’s got two kids in their teens
And a man on the road.
And that’s the way she likes it.
She’s always dancing.
Shirley can’t understand why.
They both figured the rooms
would be full of movie people by spring.
(They could sell coffee and empanadas.)
And after that Will Smith will put this town on the map.
Plaques, tours …
A continual run of the movie on Saturdays.
For tourists.
Donnie down at the gas station’s already bootleggin’
Fake T shirts.
That’s what they’re talking about at the diner anyways...
__________
Amber’s a waitress at the Dusty Diner.
She’s 17 or 18,
black white or brown with a two year old son.
She’s painfully thin and hyper
She was a heck of a softball player.
Now she’s got acne and an Oxy problem.
She lives in the trailer
behind her parents’ house with her boyfriend
who ain’t in jail or lost to addictions.
He’s busting his ass at road labor and landscaping.
She’s gonna work doubles for 6-8 months
When these movie types fill up the diner.
They figure they’ll have enough money to buy that shitty house
With the rotting roof on slanted ground.
Fix it up. That’s the dream.
When that movie money comes round.
___________
That’s what Marty the owner of the Motel 8 thought too.
He figured he was finally gonna make a buck.
He’d refinanced the place half a dozen times.
Covid put him under water though.
Now hopes of movie money are gone.
And what tourists there were
Are gone outta Georgia
And not coming back.
He didn’t even vote for none a’ those thieving sons a’ bitches in the capital.
He was thinking about laundering drug money or torching the place.
He shit-canned Shirley instead.
She’ll understand.
The most At-Risk Kids are Identified.
You wanna make a statement?
A difference?
Don’t pull out.
Lean in.
For more on Georgia Education:
The Georgia Budget and Policy Institute.
Free Primary Source Documents Available on the World Wide Web:
"The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas, An American Slave."
An Autobiography.
Many Thanks to University North Carolina at Chapel Hill
and the Documenting the American South, Beginnings to 1920.
All of MLK's Writing. All of it. Free.
There's 1962 Letter to Eleanor Roosevelt
where King writes:
Maya Angelou of my New York Office will be in touch...