ABOLISH ICE

I live in Appalachia. Just down the dirt road, there’s a sight impossible to miss. Knotted down to the entrails of the earth, there’s a sick soaked spot that was a mountain. We blew mountains up for coal, and we will do it again. PBS was on it. Yet everyone who came to the party was late to arrive at all. This is what the NYT does. It arrives at the party late if at all. It’s in your face but you fail to get it. The mountain has crumbled all around you. Post hurricane. Rubble. No one would help us. The media feasted at the site of utter devastation. PBS, too. But the real action was – and is – on le tube. We reported on ourselves. No media would publish photos of dead people in trees. The media is an empty shell. That is what you thought of us. We exist to serve you. We are not unlike the rural people because we are them. I did not know that a category five was on the way. You could not call 911 (or anything) and all roads were impassible.

I can’t tune into Public Media on a good day. Entire families hiding in the woods. No NPR there. Our crimes here are all the same crimes, and we are guilty as charged with a felonious rage of poverty, enabling those judgements that spit down on us, and le tube does not do that. It’s us spitting at us. Rabbit hole. To spite you. We are lost again. We blame you. There is no person and no paradigm and no program that can tell you to just hang hard to the tree in the wind. Your next story has already happened. Public Media is lost, too.