Mt. Pleasant, SC, USA- Representatives in the SC Legislature have introduced four bills to gut public education here, with the hope of eliminating “social and emotional education.” They hope to empower individual parents to excise whatever they object to out of the State’s highly regulated school curriculum, on a student by student basis in real time.
The last time I went to the Statehouse in Columbia, I left my beloved Julia alone at home during her last full day on Earth. I chased a Governor who couldn’t be bothered to have anyone available to receive a simple, harmless package of paper documents about transit and complete streets. In that package was a large picture of our delegation to a lobby day a year and a half before to work for complete streets. Janet, who died without a decent sidewalk linking her section 8 apartment in Sangaree to the world, was in that picture with Julia. That picture is below.
When I got home after a hot, frustrating day, Julia was weary and sick in her chair. We held hands for an hour and napped. She had become a shadow of the loving, brilliant women who could sight read Motzart string quartets and casually applied an IQ of 154. When we woke up, she couldn’t get up. She never got up again. After she fell, we argued and struggled. The ambulance came to get her. They took her to a hospital I couldn’t follow her to due to covid and put her in the care of overworked strangers. We never spoke again. The last words she said to me were thank you for bringing her glasses. I forget to say “I love you.”
I reached Julia the following morning, after I begged for a ride from neighbors following a visit from the police. I can’t drive due to nearsightedness. That’s why I’m a public transit advocate. It was the wrong day to lose my phone. I was careless. I wasted precious time. When I got to the hospital, She was sedated. I spoke to her. They say she could hear me. On good days I believe it. In the dark hours of the night, I do not know.
I continue to work for a better SC, the most foolish thing a mortal can do. I know the condescending people voting on the things I care about lie to me and others. I know they do not care. I know that my life, the lives of my friends, Janet’s life and Julia’s life, are worthless to them. They care only to fill their pockets with money and their bodies with intoxicants.
Like Julia and Janet, they are going to die. They are anxious. The fear the Devil and the perfect judgement which awaits them. They have good cause to be afraid.
I know there are still good people left in Government here. I cherish them. I hope they’re encouraged by my work. A week at the statehouse where the ruling party pretends you’re not there must be heart breaking.
Only a lifetime of rigid conditioning and discipline in the law allows me to continue to function. I understand that violence is not an option for me. I must work the miserable, corrupt, and incompetent system I have inherited and helped perpetuate. I will not live long enough to change it. I have friends with me in this fight, often fragile people who suffer more than I. Nothing which has happened to me is as horrific at the lives they’ve been given in SC. I have every confidence that I shall be able to hold myself together and play by the rules for the remainder of my life.
I don’t blame those in power for watching me. I could misjudge my personal discipline. I will be trouble. I grew up in an America of hope. Apollo, the Great Society, Woodstock all in one golden summer, 1969. The same Summer people were fighting for equal rights in the Hospital Strike I barely remember. I was 9.
I remember functional, rewarding communities like Hobcaw where we built our own docks at the Yacht Club and Northbridge where we cleaned and painted the community pool. I remember a kind, decent America struggling to be better. I have watched it slip away for 45 years. The hopeful events of the Bicentennial look like comedy today.
I have had my therapy, but I don’t take the pills which would quiet my conscience. I remain here in part because at the age of 17, James B. Edwards, Governor of the State of SC asked me to stay. It was the mistake of my life, but it’s too late to change. I have obligations to my son, my inlaws, my clients and the thousands of people I foolishly agreed to persuade to vote to fund a functional rapid transit system. I promised to see that through. They trusted me. There may never be a real transit system, but my promise to do whatever was possible to be sure there would be will be kept.
When I see members of the Legislature prattling on about ideas, they don’t understand such as prohibiting emotional and social education, I can harness my disgust. I know that younger, smarter people will read such stupidity on Facebook and Tic Toc and plan their escape. I have accepted the reality that the forces of resistance here will grow older, wearier, and weaker in the years ahead. That does not mean we will lose every fight. Every stone thrown finds a target when you are surrounded. Risks become acceptable when you have little left to lose.
When the rednecks, bubbas and good ole boys in power in SC discover they have no one left who can be trusted to wash their dishes and no one smart and healthy enough to supervise it, I hope to be present to magnify their disappointment. I look forward to those lonely public comment periods in the years ahead where they attempt to ignore me because they’re hoping for a text from their grandchildren about summer vacation. These would be texts hoped for because the vital and growing part of their families have abandoned them for better places with better opportunities and better schools. Our degenerate rulers will go home after the polite but focuses 2 minute lashings I hope to deliver. They will look at the empty chairs and wonder what their children will do with the furniture and their old family home following the funerals where their offspring will complain about the hopeless traffic congestion around the airport because they believed blocking transit and affordable housing would preserve their power.
It’s already happening. I knew Charleston’s old ruling class. I’ve watched their homes being renovated into trophy housing for multimillionaires who come down for Spoleto and the Holidays. The current cadre is a major step down in quality. The generation ahead of mine could beat them. However, now, on both sides, It’s now a slow drift to the bottom. TC Drayton could have powered up the Afro American political machine on the East Side of Charleston she had 40 years ago and clean out city hall in one election. Now her neighborhoods are full of housing being renovated for rich people who want something old but can’t afford South of Broad or Calhoun.
The old guard is already cooperating in turning over control of the community to the rich multimillionaire recently arrived in hopes of retaining their appearance of relevance. People worth 100 million dollars really don’t want to sit though City Council meetings. Hearing zoming applications would bore them. They want to run the community by proxy.
SC has a fertile land and a forgiving climate. We were part of a nation which had a stable, prosperous democracy capable of independence in energy, manufacturing and agriculture. We were once the greatest nation the world had ever seen. I remember the confident, bipartisan unembarrassed march towards a better SC we tried here in the 1970s.
I’ve studied enough Emerson, Marx, Russel, Aristotle, Shakespeare, Ruskin and Twain to know how we got here. The warnings of the devastating flaws in the American and Southern character were always there. De Tocqueville covers them. Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison and Adams addressed them. Before he lost his mind about slavery, John C. Calhoun explained them. Americans have always believe they could hitch up the wagon, head West and escape the consequences of history. SC and America won’t.
So, legislators willing to pander to every paranoid right-wing delusion, order more Zoloft. It’s going to be a rough ride down.