Commencing Now!

Five years ago, some of us looked daily at the Covid numbers, reliably and accurately reported by Orange County health officials. We who live in the reality-based world confirmed the severity of the pandemic, and responded toward protecting ourselves, our community, all the while exercising what Noam Chomsky calls “intellectual self-defense” against the reactionary and absurd counter-narrative which, alas, got us Q-Anon, Trump, anti-vaxxers, RFK, fraud by a now convicted (!) OC Supervisor, dumb-dumb influencers, and the simultaneous, coordinated and opportunistic assaults on science, the US Constitution, public health, public education, public libraries, organized labor, historically marginalized people, and LGBTQ+ communities.  Don’t get me started! Oops, too late.

Just now one can easily quantify the current crisis daily thanks to the work of, among other organizations, the Orange County Rapid Response Network (OCRRN), communicated in both English and Spanish, and available on Instagram and on its website. That organization, whose program coordinator Sandra De Anda is a contributor to this and past issues of Citric Acid, investigates, tracks, and confirms ICE activity --- by which we mean kidnapping and arrests, harassment and intimidation of our friends, students, and neighbors --- daily, even hourly. Activist and advocate De Anda and her organization have been celebrated in the Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker and at the excellent and award-winning online Voice of OC.

OCRRN works with large network of human rights and legal defense organizations including MigraWatch, through which one can follow the assault and victimization of targeted workers, families, students, parents, and children in real time toward being aware and, yes, offering aid and assistance.

Here's a screen shot from a recent Instagram feed/post from MigraWatch.

Real time is a funny phrase. Now is a relatively useful or useless assessment of our moment. Long forgotten is the twenty-year “forever war” and January 6 Capitol attack, and Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally so that then, now, forever, and real are perhaps nearly useless descriptors. Or maybe helpful provocations.

I have no idea what to make of today’s boringly de rigueur celebration of Independence Day, with its flags, fireworks, online sales, and picnics. Hooray already! A duck could be somebody’s mother.

Meanwhile, the Fourth of July could actually be made into a meaningful day of resistance, appreciation, and solidarity. And, if you will, independence from authoritarianism, monarchy, and wannabe fascism. (Per the Declaration of Independence: “A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”) In that spirit, we at Citric Acid offer yet another opportunity to celebrate and confirm, defend and engage, with remembrances of beloved friends and activist mentors, meditations, and explications. But we lead the issue with public witness from activist-educators who sound the alarm and remind us of our power, which is of course meant to be exercised. The weekly Irvine City Hall rally, the commencement address, the end-of-year speech, the UCI commemoration of May Day (International Workers’ Day) all lately offered Orange County opportunities to take quite seriously, sincerely, German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller’s (1892–1984) cautionary observation, a lately much-Googled and recited prose poem. Just now, “they” are indeed coming for immigrants, anti-war activists, LGBTQ+ comrades, teachers, librarians, universities, socialists, scientists, Medicare, national parks, and history itself. In speeches, comix, poetry (by OC women!), art, theology, biography, and more, we speak out for others now and, of course, for ourselves.

(Actual customized/activist-curated Irvine trash/recycling bins outside the home of Marilyn and Angelo Vassos. Likely not HOA approved!)