Juneteenth

Southern trees have a strange fruit

Blood at the leaves and blood at the root

Black bodies twistin in the summer breeze

Strange fruit hangin from the poplar trees.

The immortal lines of the first verse of the Billie Holliday classic as relevant today sadly as back in 1958. The style of lynching may have evolved but the result is depressingly similar. Meanwhile the pres schedules a campaign rally for Tulsa Oklahoma a city where on the 19th of June 1921 hundreds of blacks were slaughtered in a racist atrocity for the crime of being a resident of an upwardly mobile local black community. This was something the racists could not stomach. The date is now a landmark in black folklore celebrated as the date of black emancipation from slavery and given its own name of ‘Juneteenth’. That the tramp in the White House would campaign in corona compromised okie on this date is in itself an atrocity and eventually even he had to reschedule. In a little known incident which occurred on the 13th of may 1985 Philadelphia police dropped a bomb from a helicopter on to a house occupied by a group of anti racist and environmental campaigners. This was preceded by a grenade and tear gas attack at road level and the firing of ten thousand rounds of ammo. When the lads were finished eleven adults and five children lay dead . Sixty other homes in the black neighborhood were gutted and hundreds left homeless. It goes without saying that nobody has ever served a day in prison for this atrocity. Any reasonable person would say that the social contract America has with its police is a farce. Even the most highly trained and capable police force would struggle to impose law and order on a citizenry that is itself armed to the teeth. An under-trained and overarmed force is an unexploded bomb. Anyway with any luck everything will change in November. If it doesn’t were all bollixed. Meanwhile let’s hope the okies from Muskogee survive tomorrows rally on Tulsa . Over to you merle haggard….

We don’t grow marijuana in Muskogee

We don’t take no trips on lsd

We don’t burn no placards down on main street

We like livin life and bein free

I’m proud to be an okie from….