Police – THE QUALITY OF MERCY

2026-03-062026-03-15 by David Hughes

Ars Protestationis

Last month I spent two weeks in the Twin Cities, my annual sojourn to my wife Andrea Carney, who lives in Eagan, a suburb of Saint Paul. We didn’t visit memorials to the recently fallen, although we did drive past the Whipple Building where ICE jails abductees (on the way to celebrate our thirty-second wedding anniversary). Local network newscasts continue to cover roundups and reactions. We learned ICE was moving to the ’burbs, but we hadn’t seen that there. Nonetheless, we counseled our Filipina daughter-in-law to carry her passport.

I didn’t take in any live music while I was in Eagan, but I’ve been thinking it’s time to share a few songs sung in resistance to ICE as well as that exhibited in Gaza and the West Bank.

I just missed a January 30 appearance at Minneapolis’s historic club First Avenue by Tom Morello (ex Rage Against the Machine) and others. as a benefit for the families of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Morello was joined by Rise Against, Al Di Meola (!), Ike Reilly, and a (Very Special Guest), documented below. The “boo”s you’ll hear are an indication of the political persuasion of many in Morello’s audience.

While The Boss’s sentiment is pretty pedestrian, he does pay tribute to the fact that, following the earlier killings of Philando Castile and George Floyd, “a city aflame” in 2016 and 2020 now “fought fire and ice,” pun intended.

2026-02-252026-02-25 by Andrea Carney

Cleaning for Darlene

When I was 16, my family moved to Sylmar. Darlene, a neighbor, noticed my sister Elaine and me in our front yard. She walked down the street and asked, “Do you babysit?” I said yes. She had three girls.

I told another neighbor, Susie, about the babysitting job. Her sister Marian came out and said, “Don’t babysit her kids; she’s got a retarded child.” I said, “I don’t care. I’m up for challenges.” Darlene was desperate for help; she was a waitress. Overworked and underpaid. Neither Darlene nor her husband Hal accepted their youngest girl, Anna, nine months old and so she was neglected for some reason. They left her in bed with bottle propped up and let her poop her pants and spread it around. Anna had a habit of staring straight into your eyes, unnervingly.

2022-04-122025-08-23 by David Hughes

I’m Dreaming of a White Bicycle

While searching for half-remembered short films on the theme of public restrooms last month (see In the Can), I ran across a parody of “God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen” posted last fall as a commentary on the trans* bathroom con-troversy.

The performer, Christopher Trautman, explains:

This song was recorded in North Carolina. The only State in the United States that passed a law specifically directing that the restroom you use must be based on the junk you possess. It was later repealed after a national embarrassment campaign [led] by Comedy Central where they opened a food truck called Bone Brothers Barbecue in downtown Raleigh and discriminated against everybody who they determined to be gay… which was everybody.

That barbecue pi—er—bit, which aired on The Daily Show in 2016, was by Roy Wood Jr., assisted by Jordan Klepper. It’s hilarious and is, mm…, cued up below.

2022-03-222025-03-08 by David Hughes

In the Can

Public toilet, Yoyogi Fukamachi Small Park, Tokyo

My introduction to the public restroom would have been in kindergarten, 1960–61. There were issues.

2021-03-152025-08-02 by David Hughes

Missing/Inaction

It was awful. Dissatisfied with the HVAC system in our home I turned to NextDoor, the online neighborhood forum that can provide useful references. I somehow seem to have opted out of its daily or weekly digests but located my login only to be greeted with a missing person notice, a couple of blocks away.

2020-06-152025-08-03 by David Hughes

Another Monument Toppled: KKKpleton

After many years of resistance and organizing, the name of Andrea’s and my Denver neighborhood finally will be abandoned. “Stapleton” is a holdover from another era: Denver Municipal Airport, a consolidation of smaller fields, was championed by mayor Benjamin Stapleton in 1929, six years after he first was elected with the help of the Ku Klux Klan.

2020-06-032025-08-03 by David Hughes

“Out of the schools and into the streets”

On Sunday afternoon a comrade in the effort to change the name of our neighborhood posted the following regarding George Floyd and so many others:

For those of you with kids, I thought you might want to know about this peaceful protest happening at Central Park on June 6th 9:00am

Not knowing the neighbor who organized this protest, I thought the image that accompanied the announcement was a little tone deaf.

2018-01-042025-08-08 by David Hughes

1952: A Triad

1952 was a watershed year for the Mattachine. The organization had begun its engagement with the larger community by standing in solidarity with Mexican Americans who, like homosexuals, were targets of the Los Angeles Police Department. With the arrest of its cofounder Dale Jennings in March of that year, the Mattachine had a test case of its own to rally ’round, but in that effort the group turned inward rather than outward. I examine this dynamic in the first of three articles, “Harry Hay Meets His Match.” I also look toward the remarkable woman Hay met along the way.

The gamble to back Jennings paid off. His superb legal representation—bankrolled by Mattachine fundraising—resulted in a hung jury, allowing the organization to capitalize on an impossible dream: an admittedly homosexual man beating a charge of lewd vagrancy. “Blown Cover: The Arrest of Dale Jennings” reviews some of the particulars of the case, including the identity of his arresting officers. I also examine LAPD’s liberal employment of the lewd vagrancy allegation as well as its use of a tactic known as the “third degree” and brutalization in general.

In the fall of 1952, emboldened by Jennings’ success in court, the Mattachine once again turned its gaze outward, this time to civic leaders and local candidates for office. The vehicle of outreach was a brief survey known to have been completed by only three or four respondents, but when it came to the attention of a local newspaper columnist, the concerns he voiced about the Mattachine turned out to reflect those already in the minds of its members, as discussed in “Queer Questionnaire and Coates Column.”

The above three articles are adapted from my work-in-progress with the working title The Feeble Strength of One: Bob Hull, Chuck Rowland, Maxey, Marx and the Mattachine. Because their length likely would prevent their eventual publication as-is, I offer them via The Tangent Group.