WEBVTT 00:00:00.655 --> 00:00:03.922 OK so, this is for the red states. 00:00:06.128 --> 00:00:07.502 Stupid. 00:00:07.502 --> 00:00:09.384 [laughter from the crowd] 00:00:09.712 --> 00:00:12.009 My uncle Melvin is stupid. 00:00:12.009 --> 00:00:13.107 He voted for George Bush 00:00:13.107 --> 00:00:14.538 hell, he voted for Bush Sr. 00:00:14.538 --> 00:00:17.557 when something like this, read my lips, no new taxes. 00:00:17.557 --> 00:00:23.133 That time, like this time, the Democrats were not speaking a working people's language. 00:00:23.133 --> 00:00:26.034 Oh sure, their candidates' arguments were all nuanced and complex 00:00:26.034 --> 00:00:28.299 but what the hell does that mean to my uncle Melvin? 00:00:28.299 --> 00:00:31.629 Whose parents sat him in front of a television since before he could walk, why? 00:00:31.629 --> 00:00:34.673 Because it's the option for exhausted labourers. 00:00:34.673 --> 00:00:36.288 People whose hands will never fully soften 00:00:36.288 --> 00:00:39.263 no matter how much pumice they apply the skin grows that way. 00:00:39.263 --> 00:00:41.254 People keeping the bunion pad companies in business 00:00:41.254 --> 00:00:44.812 from standing in bad shoes on assembly lines for lifetimes. 00:00:44.812 --> 00:00:47.852 People whose primary source of entertainment is, no stretch, the television. 00:00:47.852 --> 00:00:50.641 Because after a day on your feet what a body needs is rest. 00:00:50.641 --> 00:00:54.616 Exercise is something people do who sit at computers all day. 00:00:54.616 --> 00:00:58.011 It was from the television that my uncle Melvin learned to absorb information 00:00:58.011 --> 00:01:00.754 in highly emotional, over-simplified soundbites, 00:01:00.754 --> 00:01:02.414 so his very head works that way, 00:01:02.414 --> 00:01:04.451 but because he's stupid? No. 00:01:04.451 --> 00:01:06.401 Because he's brainwashed. 00:01:06.401 --> 00:01:08.144 Brainwashed and kept poor by underpaying his labour 00:01:08.144 --> 00:01:10.369 from the time he dropped out to support his sisters 00:01:10.369 --> 00:01:14.332 to today, when he can't even afford to buy his wife a proper set of teeth. 00:01:14.332 --> 00:01:16.268 I'm not kidding here, and it isn't funny. 00:01:16.268 --> 00:01:19.679 My aunt Juanita has permanent sores in her mouth from her ill-fitting dentures 00:01:19.679 --> 00:01:20.959 which by the way without them? 00:01:20.959 --> 00:01:24.089 she can't even go to the bathroom in the night for fear of someone seein' her. 00:01:24.089 --> 00:01:27.821 Shame comes standard in my family. 00:01:27.821 --> 00:01:30.429 My uncle Melvin is powerless to purchase his wife some relief 00:01:30.429 --> 00:01:32.750 but we offer him a presidential "choice": 00:01:32.750 --> 00:01:37.371 a guy with a fancy education or someone who sounds like a down home boy promising no new taxes, 00:01:37.409 --> 00:01:41.021 no more bite out of this backbone that ain't gonna outlast the mortgage on the trailer. 00:01:41.021 --> 00:01:42.283 This is not fiction. 00:01:42.283 --> 00:01:46.243 The trailer is white and he'd like to get a fence to keep the rabbits out of the pansies. 00:01:46.243 --> 00:01:48.875 Melvin is gonna vote his pocketbook. 00:01:48.875 --> 00:01:51.979 Cause maybe Juanita can get some teeth. 00:01:51.979 --> 00:01:53.578 Think about your own. 00:01:53.578 --> 00:01:55.506 Touch them with your tongue. 00:01:55.506 --> 00:01:57.995 Now imagine the person you love the most live without them. 00:01:57.995 --> 00:02:00.378 Face the world and try to feel beautiful or worthy. 00:02:00.378 --> 00:02:03.725 Melvin is gonna vote for the guy who promises to put more power in his pocket. 00:02:03.725 --> 00:02:08.136 If the Democrats haven't learned that yet, then they're the dummies not the people who didn't vote for them. 00:02:08.136 --> 00:02:10.647 Have I mentioned that my aunt Juanita can't read. 00:02:10.647 --> 00:02:15.117 I am a slim generation away from not being able to decipher my own ballot. 00:02:15.117 --> 00:02:19.650 But yeah, Melvin responds to over-simplified, deep-fried versions of the truth, but why? 00:02:19.650 --> 00:02:21.891 Cause it's been his diet for as long as he can remember. 00:02:21.891 --> 00:02:23.611 "Have some turkey" he says to me at Thanksgiving 00:02:23.611 --> 00:02:26.093 and then he covers the gap in his own smile with his palm. 00:02:26.093 --> 00:02:28.243 I slather my potatoes in Juanita's gravy, 00:02:28.243 --> 00:02:30.436 and for shame will not interject my opinion 00:02:30.436 --> 00:02:35.429 when at his table in front of his bounty he asks me to bow my head and pray, why? 00:02:35.429 --> 00:02:39.034 Because what right do I have to judge their source of hope, really? 00:02:39.034 --> 00:02:43.622 During Grace, I know that my uncle's god is someone who hates me and my depraved coastal ways, 00:02:43.622 --> 00:02:45.566 so once again I am torn. 00:02:45.566 --> 00:02:48.118 Acutely aware of how far apart are both my homes 00:02:48.118 --> 00:02:50.719 My hand in Melvin's my cheek warms with cowardice 00:02:50.719 --> 00:02:54.499 over having left my whole family behind in search of my own freedom. 00:02:54.499 --> 00:02:58.351 Just as quick, the other cheek cools with dread at the hate that is blooming in my new home 00:02:58.351 --> 00:03:00.753 from stealth bias and a full body disgust 00:03:00.753 --> 00:03:05.645 my liberal friends are condemning entire red regions as idiots incapable of nourishing themselves 00:03:05.645 --> 00:03:08.480 out of the rickets that has rotted their brains. 00:03:08.480 --> 00:03:13.896 Not new, certainly, but shocking as hell out of the mouths of people with whom I shared values. 00:03:13.896 --> 00:03:17.796 More than ever, I am straddling two boats hell bent of rowing in opposite directions. 00:03:17.796 --> 00:03:24.778 I wake up sweaty with the pressure to choose and choking on the privilege it is to have the option in the first place. 00:03:24.778 --> 00:03:29.840 Some days, I am side by side with my chosen, if depraved, queer family. 00:03:29.840 --> 00:03:32.885 Damn right, I say, fucken homophobes. 00:03:32.885 --> 00:03:36.642 I think about the last public hate crime that happened in my midwest town and feel sick. 00:03:36.642 --> 00:03:41.998 Two gay men, sleeping, wake to find their house being painted with "FAGGOTS GO HOME". 00:03:41.998 --> 00:03:45.492 When I think about how this coulda happened, I remember who used to live there. 00:03:45.492 --> 00:03:46.799 The Geiger girls, 00:03:46.799 --> 00:03:49.329 whose father and uncle worked around silos all their lives. 00:03:49.329 --> 00:03:52.516 But during the 80's farm crisis "accidentally" walked into one, 00:03:52.516 --> 00:03:58.538 where overcome by fumes each died in his brother's arms so their families might make it on the insurance money. 00:03:58.538 --> 00:04:02.902 Which they did for about a decade before Jim and Joseph looking for a weekend refuge from the city 00:04:02.902 --> 00:04:06.146 bought the whole farm plus house for a screamin' deal. 00:04:06.146 --> 00:04:08.229 As artists they had plans to redecorate. 00:04:08.229 --> 00:04:12.008 And I quote: "Have these people ever heard of PAINT??" 00:04:12.008 --> 00:04:14.068 Yeah, we have. 00:04:14.068 --> 00:04:18.616 And sometimes what gets called homophobia is a little more complicated than that. 00:04:18.616 --> 00:04:21.592 Closer to home, I think about my Seattle neighbourhood gone white in seven years. 00:04:21.592 --> 00:04:25.666 Not so when I moved in, but then again, white dykes are the first wave of gentrification. 00:04:25.666 --> 00:04:29.319 I sit with that in my pocket and look down at my rapidly separating feet, 00:04:29.319 --> 00:04:32.744 both boats spilling over with white people. 00:04:32.744 --> 00:04:36.737 From this position, I have this to respectfully say to my queer peers: 00:04:36.737 --> 00:04:41.275 Gay marriage is something the privileged, specifically college educated people, can afford to long for, 00:04:41.275 --> 00:04:43.345 and it feels like a middle class agenda. 00:04:43.345 --> 00:04:47.821 For me, given a choice, I'd sell out my middle class peers any day for equal pay for equal work 00:04:47.821 --> 00:04:49.435 but not in the way the feminists thought of it 00:04:49.435 --> 00:04:51.271 ---which by the way preserved the class order --- 00:04:51.271 --> 00:04:54.505 but in the way that says an hour is an hour is an hour. 00:04:54.505 --> 00:04:57.395 I don't care if you're pushing a broom or paper, you outta get paid the same. 00:04:57.395 --> 00:05:00.600 If we mean what we say in this country that all men are created equal 00:05:00.600 --> 00:05:03.254 then it follows that we all have the same relationship to time, 00:05:03.254 --> 00:05:06.599 that it's precious, and_ you gotta be compensated. 00:05:06.599 --> 00:05:09.758 So, this is to say that I don't think we were defeated because of the middle state homophobes. 00:05:09.758 --> 00:05:13.457 We were defeated because we haven't begun to address working people's needs 00:05:13.457 --> 00:05:15.835 let alone truly align ourselves with people of colour. 00:05:15.835 --> 00:05:18.444 We let the right use us as a smokescreen to their real agendas: 00:05:18.444 --> 00:05:21.737 keeping the poor poor and eroding civil rights of people of colour. 00:05:21.737 --> 00:05:25.993 If all queers starting today, devoted our lives full time to economic justice, 00:05:25.993 --> 00:05:31.121 I would not be surprised if we'd have our gay marriage sooner than Melvin and Juanita will get that fence. 00:05:31.121 --> 00:05:35.871 And if all Democrats starting today devoted their party to an hour is an hour? 00:05:35.871 --> 00:05:40.388 Well I'd guarantee that every toothless bastard in dumfuck everywhere would vote for that 00:05:40.388 --> 00:05:41.941 before you could say read my lips 00:05:41.941 --> 00:05:44.393 NEW. CLASS. ORDER. 00:05:44.393 --> 00:05:47.170 [applause]