We went to Liverpool yesterday because if you grew up in the 1960s, it’s a requirement. I was seven years old when The Beatles first appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. I remember watching the show with my brother and my mom. I can’t remember if Daddy was there or not, but it’s likely he was. I remember Mama commenting on them and how silly they looked with that hair of theirs. (She’d no doubt have a fit if she saw her great-grandsons and the hair their momma pulls into man buns!) I was mostly looking forward to visiting the Slavery museum, which seemed a fitting way to honor MLK day. BTW: if you have not yet listened to Eddie Glaude Jr and Tressie McMillan Cottom’s interview about MLK, please do. It is so very insightful.

Anyway, after taking in our own version of a Beatles walking tour, we discovered the slavery museum was closed. By that time we’d put in 20,000 steps for the day, so it was time to head back to the train station. By then my phone was dead from using maps and Tim had forgot to bring the rechargable battery. This was a problem because the price for tickets are about half online as what they are if you buy them from the folks at the station. For instance, I’d booked our single tickets for £18 total the night before online. Whereas to buy the return tickets was going to cost us £45. Me being me though, I just walked up to a couple working on a computer, phones in hand and asked if they had a battery charger with them. Turns out they did and they very kindly loaned it to me. I was able to book our return tickets for half the price. I love that most people are so kind. I couldn’t thank this couple profusely enough and they were just as gracious in their response. Tim won’t forget the battery charger from now on.

Scouse. That’s the name folks from Liverpool are known by. A local fella from Liverpool explained it to us. “When the Irish came over, people like me dad, they lived under the arches of train tracks. They used to be high up,” he said raising his hands by way of explanation. “People who wanted to help them would take donations of bits of meat, the stuff nobody else wanted, lots of vegetable, and potatoes, always potatoes. And they would make this stew that you could stand a spoon in, scouse they called it. So that’s why we are known as Scousers.”

“But it’s not a derogatory term?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “We are proud to be from Liverpool. It’s because the government treats us as if we aren’t part of the UK, always talking down on us. But when Neo-Nazis came on the trains to Liverpool, Scousers kept them from getting off the train.”

I looked it up. You can read about it here. That was back in 2018, during Trump’s first fascist reign. More recently, however, after three young girls were stabbed to death in Southport, about 20 miles north of Liverpool, Neo-Nazis tried once more to capitalize on the tragedy and use it as a means to advance their right-wing agenda.

Again, Scousers weren’t having it. As one local said, “Liverpool is a place that comes together as a community. We’re a very socialist city and we have no room for any sort of unreasoned bias where we’re singling out one ethnic group over another at the end of the day.”

The thing is people like Nigel Farage is funding these right-wing groups, explained the local fella we spoke with. Farage is a friend of Trump and like Trump is rich enough to persuade people that he’s full of ideas that will save them. In other words, Farage is full of shite. He’s made a career out of running for office, the majority of elections of which he lost. He is a danger like Trump in that he has money enough to convince some that being white and staying white is the only way to make a nation great. Known as the man who “broke the UK” for his support for Brexit, Farage has a history of anti-semitic and racist behaviors.

I won’t tell you what the Scouser said to me about what he wished would happen to Farage but I know the sentiment well.

Neo-Nazis are rising in power around the globe because powerful rich white people are funding them. They are paying them to show up and exploit every news story that involves a brown or black skinned person and a white woman. An age old trope I first heard as a young girl growing up in Georgia during the Civil Rights movement.

If the rich can get us to focus on the brown or black skinned among us, if they can get us to fear immigrants or the “outsider”, then we forget about aligning together and focusing on how the rich white people are exploiting us to our own detriment.

I can’t urge you enough to find some of Mother Jones’s speeches and read them. Share them.

Liverpool is known primarily for what it has given the world in the form of music. That music was considered revolutionary at the time. What we’ve discovered with the passing of time is that their music is as relevant today as it was then. Consider these lyrics by McCartney and Lennon:

You say you want a Revolution
Well, you know
We all wanna change the world
You tell me that it’s evolution
Well, you know
We all wanna change the world

But when you talk about destruction
Don’t you know that you can count me out

You say you got a real solution
Well, you know
We’d all love to see the plan
You ask me for a contribution
Well, you know
We are doing what we can

But if you want money for people with minds that hate
All I can tell you is brother you have to wait

You say you’ll change the constitution
Well, you know
We all want to change your head
You tell me it’s the institution
Well, you know
You’d better free your mind instead

But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao (or Donald Trump)
You ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow

Don’t you know it’s gonna be alright
Alright
Alright