Make Some Good Trouble

Making the List

by H. Doremus, Contributor

There’s a song in the Gilbert and Sullivan satirical opera The Mikado (written in the late 1800s as a commentary on Victorian England and British imperialism) called “As someday it may happen,” but which is more commonly known as the “little list” song. This is the song most often adapted in performances to speak to the present moment – and also because there are lines which don’t translate as intended to modern audiences, the line mocking minstrels being perhaps the most infamous. Sung by a villainous character called the Lord High Executioner, the first lines set the tone for the rest of what follows:

As some day it may happen that a victim must be found
I’ve got a little list — I’ve got a little list
Of society offenders who might well be underground
And who never would be missed — who never would be missed!

What follows is a laundry list of people who generally annoy him or disrupt “polite society,” but have not done anything actually criminal. The comedic song’s punchline is that it points out offenses that are ridiculous to mete out capital punishment over – the Executioner can’t even remember exactly who he wants to include on his list by the end. It is a criticism of the buttoned up and exacting standards of Victorian England, but equally skewers any society that is bloodthirsty for a scapegoat.

I’m sure it hardly needs saying that we find ourselves in a very literal version of such a society now, not with news this week that the TSA is handing over passenger data from domestic flights to ICE, the Treasury Department is targeting Somali communities for fraud investigations, and now terminally wide-eyed Kash Patel and his FBI are working themselves up a little list of so-called “domestic terrorists” – and a “cash reward system” to encourage citizens to turn each other in for thought crimes. Potential offenses include, “adherence to radical gender ideology, anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, or anti-Christianity,” as well as “hostility towards traditional views on family, religion, and morality.”

Free speech is becoming more and more dangerous, with roving bands of deputized thugs kidnapping people off the streets at gunpoint and the highest court in the land turning itself into a rubber stamp for the unraveling of our rights. But that’s why we have to get loud – we have to raise our voices even more and speak when speaking feels hard, uncomfortable, and even dangerous. The bigger part of “we” there is white people – those of our countrymen who are historically safer and sounder demanding our rights and challenging injustice, if only because we get very indignant that our rights would ever be challenged in the first place.

We cannot be afraid of lists or of being on them. But simultaneously, we must protect our more vulnerable neighbors from these near-farcical villains who are sure that our neighbors “never would be missed.” We must even seek out opportunities to do better by one another, especially if – like me since I moved from South Central to West LA this year – you aren’t seeing the effects daily of the GOP’s gleeful campaign of terror against our communities, if you’re only feeling the pinch in your pocketbook so far.

There are as many forms of protest as there are people out there, and not everyone is able to get in the streets and literally shout. People have family they’re solely responsible for, disabilities or chronic illnesses that restrict them from certain spaces, parole they can’t violate, jobs they can’t lose, and much more. However, protest hinges on asserting our freedom of speech, and there is all manner of speech that can speak loudly all on its own. Boycotts, postcarding, flyering, sharing safety info, participating in mutual aid efforts, arguing with your Uncle Larry, flooding hotlines with ridiculous calls, nagging your entrenched representatives relentlessly, getting to know the people around you – this is how we keep the volume loud from every side.

So go on, get out there and get yourself on a little list. Make a little good trouble, for every silent voice is missed.

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Mutual Aid Resources

This is always a hard time of year for our communities, so save money on new, tariffed decorations and knick-knacks suffering from planned obsolescence and support your neighbors instead! These resources lean LA-specific, since that’s DAN’s home port, but we encourage all of our readers to look up food banks and mutual aid groups in their own areas and lend them your support.

1. Feeding America
2. The Los Angeles Regional Food Bank Pantry Location Finder
3. The Mutual Aid Los Angeles Network (MALAN) Group Directory and Volunteer Opportunity Calendar
4. Los Angeles Community Fridges - A directory of all the community fridges in the broader LA area
5. Google Doc of LA Mutual Aid Organizations
6. NDLON - Adopt a Day Labor Corner
7. LA Street Vendor Solidarity Fund
8. FindHelp.org - A nationwide resource for locating all manner of support, from diapers to bus fare, by zip code
9. Mutual Aid Hub - A nationwide resource for finding mutual aid groups in your area

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