Hi, I’m Adrian and I am posing next to the trains are on time sign ironically not because I’ve heard about Musollini but because I work for Ford who wants to create cars like in the movie “The Minority Report”

I saw the mayor of Palo Alto speak today. Not really, I got there too late to see the podium. I could barely hear the speakers. There were 10,000 people at Hamilton and Ramona, 250 Hamilton. I taped the mayor’s speech, using my smart phone, but I have not tried to listen to it. A friend of mine texted me that he was pretty bad. I said “Who is speaking?” And then “Adrian?” and then recognized his voice, barely. After a while people started chanting “De-fund Po-lice” Defund the police. They weren’t really shouting him down they just weren’t sure if he was still speaking. Maybe he was the guy who was about to announce the next band.
If I ever get the chance to speak to 10,000 of my fellow citizens. I would go, ad lib, like I’m doing here “Hello, Palo Alto! It is so good to see you. I recognize some of you, but I love all of you! Black lives fuckin’ matter! BLACK LIVES FUCKING MATTER! MALCOLM X! FUCK YEAH! LADORIS CORDELL, FUCK YEAH! FRANK WILDERSON! FUCK YEAH! ANGELA DAVIS FUCK AND FUCK YEAH! GEORGE FLOYD! SAY HIS NAME!”
Something like that.

My friend said that Adrian Fine, a 35-year old Gunn grad and former Planning Commissioner chosen by his peers as the buck-stops-here-only-one-year mayor, instead said, and I could update later if the tape comes out, something about City Council will “debate black lives matter”. What could that mean? Debate? black lives matter, Black Lives Matter. The people have spoken. There is no debate. People could die while the bureaucracy debates.
Was he referencing the “Resolution” he will read to an empty chamber Monday night? It’s pretty good. It’s better that the “message of hope” that the city sent out the other day. But I wonder who wrote it. It’s not as good as what I just wrote, off the top of my head (“Angela Davis! Fuck and Fuck Yeah” et cetera). It looks like something someone faxed us from another city.

I am thinking about a movie I liked as a kid, I saw on tv. It was a World War II movie, in the Pacific. A mix of comedy and suspense. A small boat with an iconoclast captain, maybe William Holden. It was not I don’t think “McHale’s Navy”. It was more serious that that, the movie.
There’s a scene I remember where they get a message:
YOU ARE IN A FINE AREA.
The captain is puzzled. He says “What are we, The PTA? (Parent Teacher association).
Someone speaks up: “Mine” not “fine”. Explosives. Danger.

Or as Mark Twain once said: the difference between having a Mayor of Palo Alto who can piss holding his dick with one hand while standing up and having a mayor who is not sure if black? lives? matter? is the difference between life and death, Democracy and Fascism, you fucking idiot.
Drop the mic, Adrian “fine”.

PS I mean “drop the mic” in an ironic sense in the he should let someone else speak for us, and lead us. Not “drop the mic” in the sense of BOOM I said something important.

PPS Someone pointed out that as of a week ago the mayor of Palo Alto Adrian Fine filled out an updated Form 700 Fair Practices which says he now works for Ford Motors and owns 10 percent or more of a startup here helping this $26 Billion dollar company — which has a history of racism and anti-Semitism — get in on what some people want or predict, self-driving cars. I thought Adrian Fine worked for NextDoor, that announces yard sales and the like on the internet. Why didn’t this make the news? I would think going forward the mayor should recuse himself from the business tax, from shuttle system and how to get it here, from RPP parking. Ford just bet another billion with a B on self-driving cars, they don’t want a director of marketing who is also a civil servant.

So now is the perfect time for Adrian Fine to resign as mayor “for personal reasons” for his family or his employer or to become a motivational speaker.

Buh-bye!

edit to add: shout out to Michael Young formerly of Palo Alto who hipped me apropos of Frank Wilderson who he calls “brilliant’ about Frantz  Fanon and CLR James, who I would have worked into my speech.

Palo Alto Black Lives Matter rally, Saturday, June 6, 2020