Have you seen a Rockwell 1950’s Lemonade Wars?
Two girls, both white of course,
dressed for YoungRepublican success
scowling at each other on a pristine deserted street
of the tree-lined rich suburban variety,
arms folded across their angry
relentless middle-class chests,
shoulders hunched for their LoseLose anger battle.
Each stands before her lemonade stand,
across the street from one other,
each with a de-escalating sign
that originally says 10 cents,
but with a bold line across it,
replaced below with a somewhat smaller 5 cents,
also crossed out,
followed by a 2 cents price war notice,
about which the entire neighborhood apparently would not give 2 cents
to get economically
and politically involved.
Would this be less surprising if we were looking at two white boys?
How about two brown-skinned boys?
Does the humor have more of an edge to it?
Or perhaps it’s no longer funny at all.
Maybe more about just another racist stereotype
about not having two suburban cents between them,
about what is intelligent
multiculturally resilient
behavior.
Do you think it more likely two girls might have formed a cooperative?
Replaced their two tables into one larger street presence,
invitation present,
Faced their two signs both up and down the street
to better alert oncoming traffic seeking therapy,
splitting their take at the end of a lovely day
chattering away
with and between more convivial customers,
rather than aiming themselves across the street against each other.
weapons of mutual traumatic disdain,
heading toward long-term unenlightened
and disempowering contempt.
But, probably less likely for two boys from the 50’s and 60’s.
Today, I’m not so sure.
Perhaps boys and girls, and all between,
are learning a healthier,
more fertile
way of doing the cooperative math,
finding profit through ecopolitical interrelationships.
We have feminist psychology and therapy and medicine
and politics
and theology and history and sociology
and probably anthropology and neurology, for all I know.
Research and theorem proofing and disproofing
more likely to unfold through networking circles
of mutual rewarding nurture
rather than competitive marching
in bought-and-sold squares
of irrationally dispirited distinctions
without seminal natural difference.
New Economics is Feminist Peace-Restorative Economics,
about cooperatively nurturing healthy nutritional co-investments
rather than WinLose dyspeptic high risk
beat-down
over-testosteroned
divestment competition games.
So, why is New Economics not called Feminist EcoPolitics?
Maybe it is, but not where I live
and not where I have non-womanist read
but I still hope to see more cooperative non-warring lemonade stands
across suburban and urban and rural divides,
blending gender co-binaries to make lemonade out of,
well,… whatever you have of potential nurturing value
Discarding over-heated presumptions of gotta-have competition,
to pour out democratic power-assumptions of cooperative investment,
where Golden Rules apply transgenderally
as Golden Ratios reply transculturally co-invested co-binaries,
producing Golden Elixirs of inclusive consumer-producer satisfaction
This day we will have done well
and faithfully,
truthfully
and trustingly,
peacefully
and justly,
and not so unlikely
divesting StraightWhiteMale autocracy
to hell.
gdill52 