Bernice Johnson Reagon of Sweet Honey in the Rock fame died. She made a memorable essay in the 80s about coalition building. I learned of it when doing my Masters in 2017. That’s maybe the best thing I got at York. It happened the first month thanks to Chris Cavanagh. A very interesting moment followed reading that essay where she explained how the women’s movement had put itself into a situation where it was limiting who could enter into their space first by one type of gender then by one type of race and gender and later by one type of gender, race and class. It became clear without building coalitions, power would never be obtained and the imaginary changes would only remain imaginary. That week I heard some young women outside the class disputing her essay. One of them asked the others what year was it written? Someone answered 1980something. The first one rolled her eyes and said “it is too out of date! The world doesn’t work like that anymore.” A heartbreaking moment I thought. Like listening to children insist ice cream is a superior supper. Oddly, I found out about her death while reading comments on Facebook about J.D. Vance, the man Trump chose as a running mate. It was a thread of people questioning what J.D. Vance was all about and the book he wrote about growing up poor with a mother on heroin who almost killed them both. One woman wrote simply “he is an asshole”. I clicked on her profile and there I read about Bernice Reagon Johnson’s death. The woman who said J.D. Vance is an asshole was apparently an admirer of the woman who wrote about coalition building. Anything weird about that? They say McCartney and George M<artin tried to talk Lennon out of including Revolution #9. I am glad he stood his ground.