The Freaks Come Out at Night

The freaks come out at night
The freaks come out at night
The freaks come out at night
(the freaks come out)
The freaks come out at night—Whodini

In the 1987-1990 TV show Beauty and the Beast, the part-animal part-human creature hulks around the city at night, largely undetected in the darkness. One Halloween he becomes just another city dweller enjoying this celebration of demons and goblins. He overdoes the reveling and falls asleep on a city bench.

The Beast is awakened at dawn on November 1 by a scowling teen. “Hey moron, don’t you know Halloween was yesterday?” he hisses, mistaking the Beast’s feline features and mane for a costume. The Beast slinks away, back into his subterranean home populated by other societal miscasts like himself. Until the next Halloween….

Today “The Freaks Come Out at Night,” a song popularized by the hip-hop group Whodini in 1984, has been appropriated for use in Halloween advertising. In America on today, Halloween 2018, we have become anesthetized to freaks. Not freaks like the Beast character, whose strange exterior disguised a heart of gold, and who risked being discovered by a hostile society while he engaged in social justice activism on their behalf. But rather run-of-the-mill, dangerous, malicious real-life, real-time freaks who have tapped into the base instincts in many Americans.

The insults spewed by these freaks have become a collective art form; they are spit out in rapid fire–too fast for us to digest. The aggressions and the violence are even more frightening. We are overwhelmed. Those of us who are not part of the problem have, out of a need for self-preservation, become inured to:

Children being taken from their parents and trapped in cages
Children being shot to death in school or at a concert
Adults being shot to death as they buy groceries
Adults being shot to death as they pray in their houses of worship
Man who boasts about nonconsensual sexual encounters becoming commander-in-chief
Man who assaults woman and lies to Congress ascending to the Supreme Court
Smirking as we use the word allegedly to discuss these men
9-year-old accused of sexual assault by backpack
Man shot to death because he is assumed to be a burglar in his own home
Cops called on a man for babysitting his friend’s kids
Cops called on students for sleeping or moving around in their own dorm
Bob Marley’s granddaughter accosted for leaving her Airbnb
Get up stand up. Stand up for your rights. Get up stand up. Don’t give up the fight.
Man pulled over for babysitting his friend’s kids
45 supporter mailing bombs to 45’s prominent Democratic critics
Board of Elections mailing voters the wrong polling address
Politicians excising voters whom they deem non-viable from the voter registration rolls

Affirming Community, if the Beast were real, I would tell him to stay out all day if he wants to, because unless we exercise our right to vote (and demand provisional ballots if our name mysteriously disappears from the rolls) on today, Halloween 2018, I can confidently say it is night 24-7 in America.

Voter registration is still open in some states. Check the following website for yours: https://vote.gov

Happy Halloween.

The freaks come out at night
The freaks come out at night
The freaks come out at night
(the freaks come out)
The freaks come out at night