Dust-Licking Pimps

Mark Twain and Quincy and Immigration

I am currently listening to Ron Chernow’s Mark Twain biography. The audio version is over 44 hours…Chernow is known for the very long biographies and I love to listen to him while driving across the heartland to speak to rural Democrats.

I spoke to about 130 people in Quincy, IL last Thursday. I drove through Hannibal (Twain’s hometown) on my way to the event, and I had been listening to Chernow’s book for about four hours when I finally arrived at the Machinists Lodge for the Adams County summer cookout.

This was my second time at the Adams County event, and when I arrived, I couldn’t help thinking there’s no way it had been a year since my last visit.

Time marches on, but I didn’t know it would be at such a quick pace.

When I last drove to Quincy, we hadn’t elected the current regime. I was still hopeful that Trump was in the past and we were moving forward. I was sure the country was going to vote for our first woman President because I was constantly in rooms with hundreds of rural Democrats across the country — they were motivated and excited and on the ground doing the work.

We all know how that went.

Adams County Democratic Party Picnic. Quincy, IL. 7/31/25.

When I arrived at the event, there were already several people there, so I decided to change in the back of my car instead of walking in with my bags and hangers and hairspray and makeup. My car has tinted windows, and if I push the front seats all the way up, I have enough room to hide behind the seats and do a quick change.

Superman’s phone booth has nothing on my Mazda.

Before speaking, I sat down to fresh tomatoes and a grilled pork chop and a salad and a piece of chocolate cake. No Diet Coke available, so I was forced to give my body the water I usually avoid.

After the event, a man came up, introduced himself, and said he was at the same event last year as well. He told me something I have been thinking about ever since: he said, “I saw you last year and your message has changed. You were light-hearted last year. You are pointed this year.”

True enough.

Last year, I had hope that we would make progress. This year I hope we won’t devolve into an autocratic police state. I hope I have healthcare in January after the subsidies dry up. I hope my kids can afford to buy groceries and pay their rent. I hope my grandkids’ schools are funded. I hope my neighbor isn’t deported. I hope concentration camps don’t become a normal experience.

I have hope. I am also paying attention.

I have spoken so often that I almost have an autopilot switch. I rearrange the order at most events so I don’t get stale, and I usually throw in a new story or talking point at each event. I can speak unscripted for about 45 minutes, however, I would never. I am an old teacher, so I watch the audience for cues. I watch to see if I should hit a point even harder or if I should wrap up.

There is nothing as awful as a speaker who has gone on too long. I’d rather be booed than be boring.

Since March or so, I have spoken on the cruelty of ICE and the instances of kidnappings on American streets. I talk about the folks who are disappearing before our eyes. I speak on the ICE “agents” without badges or warrants or marked cars. Thugs covering their faces. Thugs who seem to have unlimited power from a regime who wants to turn the US into a police state.

I speak on my privilege and what people who look like me should do if they encounter their neighbors being kidnapped or harassed…get in the way.

Film the encounter. Ask for badges and warrants. Warn your neighbors if you see ICE. Remind them to not open the door for agents. Narrate your video, focusing on the agents not the detained.

Throw sand in the gears as best you can.

I reflected on my talking points on the drive home the next morning. My sweet host was up with me by 5:45 to let her dogs out and say goodbye and I started the journey home via Highway 36, the Twain bio roaring through my speakers.

A quick stop in Hannibal for a McDonald’s Diet Coke and back to the drive home.

And back to my audiobook. The narrator reminded me of Mark Twain’s newspaper writing in the West. How Twain had used racist rhetoric in both his notebooks and his writings since the beginning, but his attitude was slowly changing after leaving Missouri, a slave state.

Twain is a deeply complex man whose views changed and evolved throughout his life. He was vain and always seeking wealth, but he also fought for the oppressed through humor and satire.

The narrator coming through my speakers told of how offended Twain became at the treatment of Chinese immigrants in California and the constant berating and beating at the hands of both the police and politicians and random men on the streets.

As a reporter in San Francisco, Mark Twain witnessed police standing by while white men attacked a Chinese man for no reason. The narrator told me of Twain’s frustration with police complicity in racial violence perpetrated against Chinese immigrants.

In “Roughing It”, Twain said:

No Californian gentleman or lady ever abuses or opposes a [Chinese person], under any circumstances, an explanation that seems to be much needed in the East. Only the scum of the population do it - they and their children; they, and, naturally and consistently the policeman and politicians likewise, for these are the dust-licking pimps and slaves of the scum...

I like that phrase. I usually call the folks fighting on behalf of the fascists “bootlickers”, but I think Twain’s description may predate the word bootlicker.

Dust-licking pimps and slaves of the scum…it seems very appropriate for the ICE agents I have seen and read about in the news.

ICE is getting closer and closer to my home. I just read of a raid in Lenexa, Kansas at a Mexican restaurant. I watched a video of the incident, and I am proud to say that Lenexa community members did in fact get in the way. They stood with their neighbors and tried to protect people in their community.

Rabbi Moti Rieber is the executive director of Kansas Interfaith Action, and says the raids happen without rhyme or reason.

“Because anyone who is perceived as Latino or African, wherever they are at a Home Depot, at a court hearing, out gardening, picking up their kids or at a restaurant in suburban Johnson County can be set upon by armed thugs, armed gunmen in masks, dragged into a van and disappeared. My friends, fascism in the form of uncontrolled executive power, lawlessness, political persecutions and racist law enforcement is not coming. It is here.”

The Rabbi is right. It’s not coming. It’s here. And we have to be ready to fight back on behalf of the people who are being persecuted by the police state.

The kidnappings are brazen to induce fear, but we have to act in solidarity and without hesitation. We can’t let this stand.

Twain was right in his summation of the dust-licking scum detaining and harming people for the color of their skin in the 1800s. Rabbi Rieber is correct in his description of ICE agents in the present.

As I travel around the center of the country helping to organize rural Democrats, I need you to know they exist. Rural people are also progressive people. There are people in every space in every state standing up for their neighbors and against thugs and fascism and authoritarianism. Against the racism and the disappearings.

Bootlickers be damned.

~Jess