2017 and Counting

We are at a precipitous time in our lives and in the history of our country. A sense of dread hangs over my every thought and action. Maybe many of you feel as I do: depressed, angry, anxious, and fearful, with a sense that the world tilted on its axis and something is coming to an end.  The weird thing is both sides of the partisan aisle feel that way. The right feels it looking back over the last eight years, and the left feels it looking forward to the next four years as we witness an end to progress.

Ever since it became apparent that Donald Trump would be the next president of the United States, I have suffered anxiety and paralysis. I know this response is useless, and so is any display of anger at those who elected Trump, or those who worked behind the scenes, including Russian hackers, to sway the election, or those in our own country who worked to make voter access difficult for some populations. It is more important to take action as President Obama did with sanctions against Russia.

Along those lines, I thought I would list some possible New Year’s resolutions so we can try our damndest to right this runaway train before the inevitable crash occurs.

But I find myself feeling resolutions are not quite the right term for 2017.  They may seem like good intentions that don’t have to be fulfilled. Plus they cannot possibly fix all that is broken. They cannot possibly lift me or us from the depths of despair. They cannot possibly stop the train wreck.

Instead I will call them living commitments, and I am suggesting them for individuals and for the collective America we all call home, although not every single one will apply to every person (you’ll know which ones are which for your situation):

1.     Appreciate the people in your life who love you just as you are. Love them back just as unconditionally. Don’t just tell them you love them. Show them every day through kindness, compassion, attentiveness, and concern. And when life gets in the way and things feel dire, help, if you can, and if they accept your help, or sit and listen. Let them vent, and vent, and vent, until they feel better. One day you will need the same.

2.     Stay fit and work toward maintaining good health, but don’t get obsessed about it. Sometimes it is just as important to treat yourself and to have a good time. Everything in moderation isn’t such a bad adage.

3.     Stop believing your time and your life are worth more than others’. Especially stop believing your skin color or your religion makes you better.  The world isn’t as big as it used to seem and we are all in it together. We are all exactly the same at birth, imperfect and trying to survive, equal in every way, except our life circumstances and the cultural and ethnic beliefs in which we are raised and through which we view the world around us are different, so even the people you may think do not deserve equality are your equals. Treat others, as you would have them treat you.

4.     Speak up as often as necessary and do not let this Trump circus become normalized with excuses or pleas to “give him a chance.” He’s blown all his chances and then some, and he hasn’t even been sworn in yet. He is an egomaniacal, ignorant, bigoted, ethically challenged, sexually inappropriate, greedy, developmentally stunted, rich guy who will destroy our country and possibly the world. Remember what Maya Angelou said: “When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.” Don’t be complacent.

5.     Read the real news from the free press: The New York Times, The Washington Post, or any of the big city newspapers, and your local paper so you know what is going on in your area. Learn which outlets are fake news outlets and don’t support them by reading or sharing their trash. Stop watching news entertainment channels like Fox News. They make money by making you view the world through fear, paranoia, and hatred.

6.     Get involved with your local politics. Be an informed voter, pass out flyers, help people register to vote, make phone calls, or think about running for office – we need people to run for office. At the very least, get out and vote in EVERY SINGLE ELECTION and write to your representatives at all levels so they know what their constituents are thinking. We need to get out there and get the word out that hate and insularity are not our mandates. Equality and quality of life for every single American are our mandates.

7.     Remember how small the world is now and how important it is that we engage in the global negotiations among countries, global human rights, and the global economy. We are a world power, though we may not be for long. Trump has it wrong, very wrong, and his ignorance and reliance on white supremacists and crazy, old, white generals who believe in conspiracy theories could very well stir up world unrest. It already has. World War III is now a possibility, and it won’t be like the other wars, which were horrible, devastating, and inhumane in their own right. This one could end it all, especially since Trump tweeted about a nuclear arms race and because there are other unstable, egotistical, world leaders like him. Do you really think they care about human life other than their own lives? You are delusional if you think they do.

8.     Speak up against discrimination of any kind. The worst you can do is nothing. It makes you complicit. Even if you don’t think it is your problem, it is, because it is our country’s problem. There are people who are oppressed socially, educationally, and economically because of the color of their skin, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, or ableism.  Do you think it is okay when one group feels perfectly comfortable defining the worth of other people based on a single standard (white, male, heterosexual, able) and then treat others differently, indifferently, or even violently? If you don’t, then don’t be silent.

9.     The only reasonable response to the murder of unarmed black men and women is outrage.  Think of it as the new Jim Crow control of the black population through terrorization, akin to lynching prior to the Civil Rights movement. If you don’t feel outrage EVERY SINGLE TIME you see such murders on the news, ask yourself why. If the answer is racial bias, which it probably is, work hard and learn how to overcome it. It is important that we recognize, acknowledge, and question our biases. If we don’t, our country will NEVER overcome systemic racism, sexism, homophobia, ageism, classism, and ableism. We will never reach the ideal of equality. Our citizens are becoming browner and female.  Will we become majority minorities with a white male ruling class, or will we get this figured out so that every American is bestowed freedom equally, has a voice in the process of governing, and where we can truly govern our country for the greater good and not for the good of the few? Don’t just feel the outrage. Do something about it. Write to your representatives, the Attorney General, and the police departments that switched from protect and serve peace officers to militarized population control. And if you are thinking we should care as much about the police who occasionally get gunned down, I agree. But let’s get real: some people are going to snap when they fear walking down the street or having a broken taillight could result in death by police officer. Can you imagine living under that kind of stress? It feels unbearable, right? Until we retrain police to be peace officers who are invested in community policing and police departments reflect the ethnic makeup of communities they serve, that kind of over-the-top retaliation may still occur. So this is about the safety of all parties involved, and, yes, all lives matter, but we are focusing on black lives because those are the lives that appear to have no value in our society.

10. Stop pretending our economy and the middle class are reliant on manufacturing jobs. Technology has changed manufacturing, and those jobs, as well as coal mining jobs, are gone, not necessarily shipped out. Our economy is energy, technology, consumer, and service based. Pay a living wage and allot full time status to those jobs that were traditionally reserved for high school students. Let unions negotiate pay, benefits, and workers’ rights and safety again. We need unions and the strength of their membership numbers to make working conditions better for everyone. A rising tide lifts all boats, no matter their size.

11. Fight against privatization of government functions. The government doesn’t have to make a profit. Running the government like a business is a terrible mistake. Private companies do and want to make money, lots of it, through methods that put the bottom line above all else, like quality and affordability of service. Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, the US Post Office, and the Internal Revenue Service are government functions that are almost wholly self-sustaining.  Prisons should also be a government function – a privatized prison system is only cost effective when the prison is full beyond capacity, which means ridiculous sentences for petty crime. Health care should be a government function – a single payer system that can negotiate drug and health service pricing, focus on preventative health care, include dental care, and take the burden of providing health insurance to employees from corporations that complain the cost is too much (it is expensive, for both the corporation and the employee, who is saddled with expensive premiums and high deductibles). Then corporations could spend more on jobs. Don’t let rich (mostly) white men, hoping to get richer, take over such functions. They will be more interested in making money than in serving the interests of the public, and services will not be equitably distributed. Furthermore, the middle class is filled with government workers. Privatize those jobs and the middle class will shrink even more.

12. Public education should remain public education. Vouchers are just a way to ensure wealthy people can send their children to private schools using public school funds instead of their own money. Their advantage will disadvantage our children. It will never be equitable and the same goes for the privatization of public schools.

13. Stop feeling like you worked harder than other people to get where you are. Realize most Americans work hard, and being punitive about pay and benefits is a horrible way to treat fellow Americans. Assigning more worth to one job over another is wrong – we need all kinds of jobs to make our country function, so all jobs deserve a living wage. Many people benefitted from systemic and institutional racism and sexism to get where they are, so they are not better or harder workers, but privileged. Most people want to work, and there should be jobs for them that pay a living wage. Place a cap on executive pay, so that it is not more than ten times the lowest paid employee of the company (right now it is 300 – 400 times higher). For those who can’t work, provide living wage assistance.

14. Stop being punitive to poor people. Most of them are poor due to systemic classism or racism. Poor, white people (many of whom live in rural areas) outnumber poor black people because blacks make up only 12% of the total population (an amazing statistic when you consider the number of Africans who were taken from their homeland and sold into slavery. At one time there were many more slaves than white people, particularly in the South. Are you inquisitive enough to wonder why that is? The conditions of slavery, Jim Crow, policing, and systemic racism have caused a stark decline in the population of American blacks. Genocide in our country is not new or unique. Ask the one 1% of Native Americans.) – racial bias makes most people believe blacks make up the majority of poor people. We can help all poor people by making sure they have access to education, jobs, health care, housing, and food.  Not a single child in America should go hungry or without a warm bed or a safe place to live and attend school. Our tax dollars should support safety nets and access to the inherent rights listed above. Relying on churches and charities is wrong because they do not have enough to help all the needy and sometimes they are subjective about whom they serve. Think of your tax dollars as tithing. Such a small amount of tax dollars cover safety nets (the majority of tax dollars are spent on defense), so taxpayers should not feel they are helping freeloaders, who are a definite minority amongst the poor.

15. Remember patriotism is not just blind allegiance to our country. It is the active participation and contributions one makes as a citizen that is true patriotism. If you are in support of the Confederate flag, you are not a patriot, and you are guilty of treason. White supremacy is a myth and your support of it, or your support of a supremacist president and his supremacist cronies, goes against the best ideals of this country and is a damaging testimony in regard to your character.

16.  Equality doesn’t take away from some to give to others. It simply ensures equal access and opportunity to reach one’s God-given potential. No one will take your jobs, your guns (except maybe assault weapons which have no business being used by anyone not in the military), or your religion from you. That is the lie you’ve been told so you will vote for the wealthy to get even richer. In fact, equality will ensure you have the freedom to live, work, socialize, and worship as you choose, and it ensures it for every person. Realize that if a person decides to marry someone of the same sex, for example, that decision in no way impacts your religious rights. If you decide your religion prevents you from assisting such a reunion, then please don’t run for the position of city clerk or have a business which daily puts you in conflict with your religious beliefs. That is something you must personally decide upon while not imposing your will on others.

17. Remember this country has enough room and resources for everyone here, including illegal immigrants (and their children) who were brought here by large corporations, like Trump’s businesses, so they could pay them lower wages and not provide benefits. Our diversity is our strength. That’s what true democracy is: the cacophony of many ideas and perspectives in order to find the best path to serve the greater good.

Happy New Year, dear readers! We will get through this time in our history just as we struggled, fought for, and won progressive change in the past. We will head toward the righteous and progressive path and be on the right side of history, even as other forces try to turn us backward. Let’s turn our anxiety and despair into action. America is already great, and together we can make a difference and make it even greater.

I Am Tired of Talking about Race and Gender, Too

Whenever life got difficult for me as a child, and that was fairly often growing up with an alcoholic mother, I gave myself a pep talk. I do it in adulthood, too, when life seems overwhelming or seems to go against my grain. I remind myself that everything is temporary, and if it is temporary, I can get to the other side of it and come out fine.  It is usually a big enough push to motivate me through the worst life throws at me.

But on November 8, 2016, I started sinking fast. I fell down the rabbit hole, hard. Each announcement on election night pushed me farther down the hole. I could not believe what I was seeing. I started swearing at the TV and slapping the chair. Ronald was mostly silent.  At one point, he said, “It’s over.”

“No,” I said. “They haven’t called Florida yet. Surely she will take Pennsylvania.” But soon I, too, realized it was over, despondency oozing over me.

Although Secretary Clinton won the popular vote by over 1.5 million votes, she lost the Electoral College vote.  The last time that happened was in 2000, and, admittedly, some odd things occurred during the Bush/Gore election, including those mysterious hanging chads.

Over the next couple of weeks, I commiserated with other progressives, argued with those who take a more conventional and close-minded approach to life, shed a lot of tears, and expressed a lot of anger when talking to my immediate family.

I could point fingers: it is the fault of the third party voters and/or the fault of the 50% of the voting age populace who chose not to vote.  All in all, Trump won on less than 25% of all possible votes. But now that I find us here, how is blaming others any good? It won’t change the outcome.

As I watch the parade of possible appointments including Steve Bannon and Jeff Sessions, both men who have demonstrated racial hatred and other extreme conservative views, I feel like I am being suffocated in the rabbit hole.  Then there are all the racially motivated attacks, graffiti, tweets, bullying, and other acts of white supremacy.

The rabbit hole exit is disappearing from sight.

I’ve talked and written about racism for over forty years now, but more so in the last eight years. We were on a steady downhill slide to the rabbit hole ever since President Obama was elected and the far right decided, when they could not find any real scandals to bring Obama down, to systematically attack his validity, credibility, and character. The birther conspiracy, supported and carried on by Trump, caused all kinds of racist responses.

But Americans got tired of being accused of being racist and they responded… with more racism. Nothing better than accusing the victims of being responsible for the hatred and oppression heaped on them. Then America voted in Trump, the candidate openly endorsed by the KKK. And almost all of the Trump supporters expressed anger at being called racists. However, they are not disavowing all the hate crimes popping up around the country, over 400 reported so far, and a good number of the people perpetrating these crimes are avowed Trump supporters.

People are saying they are tired of hearing about racism. Quite a few contend racism didn’t exist until President Obama started talking about it. They have short memories and a poor understanding of our history. 

Every time we made racial strides in our history, there has been an equal or stronger backlash.  President Obama’s election eight years ago, and his list of accomplishments, caused the rise of the Tea Party and the rise of Trump. Hatred is strong, even when it is only inside the hearts of a minority. Silence by others makes it even stronger. Silence is complicity.

In the past black towns, successful with black-American-owned businesses and commerce, and segregated from white towns, were burned to the ground and black Americans were lynched. So much for “separate but equal.”

After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 (75 years ago next month), Japanese Americans were rounded up and placed in internment camps. They lost their freedom and everything else, because Americans believed their loyalty would lie with Japan, even when they had been Americans for generations. America offered restitution to the survivors of internment in 1988 under the Civil Liberties Act.

Black American descendants of slavery and Jim Crow have yet to receive restitution.

Today I argue discrimination and hate crimes are equal to those perpetrated in our history. But an awful lot of white Americans disagree.

I can tell them that I am tired of talking about racism, too, and misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, and religious intolerance.  But I have to talk about it because they are not going away, and at this time in our history, with the election of a racist, misogynist, religious intolerant president, it will only get worse. I am also tired of people supporting systemic racism and the other isms, but pretending denial, like when they voted for Trump.
We are losing our freedoms including freedom of the press, freedom to protest, and the freedom to be fully participating American citizens. This should scare the shit out of people, but many are celebrating how this will hurt the people they hate (they are confident they themselves are excluded from this loss of freedoms) and a bunch more are silently compliant.

Some of my extended family members are worried that my speaking out will result in imprisonment. I jokingly told my mother-in-law to visit me in prison and bring cookies (I have been bringing her home-baked cookies when we visit her up North), after I am arrested for political activism that includes this blog, my FB posts, and writing to my Congressmen.

But maybe prison for political activists is not such a distant reality, and maybe we are close to another McCarthy era when people’s lives were ruined and some lost their lives because the government didn’t like their politics. Senator Doug Ericksen, a Republican state senator in Washington, is trying to pass a bill that makes certain kinds of protests a felony (right now one can be arrested for blocking traffic or causing property damage, but both are misdemeanors) and supporting protests will be a felony, too, if the law gets through. Such a law would not only result in a possible prison sentence or probation, it could revoke the individual's right to vote. Think about that and the number of protesters who came out for Black Lives Matter and against a Trump presidency.

A professor at Rutgers University, Kevin Allred, who is white, was picked up by police at his Brooklyn home for tweeting, "Will the 2nd amendment be as cool when I buy a gun and start shooting at random white people or no...?" They delivered him to a psychiatric hospital. Although extreme racial bias is still not considered a mental illness, apparently political activism is. My extended family members may not be overreacting in their worry over my safety.

So here I am, a couple of email exchanges with Senator Thom Tillis on record, other emails penned to Senator Richard Burr, Representative Virginia Foxx, and Speaker Paul Ryan; a growing number of outraged and angry FaceBook posts logged; and now this post. Yet I am still reeling.

What if Trump’s cabinet were filled with racists, misogynists, homophobes, the religious intolerant, and xenophobes? Will Trump’s rant to “make America great again” or as many of us say, “white again,” become reality? Will we be living in a country where political activists are jailed, people of color and women are second class citizens, separate and unequal, dreamers will be deported to a country they never stepped foot in, LGBTQ individuals will be subjected to conversion therapy, women will have to ask their male partners permission to take birth control and perhaps will go to jail if they get an abortion, Muslims will have to register as such with the government for possible deportation or internment, all of us will be forced to worship under fundamentalist dogma, and citizens will be encouraged to demonstrate their hatred toward any group that is not compliant or white and heterosexual?

My panic just soared past the moon. Time for a pep talk, but I gave it already on FaceBook yesterday. Here it is:

This country needed HRC. The majority of voters realized that, even those who didn't think she was perfect. We lost, more than just the election, as we are seeing in these days of transition of power. But we cannot give up, not for one moment, because of all the people who came before us and refused to lie down and take oppression and violence and segregation and economic hardship and second-class citizenship. In their honor and for the future generations, we have to keep going forward while the white nationalists, white supremacists, misogynists, homophobes, reality TV stars, and powerbrokers try to force a vision of America on us that we know is shameful, hurtful, ignorant, and finished the moment we stand against it. Stronger together.

Yes, I will get through this, and you will, too, but it will take hard work, the ability to speak up loudly and often, and perseverance in the face of unprecedented obstruction. There is a way to climb out of this rabbit hole, and that is to keep talking about race and gender, no matter how tiring it gets, until we no longer have to. We got this.

Additional thoughts:
I just realized I am in mourning. Watching the Medals of Freedom ceremony gave me that understanding. The last eight years haven't been easy, but they were a promise. President Obama was a promise of a different America, led by a man who embodies grace, perseverance, intelligence, humor, and a view of what a truly egalitarian America would look like, an America in which my family is just another American family. I would have still missed President Obama terribly if Secretary Clinton had won the election, but I would have looked forward to her chance to lead us toward a truly progressive America, taking up the gauntlet we handed to President Obama in 2008. Instead we elected a horrid, self-centered, self-aggrandized, entitled reality star who doesn't respect women, minorities, people with disabilities, the free press, and anyone else who doesn't adore him. He is a monster who is fully taking advantage of hatred to promote nothing but himself. If he had a shred of ethical and compassionate thought, he would stand before America in a press conference devoted to just this topic, and tell America that white supremacy and white nationalism are treason and abhorrent. A statement during an interview is hardly taking a stand. I am in mourning for more than the term of Obama's presidency. I am in mourning for the loss of our country to haters and supremacists who are no better than Dylan Roof and the Confederate flag/Southern heritage bunch. When you have to debase others to feel better, you are lacking in character and quality, and you have no right to drag the rest of us down with you.

Not Okay

I stood in the elevator with a colleague. We exchanged pleasantries as the doors closed. Then he was behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist and pulling me against him. He was a big man, but I pushed him away. I said, disbelief squeezing my voice, “Why did you do that?”

“I had to.”

I told my supervisor. I was crying. I asked him if I had ever done anything to make someone believe it was okay to touch me without asking. He said, “You didn’t do anything. He was wrong.”

He reported it to senior management. Maybe someone spoke to the man because he never touched me again.

I was in my late twenties, a new mother. I knew it was wrong, but I thought he was a nice man, so I looked at myself instead of acknowledging he was terrible for thinking he could touch me just because he wanted to.

In college not just one, but two men, stalked me at different times. When I called the police to report the one who followed me in his car every morning as I walked to campus, repeatedly asking me to get in, they told me they could not do anything unless he touched me. There were no stalking laws then. I told the officer I would be sure to call back after they found my cold, dead body. Both men stopped stalking me after I pointed them out to Ronald and he threatened them. I still feel the anger of having to rely on him to feel safe instead of the men accepting my refusals.

Another time I was assigned to work on a class project with one of the football players.  He came to my dorm room. When he knocked on the door, I let him in my single room and left the door wide open. He turned around and closed it. I opened it again and told him my boyfriend was on his way over (Ronald WAS on his way. I asked him to come over because I knew it might not be safe), and he should leave the door open or I would report to the professor that I could not work on the project with him.

A director at the university library where Ronald and I were work-study students decided he did not like seeing us together (for new readers, Ronald is black. I am white. We have been together for forty-one years). He tried to fire Ronald and when that failed because the rest of us resigned, he tried to have me moved to a different department. Our supervisor told him off, especially after the director stated people had been complaining about us.  I could not believe he felt entitled to monitor, challenge and change my choices.

A professor was advising me on one of my student teaching lesson plans. He started calling me at my apartment and showing up at my work-study job. My roommates started screening calls and I changed my work schedule. One day he caught me on the stairs at the library and said, “Just have a drink with me. That’s all I ask.”

“I can’t.”

“Why?” he asked, stepping into my personal space.

“I just can’t.” I turned and ran down the stairs.

More than one white man, my father included, told me I could do better than dating Ronald. How many of them felt they were somehow missing out or that a black man had taken something that belonged to them?  Many acted as if they were concerned for my welfare, but I knew they were only concerned with their own wants and pleasures.

Other white men told me, because they saw me with a black man, that I was “easy.”

I reported a facilities problem at one job, but I didn’t know whom to contact, so I contacted the department head. The next day one of the facilities guys showed up at my office. He was enormous, about 6’5”, and he weighed well over 300 pounds. I am 5”2’ and on the tiny side. He leaned over me, his face just inches from mine, and yelled in his booming voice about how things would not get fixed because I had not gone through the right channels. I was terrified, but I looked him in the face, refusing to cower, and said, “It’s not that serious, Mike.”

After he left I went to the restroom and burst into tears.

One time a manager denied my request for personal time off to attend an event at my daughters’ school. As a manager myself, I told him it would not impact the operation of the department I managed, but he would not change his mind and suspected I did not think my job was a priority. I told him I would go to human resources and he said, “Go ahead,” like his word was the last one.

I reported him and told the personnel manager the company could not retain women managers in an environment that did not encourage work/life balance, where managers like the one I reported to judged a school event as not a valid reason to take time off. She said she would take care of it. Twenty minutes later my manager emailed me and said he had reconsidered, and I could take the personal time.

Another time he told me he could not picture me “fitting in” at the corporate office. I was not sure if he meant the way I looked, how I conducted business, or something else, but I knew it was a negative.

At another job the personnel manager shut his office door when I went in to ask him for more hours. He told me he would give me more hours, but I owed him. He leaned over the desk, loosening his tie. I raised my voice and asked him if he had ever heard anyone scream the word “rape.” He opened the door and, as I walked out, I said, “I don’t owe you anything.” He gave me more hours.

After he got transferred to another location, he stopped by my station to tell me I kept him honest. I told him, “I am your goddamned conscience.”

At a different job a manager, looking me up and down, said,  “Your hair was longer in my dream last night.” Then he patted his lap and asked me to have a seat. Another day he reached out to touch the spot between my breasts and, when I slapped his hand away, he told me he was only going to touch my button to tell me he liked it.  I reported him. The executive said he would fire him – zero tolerance for sexual harassment – but I asked him not to. The man was on his third marriage and his new wife was pregnant. I felt sorry for her and asked the executive to tell him that another infraction would immediately be reported and then he would be terminated. I gave him a second chance.

A day later he asked if he could come to my desk and speak to me. He said I misunderstood him, that he liked to joke around, and he was sorry I took it the wrong way. Even at risk of losing his job, he was cavalier.  I told him I did not appreciate his brand of humor and that it had better not happen again.

Even at fifty-nine I still feel vulnerable when I am out and about alone. Sometimes I feel invisible, too, because there is a different way older women are treated and described, like the way Trump says Secretary Clinton has no stamina.

All the women who are coming forward and speaking publicly about their experiences with Trump as sexual predator brought these stories, and many more than I have space to tell, back to consciousness. I am angry. Angry for all the times men made me feel like a thing instead of a person and for all the times they felt entitled to make sexual comments, invade my personal space, or make judgments about my looks, sexuality, abilities, intelligence, and choices.

We not only taught our daughters about race and racism in America, we taught them about how society might treat them as girls and women. As they became  young teens and then left home at age seventeen to go to the dance conservatory, I told them the following:

1)                   Don’t play games with boys and men. Be clear about what is comfortable and what isn’t. Be clear if you don’t feel mutual attraction.

2)                   Don’t put drinks down at a party and leave them unattended. Don’t accept a drink from anyone, even friends.

3)                   Protect yourself from getting into a situation in which you don’t have control over the outcome.

4)                   Speak up no matter how uncomfortable it may make you feel.

5)                   You can tell me anything, and, although I may be upset or even angry, I will still support and love you.

6)                   Stay safe. Take a cab. Tell someone else where you are and whom you are with. Have someone go with you.

I only hope parents are teaching their sons how to treat girls and women as equals and with respect, not as sex objects or by shaming them about their bodies or sexuality. But I know, with the high rate of rape on college campuses, we have a long way to go.

Obviously no one taught Trump how to treat women. He does what he wants. He feels entitled. He said so. When Trump says the women who spoke out are liars and “you know me,” he is gaslighting his supporters.

But the women who are coming forward? They are courageous. They know their truth, and they are ready to speak it. Trump can’t gaslight them anymore, making them feel like they were mistaken or it was something they did or some personal failure or that they are too ugly or old to have held his attention -- "look at her." Nor can he gaslight the majority of the electorate who knows exactly who he is – a sexual predator. 

Don’t be silent.

America Broke My Spirit

I spend anxious days and view many people with suspicion. I cry. I can’t quiet my mind at night. I keep the news on almost 24/7.  I talk about these days on FaceBook to the discomfort of my FB friends. Both my daughters report crying and anxiety, too. My husband is agitated.

The two days I decided to shut the news off, bombs went off in NY/NJ and a black man was shot and killed in a police stop after his car broke down in Tulsa, OK.

One of the pilots in the helicopter circling over the scene said, “… looks like a bad dude. Might be on something.” But I didn’t see that. In the video taken from the helicopter, Terence Crutcher was walking slowly with his hands in the air. He did not appear dangerous. Nor did he have anything in his hands. Later police claimed he might have had PCP in his car, the usual criminalization and thugification of the victim. His twin sister Dr. Tiffany Crutcher said, “He didn’t have a chance to live.”

Crutcher, 40, did not deserve to die that day.

Then one day later in Charlotte, NC, police shot and killed Keith Lamont Scott, allegedly for carrying a gun. His family disputes this fact, and many witnesses came forward to say he spent each day reading in his car.  The police videos have not been released to the public as I write this. The family got to review them, and the attorneys representing them said the review just raised more questions.  Protests broke out, and when police arrived in riot gear, violence broke out. One person was shot and killed, not by a police officer, and neither his name nor the circumstances of the shooting were released.

North Carolina passed a law that will go into effect on October 1^st. It will make it nearly impossible for the public to obtain access to police video. I believe the authorities are dragging their feet until the law goes into effect.

North Carolina, the state I live in, is an open carry state. People can wear a weapon to the grocery store, to restaurants, walking down the street, and sitting in their cars. How can anyone be shot for carrying a gun when it is perfectly legal? Easily. Just like the stand your ground law in Florida is for white people like George Zimmerman, open carry is for white people in NC and in other open carry states. America is for white people.

Two bits of positive news filtered through my veil of tears and anxiety: Officer Betty Shelby, the officer who shot and killed Terence Crutcher, was charged with first degree manslaughter and protests in Charlotte, despite a call for a state of emergency and a midnight curfew, remained absolutely peaceful on the third evening, even after protesters kept on marching well past midnight.

North Carolina Congressman Robert Pittenger said of the protesters, “"The grievance in their mind is the animus, the anger. They hate white people because white people are successful and they're not."

I am so tired of people like Trump and others who call black Americans poor, uneducated, resentful, angry, lazy, needy, and criminal, any negative adjective will do in their minds. My family, my interracial family, is full of educated professionals. They own homes and cars and buy their own food and go on vacations. My black friends (and I don’t just have one for kicks) are educated professionals, too, though I have certainly known poor people in my life. I was one of them, growing up in a white suburb outside Albany, NY.

White people don’t know how offensive it is when someone assumes you are poor, uneducated, and criminal just because your skin is brown.  And it doesn’t matter where you live, what car you drive, what your profession is. If you have brown skin, America views you differently. This goes for white liberals, too, who believe all the magnanimous equality stuff in theory but quickly revert to stereotypes in practice.

Racial bias is rampant in America. It is hard to deny. My own neighbors chose a white supremacist over Ronald and me, and we have lived here for nine years. I was president of the HOA. I did good things for the neighborhood and Ronald keeps our yard and garden in tiptop shape. Yet, when forced to choose, because I asked them to, they chose the white supremacist, someone who represented the HOA in legal matters, not a neighbor. Most people did not even know his name. But the HOA officer, who refused to replace him, in spite of my protests and resignation, said the attorney was more than just a person who was paid to perform legal services, he was part of HOA, one of them, and not a single neighbor disputed that statement. Not us, though. We aren’t part of the neighborhood. We are interlopers. We are liberals who don’t understand Southern culture, white Southern culture, where white men are superior and everyone else is submissive. We are, as we have been told since moving down here, an abomination because we are guilty of race mixing. We live someplace they don’t think we belong. The sad thing is, black families don’t belong anywhere in America, because white people don’t want them.

Another neighbor who lives behind us, angry that my husband said they had directed their drainpipe on to our property, causing flooding, said, “You think everything bad happens to you because you are black. You are a dumbass.”

Ronald said, “Interesting that you are the one who brought that up and not me.”

Secretary Clinton was lambasted for calling half of Trump supporters a basket of deplorables. She was not far off, as she has a brilliant mind for numbers and statistics.

From an NPR story:

…  a PRRI/Atlantic poll this spring found that Trump supporters are more likely than others to say that:

▪       The U.S. is becoming too soft and feminine (68 percent),

▪       It bothers them when they encounter immigrants who do not speak English (64 percent),

▪       The government has paid too much attention to the problems of blacks and other minorities (55 percent)

▪       Men and women should stick to more traditional gender roles and tasks (50 percent),

▪       Discrimination against women is no longer a problem (46 percent)

If anything Clinton may have been purposely underestimating the number.

The worst thing, the thing I keep replaying over and over in my head, is when a few HOA members told me I was wrong in saying the attorney was racist. They deemed he was not racist. My thoughts on the topic were not credible.

But here is a portion of a blog post from the national founder and president of the organization the attorney chairs in NC:

But [multiculturalism] is really not about ushering in equality among all races, religions, and cultures; rather, it is about destroying Western Christian civilization, the world's premier unmitigated evil. And because the South is the strongest enclave of this civilization, it finds itself square in the crosshairs of the MC crowd. Why do you think the Feds are not willing to lift a hand to stop our dispossession by a floodtide of illegal immigrants? It is the continuation of Reconstruction to the ultimate degree. We are being replaced as a people. 

Any attempt by Western man to defend himself and his civilization is called "racism," and is designed to paralyze him completely (even when no malice is shown toward any other group). This agenda points up the fact that the proponents of MC seek not fairness, justice, or equality but demonization and destruction of the white, Christian West. Only whites, and white Southerners in particular, are not allowed to have a country all their own. Asia for Asians, Africa for Africans, but no South for white Southerners! 

All indications point to the success of the MC agenda of paralyzing the West through guilt manipulation. Though we never had any sort of debate about whether we wanted to be a MC polity, it has been forced upon us anyway. Anyone who protests is silenced by the usual epithets. Even opposition to illegal immigration is enough to get you called a "racist" or a "xenophobe." If you don't believe me, check out the Southern Poverty Law Center's rants on the subject.

The xenophobic, racist right wants to get rid of political correctness, but they can’t stand to be called what they are, and that is white supremacists. My neighbors were quick to tell me I didn’t know what I was talking about. They were quick to blame my ignorance on “that liberal organization,” the Southern Poverty Law Center.  But, oh, don’t go calling them a basket of deplorables.

White supremacists are flocking to support Trump. They haven’t felt so emboldened since David Duke, once the grand wizard of the KKK, ran as a presidential candidate in 1988 – does anyone else even remember this? Today David Duke is running for a Senate seat.

Here is a snippet of an interview with Steve Innskeep of NPR:

[David Duke] was confident that Trump backers in Louisiana would support his Senate run.

"We've already polled inside the Trump voters, and we know that we're going to carry 75 to 80 percent of those who are going to vote for Trump," he said.

Steve asked, "You think Trump voters are your voters?"

"Well, of course they are!" Duke said. "Because I represent the ideas of preserving this country and the heritage of this country, and I think Trump represents that as well."

Black men get shot and killed if they are found in white neighborhoods, even when they live there, and they get shot and killed in predominately black neighborhoods. No place is home if you are black in America. No place is safe.

White people can’t imagine it. They get angry. Why do you keep talking about race? They blame president Obama for being the divisive one.  

Trump campaign chair Kathy Miller said, “If you’re black and you haven’t been successful in the last 50 years, it’s your own fault. You’ve had every opportunity, it was given to you,” and she also called Black Lives Matter “a stupid waste of time.”

Then she blamed it all on Obama, saying, “I don’t think there was any racism until Obama got elected. We never had problems like this ... Now, with the people with the guns, and shooting up neighborhoods, and not being responsible citizens, that’s a big change, and I think that’s the philosophy that Obama has perpetuated on America.”

She has since resigned her position, playing the scapegoat in a campaign rife with hatred and ignorance.

You can tell me she is just one person. But she is one of the deplorables and there are many more where she came from.

You know what hurts and outrages me the most? When family and friends choose white over acknowledging that what we experience is different than what they experience, and that it is dangerous and scary at times. I don’t need anyone to weigh in on how they perceive the situation. If you haven’t lived it, you have no idea.

I am sure some of my FaceBook friends wonder why I still talk about the HOA incident. Why am I still emotional and why haven’t I put to rest the whole issue because the attorney resigned and the other officers resigned? Why is it a fresh wound that won’t heal?

Because now I know how our neighbors feel about us.

As soon as the police pull over a black man in a traffic stop, he is already considered not one of them, “looking like a bad dude” just for having brown skin. That’s what racial bias does to one’s perception of an individual. Even when the police officer is black, as in the Charlotte shooting, racial bias plays a part. How can having a broken down car, a broken taillight, or maybe “fitting the description” which is oftentimes simply “black male,” turn so deadly, so quickly, and in so many stops?

Don’t tell me not to mourn. Don’t tell me my tears and anxiety are only hurting me. Don’t tell me things aren’t dire. Don’t tell me it only looks bad because the media is drawing attention to it.

Maybe my anger scares you. Your unwillingness to be outraged scares me.

I am not asking you to give away your sense of status and privilege as an American. I am only suggesting it should be available to every American.

You know what would be nice, though? Maybe saying what my friend on FB said to me last night when I was feeling pretty low. She said, “You're not alone. I can't fight your fight, but I can struggle along in my own way.” Thank you.

Footage just released by Scott family. His wife recorded it. She told the police he had traumatic brain injury. There is nothing on the ground by him, but then there is after an officer leans over. Release the police video.
9/24/2016 I had to wait a day to be able to say this because my anger and sorrow reached a terrible place while I watched the video Mrs. Scott took (over and over, I watched): how strong must a person be to record, hold herself still, put aside the terror raging inside her, engage calmly with the police, and watch the them murder her husband in cold blood? Why must she be that strong? Because in America, it is a must. The whole legacy of black American history is to not let them, the white man, break you.  I don't know if I could be that strong. But I know I have to think about it because I may have to one day unless we can stop the senseless murder of black men and women. 

#AltonSterling #PhilandoCastile

Note: I want to believe we, the American people, are better than police slaughtering people of color, the systematized racist solution to keeping white people in the majority and people of color powerless. How many of you feel fear every time your spouse leaves the house, because you are afraid he won't come home? That he will be stopped by the police and possibly killed? I do -- every single time he goes out the door and even when I go with him, because I know I cannot protect him. I watched that police officer who killed Philando Castile become completely unhinged, unfit for duty, and yet, he got to go home and Philando didn't. He died, sitting in his car, as his girlfriend and her four-year-old watched. The world has proven to me that my beliefs are naive and this post is naive. No justice. No peace.

Alton Castile

Philando Castile

I am immersed in this election campaign, debating and sharing mostly with my liberal friends – most of my conservative friends no longer speak to me, nor I to them. I never thought I would be that person. I always enjoyed having a diverse group of friends, friends who could never gather all together in one room at the same time. Then one day I got angry.

I am an optimist. If I didn’t have that trait, I might not have made it through my childhood with an alcoholic mother. I might not have made it through the years when the world thought our interracial marriage was wrong and took actions against us to prove it. I might not have picked up and moved from a somewhat comfortable place to a new place with a new culture – from North to South. From a place where immigrants are common to a place that takes pride in its generations-long heritage, no matter how violent, oppressive, exclusionary, and divided it was.

My optimism keeps me going.

But on the 4^th of July, I lost my optimism.

I am in mourning for so many senseless, violent, terrorist acts, and the lives they took, being perpetrated across the world in Brussels, Orlando, Istanbul, Dahka, and Baghdad. I am holding my breath, anticipating the next tragedy.

In the United States a vile, negative presidential campaign is building up to the conventions taking place this month. It is a cult of personality: a clash between reality and reality TV; between the truth of progress and the lies of racism, hatred, misogyny, fear, and illusion; and between two different visions of America’s past, present, and future.

Daily I feel assaulted by the Trump campaign messages and the comments of his supporters. No political correctness on their parts, just plain discriminatory and hateful messages. Yet they come with the self-righteousness of disenfranchised, mostly white people who are impacted by a rigged system – a system rigged in favor of white, wealthy people and against everyone else, although there is a hierarchy of the disenfranchised with white males on top and women, people of color, and LGBT people at the bottom. Unfortunately, these same individuals are supporting the very person who epitomizes the unfairness of the system.

Then today I heard about a shooting in Baton Rouge. The alleged suspect Alton Sterling was pinned to the ground by two police officers when one of the officers pulled his gun and shot him in the chest six times, execution style. Alton Sterling was 37 years old. He was the father of five.  They had already tasered him, and after they shot and killed him, they pulled a gun from his pants pocket. I watched the mother of his oldest son speak to the media at a press conference called by the local NAACP, religious leaders, and elected city officials. I watched his fifteen-year-old son cry unabashedly in front of the cameras – a child full of despair, who lost his father and has the video of his execution burned into his brain. A child who is no safer on the street than his father was.

Where is my optimism now? It is crushed beneath the weight of Jim Crow.

How is it that some people can support Trump as a candidate and a military-style, vigilante-style police presence in predominately ethnic minority communities? Racism is alive and well.  Jim Crow is thriving. Individuals unaffected by racism pretend it doesn’t exist. Yet their subconscious racial bias supports systemic racism. Oftentimes they blame the targeted group, people of color, as being somehow unfit and unworthy of equal treatment.

This case has been turned over to the FBI and the Federal Department of Justice for a thorough investigation. However, the burden of proof is so strict in these violent and murderous police stops that very few are prosecuted. It seems a fruitless endeavor. Strange fruit, no longer hanging from trees, but lying on concrete, bodies, often left uncovered, surrounded by police tape, growing stiff, families and communities left behind to mourn: all to warn people of color what will happen to them if they forget their marginalized status in society.

I still want to feel that small kernel of hope in my heart. Strange, right? Yet I want to believe humanity will understand inequality, discrimination, and supremacy and want to stop them, because it is the right thing to do.

I felt it after crying my way through Free State of Jones, which we saw on Independence Day, the same day I suffered the loss of optimism. The truth is human beings are complex, feelings are complex, and we often have conflicting feelings about the world around us.

The film is about Newt Knight, a white Southerner who deserted the Confederate army because he believed it was a rich man’s war, fought by poor men. He also assisted the Union army, embraced slaves as his equals, and raised an American flag at the courthouse of the Jones County Seat in Mississippi, one of the most historically racist states in our country.

After watching Alton Sterling die over and over on the news, I started researching Newt Knight on the internet and found this article from Simthsonian Magazine. It parses out the true story from the poetic license of the movie and talks about the process writer and director Gary Ross (Hunger Games) went through to make the film.

Joseph Hosey, a forester in Jones County, and an extra on the film Free State of Jones said, when interviewed for the article, “When you grow up in the South, you hear all the time about your ‘heritage,’ like it’s the greatest thing there is. When I hear that word, I think of grits and sweet tea, but mostly I think about slavery and racism, and it pains me. Newt Knight gives me something in my heritage, as a white Southerner, that I can feel proud about. We didn’t all go along with it.”

Many other community members of Jones County consider Newt Knight “what we call trailer trash.”

John Cox, a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans went on to say, “I wouldn’t have him in my house. And like all poor, white, ignorant trash, he was in it for himself. Some people are far too enamored of the idea that he was Martin Luther King, and these are the same people who believe the War Between the States was about slavery, when nothing could be further from the truth.”

I find it interesting when wealthy white people claim that it is poor people who are crafty and unreliable with the truth. Trump exhibits that same distinction every time he steps up to the podium and spins his version of America.

Reading the article on Newt Knight lit the coal of my optimism again. It isn’t because the history of Jones County and Newt Knight is clear and simple. It is because his story reveals our country’s complex history and who we are as a people, inclusive of all Americans, not just some.

Newt Knight, his life story, and the story of his mixed-race descendants, remind me that there are people who can move beyond systemic racism, the craziness of segregation, and self-righteous superiority.

There are people who think as I do and feel as I do. They are the ones who refuse to turn a blind eye, who refuse to accept an unfair system based on skin color, and who refuse to be silent. They understand the country and its relationship with race are complex, but they don’t give up. They are quietly heroic, and sometimes loudly and violently opposed to the directions our country took, and continues to take, throughout our history. They tell the stories of race in our country even when Hollywood can’t believe anyone would be interested and there may be no money made from making the film. 

Together we can challenge those who refuse to see the truth of our country and who will not acknowledge the systemic racism that ensures continued white supremacy and privilege and makes life dangerous and deadly for people like Alton Sterling. We can challenge Trump and the ignorance he is peddling like a carnie peddling snake oil.

Newt Knight continued to be a true rebel even after death. He asked to be buried next to Rachel his black common-law wife (he never divorced his first wife, and mixed race marriage was illegal) who was his grandfather’s slave and with whom he fathered five children. It was illegal for whites and blacks to be buried side-by-side in Mississippi, but his family refused to bend, and he was buried next to the woman he loved for eternity.

His gravestone tells the story of his life and legacy: “He lived for others.” May each of us one day be able to claim that truth.

#HandsUp; #Don’tShoot; #BlackLivesMatter; #AltonSterling; #Morethan500; #Don’tBeSilent

Newt Knight 

Note: Another fatal police shooting in MN overnight (7/7/2016). Philando Castile, 34, stopped for a broken taillight  and asked to get his license and registration, was shot as he retrieved them. Jim Crow lives. People of color die. Don't be silent. #PhilandoCastile

The Greatest is Dead

Muhammad Ali died this week.  His death represented a watershed moment personally and for our country and the world. He was one of the movers and shakers of the era in which I grew up. His life affected my life, my thinking and my understanding of race in America.

I was the child of an Italian-American father who only learned English when he went to school and a mother who was a WWII war bride of Irish descent from Australia. We were solidly trapped in the class of the working poor since neither of my parents graduated high school. The concept of white middleclass America was fuzzy in my child’s eyes.

Clearer was the circumstance of my father’s best friend Harold who, like Ali, was the grandson of slaves. I understood his concern when he told us to stay behind at the house while he walked down to the grocery store to pick up rolls for our dinner. He did not want to cause us trouble, but I know my dad respected his request because he did not want to cause Harold trouble in his mostly white rural community where he moved after retirement into the house his grandmother left him and my father was helping him renovate.

I watched boxing from an early age with my dad. It’s one of the few things I shared with him. He watched boxing by throwing punches at the TV, jumping up and down out of his chair, pacing, yelling, and clapping. I adopted his raucous spectatorship and still watch boxing with my husband Ronald. Ronald, who has always been protective of me, has repeatedly said I would not like watching boxing live in the arena. He said you hear the punches and see sweat and blood fly. I agree with him. Often one of the things I am yelling at the screen is for the referee to stop the fight.

I remember watching Ali fight, when he was Cassius Clay and when he changed his name to Muhammad Ali. I heard adults talking about his name change and then again when he registered as a conscientious objector during the Viet Nam War.  He was stripped of his title and his license was suspended. People were angry with him. When he returned to boxing three years later after the Supreme Court reversed his conviction, some wanted to watch his fights in the hope that he would lose. But he disappointed them by winning.

He kept speaking up on the right side of history; although few people understood what side of history he was on and what side they were on. Maybe he wasn’t thinking that at the time. Most people don’t wake up one day and say, “I’m choosing the right side of history. I’m going to change the world.” They simply respond to the situations presented to them, and, after the fact, the historians and pundits decide who changed what and who had the most influence.

I wonder which people will be considered the movers and shakers of these times? Certainly President Obama will be chosen. Maybe Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be looked upon the same way in the future as the first presumptive female presidential nominee and maybe as the first female president.

Trump, on the other hand, is clearly on the wrong side of history. He promotes racism, hatred, prejudice, violence, selfishness, and narcissism. His supporters followed him to the wrong side, claiming political correctness was dead.

Of course, there is political correctness and then there is blatant racism and discrimination. Trump supporters were really choosing the latter, and I do not think they chose it mistakenly. Trump said of Judge Curiel, “I’m building the wall, I’m building the wall. I have a Mexican judge. He’s of Mexican heritage. He should have recused himself, not only for that, for other things.”

Within the same week he said at a rally, while pointing to a black man in the crowd (someone who said he was not a supporter), “Oh, look at my African-American over here. Look at him. Are you the greatest?"

The GOP establishment is now walking an unknown path: the way to preserving the GOP while distancing the party from an avowed racist.  What a treacherous journey they have ahead of them, particularly because they have relied on racists as supporters since Nixon’s Southern Strategy.

One day, sometime after Ali retired, white Americans declared him a hero. He had become a shadow of his former self, his body holding his mind hostage. They forgot he was physically powerful and dominated his opponents in the ring. They forgot they cheered for the other boxers to beat him. They forgot how he spoke out against racism and white supremacy.  They forgot he was a black nationalist. They forgot how they hated him for converting to Islam and changing his name from a slave name to a name with spiritual meaning and identity. President GW Bush awarded him the Medal of Freedom.

Maybe, as I’ve often heard, our memories grow sweeter with the passage of time.  Me? I always thought Muhammad Ali was an amazing and intelligent athlete, who sometimes let his ego choose his fighting strategy, and he was a person who was courageous enough to tell his truth no matter how people reacted.

Sometime during this election campaign and the deaths of several icons of my era (Ali, Prince, Bowie and others), I lost my mind and all understanding of the world. Maybe I never understood it in the first place.

I watched Trump turn the campaign into the art of the deal, playing the role of the modern PT Barnum who once said, “There's a sucker born every minute,” and “Money is in some respects life's fire: it is a very excellent servant, but a terrible master.”

I watched millions of first time voters “feel the Bern” and heard one say that if Bernie Sanders did not become the Democratic nominee, she refused to vote for the lesser of two evils (Hillary Clinton) because it was unfair to make her vote for a candidate who was not her first choice. I wondered as I listened when they would reinstitute civics classes in high school and teach about personal sacrifice for the greater good. I wondered if Bernie would choose the right side of history and concede, perhaps this evening at the close of the polls.

Then last night the AP and NBC projected Secretary of State Clinton as the presumptive Democratic nominee. I rushed to change my Face book profile photo from a glum, cranky pants expression to one of absolute glee. I am elated we reached this historic moment in our country, 36 years after Iceland elected their first female president Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, and 50 years after Indira Gandhi was elected the first female prime minister of India, serving until she was assassinated in 1984. It feels similar to my excitement in 2008 when President Obama clinched the nomination and then won the election. As a woman, a spouse in an interracial relationship, and the mother of biracial daughters, these moments are tangible.

Perhaps if Trump supporters could tell the truth about how scared they are in a world in which they feel irrelevant and disenfranchised, we can begin to heal this country. We can assure them they and we are all Americans and that we have more in common than they believe. We can promise them no one is going to take away their way of life or their guns or their religion or their safety in public bathrooms; we simply want equality and the ability to live our lives and our truths, too.

Telling the truth is something all of us need to do more often, even at the risk of others not accepting you or it.

Mohammad Ali knew that. He lived it.

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