tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9928033744944555382024-03-13T23:05:29.085-04:00About RaceDiannehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00367333776511320196noreply@blogger.comBlogger132125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-992803374494455538.post-43789395179759873172020-12-10T22:18:00.000-05:002020-12-10T22:18:14.558-05:00It is an honor to be ranked among so many great books<p> </p><h3 style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: "Nunito Sans", Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 17.6px; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">Another Day in Post-Racial America made it to the Best Black Lives Matter Books of All Time</h3><div class="ba-post-award" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; float: right; font-family: "Nunito Sans", Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; padding: 0px 0px 10px 10px;"><a href="https://bookauthority.org/books/best-black-lives-matter-books?t=t45ub1&s=award&book=1797509047" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #0069af; outline: 0px; text-decoration-skip: objects; text-decoration: none; touch-action: manipulation; transition: color 0.1s cubic-bezier(0.4, 0, 0.2, 1);" target="_blank"><img alt="BookAuthority Best Black Lives Matter Books of All Time" src="https://award.bookauthority.org/best-black-lives-matter-books.png?b=1797509047&c=1&v=6&w=300" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; display: block; height: 274px; width: 300px;" /></a></div><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: "Nunito Sans", Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">I'm happy to announce that my book, "Another Day in Post-Racial America: To the Mothers of the Black Lives Matter Movement, With Love", made it to </span><a href="https://bookauthority.org/books/best-black-lives-matter-books?t=t45ub1&s=award&book=1797509047" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #0069af; font-family: "Nunito Sans", Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-decoration-skip: objects; text-decoration: none; touch-action: manipulation; transition: color 0.1s cubic-bezier(0.4, 0, 0.2, 1);" target="_blank">BookAuthority's Best Black Lives Matter Books of All Time</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: "Nunito Sans", Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">:</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: "Nunito Sans", Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;" /><a href="https://bookauthority.org/books/best-black-lives-matter-books?t=t45ub1&s=award&book=1797509047" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #0069af; font-family: "Nunito Sans", Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-decoration-skip: objects; text-decoration: none; touch-action: manipulation; transition: color 0.1s cubic-bezier(0.4, 0, 0.2, 1);" target="_blank">https://bookauthority.org/books/best-black-lives-matter-books?t=t45ub1&s=award&book=1797509047</a><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: "Nunito Sans", Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: "Nunito Sans", Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">BookAuthority collects and ranks the best books in the world, and it is a great honor to get this kind of recognition. Thank you for all your support!</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: "Nunito Sans", Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: "Nunito Sans", Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">The book is available for purchase </span><a data-amzn-asin="1797509047" href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1797509047?tag=uuid10-20" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #0069af; font-family: "Nunito Sans", Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-decoration-skip: objects; text-decoration: none; touch-action: manipulation; transition: color 0.1s cubic-bezier(0.4, 0, 0.2, 1);" target="_blank">on Amazon</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: "Nunito Sans", Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">.</span>Diannehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00367333776511320196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-992803374494455538.post-29931022317643546482019-04-23T13:02:00.000-04:002019-04-24T10:20:26.041-04:00The Rabbit Hole Just Got Deeper<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
Sometimes life feels like a lawn tractor mowing me down. I feel it now, and it is painful! Life gets complicated! The news of the Mueller Report and other trump administration missteps and blunders keeps me awake at night.</div>
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But I also worked hard into the evenings and early mornings for many months, despite some personal life issues, to release a new version of my book. It has a new title, updates, new personal stories, expanded stories, and questions for discussion so that readers really can join the conversation about race in America. Look for it on Amazon. It should be on Barnes & Noble soon. It is now titled <i>Another Day in Post-Racial America: To the Mothers of the Black Lives Matter Movement, With Love</i>. With hope, it will no longer be placed among books about motherhood and parenting, but where it belongs, among books that talk about racism in America. But, so far, it is slow going. People who reviewed the first edition don’t want to reread it (I understand, and I thank the readers who did), and with all that is going on in people’s lives, finding new reviewers has been difficult. Independently published books live and die by the number of reviews (whether positive or negative), so if you do order my book, and I hope you will, I also hope you will give it an honest review to make sure it appears in search lists. Thank you in advance, and thank you for joining the conversation about race in America in this time of mainstream white supremacy. I would be honored to facilitate a book club or classroom discussion via Skype. Contact me in the comments section if you are interested.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The Mueller Report was released, kind of. Attorney General Barr did his best to obstruct, acting as the president’s personal lawyer and not in his role as the people’s lawyer. Finally, he released a redacted version, but we need to know ALL the details and see ALL the documentation as well as the president’s tax returns. Our government is so corrupt under this administration, we are at risk of losing the very foundation of our country: democracy. The Democrats are infighting over whether or not to proceed with impeachment, worrying it will hurt the results of the 2020 election. The GOP can only clap their hands at how many conservative judges they are placing on benches, so they have turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to all of the president’s grift and criminality. So, we are left with the most corrupt president in the history of our country, who now feels there is no consequence, no matter how far he strays from the rule of law. The consequences to our country may be irreparable. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I believe we are on the path to impeachment, but I also agree that we should not be hasty. We must have all the documentation and the testimony of Mueller and many of the witnesses named in the report. The country must understand the severity of this man's actions. 2020 will be here sooner than later, and the Russians and other foreign adversaries are ready and able to repeat their flagrant election interference. The president is unfit for the job, and, honestly, his lack of a moral compass should land him jail time. I still have hope our government system will work as originally designed.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I also believe we must pass laws that ensure election districting is nonpartisan, and we need to eliminate voter suppression through the reenactment of and recommitment to the Voter Rights Act, where the Federal government can intervene if states suppress the vote. We must encourage every person to register to vote and to get out and vote. Otherwise, our voices will be silenced. And, finally, we must look closely at the Electoral College and investigate its possible closure and rely on the popular vote. It will be a lengthy process and cannot hope to impact the 2020 election.<o:p></o:p></div>
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As of April 22, 2019, nineteen Democratic candidates have thrown their hats into the primary ring. Joe Biden is expected to join them this week. The field may still grow even after that. The pool is full of qualified, dedicated individuals who have committed their lives to public service. The youngest and least qualified may be Pete Buttigieg, but he has shown courage in the face of truth, brought other relevant experience to the table, and I haven’t discounted him. He has captured the interest of millennials, too. But I am hoping that all the white males who are running understand that even if they are equal in qualification, as a country, it is important to look most closely at women and ethnic minority candidates. It is past time, decades past time, where all Americans can feel fully represented by our elected officials, particularly the position of president. We are not just a country of white men, and our elected officials should look like the citizens they represent. I know, people will jump on me for even mentioning this kind of thought process. It won’t be the first time. But our government should reflect our populace. Even with the election of the most diverse Congress in the history of our country, it is still not reflective of who we are. We should not, as I say in my book, be a majority minority country ruled by a wealthy, white male ruling class. That is not what we aspire to when we speak of our greatest ideal, that we are all equal, so I hope voters will recognize the importance of having our elected officials look like our citizens and be individuals who can understand the unique needs of different constituents and be able to honor their narratives that are so often smothered beneath the white male patriarchy. If we succeed at that, we can all experience equality and enjoy a better quality of life.<o:p></o:p></div>
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So, yes, the rabbit hole has gotten deeper, and darker, and scarier, but I haven’t given up yet, and I hope you won’t, too. Write to your elected officials about the issues that matter to you and about whether or not you support impeachment or some other action like censure, make sure you are registered to vote, watch the town hall meetings and debates, and make your best, most informed decision. Then support whoever the candidate ends up being. We need to change course in 2020.<o:p></o:p></div>
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And, please, learn about race in America and the way it impacts citizens of color. It is so important that the country understands the systemic racism and sexism under which our governance is operating. Joining the conversation means that, together, we can change the narrative and climb out of the rabbit hole. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Diannehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00367333776511320196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-992803374494455538.post-48275335116546612432019-02-04T15:08:00.000-05:002019-02-08T20:12:02.886-05:00Dear White People Who Can't Figure Out if What You Did Is Racist Or Not<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
Dear white people who can’t figure out if what you did is racist or not, </div>
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Stop waiting for black people to explain why some of your actions are racist. You already know they are racist when you do your best to claim such behaviors aren’t who you are, or you pretend they never happened. I say this, because of the debacle Governor Ralph Northam of the Virginia Commonwealth caused for himself.</div>
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In case you haven’t heard, the extreme right went on a hunt to discredit Northam. They uncovered a photograph in his 1984 medical school yearbook that showed one student in blackface and the other in a KKK robe and hood. They were after Northam because of a bill he was trying to get passed concerning late term abortions. It appears the extreme right will go to any lengths to ensure women, even if their lives depend on it, cannot have access to safe and affordable abortions. Their love of fetuses outpaces their love of people by eons. They’ve even killed for the cause.</div>
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I don’t understand their position, because if they made sure women had access to affordable birth control and reproductive healthcare, as they did under the ACA until the right dismantled it, the number of abortions would shrink to almost zero, and the procedure would only be used as a last resort, say in the case of rape (no, a baby conceived by rape is not a gift from God; It is the result of a violent physical attack.) or the mother’s health risk. But the extreme right doesn’t care, because embryos and fetuses mean more to their cause than people. If even one of them told the truth, they would tell you that what it really means is that they would fulfill their belief that women should be oppressed and submissive to men, and they should not be allowed to make decisions about their bodies. I know this because of the number of men who claimed support of pro-life legislation, but were also caught telling their mistresses to get abortions so the men would not be found out and would not have to support a child they didn’t think was worth their support. In their case, the baby was certainly not a gift from God; It was the inconvenient result of caving to lust.</div>
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So they went digging to discredit Northam. Apparently they didn’t have to dig too deeply, because there was the photo in his medical yearbook, and another interesting tidbit in another yearbook: one of his nicknames was “Coonman.”</div>
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Many Democrats and liberals called for Northam’s resignation, along with the hypocritical right. It doesn’t matter who went digging, it matters that the incendiary photo existed at all. And it doesn’t matter what a stellar civil rights record he has. We live in different times. There was a time white men fought for civil rights, but were perfectly fine leaving systemic racism in place. They wanted to continue being the power brokers, decision makers, and leaders. There was no room at the table for anyone who looked different or thought differently from them. Those days are over. The 2008 election broke the glass ceiling for people of color, and Hillary Rodham Clinton’s run as the Democratic candidate in the 2016 election broke the glass ceiling for women. Not that there hasn’t been backlash. There has been a strong and sustained backlash. Trump is the face of that backlash. Nevertheless, we persisted in the 2018 election with the greatest turnover of Congressional seats in the history of our country and the most diverse Congress ever.</div>
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Northam, so far, refused to resign. On February 1, 2019, he issued an apology for appearing in the photograph. On February 2, 2019, he claimed he wasn’t in the photo and someone had put it on his page without his knowledge. He also admitted he had engaged in putting on blackface once for a Michael Jackson dance contest—he even said he only put on a little shoe polish since, if one had never done it before, one might not know how difficult it is to remove later. He even went so far as to consider giving a demonstration of his dance skills, but one can hear his wife caution that it is “inappropriate circumstances.”</div>
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It’s beyond inappropriate. In 1984, the year the yearbook was published, every single American would have known, with the exception of avowed white supremacists, that blackface is offensive and the KKK is a terrorist organization. Engaging in such behavior, particularly when one hopes to serve individuals as their doctor and, later, as their government representative, is egregious.</div>
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Some pundits are calling for statements from Obama and the Virginia Deputy Governor, Justin Fairfield, who would step into the governor’s position should Northam step down. No, they don’t have to weigh in. They will only be criticized, and, white people, you don’t need them to tell you what Northam did was racist and that he should step down. We know he should be held accountable. The only one who appears not to know is Northam himself.</div>
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Except, let me make a larger statement to the extreme right: You can’t call foul on liberals and not disavow Steve King (Iowa) who is a blatant white supremacist and trump who has an equally egregious record on race relations dating back to the 1970s when he wouldn’t rent to people of color. Remember, he also pushed the birther conspiracy and kept it going long after that horse was beaten to death. They should both step down, too. And you? You must start legislating equality.</div>
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So, let’s be accountable. The extreme right needs to stop doing whatever is necessary, including cheating at the polls, suppressing the vote, conspiring with a foreign adversary, and discrediting their colleagues on the other side of the aisle, to get their ideologically discriminatory beliefs into the mainstream. There is a reason there is separation of church and state. Do what you want in your churches, as long as you are not abusing people through conversion therapy or sexually abusing parishioners or doing anything else vile under the guise of God’s will, including believing that God favors white people over all others and that gives you permission to discriminate and hate anyone who doesn’t look like you. And stop looking for dirt to discredit Fairfield, too. Your methods are obvious and disingenuous.<br />
Note: after I published this it came to light that the allegations against Fairfield may have come from Northam's camp. It has not been confirmed, but if true, this shows Northam's utter disregard for people of color as he is willing to crush another's career to save his own. This story is getting deep.<br />
Note 2: An second allegation, this time of rape, against Fairfield. Fairfield is demanding an investigation, but it appears he must step down, too, even while third in line has his own black face story. The Commonwealth of Virginia is in trouble.</div>
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Northam, resign. White men have to stop expecting second, third and fourth chances when they mess up. Women and people of color still have to fight like hell just for one chance. Just because you are liberal and believe you are supporting righteous legislation for equality, doesn’t give you a buy. In fact, it holds you to a higher standard. Do the right thing, or risk discrediting the Democratic Party, because of your own self-interest. If we, the party of all people, can’t do the right thing, why would we expect the GOP to do it?</div>
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The rest of us will continue to fight for the right of all people to be equal under the law and in society, and we will let you know when we witness racist behavior and also unethical politics to support extreme ideology. We’ve proven these last several years that swimming in the muck of humanity makes us terrible people. That is why we must hold everyone to a higher standard. Governor Northam, be the first to prove why taking the high road is the right road to take.</div>
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Diannehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00367333776511320196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-992803374494455538.post-73978841701255578772019-01-27T16:35:00.000-05:002019-01-28T17:03:05.341-05:00Dear Bernie Supporters<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
Dear Bernie Supporters,</div>
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Bernie Sanders is gearing up to announce his intent to run for president in 2020. I’m not surprised, and I understand your enthusiasm. I’ve had it myself for certain candidates over the course of the forty-four years I’ve voted. He is qualified for the position and he certainly has made a positive impression on many voters, which is true of most of the Democratic candidates stepping forward. But I would like to offer a word of caution for your unbridled enthusiasm.</div>
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This is not a zero-sum game. We find ourselves in an unprecedented national crisis and our democracy and standing in the world are at risk and have already been damaged, maybe irreparably. Our most important goal is to be united against the evil represented by Donald Trump and the GOP that has put party and power before country for the last fifty years. Only a united Democratic front can fight that kind of ultimate corruption.</div>
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This is not 2016. It is not 2008. It’s not 2000 or 2004. It is not even 1972. Our country is caving to authoritarian rule, our democratic processes have been corrupted and dismantled by greed, criminal activity, stupidity, foreign influence, and systemic white supremacy, which has regained currency and credibility in the mainstream. </div>
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This is not the time to believe that there is only one candidate who represents the singularly correct view of what America can be. It is not the time to support only issues that directly benefit the individual like legalized marijuana or free higher education.</div>
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It is time to understand that progress is what the Democratic Party is known for. It is time to take the concept of the greater good out of the closet and dust it off. It is time to understand how the system of government works, and that even if a candidate believes he or she can change an issue or usher in progress, it takes three branches of government and the support of the American people to make it happen. And even then, not everyone is happy. It is time to renew our belief in compromise and negotiation – we can all take a page from Nancy Pelosi’s playbook. The GOP stopped the government from working since 2008 because they believe the country is only for white Americans, particularly those who are male and those who are wealthy. We have to speak out, through our votes, and let them know that is unacceptable.</div>
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We did it in 2018. We elected the most diverse Congress in the history of our country. But we cannot stop there, because even the most diverse Congress still is not representative of the demographics of all Americans. The 2020 election may well be the most important election in our lifetimes.</div>
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That means our unity is very, very important. Trump won partially because our party was divided. And you have to know that many Bernie supporters were victims of Russian-generated messages pushed into their social media newsfeeds just as Trump supporters were victims. The messages were misogynist and bashed Hillary as a candidate. Why? Because Putin did not want her to be president. She was the most qualified presidential candidate in the history of our country – more qualified than Bill and Barrack! More qualified than the candidates stepping forward for 2020 – including Joe Biden, should he decide to run. She understood the threat Russia poses in world stability and she was respected across the world by our allies and by many of our adversaries.</div>
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We still probably would have been okay in 2016, and Hillary would have been elected, since she had 2.8 million more popular votes than Trump, but the work of the GOP in creating voter suppression sealed the fate of the 2016 election. Gerrymandering and voter suppression laws made sure that the election was not fair.</div>
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Many Bernie supporters know this. They understand the process. It didn’t stop them from feeling passionate and working hard to get their candidate elected as the Democratic candidate in 2016. When he didn’t win the primary, they voted for the candidate most Democrats believed would best represent the platform, ideas and beliefs of the party of progress. They voted for Hillary.</div>
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Others, as mired in the lies spread by the Russian government and the extreme right as Trump supporters, either refused to vote or voted for third party candidates. Their choice to not vote or vote for candidates who had no chance of winning helped get us in this situation. If we had their votes, even voter suppression efforts would have failed.</div>
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There are going to be a lot of Democratic candidates coming forward. So far, many of them are very qualified to step into the White House and stop this crazy train on which America finds itself trapped. We have to be open to their messages. We have to make sure we don’t fall back on old paradigms of white and male supremacy. We have to make a pact that all campaigns will be about platforms and issues, and not devolve into negative and attack campaigns. We have to understand that most Democrats, even the more moderate ones, are seeking progress and equality for our country. The issue that often divides us is that white privilege is as alive and well in our party as it is in America in general and in the GOP specifically. We have to check our privilege and bias. Our diversity is our strength!</div>
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Bernie Sanders promised not to conduct a negative campaign in 2016, and I believed him. I’ve been a Bernie advocate since the early 1990s. I’ve watched his rise as an independent Senator who caucuses with the Democrats. He and I agree on many of the issues and we both sit pretty far left. We old, lifelong progressives are idealistic and believe in equality, and we fight hard for it. But something happened to Bernie in 2015 and 2016. He could taste the power, just as Trump could taste the power. Neither one originally expected to win. Bernie threw in his hat because he felt Democrats should have a choice. As the primary got closer to the finish, he did engage in negative campaigning, and I found it hurtful personally and to the unity of the Democratic party. Of course, Hillary did the same in 2008. And I felt both Bernie and Hillary were late in conceding defeat. Both threw their support to the winning candidate, as they should have. Most Hillary supporters moved their support to Barrack, but some Bernie supporters didn’t care that he supported Hillary. They were never-Hillary voters. We can’t do that again. It hurt us. It aided in dragging us fifty years backwards into our history, not helped to push us forward.</div>
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So when twenty-four or thirty candidates step forward to run in the primary, do your research, listen to them speak at rallies, listen to the debates, read their white papers on issues, make sure you only read articles from the real and unbiased media, pick your best candidate, and vote for him or her. That is your inalienable right as a citizen of this country. But if your candidate doesn’t win, do the right thing. You can still fight for progress. You can still look to reach your ideal. Vote for the candidate that will defeat the GOP. And that is true for Senate seats and Congressional seats and state legislature seats and governor seats and municipal seats. We can only progress when we agree that equality and unity are our mandates – every American has the inalienable right to experience America like white male Americans do now and every American should have access to a living wage job, fair and decent housing, safe neighborhoods, affordable healthcare, good and safe schools, and affordable higher education – and the GOP has clearly shown they believe in neither equality nor unity; they believe in the power of the dollar and in the myth of supremacy. </div>
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Everyone deserves a voice in America, even the individuals we don’t agree with. There is plenty of room and resources for all of us. Letting everyone have a voice sometimes means we don’t get what we think is best or we don’t like the way policy is implemented, but if we remember equality and unity at all times and use them to guide us, we might understand that the process and the path to progress may look different but we can still arrive at the same place in the end.</div>
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And here’s the other thing: we older progressives fought hard won battles for equality in school, in the home, in the workplace and out in society. We served as, in my case, a union steward, a lobbyist for affordable childcare, and an advocate. Our hard work and ability to make change make it easy for a young woman today to say that feminism never did a thing for her. That young woman doesn’t know the history and doesn’t realize whose shoulders she stands on when she makes a statement like that. The statement doesn’t make me angry, it makes me believe we need to educate our young Americans so they know the full story of our history of equality in this country and across the world – the truth really does hurt, but we can learn from it and vow not to repeat it, as we are doing today when babies are snatched from their mothers’ arms and put in detention centers. </div>
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I would have proudly cast my vote for Bernie Sanders in 2016 had he won the primary, and I will proudly cast my vote for him if he wins this time or for whoever else garners the most Democratic votes and support. I don’t have a favorite yet, and I am excited about the level of possible candidates stepping forward. I hope you feel the same way, because the candidates are qualified and the field is strong, and though we have our personal favorites, we have to remember what is at stake. Use your vote and your voice thoughtfully.</div>
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Sincerely,</div>
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A lifelong progressive and Democrat<br />
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PS These are just two of the letters I have written to newspaper editors in my adult life. I often use the written word as my instrument of advocacy. The second letter urging for a change in the city school district gifted program selection process prompted several anonymous phone calls that bordered on threatening. It wouldn't be the first or last time my message of equality was received negatively, but I won't give up, and I hope you won't, too. There are many ways to advocate for progress and there is no shortage of issues in our country that require hard work, enthusiasm, and passion to make them better.</div>
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Letter to the Editor, <i>The Daily Orange</i>, circa 1978</div>
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Letter to the Editor, <i>Syracuse Post Standard</i>, circa 1990</div>
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Diannehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00367333776511320196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-992803374494455538.post-4860006541818146942019-01-06T14:09:00.000-05:002019-01-06T14:09:09.483-05:00The Wall is Not a Thing<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
Most Americans don’t realize how many people actually work for the Federal Government. The number is in the millions (2.7 million in 2014), and they represent a good portion of the middle class. Right now, most of them are not being paid because of the government shutdown. They can’t pay their bills including mortgages, and are at risk of losing everything they’ve worked hard to buy.</div>
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Children whose parents rely on food stamps are also at risk. So are farmers who rely on government loans to keep their farms viable. And what about the immigrant children who are being held in detention centers? The shutdown is catastrophic, not just for Democrats or liberals, but for millions of Americans, including a large number of Trump supporters. </div>
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Two weeks ago, Trump held a meeting with Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Chuck Schumer. Trump announced he would be happy to carry the mantle of the shutdown. He would take full responsibility for it. Senator Schumer ducked his head and smirked. He knew well that Trump was caught on tape once again saying outrageous things. Of course, Trump changed his tune early into the shutdown. He now calls it Pelosi’s shutdown or the Democratic shutdown. He has always used bait and switch as one of his strategies for getting what he wants (or what the powerbrokers like Putin, who are driving his policy stances, want). I think even his most loyal base is tiring of the game. It is hitting them squarely in their pocketbooks. Many GOP Senators, who are up for election in 2020, are starting to back away from Trump and his rhetoric. It’s already been proven that they are at risk of being voted out, in spite of gerrymandered districts and voter suppression efforts. We all have to ask ourselves, do Trump and the GOP really have the best interests of America in mind when they cheat to win? I don’t think so. They have the interests of an elite group of Americans in mind, so they have to cheat to win.</div>
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I want to recommend a film and a short documentary series to my readers.</div>
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The first is the film <i>Vice. </i>It is a fictional account about the rise of Dick Cheney, from a drunken loser, to the most powerful vice president in the history of our country. I admit this film has a liberal slant, but, seriously, facts really are facts, despite what Kellyann Conway says, and if you look at what this man orchestrated in his career in Washington, along with other powerbrokers such as Don Rumsfeld, it will give you pause. During the GW Bush administration, 22 million emails were lost – it boggles the mind when one remembers how enraged GOP elected officials were over 32,000 emails belonging to Hillary Clinton that had already been vetted for security risks and mostly were personal emails about Chelsea’s pregnancy and other mundane topics. The Bush administration also conducted email exchanges on networks that did not record them for prosperity, because they didn’t want them recorded. Meetings were held in rooms where auto-record devices were not installed, and they were held without the president and without his knowledge. Cheney abused his position again and again, and he started his power abuse back in the Nixon administration. Although there were dozens of investigations into the Bush administration, one can only wonder why there weren’t more investigations launched into the inner workings of this administration that lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and also made the stockholders of Halliburton wealthy beyond their dreams. Corruption in our government is not new, but we may discover it is at levels in the Trump administration that even the most power-hungry official could not envision.</div>
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But the path to this level of corruption was laid out a long time ago, across the world. It seems mankind can’t help but feel drawn to power and the abuse of it.</div>
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I say this as an introduction to my next recommendation, a documentary series on the Smithsonian TV channel titled <i>Apocalypse: The Second World War. </i>Ronald and I binge-watched this six part series last night. It is a must-see for anyone sixteen and older. The documentary used over 600 hours of declassified government film and film from private citizens taken during the war, and it was devastating to watch. This war was responsible for more deaths of soldiers and civilians than any other war in the history of mankind, and the number is in the tens of millions, maybe as high as 80 million. Historians estimate it wiped out 3% of the world population. </div>
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Jews were left to starve in concentration camps or they were gassed en masse in gas chambers. Before the “final solution” was implemented, Jews were forced to dig their own graves and were shot while standing in them (and this horrific genocide was captured on film) – this method of genocide, later considered inefficient, was known as the Bullet Holocaust. There were millions of others who did not fit into the “master race” Nazis defined, and they were put to death, too. They included gypsies, homosexuals, political dissidents, and resistors.</div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #a0a0a0; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">Photo: Lt. Arnold E. Samuelson/</span><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ebensee_concentration_camp_prisoners_1945.jpg" style="color: purple;"><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; padding: 0in; text-decoration: none;">Wikimedia Commons</span></a><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #a0a0a0; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">/</span><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; color: purple; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; padding: 0in; text-decoration: none;"><a href="https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/" style="color: purple;">Public Domain</a></span></div>
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But the Germans weren’t the only ones who acted with depravity and without regard for human life. The Russians let 600,000 prisoners of war starve to death, rather than use food needed for troops. The Japanese were guilty of crimes against humanity for their treatment of prisoners of war and for civilians, particularly in China and the Philippines. Italy conscripted its army and forced young men to fight for a mad dictator. America interned Japanese Americans, many of whom had been US citizens for generations.</div>
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This war clearly demonstrated unchecked power is capable of the most depraved, horrific, and inhuman actions by mankind. After the war, trials were held, but many war criminals were given immunity and were allowed to start over. <a href="https://www.npr.org/2014/11/05/361427276/how-thousands-of-nazis-were-rewarded-with-life-in-the-u-s" target="_blank">Many resettled in America.</a> The United Nations and NATO were put in place to try to prevent another such war from ever happening.</div>
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But we are living in a time now where certain personalities are rising to power and they are at risk of abusing that power. Trump is one of them. He has often used the rhetoric used by Hitler and other demagogues and he has used hatred and fear to get his way.</div>
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He is saying he may invoke his power to call a national emergency and build the wall between the US and Mexico. It is a clear abuse of power. He has dehumanized people seeking asylum in the US by describing them as criminals, animals, vermin, and as individuals who would change America as we know it – not very different from the rhetoric Hitler used against the Jews. Horrific acts were committed based on that rhetoric and we should be alert to this fact and try not to repeat the past.</div>
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At least five attempts were made to assassinate Hitler as Germans in high positions realized the absolute decimation of humanity the implementation of such rhetoric caused. Such failed attempts only caused Hitler to believe more strongly that God had placed him in power and was protecting him.</div>
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When people are experiencing hard times and they feel helpless to change their circumstances, someone like Trump or Hitler can come along and take advantage of that fear. They needle away at racial and ethnic biases and give desperate people someone to take out their frustration and hatred upon. </div>
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We’ve seen this at Trump rallies and in videos shared on social media. People feel more emboldened to act out against “the enemy” because Trump told them they could. Slowly, more and more inhumane acts become acceptable, including children being snatched away from their parents and imprisoned in camps or people of color being policed by white citizens because the white citizens believe people of color have no right to be in public spaces.</div>
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We have to stop this. We can’t continue on this path of hatred and genocide. Two children dying at the hands of authority are two children too many. Their deaths are imprinted on our souls. If Trump has his way, we will be the ones burdened by our own hand in this atrocity. </div>
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The wall is not a thing. Roger Stone made it up as a sound bite to rile the base, and it worked. No one ever expected Mexico to pay for the wall, or even to use taxpayers’ money to build it. In fact, it appears Trump is the only one left thinking the wall must be built. The number of illegal immigrants crossing the borders has decreased steadily since 2010. The only people coming now are seeking asylum from danger and violence in their own countries. We ought to open our arms to them, not build a wall.</div>
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Not only this, but Trump has also tried to denigrate the United Nations and NATO. He may very well destroy the pacts between countries that have so far kept us from another war like World War II.</div>
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We need to understand that power is corrupting to certain personalities. Trump is one such person. If we don’t understand and acknowledge the past and stand against such corruption now, early in the process, we may not be able to stop it in the future. </div>
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The wall is not a thing. </div>
Diannehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00367333776511320196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-992803374494455538.post-52820346693509743132018-09-30T10:06:00.000-04:002018-10-02T11:53:48.629-04:00#DONOTCONFIRMKAVA<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
“Now, in trying to determine whether you are telling falsehoods or not, I have got to determine what your motivation might be. Are you a scorned woman?”</div>
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That question was asked of Anita Hill at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing for Clarence Thomas in 1991 by Sen. Howell Heflin (R-Alabama). He asked it because he assumed women liked the kind of attention Clarence Thomas gave his employee – talking about porn films and sexual positions – and would react angrily if such attention wasn’t given.</div>
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Ms. Hill responded, “No.”</div>
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Back in 1991 I was a 34-year-old, married mother of seven-year-old twin daughters. I had moved from working in an academic environment, which tended to be more liberal and egalitarian, but still had its own issues of inequality, to the corporate sector, which felt rife with inequality. I ran the corporate library, and, when one patron said he couldn’t come to the library during the day, I offered to stay after work hours if needed, and he sidled up beside me and said he hoped I would. I didn’t. </div>
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I watched the Thomas/Hill hearings closely, my outrage at the ignorance of the all-white-male committee exploding at the television. Not only were the questions sexist, they were racist, too. Senators are supposed to represent all Americans, but I didn’t feel represented.</div>
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Fast forward to 2018. The GOP members of the current Senate Judiciary Committee decided not to question Christine Blasey Ford directly. Instead they hired a female prosecutor to ask questions. They didn’t want sound bites of the kind that came out of the Clarence Thomas hearing. The prosecutor was at a disadvantage, because no FBI investigation had been conducted, as was the case when Hill testified in 1991, when the FBI interviewed twenty-two witnesses. Therefore, she had very little to base her questions on. In fact the committee had little to base their questions on, because they only had what the two people involved had to say.</div>
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However, Blasey Ford, admittedly terrified, was compelling. At one point I watched her as her breath became shallow, her voice quivered, as she said, “"Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter. The uproarious laughter between the two. They’re having fun at my expense." She was reliving the assault, in real time.</div>
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How awful that sex assault victims live with the assault for the rest of their lives in dreams, in perceived new threats which might be prompted by a comment or someone who inadvertently gets too close, in noises in the dark of night, or when alone in a parking lot.</div>
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Kavanaugh, on the other hand, was unhinged. He displayed anger, arrogance, self-pity and manipulation. He tried to sound empathetic a couple of times when he said he believed Dr. Ford had been assaulted but she was mistaken when she identified him as the assaulter. Then he tried to best Senators Durbin and Klobuchar during their exchanges. He refused to answer a direct question from Sen. Durbin about whether he supported an FBI investigation. Then he engaged in a chicken fight with Sen. Klobuchar when she asked him if he got so drunk he suffered blackouts. He turned it around and asked if she liked to drink and if she ever had a blackout. It was a particularly insidious moment for me. </div>
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Klobuchar explained her 90-year-old father was a recovering alcoholic who suffered the consequences of his drinking and Kavanaugh used that to try to knock her off her questioning. I grew up in an alcoholic home. The smell of beer, my mother’s choice of drink, still turns my stomach today because it was so pervasive in my chaotic home. I binge drank from the age of sixteen through eighteen, not every day or every week, maybe four or five times in those two years, but it was still terrible. I got alcohol poisoning when I returned home from college one weekend to visit friends, during a game of Chug-a-lug (a friend gave me straight alcohol since I didn’t drink beer, and I believed it was a mixed drink). I blacked out, and still felt drunken and nauseous two days later back at school. I clearly saw the path I was traveling, the one my mother had surely taken, would lead to a life not well-lived but tolerated by blurring my emotions. I was in the top of my class. I received a scholarship to attend Syracuse University. But alcohol made my life precarious and dangerous.</div>
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I stopped drinking cold turkey after the alcohol-poisoning episode until I was in my late forties, thirty years later. Now I drink a glass of red wine at dinner a couple times a week, more for heart health than love of alcohol, and an occasional gin and tonic or margarita. </div>
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But did Kavanaugh ever stop drinking? “I like beer. I still like beer,” he testified, “but,” he continued, “I did not drink beer to the point of blacking out and I never sexually assaulted anyone." Since I am intimate with alcoholics, I think Kavanaugh is one, and not in recovery, but actively still drinking to excess. He is what I would call a functional drunk.</div>
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Then he lied about the meaning of certain comments in his yearbook. “Boofing” was flatulence and “the Devil’s triangle” was a drinking game with coins. His reference to being a “Renate alumnius” was because he had taken her to dances, as had many of his friends, and he thought so highly of her. Renate Dolphin, the Renate referred to by several football players, had this to say: “I can’t begin to comprehend what goes through the minds of 17-year-old boys who write such things, but the insinuation is horrible, hurtful and simply untrue. I pray their daughters are never treated this way.”</div>
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Kavanaugh claimed his detailed calendar proved he was never at a party with Blasey Ford. Yet there is an entry on July 1, 1982 that says, “Timmy’s for skis with Judge, Tom, P.J. Bernie and ... Squi.” The term skis is short for brewskis, or beers. No further questioning about the calendar entry ensued, because Sen. Graham launched into his audition for the position of Attorney General (My interpretation of why this usually rational senator jumped over the edge of decency. I believe he would like to step into Sessions’ shoes after the mid-term election.) He shouted about the unfair treatment of Kavanaugh and slammed his hand on the table for emphasis. </div>
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Two more credible women came forward with their stories about Kavanaugh and his friends. Debbie Ramirez said he exposed himself and pushed his penis toward her face at Yale during a dorm room party. Julie Swetnick, who grew up near Kavanaugh, claimed she “observed the future Supreme Court nominee at parties where women were verbally abused, inappropriately touched, made ‘disoriented’ with alcohol or drugs and ‘gang raped.’” She said she was raped at one such party, but did not name Kavanaugh as the rapist (or one of the rapists).</div>
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I’ve been posting a lot about white male privilege on FB and Twitter. We have to understand the power of privilege in all of this. Kavanaugh carried a golden ticket to success because of his family’s status and the schools he attended –it’s a perverse kind of affirmative action. He was also an athlete and that comes with some privileges and status, too. He may have lied during a previous confirmation to federal judge. Sen. Leahy tweeted the following: “We have discovered evidence that Judge Kavanaugh misled the Senate during his 2004 and 2006 hearings. Truthfulness under oath is not an optional qualification for a Supreme Court nominee.” Yet Kavanaugh’s career continued on an upward projection all the way to being nominated to the Supreme Court of the United States.</div>
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What did Kavanaugh think of Blasey Ford’s allegations? They incensed him. He isn’t used to being told no or to adversity of any kind. He perversely decided Blasey Ford was part of a leftwing conspiracy that the Clinton’s waged to exact revenge for the time he served under Ken Starr, the special investigator who investigated the allegations against Bill Clinton that lead to his impeachment. His rage was real, and certainly not demonstrative of the kind of measured temperament expected of a Supreme Court justice. </div>
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Did Kavanaugh ignore Blasey Ford’s cries of no when he and Mark Judge pushed her into a room and then onto a bed? Did Kavanaugh continue to ignore her terror, as he climbed on top of her, ground himself against her, and tried to remove her clothes? Did he put his hand over her mouth, not just so the people downstairs wouldn’t hear her scream, but also so that he wouldn’t have to hear it? Did her fear and humiliation entertain him?</div>
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Privilege doesn’t make every white man a sexual predator, a racist, or a terrible person. But it does give them the power to deny or diminish inequality and behaviors such as sexual assault. It can lead some men to believe that women are objects to be used for sexual pleasure. It can cause them to believe that their bad behavior should not be punished, because it might keep them from reaching their full potential. They don’t care if they hurt, abuse, or otherwise impact others, because they do not value others who are not white, male, and in the same tribes (Georgetown Prep and Yale, for example).</div>
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It is particularly insidious when those in privilege protect one another. Two unnamed men came forward to claim they were the assailants. Their story didn’t go anywhere because there are no follow-up news stories after their admission. The GOP is guilty of protecting Kavanaugh, too, as they diminished Blasey Ford’s testimony by saying while they believed she was sexually assaulted; she was mistaken in her allegation that Kavanaugh was the one who assaulted her. Many of these men are the same men who ignored allegations of sexual harassment against Clarence Thomas and sexual assault against Trump. They’ve continued to protect Trump even as more and more evidence emerges that he was a coconspirator with a foreign dictator. And they are protecting Kavanaugh, first, by keeping tens of thousands of documents from the Judiciary Committee, and, now, by making him the victim of the left and of Blasey Ford. </div>
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Sen. Flake, who was ready to advance Kavanaugh to the Senate floor vote, only changed his mind after Maria Gallagher and Ana Maria Archila broke through a group of reporters and cornered Flake in an elevator.</div>
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“Don’t look away from me,” Maria Gallagher said to Flake. “Look at me and tell me that it doesn’t matter what happened to me, that you will let people like that go into the highest court of the land and tell everyone what they can do to their bodies.”</div>
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Back in session, Flake announced he would vote yes in Committee, but he didn’t feel comfortable voting yes on the Senate floor unless the FBI investigation was reopened.</div>
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Is that the only way we can dismantle white privilege? By cornering men and forcing them to listen to the millions of women and girls who have been sexually assaulted?</div>
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The FBI has one week to investigate the allegations made by Blasey Ford and Ramirez, but it appears the White House limited the investigation and they cannot investigate Swetnick’s allegations. Why did the White House limit the investigation? Is it another personal vendetta of Trump’s against attorney Michael Avenatti who represents Stormy Daniels and now Julie Swetnick? What will the Judiciary Committee do with the data collected by the FBI? Will they still confirm the man, or will they deny him? Either way will be met with resistance, but I am almost sure that they will do everything in their power and privilege to confirm him. There may be occasional cracks in the lens of privilege that cause temporary responses that seem reasonable, but soon the lens is repaired, and we are back to the original view that white men are better than the rest of us and are entitled to do whatever they please at another’s expense. It is the uproarious laughter of those who refuse to hear no.</div>
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There is one way to stop privilege in its tracks, and that is to vote more women and minorities into elected positions. Only then can we begin to push back against systemic privilege and have the number of votes required to disqualify an appointee for credible allegations of sexual assault, for perjuring himself during the hearing, or for demonstrating his temperament is unfit for a position on the highest court in the land. But in the case of Kavanaugh’s confirmation, we have to rely on white men who are used to getting their way. So we need to start now.</div>
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Remember, when you go to vote in November, because we MUST vote in the midterm election, Christine Blasey Ford’s voice as she described Kavanaugh sexually assaulting her:</div>
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<i>When I got to the top of the stairs, I was pushed from behind into a bedroom. I couldn’t see who pushed me. Brett and Mark came into the bedroom and locked the door behind them. There was music already playing in the bedroom. It was turned up louder by either Brett or Mark once we were in the room. I was pushed onto the bed and Brett got on top of me. He began running his hands over my body and grinding his hips into me. I yelled, hoping someone downstairs might hear me, and tried to get away from him, but his weight was heavy. Brett groped me and tried to take off my clothes. He had a hard time because he was so drunk, and because I was wearing a one-piece bathing suit under my clothes. I believed he was going to rape me. I tried to yell for help. When I did, Brett put his hand over my mouth to stop me from screaming. This was what terrified me the most, and has had the most lasting impact on my life. It was hard for me to breathe, and I thought that Brett was accidentally going to kill me. Both Brett and Mark were drunkenly laughing during the attack. They both seemed to be having a good time. Mark was urging Brett on, although at times he told Brett to stop. A couple of times I made eye contact with Mark and thought he might try to help me, but he did not.</i><br />
<i>During this assault, Mark came over and jumped on the bed twice while Brett was on top of me. The last time he did this, we toppled over and Brett was no longer on top of me. I was able to get up and run out of the room</i>.</div>
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Vote in November for all the women, children, and men who were victims of sexual assault. Vote as if our lives, our equality, and our democracy depend on it. They do.</div>
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Diannehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00367333776511320196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-992803374494455538.post-40442626857694260992018-09-08T20:36:00.000-04:002018-09-09T12:42:32.643-04:00[Amonmymous] Times<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: #14171a; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">When a man who can’t pronounce “anonymous” claims the speech of one of our greatest orators put him to sleep, we have to wonder about his grasp of words. If Trump is the best that many Americans think our country has to offer, what criteria are they basing it on? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #14171a; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">Is it the unethical and opportunistic way he runs his businesses and the government? The way he disrespects and objectifies women? Or maybe it is his inability to understand the responsibilities of the office of president. Or it is his penchant for defying the rule of law. Perhaps it is his insensitivity to people with disabilities or maybe the way he attacks people of color with statements pertaining to their IQs and threats of deporting or imprisoning them. Maybe it is the way he has cuddled up to violent dictators, while disavowing liberals of any ilk here in America. Or is it because he treats immigrants as criminals, rapists, and animals by denying them refuge and snatching away their children? Or is it God ordained that we suffer this fool as some fundamentalists, who believe in the divine bestowal of white supremacy, suggest? Or is it because he claimed there were many fine Nazis and white supremacists in Charlottesville in 2017? Or, most importantly, was he the whitest white man in the bunch?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #14171a; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;"> If white supremacists think he is representative of supremacy, they are neither supreme nor intelligent. If the only way they can show supremacy is through bullying, taking away freedoms, carrying a gun, policing public spaces, and threatening the safety and wellbeing of others, we have to ask them, “What are you afraid of?” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #14171a; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">America, we all have a right to be who we are, whether that means being a Christian fundamentalist, an LGBTQ individual, a black American, a white American, a native American, Hispanic, Asian, Muslim, atheist, able-bodied, or an individual with disabilities, a man, a woman, a gender-free individual. And, guess what? We can co-exist. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #14171a; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">That doesn’t mean a great, big love fest. It means understanding basic freedoms and supporting those freedoms for all Americans. All Americans have a right to worship or not worship as they choose. They have a right to vote. They have a right to be represented by their elected officials. They have a right to be in public spaces. They have a right to feel safe in those spaces. They have a right to make choices about their bodies and healthcare. They have a right to healthcare.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #14171a; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">The way to do that is through respect. Not the kind of respect you earn. That takes knowing someone, and we don’t have to know every person in America to respect all Americans. I’m talking about the kind of respect that acknowledges every person has a right to be in public spaces and to work a living wage job and to live in a decent and safe neighborhood and attend decent schools that are safe zones from violence and that have the same resources as every other school and to have access to affordable healthcare. We’ve lost that respect. Maybe we never had it. I am leaning toward the latter. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #14171a; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">I’m not going to tell some white guy he can’t think he is superior to me, as a white woman, and to people of color. If that’s his personal narrative, so be it. I have my personal narrative, too. But if he is out there trying to oppress women and people of color by controlling or denying social and economic opportunities and advances, so he can gain some kind of advantage and privilege, I am going to speak up. The collective needs to speak up. We need to support equality. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #14171a; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">White people, I am mostly speaking to you, whether you are conservative or liberal, because our society and governance is based on a system that gives us a leg up just for being white while it disadvantages everyone who isn’t. We have to disavow that system. And we have to stop feeling hurt when the topic is brought up. Nothing will ever change if we can’t talk about racism and white privilege as concepts that operate congruently. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><i><span style="color: #14171a; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">None of us is morally superior, intellectually superior, or physically superior because of our gender or race.</span></i></b><b><span style="color: #14171a; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="color: #14171a; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">Who can deny that Serena Williams is the greatest athlete in the past twenty years? Just fifty years ago, we’d never have expected a woman, and a black woman at that, to be the greatest athlete. That's because women weren't expected to excel in sports. Furthermore, she just had a baby. She almost died during delivery. She survived and became a wonderful mother, and, no, she didn’t make a comeback to the tennis world, she took up where she left off. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #14171a; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">I have to divert a bit from my main message in this post, although it is certainly related to the topic of race and gender. We just finished watching the 2018 US Open Women’s Finals. Serena's greatness as an athlete in no way guaranteed a win in this grand slam tournament or in any other tournament or grand slam championship. She didn’t win this time. Naomi Osaka, who just broke the top ten in rank at age 20, played powerfully and strategically against Serena and deserved the win. But I do have some questions about the severe treatment imposed by the chair umpire. I can’t help but think he has different expectations for women than for men players, and Serena expressed the same concern. And what he did was impact the match at a critical time. His interference ruined the match for both players who should have felt the match was about the competition between their abilities, not the man in the chair who felt offended because a woman expressed her emotions and then called him on his call – I’ve watched many men over the years swear, break rackets and do other things that could be construed as abuse, and they weren’t penalized by a point and then the loss of a game. It left both women crying at the end, and I cried with them. I cried because Serena still had a chance to turn the tables had he not taken a game from her, and I cried for Naomi who should have been celebrating what great tennis she played instead of feeling she won on an umpire’s call. That’s what happens when genders are measured against different standards, including another female who was penalized during the US Open for changing her shirt on court (she had it on backwards and removed it to turn it the right way around.). Come on, how unfair is that? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #14171a; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">The moral is we have to stop elevating people and awarding them privilege based on gender and race. Any of us has the potential for greatness, and it has nothing to do with gender or race.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #14171a; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">Getting back to the topic of governance, there are many white males who are more than capable of being the president of our country and the leader of the free world. Trump isn’t one of them. He never was. He never should have had a shot, because he isn't qualified. But here he is, and he has put our democracy and our national security at risk, all in the name of making America white again. But it never was all white, not from the beginning and not now. That is the important point our elected officials must make again and again to quell this awful tide of supremacy and hatred.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #14171a; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">We also cannot forget that there are many women and people of color who are also more than capable of being the president and leader of the free world. Hillary Clinton was one of them – the most qualified candidate in modern times. She was more qualified than Bill Clinton and Barack Obama – both great leaders of our country. And I can list many, many others including Kamala Harris, Corey Booker, and Elizabeth Warren. They should be judged by their qualifications and not their race or gender.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #14171a; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">So when people talk about who is qualified and who isn’t, it is imperative that we leave race and gender out of the conversation. The past eleven years have proven conclusively why that is. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #14171a; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">When one former president is elegant, intelligent, humorous, unifying, and passionate and the present president is unintelligible, blustery, self-centered, divisive, thwarted by his own administration, and an inciter of violence, the only lesson learned is that race and gender have nothing to do with how they acted in the office of president. It is the individual. One was qualified and saved our country from a depression; the other was unqualified and has brought our country to the brink of destruction. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #14171a; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">Americans, we can be better. We can coexist. We need all of us to do it. First we have to stop thinking some Americans are more equal and more deserving than others due to their race and gender. We have to believe our greatest ideal: We are all created equal. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #14171a; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.33333206176758px;">It has to start in November. Get out and vote. Vote like our life and democracy depend on it, because they do. Don’t vote based on race or gender or religion or class. Vote based on qualifications and who can rise to the challenge of best representing ALL of us and who knows how to guide and explain why it is the best route to do so. Yes, we are diverse, and that means we have a hard time understanding one another at times, sometimes because we don’t have the right words, but more often because we’ve stopped listening. Our diversity means we have a better chance at the kind of progress and change that can lift all Americans, regardless of race and gender. We can fix this mess. Vote.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Diannehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00367333776511320196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-992803374494455538.post-23365910201069222562018-07-11T18:09:00.001-04:002018-07-12T11:24:49.981-04:00MAPE: Make America Progressive and Equal<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
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When the right to bear arms, especially assault rifles that are designed to kill many people at once, is more important than protecting our students, teachers, and all our citizens and visitors in America, we have to admit our country just slid off the rails. When children are wrenched from their mothers’ arms and left for weeks in cages, some of them abused, and most neglected by human touch, we have lost all decency as a country. When black Americans are constantly endangered by white people calling in false reports of feeling threatened to the police for such things as wearing socks in the pool area, our country has bought into conventions and stereotypes that justified an oppressive system of inequality and free labor better known as slavery. And when we expect children as young as one year of age to stand before court in order to be reunited with their parents, we didn’t just slide off the rails, we plunged into a morass of ignorance, hatred, xenophobia, racism, white nationalism, and depravity.</div>
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Of course, our country has been on a crash course its whole history – forcibly taking land from natives, and committing genocide; forcibly bringing Africans to America for enslavement and to make white men wealthy off their labor. We never reconciled our past transgressions against humanity. But people want to forget or deny how this country became the world power it was; I said “was” because under President Trump we have lost our status among other countries.</div>
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Maybe we can admit it became visible to us over the past ten years, ever since Barack Obama became our first president of color, and his election to the highest office in the land was interpreted by some citizens to mean that they were now irrelevant and maybe they would end up being treated as non-white and non-male persons have historically been treated in this country. An out-sized reaction to an event that simply meant equality was within reach for all Americans.</div>
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Then the Russians interfered with our 2016 election, and we find ourselves with a president who is self-serving and more concerned about his popularity among his supporters and his wealth than he is in running the country and implementing policy that will benefit the greater good instead of the 1%. He has also insulted and demeaned our allies while he praised dictators and human rights abusers. </div>
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When did it become acceptable to elect the most inexperienced person for the position of leader of the free world? How did anyone, except for the Russians and white nationalists, ever believe this was a good idea?</div>
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And why are white nationalism, racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and homophobia still acceptable in this country? This kind of embracement of inequality can motivate white people to call police on black people for swimming or barbecuing or sleeping or playing or working because when black people are in public spaces some white people feel uncomfortable and like their sense of privilege is at risk of being lost—thankfully, many of these individuals were shamed across the internet after videos went viral. It can cause a Trump supporter to vandalize signs with spray paint to appear as if an extreme liberal were making death threats to the president—thankfully, he was caught on video and he turned himself in to the police. It can cause a cop to aggressively harass two black men who were walking to the park outside of Chicago with threats that he could arrest them for videotaping the scene as he pushed them and tried to send them over the edge. Thankfully, his chief saw the viral video and took action.</div>
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There is so much to do to get this train back on the track. Yes, we need to mourn the victims of our terrible laws and leaders like the representatives who are protecting the gun manufacturers that ply them with campaign donations so the manufacturers can get even wealthier than ever off the loss of life or the Trump administration officials who think it is acceptable to force a one-year-old to stand in front of a judge in order to be reunited with his mother or who think reversing Roe v. Wade is somehow pro-life. The victims are the teenagers who lost their lives because someone had a gun and the children who have lifelong trauma due to being snatched out of their parents’ arms and the women who may lose their right to control their bodies and choose their reproductive healthcare.</div>
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And we need to let special investigator Mueller finish this complex and long-reaching investigation into this administration and the other players who interfered, aided, and obstructed justice. We keep saying never again, but then it happens all over just around the corner. One more law or executive order that discriminates against certain people, one more regulation that protected life dropped in favor of making more money more quickly, one more mass shooting that feels too much like a broken record, one more day where someone black is prevented from going about his or her daily activities, one more day where a child is bereft and traumatized because her mother hoped for a better life by seeking asylum here and this country forgot its humanity. It’s overwhelming. And it makes us immune to the fact that inequality is still the law and mores of the country.</div>
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Back in 1964 when our television news hours were filled with images of black protesters being attacked by police dogs and sprayed with fire hoses, our government leaders debated passing the Civil Rights Act. Back then the Southern Democrats were almost exclusively segregationists, and they fought hard to keep Jim Crow laws that touted separate but equal status of black Americans. Although it was more like separate and unequal, separate and oppressed, separate and low wage jobs, separate and poor housing, separate and underfunded public schooling, separate and lynched. Americans could no longer deny what their eyes were seeing, and they pressed their representatives to do something about it. And they did.</div>
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In an <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/03/grading-the-presidents-on-race-115639" target="_blank">article </a>in <i>Politifact </i>it was noted the house passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 290 votes to 130 with 61% of Democrats voting for it and 80% of Republicans. The Senate then went on to pass the act with two-thirds the Democratic vote and 82% of the Republican vote. The article goes on to say this:</div>
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<i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">The primary reason that Republican support was higher than Democratic support -- even though the legislation was pushed hard by a Democratic president, Lyndon B. Johnson -- is that the opposition to the bill primarily came from Southern lawmakers. In the mid 1960s, the South was overwhelmingly Democratic -- a legacy of the Civil War and Reconstruction, when the Republican Party was the leading force against slavery and its legacy. Because of this history, the Democratic Party in the 1960s was divided between Southern Democrats, most of whom opposed civil rights legislation, and Democrats from outside the South who more often than not supported it.</span></i><i><span style="color: #333333;"><br /><br /><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">This pattern showed clearly in the House vote. Northern Democrats backed the Civil Rights Act by a margin even larger than that of Republicans -- 141 for, just four against -- while Southern Democrats were strongly opposed, by a margin of 11 yeas to 92 nays.</span></span></i><i><o:p></o:p></i></div>
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During that time our representatives, except for the segregationist diehards, worked together to find a common resolution to an immoral and deadly system of inequality. Now we can’t find that common ground and we are fighting over whether or not equality is even an American value. Big money and fundamentalists have put a wedge between us, peddling the old segregationist paradigms. They are fighting against progress but progress is good for a country. It keeps us vibrant, growing, intellectual and competitive.</div>
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You see, something happened after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were passed. Truly, white people started worrying that black people really would become equal. In other words, they theoretically agreed with equality but emotionally weren’t ready for it because when they heard the term equal, they thought it meant better and maybe more powerful, not equal at all. They feared their status would be reversed. They couldn’t imagine what a country of equal citizens would look like. The systemic racism was so strongly imbedded in our history and our social structure and economy, that they could not imagine a different, more progressive, system. </div>
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The backlash to the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act began with the election of Nixon and got much worse when Reagan came into power. Nixon implemented the Southern Strategy, which brought the Southern segregationist Democrats into the GOP, and he started the school to prison pipeline for young black men to keep them out of white society. During the Reagan years, Reagan created the Welfare Queen in order to make the face of welfare a conniving black woman who bilked the system on the backs of the good, law-abiding white taxpayers. President Clinton, often jokingly called the first black president because he seemed to understand the plight of black Americans, enacted, at the behest of the GOP, the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act that furthered the trend of mass incarceration of black men. Then came the Bush era economic policies that hurt everyone who wasn’t wealthy and increased poverty by 26% according to April Ryan in an <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/03/grading-the-presidents-on-race-115639?o=1" target="_blank">article</a> from 2015. </div>
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Soon after President Obama was elected, the Tea Party rose to power with their mantra to “take back America.” It left me wondering whom they believed took it from them in the first place, but I knew. It was ethnic minorities seeking social and economic equality along with the old progressives from the 1960s who supported and voted for the Civil Rights Act.</div>
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You know the rest of the story. The fractured GOP and Russian election interference caused the rise and election of Trump with his call to “make America great again.” The message was clear. A great America has no room for people of color, nor non-white immigrants, nor women, nor non-Christians, nor LGBTQ individuals, nor individuals with disabilities. They are all to be relegated to second-class citizenship as they were in the past.</div>
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Here’s the thing. I am upset with our representatives, conservative and liberal alike, because they have to work together and they’ve proven they can’t. They’ve even turned on one another as Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi did after <a href="http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-essential-washington-updates-trump-again-calls-maxine-waters-low-1530027517-htmlstory.html" target="_blank">President Trump attacked Maxine Waters</a> when he said, “She is a low IQ individual, Maxine Waters. I said it the other day. High — I mean, honestly, she’s somewhere in the mid-60s, I believe that.” Then he called her the “face of the Democratic Party” and told her to be careful. This was a racist dog-whistle for his supporters and a direct threat to her. Maxine Waters called for civil disobedience in the form of confronting Trump administration officials through the power of protest, but Schumer and Pelosi did not support her. Instead, Pelosi called her responses unacceptable while Schumer said Waters’ call for “harassment of political opponents” was “not American.” They sided with whiteness and failed to take seriously the threat issued by the president and the death threats she received from ardent Trump supporters. In my eyes, they have fallen from iconic to mediocre.</div>
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<a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/black-female-leaders-blast-schumer-pelosi-failing-defend/story?id=56382314" target="_blank">Black female leaders and allies</a> of Waters, nearly 200 in all, wrote their own letter of protest to Schumer and Pelosi stating: “We write to share our profound indignation and deep disappointment over your recent failure to protect Congresswoman Waters from unwarranted attacks from the Trump Administration and others in the GOP. That failure was further compounded by your decision to unfairly deride her as being ‘uncivil’ and ‘un-American.’”</div>
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Even white leaders who philosophically agree that equality is our mandate sometimes fail to see their own buy-in to systemic racism and misogyny.<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span></div>
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How do we get our representatives back to working with one another like they did in 1964 and 1965? How do we remember that we theoretically want the best for all our citizens and not just the few? How do we shape what that looks like and abate fears that equality means giving something away? How do we prevent special interests from co-opting our government? How do we get people to understand that our freedoms are for every American? How do we speak to one another without all the vitriol? And how do we visualize what equality looks like and how it is implemented?</div>
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First, we have to demand that our representatives represent all their constituents, and we need to get rid of gerrymandering and make sure that every vote counts. Then we need to vote! We need to vote in every single election, even when we feel our votes may not count. They do!</div>
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Next, we have to understand that we really need differing perspectives in order to best serve the citizens of this nation. We need conservatives, liberals, independents, centrists, libertarians, democratic socialists, fundamentalists, and whatever else politicians bill themselves as, to work together as a team to make the best decisions for the greater good, not just the few, based on the best information available. Representation of Americans should not all be one extreme or the other. We need politicians who are as diverse as our population. That means more women and minorities serving in elected positions and more varied perspectives being brought to the podium for discussion. We can and should be able to work together but, first, we need to agree that equality and progress are the mandates. We need to disavow false narratives that hurt and marginalize individuals.</div>
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Then we need to hold our politicians accountable. Don’t let the NRA or the Koch brothers or another country’s dictator buy our politicians. They serve us! They also need to stop using fear and hatred to garner votes. They need to disavow both those things along with calls for inequality. That’s where our votes matter yet again.</div>
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Another thing we need to be strong on is support of the free press. We rely on them to find the truth. It is imperative that they can operate freely to do that. Otherwise we are destined to become a country run by despotism.</div>
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And after a recent conversation with a relative about how shallow and unrewarding social media can be, I have come to the conclusion that we need to put down our computers and open our doors to have some real conversations with real people. We’ve forgotten that there are people behind the avatars representing them on social media. When one is responding to a picture or a quote, it is easy to drop all semblance of fair and equitable dialog.</div>
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Stop buying into fear and hatred. Realize equality means we all have a right to be in public places, and to act to keep our children safe, and to make choices about our bodies, and to worship or not as we see fit, and to make a living wage and have a decent place to live and good schools for our children. Be kind to one another, please, but don’t be silent when fear and hatred raise their banners.</div>
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Let’s do one little thing that might help us start to get the big things done. Join the conversation about race in America. Please, start by reading my book, <i>To the Mothers of the Movement, With Love</i>, to follow my decades-long journey of learning about race and racism in America. It isn’t always an easy conversation, but it is a necessary one, if we are ever to reach our ideal of an equal and progressive America. </div>
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<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Mothers-Movement-Dianne-Liuzzi-Hagan/dp/1978341555/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1516294217&sr=8-1&keywords=to+the+mothers+of+the+movement+with+love" target="_blank">ORDER HERE</a></div>
Diannehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00367333776511320196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-992803374494455538.post-36069768144206665442018-04-22T14:05:00.000-04:002018-04-22T20:27:14.567-04:00To the Mothers of the Movement, With Love Ad Considered Controversial by Amazon and Was Rejected for Display<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
Here’s the verbiage of an ad I placed on Amazon to get the word out about my book <i>To the Mothers of the Movement, With Love</i>:</div>
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“Interracially married and a witness to racial inequality in America for 42 years, Liuzzi Hagan calls upon all Americans to disavow systemic racism.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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I’ve run two ads in the past with the very same wording and haven’t had an issue, but this time I received an email with the following message from Amazon:<o:p></o:p></div>
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“Unfortunately, your ad campaign has not been approved to run on Kindle E-readers for the following reason(s):</div>
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It is Amazon's policy to not advertise content in which our audiences may see a controversial topic, person, or event.”</div>
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My life story is suddenly considered controversial? Or is speaking about racism in America from any perspective considered controversial? Is my witness to racial inequality and the telling of my story the moral equivalent to white supremacists chanting “blood and soil” and carrying bats and rifles in Charlottesville? Is my call for equality reprehensible? Please, Amazon, explain.</div>
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Fred is trying. Here is what he said:</div>
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<i>Hello Dianne,<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i>I'm very sorry for any frustration this issue has caused.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i>I checked and see that your ad is approved but it was rejected to run on Kindle E-readers.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i>I have escalated the issue with the Advertising team, please allow me some time to work with the since I need their expertise to solve this issue. I've also prioritized the request to get more information on what needs to be corrected for the Ad to get approved to run on Kindle E-readers.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i>Your patience and understanding is highly appreciated.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i>As I’ll need a little time to look further into this, I’ll contact you with more information by the end of the day on April 25, 2018.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i>I do understand that if you've received more information on the email regarding the corrections that you've to made then that may be helpful.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i>I'll take your concern as feature request and communicate the same to our business team for consideration as we plan future improvements.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i>Thanks for your understanding and support.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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In the meantime, I had already scheduled a free Kindle download promotion, but, unfortunately, because my ad was rejected, Kindle readers won’t even see it to know it is free.</div>
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<i>To the Mothers of the Movement, With Love </i>is the story of men and women who mattered, but their lives were ended by people who didn’t think they did. It’s my story of five decades of learning about race in America in ways I would never have experienced as a white woman if I hadn’t been interracially married. I’ve seen both sides of systemic privilege and bias, and I wanted to share that story as well as the story of those men and women who lost their lives to police, vigilantes, and white supremacist terrorists and their mothers and loved ones they left behind. My book is a call to disavow systemic racism and join together to demand race equality. </div>
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That isn’t controversial. Rather it is about believing humanity can change the race narrative and reach the ideal that all people are created equal.</div>
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I hope you will join the conversation about race in America. Start by reading my book. Between April 21 – 25, 2018, it is free if downloaded to Kindle. That’s how important I feel my message of hope is.</div>
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And if you are so moved after you read it, please consider writing a review on Amazon or Barnes & Noble to get the word out. I won’t let petty bureaucratic fear of backlash prevent my story and the story of those people whose lives, it seems, didn’t matter in this country, stop us from reaching the ideal of equality.</div>
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Here’s the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Mothers-Movement-Dianne-Liuzzi-Hagan/dp/1978341555/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1524319852&sr=8-2&keywords=to+the+mothers+of+the+movement&dpID=41yO2tp7LoL&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch" target="_blank">link</a> to purchase or get a free download of <i>To the Mothers of the Movement, With Love.</i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
Read and join the conversation about race in America. Together we can change the narrative.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-t_ZBp7v_T2g/WtzNixOO96I/AAAAAAAABlY/ktEGd7EvlmIn_-Dwq_jpJOqtQz3-t2MHACLcBGAs/s1600/BookCoverImage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="333" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-t_ZBp7v_T2g/WtzNixOO96I/AAAAAAAABlY/ktEGd7EvlmIn_-Dwq_jpJOqtQz3-t2MHACLcBGAs/s320/BookCoverImage.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
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Diannehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00367333776511320196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-992803374494455538.post-90023731460597127292017-12-08T15:37:00.000-05:002017-12-08T15:38:49.589-05:00Finding the Moral High Ground<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
We just lost a
great advocate for the American people because he did some stupid things when
he was a comedian and even, allegedly, when he was a senator. Senator Al
Franken is resigning in the wake of fellow Democrat John Conyers’ resignation, after
Conyers’ staff levied allegations against him. Seven women came forward to
report Franken groped and/or kissed them without permission. Some, including my
husband Ronald, say his actions cannot be thrown in with the likes of Roy
Moore’s actions or Donald Trump’s actions, and I agree with that. But I believe
his resignation was the right thing to do.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Men have to learn
that touching a woman in any way when she has not given you express permission,
is wrong. Only acceptable social touching such as a handshake is right.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even if you think it is funny, or you
think she might like it as much as you like it, you can’t make that call. And,
besides, there are rules of conduct in the workplace that cover just these
situations. If you don’t know them, it would be prudent to find out what they
are.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
It’s worse in the
entertainment industry because there may be touching or nudity as part of the
job or role. But it is still a workplace, and we have to make sure all
workplaces are safe and interactions are respectful and equitable. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
I was a drama
student in high school and for one semester in college.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve been grabbed in the crotch, had a
few students suddenly grab me and stick their tongues down my throat, and been
felt up during a scene in a play in which we were stuck in an elevator on set
while the show principals sang a duet in front of the closed doors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Each time I reacted strongly and told
them it was unacceptable behavior and they’d better not do it again, but the
act had already been committed and it didn't stop the next high schooler from trying it. And it wasn’t funny; it was disgusting,
unwanted, and violating. They started calling me “ice queen” in high school,
trying to shame me for not playing along. I can only imagine what young girls
go through today, and it hurts me to think about it, because we fought so hard
to end this kind of misogynist treatment. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You can read more about my personal experiences with sexual
harassment in my blog post <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://aboutracewriter.blogspot.com/2016/10/not-okay.html" target="_blank">Not Okay</a></i>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
I remember sitting
in a labor union meeting in the early 1980s with a labor attorney who
introduced us to the concept of sexual harassment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was a name for it and something we could legally do
about it. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That knowledge was
empowering.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
The Equal
Opportunity Commission defines sexual harassment this way:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">It is unlawful to harass a person (an
applicant or employee) because of that person’s sex. Harassment can include
“sexual harassment” or unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors,
and other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Harassment does not have to be of a sexual
nature, however, and can include offensive remarks about a person’s sex. For
example, it is illegal to harass a woman by making offensive comments about
women in general.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Both victim and the harasser can be either a
woman or a man, and the victim and harasser can be the same sex.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Although the law doesn’t prohibit simple
teasing, offhand comments, or isolated incidents that are not very serious,
harassment is illegal when it is so frequent or severe that it creates a
hostile or offensive work environment or when it results in an adverse
employment decision (such as the victim being fired or demoted).<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The harasser can be the victim's supervisor,
a supervisor in another area, a co-worker, or someone who is not an employee of
the employer, such as a client or customer.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
But many women are
afraid to report sexual harassment, and that goes double for sexual assault and
abuse. The reason they are afraid is because the public tends to question their
credibility and their motives, and, instead of looking at the character and
intent of the perpetrator, they often scrutinize the character and intent of
the victim. What was she wearing? What did she say?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What did she do to cause it? And it makes women ask
themselves those same questions even though they might have been taken
completely by surprise and never acted in any way open to a sexual overture.
Because the only thing that they could do to cause it would have been to say,
“Please grab me and force your tongue down my throat when I least expect it,”
or “Make sure you expose yourself while we are working on that report.” And I
doubt many women or girls say that.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
It’s about who does
and doesn’t have control of your body. No one does but the person inside of it.
In an egalitarian world, women would be safe in the workplace, on the street,
and at home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the unequal world
we live in, women’s bodies are sometimes assigned government oversight, and some
men, the ones they know and the ones they don’t, believe women’s bodies are sex
objects or baby vessels to be owned or manipulated. It is unconscionable and
wrong. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Women fear
retaliation, too, in the form of social and economic oppression and through
violence. Some are so afraid of a confrontation or retaliation, they silently
comply while waiting for their moment to escape.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That doesn’t mean it is any less disgusting, invasive, unwanted,
illegal, or violent. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
So when women step
forward and report sexual harassment, abuse, or assault, we ought to consider
them sheroes for standing up to public scrutiny.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their stories cause other women to remember their own
experiences of being harassed or assaulted and the attendant trauma many
suffered from such experiences. Let us women (and other victims including
children, men, and gender fluid individuals) work our way through the emotions
these stories elicit, because those memories are difficult to process. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
And men (and all potential
predators), while they sit and wonder who in their past might come forward to
report an incident of harassment or worse, need to support these women, too,
and learn from what they are hearing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We are not condemning all men. Nor are we condemning all behavior. Under
the right circumstances, flirting or other sexualized behavior might be welcome
and returned, but it must be consensual. And it’s okay to make mistakes because
sometimes you think one thing but it’s another. However, repeated attempts or
the inability to understand that no means no is a clear indication that
boundaries have been crossed.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Men need to
collaborate with women in creating a safe and respectful workplace, whether
that workplace is in a corporate office, in a classroom, on a movie set, in a
fire station, or in the halls of Congress. It is NEVER okay to assume another
person wants to see you naked or wants to be touched or chooses sexual
humiliation or interaction, especially if it is a work colleague. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
So Senator Franken
did the right thing, as I would expect him to, even though he still questioned
the credibility of some of the charges against him by saying, “some of the
allegations against me are simply not true. Others, I remember very differently.”
But just like a racist doesn’t see how his unequal treatment of a person of a
different race is damaging to that person or he may not remember specific
incidents of racist behavior, the sexual harasser won’t necessarily recognize or
remember incidents either. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
I allow that Franken’s
resignation may have been too quick since the Ethics Committee barely had time
to investigate and the investigation is incomplete, but it was way past time
for the women who were victims of his actions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In many ways I am saddened he had to take the fall along
with civil rights advocate Rep. Conyers, in order to expose the hand of the GOP
that voted a sexual predator into the office of president and is at the brink
of electing a child sexual predator and proud racist to the Senate. Franken
understood the incongruity of his situation when he said, “I, of all people, am
aware that there is some irony in the fact that I am leaving while a man who
has bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault sits in the Oval
Office, and a man who has repeatedly preyed on young girls campaigns for the
Senate with the full support of his party.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
But I am sure that
taking the moral high ground is always the right thing to do. In the meantime, we
need to figure out how to interact respectfully between the sexes, especially
in the workplace. As it was in the 1980s, it will be hard to work out what is
and isn’t acceptable and what the consequences will be for those who choose
their own self-aggrandizement and wants over respectful, equal, and dignified
interactions with colleagues and subordinates.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
We are, no doubt,
in the middle of redefining who we are as Americans, and we cannot shy away
from the hard conversations, revelations, actions, complexity, and consequences
needed to reach the high ground. At the very least, we need to press the GOP to
respond and participate in kind by using our voices and votes in protest for
their inactions. Their denial and disparagement of the women, who came forward
to report abuse, their protection of sexual predators, and their inability
to hold their standard bearers accountable are our obstacles to reaching the high ground.
#resist #persist</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2aDLFgz91gs/Wir1C4kfH-I/AAAAAAAABX0/w5TxvF9hurMuTDRHJFDtNGq0rkjZpchLACLcBGAs/s1600/Scan%2B1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1582" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2aDLFgz91gs/Wir1C4kfH-I/AAAAAAAABX0/w5TxvF9hurMuTDRHJFDtNGq0rkjZpchLACLcBGAs/s400/Scan%2B1.jpg" width="395" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Author in the role of Queen Guinevere in a high school play, ca. 1975</span></div>
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Diannehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00367333776511320196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-992803374494455538.post-63319215838170712722017-11-07T23:33:00.000-05:002017-12-02T20:19:14.909-05:00To the Mothers of the Movement, With Love<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
A year ago last
month, Ronald and I saw the mothers of the Black Lives Matter movement at a
restaurant after one of the Clinton rallies. For new readers, I am white and
Ronald is black. We met forty-two years ago when I was 18 and he was 19. I
wanted so much to go over to the mothers’ table and tell them how sorry I was
for their losses and sorry that America failed them, but I am someone who feels
others' pain acutely, and I was already in tears just being in their presence.
I had shed many tears each time I heard about another unarmed black man, woman,
or child murdered at the hands of a racially biased police officer, vigilante,
or white supremacist terrorist, and I've felt the terror of having people treat
us differently, unkindly, and, sometimes, violently because they didn't think
we should be together. I did not want these beautiful women to feel they had to
comfort me, and my husband agreed, so I did not go over. I regretted that
decision, because they deserved to hear my condolences and that their
children's lives mattered. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
When we arrived
home, I made a decision. I wanted to contribute to the conversation about race
in America in an even bigger way than writing this blog. So, at age 60, I wrote
my first full-length book, dedicated to the mothers of the movement, about my forty-two-year
journey of learning about race in America. Forty-two years is not long enough,
because we have already proven that 50 years or 150 years is not long enough. As
the months wore on, under the great weight of a Trump-led America, where white
supremacy moved into the White House and flooded mainstream culture, my book
evolved, using posts from this blog—all written about the unjust murders of
unarmed black men— revised, expanded,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>and interwoven with my own experiences with racism, ranging from
micro-aggressions to the truly terrifying, and the political landscape and
racist backlash in America.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
I am one tiny
voice in the conversation about race that America must have, all of us, together,
where people can put aside their feelings of frailty and of feeling attacked when
talking about racism and inequality, and, instead, listen and ask what we need
to do differently and how can we dismantle this system that benefits some while
disadvantaging others, to create a better tomorrow where equality is an
inherent right.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
The book is
published! It is titled <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">To the Mothers of
the Movement, With Love. </i>You can order it <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Mothers-Movement-Dianne-Liuzzi-Hagan/dp/1978341555/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1510109819&sr=8-1&keywords=to+the+mothers+of+the+movement&dpID=41bsnXaP-oL&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch" target="_blank">here</a>.</div>
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I hope, dear
readers, you will join the conversation. I hope you will read my book, and it
will inspire you to talk to your friends and family. Maybe it will give you the
strength to speak out when you witness racial bias. Together, as a country, we can come to
understand that systemic racism is a terrible, oppressive, unfair, and violent
system, and it must be dismantled. Equality is right and
righteous. Don't be silent. Vote for equality. Protest for equality. Take a knee during the anthem for equality. Let the mothers of the movement know that America knows their sons' and daughters' lives mattered.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-CcFImqETg0I/WgKFdSgcg0I/AAAAAAAABT4/DxUX_5rjy9QZo-fUZYQMvpeArAeUL7U4ACLcBGAs/s1600/IMG_3110.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1455" data-original-width="1600" height="291" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-CcFImqETg0I/WgKFdSgcg0I/AAAAAAAABT4/DxUX_5rjy9QZo-fUZYQMvpeArAeUL7U4ACLcBGAs/s320/IMG_3110.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;">
You can find it here:<br />
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Mothers-Movement-Dianne-Liuzzi-Hagan/dp/1978341555/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1512263856&sr=8-1&keywords=to+the+mothers+of+the+movement" target="_blank">To the Mothers of the Movement, With Love</a><br />
<br /></div>
Diannehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00367333776511320196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-992803374494455538.post-6014087547904924382017-09-23T21:21:00.002-04:002017-09-23T21:21:35.508-04:00Sit, Swear, Stand<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">
This
government is of the people, for the people, and by the people. If you are not
protesting this current administration, then you are handing our democracy to
an inept despot whose advisors are white supremacists, Nazis, white nationalists,
and, probably, the Russian government.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">
So
when trump uses the power of his office to tell NFL owners to fire players who
refuse to stand during the national anthem, we ought to align on the side of
freedom of speech and on the side of equal justice in our police and justice
system. If you don’t, just hand our country over and prepare to live without
the freedoms we often take for granted but that aren't shared by all our citizens.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">
I
stopped placing my hand over my heart during the pledge of allegiance and the
anthem years ago. I’ve lived the ugly side of America. I understand many in this country don’t think my husband Ronald and my daughters Cara and Mackenzie
matter, and in turn, don’t think my voice matters because I engaged in race
mixing. That hasn’t stopped me from being a patriotic citizen. I continue to
fight for the ideals and values of this country that are sometimes skipped over
or ignored in the quest to prove this country is for white people and not all our
citizens. Now I will not stand for the national anthem or the pledge of allegiance.
I agree with the professional athletes who know that any day of the week when
they are off the field or the court, they are just another black person at risk of becoming victims of dangerous and possibly fatal interactions with
the police, vigilantes, and white supremacists. They are also representing
the 28 percent of people of color who live in poverty and who do not have a national stage
on which to speak about the issues their communities face. And don’t tell me
how, as a few people already have, that professional athletes make so much
money they should stay quiet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No,
they shouldn’t. Don’t be silent, especially under the rule of this racist
administration.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">
The
white team owners are horrid and racist if they cannot support the players who
make them so much money and make sports so exciting to watch. They don’t
deserve to have such great players if they are only valued for their skills and not because they are human beings who matter and who face discrimination and danger in
this country.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">
In
many of my Facebook posts, I swear. I use common swear words such as fuck,
shit, asshole and bastard when I post articles about trump (I also refuse to
capitalize his name—and I certainly will not call him president) and everyday
articles that clearly show we are not living in a post-racial society. Rather
we are living in a segregated society where it is dangerous and sometimes fatal
to be a person of color.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">
This
started after a homeowners’ association meeting I was holding when I was still
the president—before I resigned because they refused to stop doing business
with the attorney we hired to conduct our legal affairs when I discovered he
was the state chapter chairman of the League of the South, a white supremacist,
secessionist group that hopes to start a race war. At the HOA meeting we were
talking to the district police captain, who came to our meeting to talk about safety and how to
reduce crime in our neighborhood, about our shooter neighbor, the one who
blindly shot through her garage door because she heard Mexican voices in her
driveway and who also claimed an escaped prisoner, a black man, of course, had
been captured behind her house—it was a lie. He was caught six miles away.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">
We
were trying to explain to the cop that she made our neighborhood dangerous for
the neighbors of color, many of whom were teenagers. In fact, she was a danger to
all of us, because shooting blindly without knowing what is beyond your target,
and not even knowing if your target is a true danger to you, puts everyone in
danger.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">
The
cop kept defending her Second Amendment right and said that he supported her
shooting blindly because she had a small child in the house, and nothing would
change his mind. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">
Ronald
stood and told the story of how a police officer treated him while he was doing
yard work at our old Syracuse home. He demanded to know if Ronald lived there—I
suppose lots of criminals rake the lawn before breaking and entering. Then he
told Ronald to get his “fucking license” to prove he lived there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ronald quoted the police officer in
telling the story, so people would be aware of how quickly a police stop initiated
by racial bias can escalate. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">
We
were holding the meeting in the community room of the church near our
neighborhood, where one of our neighbors is a pastor. He made Ronald leave the
meeting for swearing in the house of the lord, and he locked him out. I was
crying when I told him that Ronald does not swear, he was quoting the officer
to make an important point about how dangerous it is to be black when certain
neighbors were vilifying every black person who entered the neighborhood. He didn’t
care, and he didn’t unlock the door. I asked the one black couple if they could
give me a ride home after the meeting, but Ronald had waited for me out in the
parking lot.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">
That
evening made me want to swear, even though I don’t usually, because when people
think using swear words is worse than people of color being murdered just for
having brown skin, I think we should take a fucking stand against it. So I
decided that night I won’t put up with that bullshit and I will take a fucking
stand until it is safe for people of color to live their lives safely in
America without the threat of dying by the hand of a racist while going about
their daily business. </div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">
I
will sit during the national anthem, in support of people of color who feel this
country doesn’t want them here, doesn't think they matter, and will engage in murder to prove it, and until
such time all Americans are duly able to exercise their rights as citizens and
where they can safely be where they are; I will swear until Christians get
their damned priorities straight and stop hating on people, claiming it is in
God’s name that they are doing so, and until they remember the good news and
act to live it;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I will stand beside people of color in protest of the new Jim Crow, the blatant murder of people of
color, and the segregation of our country where people of color are expected to
be invisible so white people can feel comfortable. I will stand with them because their lives matter. I hope you will, too, even
if you think it doesn’t affect you. Check your white privilege and join in, or else
nothing will change. Join me in being a <a href="http://aboutracewriter.blogspot.com/2012/04/on-being-creative-maladjusted.html" target="_blank">creative maladjusted</a>. Don’t be silent. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3mEcKpFOhys/WccDLmbrBrI/AAAAAAAABPo/vfGrARF-IrkLUgu22nHD9cwV4SCWLa0UQCLcBGAs/s1600/1060x600-55c592cd70e25a118a00f89312a13eab.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="1060" height="181" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3mEcKpFOhys/WccDLmbrBrI/AAAAAAAABPo/vfGrARF-IrkLUgu22nHD9cwV4SCWLa0UQCLcBGAs/s320/1060x600-55c592cd70e25a118a00f89312a13eab.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<i>Washington Examiner</i></div>
Diannehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00367333776511320196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-992803374494455538.post-33546452934658186002017-08-13T13:19:00.001-04:002017-08-14T13:18:25.396-04:00Disavow Now!<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<div style="line-height: 32.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I am angry, but then again, I’ve
been angry for quite a while now. America voted a racist into the White House,
the place he calls a dump, which was built by slaves. He led the charge against
the Central Park Five, even after they were proven innocent, he wouldn’t rent
to blacks when he worked for his father, he tried his damndest to delegitimize
Barack Obama as president and as a citizen, and he openly courted white
supremacists while he campaigned and pushed for a violent response against his
protesters. He hasn’t spoken one word of unity for Americans or one word of
disavowal against white supremacist terrorism. Yesterday’s statement was worse
than disappointing. It was a quiet pat on the back to white supremacy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 32.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Did you vote for him? What didn’t
you hear right when you listened to him speak? Or did you silently agree? Or
loudly agree like the Trump supporter who raised her hand Nazi-style? What kind
of country were you hoping for?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 32.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Domestic white supremacist
terrorists consider Trump their ally. His dog whistles called them and
emboldened them. He hired them on his staff and appointed them to his cabinet.
Do you understand this yet? Are you outraged yet?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 32.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Yesterday white supremacists wore
riot gear and carried bats and rifles to protest the removal of a confederate
monument. They intended violence. And it happened. One dead (three if you count
the helicopter crash) and 35 injured.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 32.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Where were the parents of the man
who plowed his car through counter protesters? Did they know he was becoming
radicalized? Did they think it was just a phase or did they agree with him? His
mother said that he has a black friend -- the excuse used by many a racist
these days. Dylan Roof had a black friend, too.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 32.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Or is this what the other
officers of my homeowners association averred when I pointed out that our
lawyer was a white supremacist, a leader in his racist organization? That it
was "just a hobby," and would not prevent the lawyer from serving all
our neighbors equitably. They supported keeping him and accepted my resignation. Does his mother believe it was just a hobby?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 32.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Do you understand what those
monuments represent? They are not monuments to heroes. They are not monuments
to Southern heritage. They are monuments of intimidation. They were erected in
the early 1900s during Jim Crow law to impress upon black Americans that they
were not equal and never would be. White domestic terrorists have been a part
of America since the beginning of this country when settlers turned on the
native people and set up an economic system based on the free labor of black
people. Their belief in a supreme race allowed them to treat human beings as
less than animals, to abuse and torture them, kill them, and rape them. Certain
eras gave them permission to spread their hatred and beliefs in supremacy, and this is one of them.
People have died violently because of their rhetoric and continue to die.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 32.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The system of supremacy and
privilege is still in operation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 32.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 12.0pt;">It won’t change as long as you
won’t acknowledge that it exists. You are afraid of losing something, of losing
what you believe to be your status as a white American, endowed with supreme
abilities and intelligence. Maybe you won’t say it out loud, but you believe
it, every time you applaud the police for shooting an unarmed black man or
child or choose to be silent, every time you applaud Trump for his hateful rhetoric or tell us to give
him a chance, every time you don’t disavow the hatred and violence of white
supremacy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 32.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 12.0pt;">And, liberals, you are a part of
this, too. Every time you shut down a friend or family member for telling you
how it is to be a person of color and every time you tell them they are reading </span><span style="font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">into a situation
as racist because you don't see it that way. Every time you don't check your privilege. Every time you say it isn't as bad as we say it is. Every time you think of us as
whiners and worry about how we ruin your comfort and your good time because we
make you think about how different and dangerous our experience is from yours.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 32.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I don’t feel sorry for you if you
can't see this for what it is or it makes you uncomfortable to talk about. Your
thin white skin exhausts me. Either you are or you aren’t. Either you stand
with us or stand with haters. Will you really listen this time or blow it off
because it doesn't affect you? Will you be part of a united America or part of
white supremacy and engage in subjugation, deportation and murder of those who
you consider unequal? It really is black and white.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BHSk-Cvc3js/WZCDdW2gJRI/AAAAAAAABMc/xc6QjaxTlM4rieHEdSYdd4pNAUmPx5prACLcBGAs/s1600/13charlottesvilleA1-master675.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="505" data-original-width="675" height="238" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BHSk-Cvc3js/WZCDdW2gJRI/AAAAAAAABMc/xc6QjaxTlM4rieHEdSYdd4pNAUmPx5prACLcBGAs/s320/13charlottesvilleA1-master675.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #999999; font-family: , "georgia" , "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: 11px; text-indent: 0px;">Ryan M. Kelly/The Daily Progress, via Associated Press</span></div>
</div>
Diannehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00367333776511320196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-992803374494455538.post-55104696322029900362017-08-05T13:40:00.001-04:002017-08-05T13:40:52.090-04:00Reversing Discrimination<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
I owe you an
apology, dear readers. I’ve left you hanging since January.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe you think the Trump high jinks
left me wordless. I can’t say they haven’t had an impact, but rendering me
wordless was not the result. Rather, I’ve been writing and writing, and I am
nearly done. I will publish a book soon, and I hope you will read it, not just
to humor me, but because it is a small contribution to the conversation about
race in America and is in honor of and dedicated to the women who have lost sons and daughters
at the hands of biased police, vigilantes and white supremacist terrorists.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Now a little bit
about these last seven months:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
There has hardly
been a day when I haven’t had the news on for most of it. That isn’t the
healthiest response to all that is going on, but, at the same time, there is so
much going on. The difference in headlines in as little as an hour can be mind
warping and tough to keep up with. Trump voters got what they wished for when
they kept searching for ways to delegitimize former President Obama and
candidate for president Hillary Clinton – lots of scandal and incompetence and
chaos and election interference and maybe, no, probably, collusion and criminal
activity. It’s like watching a really bad reality TV show. I’m expecting
fisticuffs in the daily White House briefing any day now.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Trump supporters
also wished for isolationism, and Trump has diminished our world presence and
his status as the leader of the free world one stupid misstep, bullying word,
and ignorant comment at a time. Trump had one success, the appointment of Neil
Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Gorsuch can barely hide his extreme right agenda.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Trump supporters
denied climate change, and Trump withdrew from the Paris climate accord. Trump
supporters were afraid of immigrants and wished to turn America white again,
and AG Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, even beleaguered, in Trump’s opinion,
showed his support of a bill presented by Senator Tom Cotton under the guise of
immigration reform that, if passed, will assure America remains a white, (fundamental)
Christian, and English speaking only majority. The beleaguered AG also
penalized sanctuary cities, put a halt to consent decrees negotiated and agreed
upon by cities and police departments to hold the police accountable in use of
profiling and excessive force, and announced a crackdown on journalists and
their sources in the federal government who leak information. Finally, and one
wonders how someone so beleaguered can accomplish so much of his white
nationalist agenda, the AG announced a call for attorneys to assist in an
investigation and possible charges against universities who use affirmative
action plans in their admissions <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>processes.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Watch what you
wish for, Trump supporters. Fields of vegetables and orchards of fruit are
going unpicked and are rotting due to a shortage of workers, while Trump
successfully brought into the country 15,000 immigrants for his low-paying
seasonal hospitality jobs. Obamacare hasn’t been repealed or replaced, and some
of you are secretly relieved. The wall wasn’t built. The swamp wasn’t drained,
rather, it is spilling over. Taxes for the wealthy weren’t cut – how was that
going to help you again? The Legislative branch of government is even more
dysfunctional and paralyzed than ever. And your lives haven’t changed one iota
except that the air you breathe and the water you drink, cook with, and bathe
in is about to get dirtier.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Affirmative Action,
which has been around since the 1940s, has gone before the Supreme Court many
times in the past forty years. Each time, it is ruled legal. Perhaps Trump
believes the Supreme Court now has the votes to shoot it down. Or maybe this is
an exercise in appeasing the Trump supporters who continue to show up at
rallies to boost his ego.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
The U.S. Commission
on Civil Rights, Office of the General Counsel, defined affirmative action this
way: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Any measure, beyond simple
termination of a discriminatory practice, that permits the consideration of
race, national origin, sex, or disability, along with other criteria, and which
is adopted to provide opportunities to a class of qualified individuals who
have either historically or actually been denied those opportunities and/or to
prevent the recurrence of discrimination in the future.</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
There are a couple
of important things to remember: 1) there is no quota system, which many
detractors claim is the reason the laws are unjust, and it specifically states
“qualified individuals, ” which detractors seldom mention because it goes
against their narrative of unfairness; 2) these laws protect these classes of
individuals from future discrimination. Companies, municipalities, and
universities create affirmative action plans based on criteria such as
demographics, historical patterns and practices of recruitment, hiring,
admissions, and retention, and current information about applicants. These
plans are in place to level the playing field, and until the playing field is
completely level and there is no threat of regression, they will continue to
exist.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
The concept of reverse
discrimination is a tell on white privilege. It proves that if you are white,
your expectations are shaped by that fact. You expect to be hired, accepted
into college, approved for a mortgage, approved for a lease, to live where you
want, to be hired in the field you are interested in pursuing, to have the best
schools, to go wherever your heart desires, and to seldom hear the word “no.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
It also proves
something else, and that is if you believe there is reverse discrimination, you
know that discrimination exists and you approve of it. You know not everyone
can hope for the things you take for granted, and you don’t care as long as you
get yours even at the expense of others. People with this mindset accept
privilege and worry that equality will diminish their status rather than lift
the status of others to equal status. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
The Declaration of
Independence opens with this: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">We hold
these truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
The use of “men”
does not exclude women and gender non-conforming individuals, nor does it only refer to white Christians. Man, or mankind, is
inclusive, not exclusive.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
The preamble of
the Constitution states: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">We the People of
the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice,
insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the
general Welfare, and secure the Blessing of Liberty to ourselves and our
Posterity do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of
America. <o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
The Trump
administration is erasing the best hopes and ideals of this country and is flouting
its founding principles.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
The response is to
resist, persist, contribute to the national conversation on defining who we are
as a country, be an active civic and critically thinking citizen, disavow
discrimination of any kind, let Trump supporters know our vision of America is
inclusive and we welcome them to the conversation, support the individuals who
are willing to run for elected office and who are willing to go to the mat to
fight for our best selves and ideals for America, stop in-fighting about who is
and isn’t progressive enough, remember your own privilege and check it, and
vote in every single election. We got this.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-tSSlzkM31DA/WYYAPwIq56I/AAAAAAAABL0/X8b15Ma3yl4j3mD-AEJGVIqF9UqtnV3AwCLcBGAs/s1600/0db83304d0ded11321fe7d8101abe04e.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="540" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-tSSlzkM31DA/WYYAPwIq56I/AAAAAAAABL0/X8b15Ma3yl4j3mD-AEJGVIqF9UqtnV3AwCLcBGAs/s320/0db83304d0ded11321fe7d8101abe04e.jpg" width="180" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Trump supporter</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Chicago Tribune</i></div>
</div>
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<br /></div>
Diannehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00367333776511320196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-992803374494455538.post-75247397287173551942017-01-29T16:39:00.000-05:002017-01-29T16:40:23.348-05:00Goodbye, America<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Ronald always
carries a paper towel in his pocket due to his allergies. Every once in a
while, he forgets to remove it when he puts his pants in the wash. That
happened this morning, and I’ve spent a good part of the day removing paper towel
bits from the washing machine, the dryer, and the clothing, sheets and towels I
washed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because of the static, it
is even more difficult to locate every little piece stuck to a sock or a pair
of underwear. I’ve found a little joy picking up all those pieces of paper
towel. They are a mundane distraction from a weekend filled with terrifying
news. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
America, as we
know it, grand, a world power, the melting pot, and wholly imperfect, is gone.
In its place is a country created through the dire lies of an ego maniacal,
self-absorbed, ignorant, bigoted, misogynistic, rich, reality TV star posing as
president. He used those lies to sign one executive order after another,
appoint completely unqualified individuals to important cabinet positions and
posts, and surround himself with advisors who are white supremacists and greedy
businessmen. Then he spends his time distracting us by talking about the size
of the inaugural crowd and the millions who, he is sure, voted fraudulently.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
And America is
left with the fallout and the consequences of his words, actions, and orders. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
America has always
been imperfect. Democracies are, especially ones that open their doors to
anyone who dreams of something different and better. We have a history that we
are not always proud of. We have stumbled and fallen on the wrong side of
history more than once. We still have a race problem that a good part of
America refuses to address. There is an economic division that is ripping the
middle class to shreds and leaving the poor with no paths out while making the
rich even richer. There is too much corporate intercession in our laws, causing
the government of the people to be more about the government of the
corporations and their wealth. And while we continue to struggle for equality
and quality of life for all our citizens, some people are still left on the
fringes.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
In spite of all of
that, we are still a great country. The struggle is part of who we are and,
more often than not, our moral compass guides us to the right side of history.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
But that is not
true right now. Because of an individual who is unfit to hold office, we are a
country in crisis. The impact of this man’s erratic and uninformed leadership
affects not just our country, but global stability. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
I am still waiting
for the GOP to speak out against the things that are going on: White supremacists
in key positions, Russian influence on the election, ill-conceived and
unconstitutional executive orders flying out the door as quickly as they can be
written, attacks on the free press, and, now, attacks on immigrants, even ones
who are now citizens. The Muslim ban Trump promised his supporters was rolled
out Friday by executive order, only White House staff is trying to spin it
differently, using those alternate facts Kellyann Conway was quick to offer up
when Trump was caught lying.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Where is the GOP?
Why haven’t any of the GOP Congress or Senate appeared before the press to
weigh in on what’s happening in our country? Senator Chuck Schumer did, with
tears in his eyes and his voice breaking, because the very foundation of our
country has been pulled out from under us.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
The ACLU stood up
to the executive order to detain Muslims. So did thousands of citizens who
protested at airports. Others are emailing or calling their representatives. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Will any of this
stop this train wreck? I don’t think it will unless the GOP stands with us.
They are the ones in power. When will they decide the country is more important
than their elected positions and ideology and do the right thing?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Are we going to
repeat a terrible world history, the one that caused the world to go to war a
second time in one century and that caused us to say over and over, “Never
forget?” Have we forgotten that terrible history so soon, the memory of which
Trump trampled on as he wrote his Muslim ban executive order on the remembrance
day of the Holocaust?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Where is the GOP? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
In the meantime,
besides doing one thing every single day to resist, like writing to my representatives
and donating money to groups who are standing up to this oligarchy, I will
continue to pick the paper towel bits out of the laundry and yearn for our
imperfect America where we can fight the good fight through discourse and votes,
hopefully ending up on the right side of history, and where our president, even
when we don’t agree with him or her, is still serving the best interests of the
country and not his own self interests and those of his inner circle.</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
#resist #unite
#impeach #holdtheGOPaccountable</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZPPHaBvTEcQ/WI5f2wcHhYI/AAAAAAAABDQ/gAguHBKpaHsabRae7NKVTggODjFwtCXHwCLcB/s1600/1485668762-airport-sshow-001.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZPPHaBvTEcQ/WI5f2wcHhYI/AAAAAAAABDQ/gAguHBKpaHsabRae7NKVTggODjFwtCXHwCLcB/s320/1485668762-airport-sshow-001.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
Diannehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00367333776511320196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-992803374494455538.post-81497494182034748362016-12-30T22:51:00.000-05:002016-12-31T14:39:55.413-05:002017 and Counting<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
But I find myself
feeling resolutions are not quite the right term for 2017. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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):</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 1.0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->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.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 1.0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->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.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 1.0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Stop believing your time and your life are worth
more than others’. Especially stop believing your skin color or your religion
makes you better.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 1.0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">4.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->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.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 1.0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">5.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Read the real news from the free press: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The New York Times</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Washington Post</i>, 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.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 1.0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">6.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->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.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 1.0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">7.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->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.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 1.0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">8.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->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.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 1.0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">9.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->The only reasonable response to the murder of
unarmed black men and women is outrage. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 1.0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">10.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->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.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 1.0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">11.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->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.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 1.0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">12.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->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.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 1.0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">13.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->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. </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 1.0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">14.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->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.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 1.0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">15.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->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. </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 1.0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">16.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 1.0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">17.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DizOfp0qbQw/WGciABzrc6I/AAAAAAAABBY/C858TJABeLUWjH3__kXe3Vs8n1PxQM7GQCLcB/s1600/Latest-Happy-New-Year-2017-Images-1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="177" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DizOfp0qbQw/WGciABzrc6I/AAAAAAAABBY/C858TJABeLUWjH3__kXe3Vs8n1PxQM7GQCLcB/s320/Latest-Happy-New-Year-2017-Images-1.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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Diannehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00367333776511320196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-992803374494455538.post-40310805393044993632016-11-18T19:28:00.001-05:002016-11-22T19:25:59.664-05:00I Am Tired of Talking about Race and Gender, Too<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is
usually a big enough push to motivate me through the worst life throws at me.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At one
point, he said, “It’s over.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
“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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Although Secretary
Clinton won the popular vote by over 1.5 million votes, she lost the Electoral
College vote.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The last time that
happened was in 2000, and, admittedly, some odd things occurred during
the Bush/Gore election, including those mysterious hanging chads.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then there are all the racially motivated attacks, graffiti,
tweets, bullying, and other acts of white supremacy. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
The rabbit hole
exit is disappearing from sight.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Every time we made
racial strides in our history, there has been an equal or stronger
backlash.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Black American
descendants of slavery and Jim Crow have yet to receive restitution.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Today I argue
discrimination and hate crimes are equal to those perpetrated in our history.
But an awful lot of white Americans disagree.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
I can tell them
that I am tired of talking about racism, too, and misogyny, homophobia,
xenophobia, and religious intolerance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>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.<br />
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">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.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
My panic just
soared past the moon. Time for a pep talk, but I gave it already on FaceBook
yesterday. Here it is:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">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.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BphoT8P8xXw/WC-VsVArn1I/AAAAAAAAA-Q/o_aGoO2me9UaMQvPKddpd2r70WQkkLjwgCLcB/s1600/main_1200.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="224" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BphoT8P8xXw/WC-VsVArn1I/AAAAAAAAA-Q/o_aGoO2me9UaMQvPKddpd2r70WQkkLjwgCLcB/s320/main_1200.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Additional thoughts:<br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-indent: 0px;">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.</span></div>
Diannehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00367333776511320196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-992803374494455538.post-12338920051293147682016-10-14T21:52:00.002-04:002017-10-07T22:14:39.629-04:00Not Okay<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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?” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
“I had to.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
He reported it to
senior management. Maybe someone spoke to the man because he never touched me
again. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Another time I was
assigned to work on a class project with one of the football players.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
A director at the
university library where Ronald and I were work-study students decided he did
not like seeing us together <span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">(for new readers, Ronald is black. I am white. We have been together for forty-one years)</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">. 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.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">I could not believe he felt entitled to
monitor, challenge and change my choices.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
“I can’t.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
“Why?” he asked,
stepping into my personal space.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
“I just can’t.” I
turned and ran down the stairs.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Many acted as if they were concerned for my welfare, but I knew they
were only concerned with their own wants and pleasures.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Other white men
told me, because they saw me with a black man, that I was “easy.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
After he left I
went to the restroom and burst into tears. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
At a different job
a manager, looking me up and down, said,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“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.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
told him I did not appreciate his brand of humor and that it had better not
happen again.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>young teens and then left home at age
seventeen to go to the dance conservatory, I told them the following:</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 86.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -50.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->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.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 86.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -50.0pt;">
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</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Don’t put drinks down at a party and leave them
unattended. Don’t accept a drink from anyone, even friends. </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 86.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -50.0pt;">
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</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Protect yourself from getting into a situation
in which you don’t have control over the outcome. </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 86.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -50.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">4)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Speak up no matter how uncomfortable it may make
you feel. </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 86.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -50.0pt;">
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</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->You can tell me anything, and, although I may be
upset or even angry, I will still support and love you.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 86.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -50.0pt;">
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</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Stay safe. Take a cab. Tell someone else where
you are and whom you are with. Have someone go with you.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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. </div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Don’t be silent.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xm-gXlDzjy0/WAGIVQm2KdI/AAAAAAAAA7M/Ws0GrgRleRoE3soNSs8QwgODHqVI1TiGACLcB/s1600/10-donald-trump-debate.w750.h560.2x.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xm-gXlDzjy0/WAGIVQm2KdI/AAAAAAAAA7M/Ws0GrgRleRoE3soNSs8QwgODHqVI1TiGACLcB/s320/10-donald-trump-debate.w750.h560.2x.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
Diannehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00367333776511320196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-992803374494455538.post-23043522041180143942016-09-23T12:20:00.001-04:002016-09-24T09:53:58.702-04:00America Broke My Spirit<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Crutcher, 40, did
not deserve to die that day.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
North Carolina
passed a law that will go into effect on October 1<sup>st</sup>. 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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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."</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
White people don’t
know how offensive it is when someone assumes you are poor, uneducated, and
criminal just because your skin is brown.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Ronald said,
“Interesting that you are the one who brought that up and not me.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
From an <a href="http://www.npr.org/2016/09/10/493427601/hillary-clintons-basket-of-deplorables-in-full-context-of-this-ugly-campaign" target="_blank">NPR</a> story:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
…
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a <a href="http://www.prri.org/research/prrithe-atlantic-survey-two-thirds-trump-supporters-say-nation-needs-leader-willing-break-rules/#.V03-0OcrJhA">PRRI/Atlantic
poll</a> this spring found that Trump supporters are more likely than others to
say that:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
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U.S. is becoming too soft and feminine (68 percent),</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">▪<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->It
bothers them when they encounter immigrants who do not speak English (64
percent),</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">▪<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->The
government has paid too much attention to the problems of blacks and other
minorities (55 percent)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">▪<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Men
and women should stick to more traditional gender roles and tasks (50 percent),</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">▪<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Discrimination
against women is no longer a problem (46 percent)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
If anything
Clinton may have been purposely underestimating the number.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
But here is a
portion of a <a href="http://dixienet.org/rights/poison_of_multicultralism.php" target="_blank">blog post</a> from the national founder and president of the organization
the attorney chairs in NC:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">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</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">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.</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But, oh, don’t go calling
them a basket of deplorables.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Here is a snippet
of an interview with Steve Innskeep of <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/08/05/488802494/former-kkk-leader-david-duke-says-of-course-trump-voters-are-his-voters" target="_blank">NPR</a>:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
[David
Duke] was confident that Trump backers in Louisiana would support his Senate
run.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
"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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
Steve
asked, "You think Trump voters are your voters?"</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
"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."</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Trump campaign
chair <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/22/trump-ohio-campaign-chair-no-racism-before-obama" target="_blank">Kathy Miller</a> 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.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
She has since
resigned her position, playing the scapegoat in a campaign rife with hatred and
ignorance.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Because now I know
how our neighbors feel about us. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Maybe my anger
scares you. Your unwillingness to be outraged scares me.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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. </div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uUKdAa_cjkY/V-VU72foeyI/AAAAAAAAA5s/AQdSsM5Q5UI2FYdhGilblUeb0mCppC2xACLcB/s1600/whitesonly.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="297" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uUKdAa_cjkY/V-VU72foeyI/AAAAAAAAA5s/AQdSsM5Q5UI2FYdhGilblUeb0mCppC2xACLcB/s320/whitesonly.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
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.<br />
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. </div>
</div>
Diannehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00367333776511320196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-992803374494455538.post-18677336671098786702016-07-06T20:52:00.000-04:002016-07-08T09:43:42.819-04:00#AltonSterling #PhilandoCastile<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<br />
<i>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.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/--6jd45Ig6nY/V365hAP7JGI/AAAAAAAAA1M/2HBN3mngakMVbTKp_ahW2dL7G0pEo2iTACLcB/s1600/alton-sterling-10.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/--6jd45Ig6nY/V365hAP7JGI/AAAAAAAAA1M/2HBN3mngakMVbTKp_ahW2dL7G0pEo2iTACLcB/s320/alton-sterling-10.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<i>Alton Castile</i></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-T5G2-nimgTU/V365mQ7N5dI/AAAAAAAAA1Q/uOgvCIlBQLcwBXU1eOceHvyZ54lQhKRBQCLcB/s1600/castile13.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-T5G2-nimgTU/V365mQ7N5dI/AAAAAAAAA1Q/uOgvCIlBQLcwBXU1eOceHvyZ54lQhKRBQCLcB/s320/castile13.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<i>Philando Castile</i></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<i><br /></i>
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. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
My optimism keeps
me going.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
But on the 4<sup>th</sup>
of July, I lost my optimism. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Where is my
optimism now? It is crushed beneath the weight of Jim Crow.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
I felt it after
crying my way through <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Free State of Jones</i>,
which we saw on Independence Day, the same day<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
After watching Alton Sterling die over and over on the news, I
started researching Newt Knight on the internet and found this article from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/true-story-free-state-jones-180958111/?no-ist" target="_blank">Simthsonian Magazine.</a> </i>It parses out the
true story from the poetic license of the movie and talks about the process
writer and director Gary Ross (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hunger
Games</i>) went through to make the film.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #222222; line-height: 200%;">Joseph
Hosey, a forester in Jones County, and an extra on the film <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Free State of Jones</i> 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.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #222222; line-height: 200%;">Many other
community members of Jones County consider Newt Knight “what we call trailer
trash.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #222222; line-height: 200%;">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.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #222222; line-height: 200%;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #222222; line-height: 200%;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #222222; line-height: 200%;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #222222; line-height: 200%;">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.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #222222; line-height: 200%;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #222222; line-height: 200%;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #222222; line-height: 200%;">His
gravestone tells the story of his life and legacy: </span>“He lived for
others.” May each of us one day be able to claim that truth. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
#HandsUp; #Don’tShoot;
#BlackLivesMatter; #AltonSterling; #Morethan500; #Don’tBeSilent</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: #222222; line-height: 200%;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-SKu2Fmfad7U/V31xi5xQi0I/AAAAAAAAA0w/NdH7H4rqZHcaA84jVYo9vmg8F9i8rEZsgCLcB/s1600/Newton-knight.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-SKu2Fmfad7U/V31xi5xQi0I/AAAAAAAAA0w/NdH7H4rqZHcaA84jVYo9vmg8F9i8rEZsgCLcB/s320/Newton-knight.jpg" width="266" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: #222222; line-height: 200%;"><o:p><i>Newt Knight</i> </o:p></span><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #222222; line-height: 200%;"><o:p>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</o:p></span></div>
</div>
Diannehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00367333776511320196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-992803374494455538.post-91421693121917432292016-06-07T20:40:00.001-04:002016-06-08T08:22:22.921-04:00The Greatest is Dead<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Muhammad Ali died
this week.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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?"</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
The GOP
establishment is now walking an unknown path: the way to preserving the GOP
while distancing the party from an avowed racist. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What a treacherous journey they have ahead of them,
particularly because they have relied on racists as supporters since Nixon’s
Southern Strategy.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Maybe, as I’ve
often heard, our memories grow sweeter with the passage of time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
I watched Trump
turn the campaign into the art of the deal, playing the role of the modern PT
Barnum who once said, “<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">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.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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 <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Vigdís Finnbogadóttir,</span> 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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Telling the truth
is something all of us need to do more often, even at the risk of others not
accepting you or it.</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Mohammad Ali knew
that. He lived it.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-TKJu19YJjbY/V1dmz6AwkmI/AAAAAAAAAzI/FBvhgIAZ26kQ-7lVUnIbUtLBtB8w0qLVgCLcB/s1600/GettyImages-479933880-E.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="179" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-TKJu19YJjbY/V1dmz6AwkmI/AAAAAAAAAzI/FBvhgIAZ26kQ-7lVUnIbUtLBtB8w0qLVgCLcB/s320/GettyImages-479933880-E.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<i>GettyImages</i></div>
Diannehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00367333776511320196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-992803374494455538.post-79325278771530752952016-04-25T16:44:00.000-04:002016-04-26T10:40:01.689-04:00Prince Died<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: center; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #373737; font-family: "times new roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 15.0pt;">I wanna be your lover<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center; text-indent: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #373737; font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 200%;">I wanna be the only one that makes you come
running<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: right; text-indent: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #373737; font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 200%;">~ Prince Rogers Nelson</span><o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Prince died, and
I’m having a hard time accepting it. As I write this I am watching a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lethal Weapon</i> marathon on AMC, eyes
tearing up during movies that are sparse on sentimentality and big on guy
humor, exploding cars, flying punches, and a rain of bullets. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
I’ve watched hours
of Prince tributes and read hundreds of FB reminiscences, but now I need space
to digest this disconcerting news.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
My emotions are twisted.
First Michael passed in 2009. Then I woke up one day and Bowie was gone, and
soon after Prince followed him. Their passing feels like the end of the Baby
Boomers’ generational era. Saying their music was the soundtrack of our
generation sounds cliché but it is true. And yet I understand it is the
soundtrack of many generations. We can’t claim them just because they were Boomers like us.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
My college days at
Syracuse University put me on a path filled with music. After all, Ronald was a
visual art and music student. Every Friday on work-study payday, we wandered
over to Spectrum Records to buy a few albums. Ronald introduced me to music
genres and musicians I didn’t know existed because I had been a top 40/movie soundtrack
kind of girl before I met him in January 1976 of our freshman year. If we
weren’t listening to our new albums on the stereo, I listened to him practice
marimba in the basement of Crouse College, or sat in on one of his R&B
band’s rehearsals, or I was in the audience watching his band play at the
Jabberwocky, the college nightclub.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
One of our first
dates was a trip to SUNY Cortland to see Tower of Power. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
I remember making
love after classes in my dorm room to one of our favorite songs, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Afternoon Delight</i> by the Starland Vocal
Band, number one on the pop chart in July 1976. Afterwards, spooned and turning
in unison in my tiny dorm bed, the stereo playing on, we talked about our childhoods
and all the things we loved about one another. It is something we still do
today in a bed with plenty of room to spread out.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
I can’t talk about
our college years without talking about art. Ronald, his love strong and his
visual aesthetic appreciative, captured my likeness in photos, acrylic, and
plaster. As much as music marked our years together, his artistry captured our
enduring love.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
The following
excerpts are from my unpublished memoir <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Shades
of Tolerance:<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Some evenings we walked down to the Con Can
building where his sculpture studio was so he could work on his projects and I
could read while he worked. His space was clean, swept free of plaster dust,
and all his supplies fit in a neat locker. Once he took a plaster mold of my
face, two short straws in my nostrils. My breath came in hollow pants, the warm
plaster tingling against my skin as it tightened and dried, but he calmed me by
telling me more stories as his long fingers engulfed my hands that lay crossed
over my diaphragm. Then he took a plaster mold of my breasts. We laughed but I
tried not to laugh too hard so the plaster wouldn’t crack, and he got serious
because he didn’t want to mix up any more.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in; text-align: center; text-indent: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">*****<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The school year soon ended, and Dad was on
his way to pick me up along with my belongings to take back to Albany for the
summer. The evening before Dad’s arrival, Ronald took me over to Crouse College
– a huge castle of a building that housed the School of Music – where he
practiced piano and marimba. <o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Up in the balcony of the performance space
where the large organ sits center stage, we made love to the sound of
melancholy chords wheezing from gargantuan pipes, an anonymous serenade made by
an unknowing student, vibrating deep in our chests and amplifying my orgasm.
Ronald breathed a warm, moist “I love you” into my ear, and my heart quivered.
Afterward we lay in each other’s arms on the cold tile floor beneath the seats,
my body shivering and pulsing, shadows tracing my pleasure, tears tracking down
my cheeks in anticipation of my departure, and our lips brushing occasional
kisses.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
It was the disco
era, and some of the music was mindless, but there was so much good music out
there, too, destined to be timeless. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Prince was one of
the musicians making good, timeless music. He was one of our peers, born a
Gemini like me, just one year later.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
His second album <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Prince</i> was released in 1979, the year we
graduated from college.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
I hear <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I Wanna Be Your Lover</i> and I remember how
absolutely in love we were, committed to building our lives together no matter
what other people thought about us, rebels against social convention, in the
same way Prince rebelled against gender stereotyping and the music industry. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
I loved his
picture on the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Prince </i>album cover,
androgynous, ethnically ambiguous, intense, and sexy as hell.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
I played <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I Wanna Be Your Lover</i> so often on our
stereo, the track wore out. I remember driving my used, 1977 robin-egg-blue Ford
Aspen 85 mph on 690 West to my teaching job, hoping the radio would play Prince’s
song, and when it finally did, my head bobbed in rhythm to his funk fusion
sound, and my heart swooned. Maybe some perceived the song as purely sexual, but
not this romantic. I long for the days when love songs were achingly emotional yearning
and not the graphic requests for casual sexual favors found in some popular
music of today.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
We spent sleepless
nights in the mid-80s, wide awake and feeding hungry infants to the sound of
the latest MTV music videos, too tired to party like it was 1999. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Prince’s music
continued to define our generation right up until his death. His music never
lost its longing and sensuality for me, just as Ronald’s and my love hasn’t
waned but grown even deeper.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
I appreciate the
times Ronald sits behind his drum kit or when he picks up his bass guitar to
knock out a few riffs. His look, a kind of intense meditation, let’s me know
music is as integral as air to him. I believe that was true of Prince and many
artists of our generation.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
We still listen to
music together, going to concerts or driving I-81 from North Carolina to New
York and back again. Ronald’s iPod now contains his entire CD music library (a
feat only achieved with the newest, largest device on the market that boasts it
can hold 35,000 songs; we have yet to transfer his vinyl library). We sing and
reminisce about what those songs mean to us, and we often meander back to our
college days when love was both free and precious. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
I realize, as sad
as it is that Prince is no longer with us, it isn’t Prince, the person, I am
mourning. I didn’t know him personally. I never spoke to him or partied with
him or even shared a space like a concert hall with him. I am mourning the
times and memories his music represents: the great times, the romantic times, the
fun times, the sexy times, the rebellious times, and the inevitable low times, those times when doves cry, when the realization hits that life, and everything and everyone in it, is
ephemeral.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dearly beloved<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">We are gathered here today<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">To get through this thing called life<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right; text-indent: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">~ Prince Rogers Nelson<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right; text-indent: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><br /></i></div>
<div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right; text-indent: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><br /></i></div>
<div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right; text-indent: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><br /></i></div>
<div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right; text-indent: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><br /></i></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EzrXWgZaTZ8/Vx5wTfFYBJI/AAAAAAAAAwY/8UO7liI-WQEgPqS0km4KmMJwPKlvi-utwCLcB/s1600/Image_13.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EzrXWgZaTZ8/Vx5wTfFYBJI/AAAAAAAAAwY/8UO7liI-WQEgPqS0km4KmMJwPKlvi-utwCLcB/s320/Image_13.jpg" width="239" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-EikNjrPEr5c/Vx5wZ1Ur7PI/AAAAAAAAAwc/R5tXUKzrsnQmsZuhV9-Onmu0bnXGtynMwCLcB/s1600/Scan%2B5.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-EikNjrPEr5c/Vx5wZ1Ur7PI/AAAAAAAAAwc/R5tXUKzrsnQmsZuhV9-Onmu0bnXGtynMwCLcB/s320/Scan%2B5.jpeg" width="214" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<i>Ronald in a photo taken by one of his college professors. Me in one of the many photos Ronald took of me in college.</i></div>
Diannehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00367333776511320196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-992803374494455538.post-55019171155923558472016-03-12T14:35:00.001-05:002016-03-12T20:48:25.889-05:00Angry White People, Part II<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
The GOP campaign
is getting ugly and violent. Donald Trump refuses to take responsibility, but
he is responsible. He is responsible for using people’s fears and anger to
incite them. He is responsible for using their hatred to ramp up their fervor.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
There is no hiding
it anymore. Our country is divided and both sides are angry, but only one side
is fearful and that makes them dangerous.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
I am not sure what
makes them afraid. I have my theories and they have to do with race, privilege,
and disenfranchisement. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What I do
know is that protesters are being ousted from Trump rallies for exercising
their First Amendment Rights. And Trump supporters, emboldened by Trump’s
urging, are getting violent. One sucker punched a protestor in Fayetteville,
NC. That supporter faced charges, but not until the video of the incident went viral. Later in an interview he said, "The next time we see him, we might have to kill him."</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Mob mentality is a
frightening occurrence. Suddenly people are no longer individuals, they are
part of a happening, complicit in groupthink, and they feel a heightened sense
of power. This sense of empowerment causes them to lose inhibition. It may
cause them to be violent. Recall the lynch mobs in the Jim Crow South before the Civil Rights movement.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Ronald and I
watched the canceled Trump rally last night, and I was terrified someone would
be injured or killed. I saw Confederate flag symbols and the American flag
draped over people’s shoulders. They pushed their faces in the faces of the
protesters and some took swings. Protesters fought back. Chaos ensued. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Ronald explained
how difficult it is to disperse a crowd like that. As a retired fire
lieutenant, he received riot training.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
I worried more as
thousands were turned out into the streets.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Fortunately, no
one was seriously injured.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Trump, of course,
refused to take responsibility. Instead he has painted himself as the leader
who took precautions so no one would get hurt.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
But he is lying.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
He did not speak
to law enforcement as he claimed when speaking to Chris Matthews. In fact it is
now believed his campaign advisors purposely chose inner Chicago on a liberal,
diverse college campus hoping to create the very scene we witnessed.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
He is using the
ignorance, fear, and hatred of his supporters to lead them toward him and his
authoritarian approach to leadership. “I make the best deals,” he tells them,
along with making digs about the protestors, “Go get a job!”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Why is he assuming
the protesters have no jobs, when thousands of his supporters are also
attending the rallies? He isn’t. He knows it is coded language that incites
his supporters. He is calculating, manipulative, and unapologetic, like when he
said he used the bankruptcy laws to his advantage because he could or when he
said, “In the old days, they’d [protesters] be carried out on a stretcher.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
I am watching
another Trump rally about to begin in Cleveland. Already I see the incendiary
signs, and they aren't being carried by protesters. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2s9-F9i-mlA/VuRrsDosZZI/AAAAAAAAAvU/_od6de96gmgBbQpdoCGI0D8JRJGM_4vHw/s1600/12472817_10207961000718441_3214462919373458329_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2s9-F9i-mlA/VuRrsDosZZI/AAAAAAAAAvU/_od6de96gmgBbQpdoCGI0D8JRJGM_4vHw/s320/12472817_10207961000718441_3214462919373458329_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<i>This is a photo from the Chicago rally</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Rubio and Kasich
are backing away from supporting Trump if he becomes the candidate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rubio was visibly upset when questioned
about last night’s rally. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Cruz
still claims he will support whoever the candidate is.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
They lost all
respect from me (not that Cruz ever had my respect) when they bowed their heads
as if in shame and said at the last GOP debate they would support Trump if he
became the GOP candidate. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Bad enough Chris
Christie endorsed Trump in an obvious move to climb on the train to some type
of cabinet position, but then Ben Carson climbed on – the black evangelical –
suddenly supporting hatred against his own people. What has this country come
to?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Why is seeking
equality in our country so reviled by the extreme right? Because they still
believe in white supremacy. Because they still believe this country is a
country of, for, and by white people and that people of color are interlopers,
even those whose families have been in this country for centuries. They blame
President Obama and Secretary Clinton for all the ills of the country. They are
uninformed and delusional, and Donald Trump is using their ignorance and delusion
to rise to power.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
I thought he was a
joke months ago. I, like so much of the media, thought he would crash and burn
well before the Iowa caucuses. We underestimated him. This is one more deal he
is working to close, and he isn’t afraid to use an unfair advantage, his supporters’
fear, anger, and hatred, to close it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Donald Trump is
dangerous, and now his supporters are dangerous, too. Just as Germans flocked
to the side of Hitler, just as they believed the Jews were the reason for the
country’s ills, so have Trump’s supporters flocked to him and laid blame on anyone
who doesn’t look or think as they do.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Trump is up on
stage in Cleveland. He is saying “professional protesters” stopped the rally
goers in Chicago from exercising their First Amendment Rights. He takes the
truth and twists it to his advantage.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
We need to make
sure Trump doesn’t even get a sniff at the presidency. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The presidency carries critical
responsibility as the leader of the USA and the free world. </div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Get out and vote. <br />
After Note: At Trump's rally this evening in Kansas City, he upped his rhetoric about protesters. He called Thomas Dimassimo, the protester who rushed the stage at the Dayton rally, ISIS-related (he is a 22 year-old college student from GA). He called for protesters at the KC rally to be arrested as he yelled, "Get them out." He threatened to ruin their lives. He is maligning protesters as un-American. Very dangerous, incendiary rhetoric.</div>
Diannehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00367333776511320196noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-992803374494455538.post-43730110352583161302016-02-29T23:50:00.000-05:002016-02-29T23:50:27.332-05:00Angry White People<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
No one wants to
talk about race or racism these days, and yet everyone does. Sometimes it is
subtle, as when someone uses coded language, like how the country is changing. Other times,
it is blatant like the birther movement against President Obama or when David
Duke came out in support of Trump. He told his followers that not voting for
Trump “is basically treason to your heritage.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Duke claims he did
not endorse Trump, and Trump claims he doesn’t know who David Duke is. For
those who don’t know, Duke was the grand wizard of the KKK and later a one-term
Louisiana state representative.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
All the white
supremacist groups are supporting Trump including the League of the South, the
organization I had a brush with and wrote about in my post <a href="http://aboutracewriter.blogspot.com/2015/09/reconstructing-south.html">“Reconstructing the South.”</a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Watch this <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjPmzw1SbBk">video</a>
of neo-confederates protesting ethnic cleansing of… wait for it… white
Americans. Listen to how the protestors place their hopes on Trump to bring
their issues to the national stage. White supremacists love Trump.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Trump, famous for
his brashness, mega-ego, and risky business deals, is working on closing his
next big deal: being elected the leader of the free world.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
He sidestepped
questions about supremacist support, because their support is another step
toward that end.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
He also quoted
Mussolini in a tweet: “Better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a
sheep.” When questioned by MSNBC commentator Chuck Todd, about whether he
wanted to be associated with a fascist, Trump responded, “No, I want to be
associated with interesting quotes and people.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
When Mussolini and
Duke are those people, one has to wonder how low he will go, but just look to
his supporters to find the answer. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
They are tired of
being politically correct, and they dream of deporting immigrants, excluding
people of color and Muslims, legislating women’s reproductive rights, keeping
gay couples from marrying, and living in a country of only white Christians.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
In the meantime
Trump initially refused to disavow David Duke and his supremacist ideas. The
GOP establishment is livid. A few have spoken publicly about voting for Hillary Clinton if Trump becomes their candidate. Yet they used racism as a political recruiting tool
since Nixon. But this blatant show, this naked truth, is too much to bear.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Violence is
another of Trump’s tools to rile his base. In a rally in South Carolina Time
Magazine photographer Chris Morris was choked and slammed onto a table by a
secret service agent for stepping outside the media pen. There are very strict
rules concerning the media at Trump campaign events, because Trump wants to
control media access to his base and rally attendees. It isn’t the first time
someone was attacked at a rally and one can be certain it won’t be the last. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Violence is
something else his base craves. They have attacked Black Lives Matter
protesters and Muslims who attended rallies. Their fervor is palpable.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
This past weekend we
saw the film <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Race </i>about Jesse Owens
and the four gold medals he won at the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany. I love
seeing movies like this one that document our history, our true history, but
they always leave me teary and depressed. The promise of reaping a rewarding
career based on being a national hero never seems to materialize for athletes
of color who rose to athletic prominence before the Civil Rights movement. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
President
Roosevelt never invited Owens to the White House after the Olympics and the
dinner at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City to honor his feat of winning four
Olympic gold medals was diminished because he was not allowed to enter the
hotel through the front door. He and his wife had to ride the service elevator.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
So anything that
Nazi Germany believed about Aryan supremacy was mirrored at home, and was
perhaps even worse, because in Germany Owens and his black teammate Mack Robinson
(Jackie Robinson’s older brother), who won a silver medal, were allowed to room
at the Olympic living quarters with the other athletes. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Sadly, Jesse Owens
struggled to make a living after becoming a national hero. The film said Ohio
State, his alma mater, gave him a job as a janitor after he graduated. That is
not a fact repeated on his Wikipedia page, but in this case, I tend to believe
the film because his daughters were consulted on the making of it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Did Ohio State
believe they were doing right by offering him a menial job on the campus his athletic feats brought to the world stage?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
When I hear Donald
Trump denying any knowledge of who David Duke is (he finally disavowed him), I
feel anger and sadness, because our country has changed so little since 1936.
Civil Rights never reached the true spirit of the law. Systemic racism still
exists because a large portion of America has amnesia, denial of, or fervor for
the different experiences of race in our country – the white experience and the
experience of people of color. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
I hoped Trump’s
numbers would drop when he skirted the David Duke association in interviews and
acted as if he did not hear the words “KKK” and “Ku Klux Klan” in a phone
interview this past Sunday. His numbers remain strong. In fact they have risen
nationally.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Even more people
now believe he speaks to their fears and concerns.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
The GOP
establishment is freaking out. How to stop him? But they created him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They resuscitated Jim Crow and now they
are paying the price. They should lose this election, soundly, for tapping into
hatred against President Obama; for feeding the growth of the Tea Party; for
speaking out against immigrants and Muslims and women and LGBT individuals; for
pushing for deregulation and corporate welfare. They turned against humanity
and this is the result: irrational anger, hatred, violence, racism, and
discrimination.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
I’m disgusted with
the lowbrow attacks the GOP candidates are waging against one another using
middle school sexual innuendo and name calling. But what do they have left when
their base is angry, white, ignorant, and hateful?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Until we take
responsibility and hold our country accountable for its history and the legacy
it has left us, nothing will change and the hatred and discrimination targeted
at minorities will grow wildly and dangerously as it did in Nazi Germany so
many years ago.</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
What will angry white
Americans think after they elect Donald Trump (or Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio) and he
enacts everything he has threatened: building the wall, shutting down legal
immigration of Muslims, letting even more guns into society? Will they still believe
he is the answer to all their ills? Or will they regret electing the one person
willing to act on their hatred and anger?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PbKnn14hE9o/VtUbbWd3YvI/AAAAAAAAAvA/S3amQTE2nfo/s1600/1035x1468-20140205-jesseowens-x1800-1391621173.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PbKnn14hE9o/VtUbbWd3YvI/AAAAAAAAAvA/S3amQTE2nfo/s320/1035x1468-20140205-jesseowens-x1800-1391621173.jpg" width="225" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Jesse Owens, 1936 Olympics </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
Diannehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00367333776511320196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-992803374494455538.post-27721773245862193962015-12-07T22:41:00.000-05:002015-12-08T08:54:07.815-05:00The Ugly American<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
I first remember
hearing this phrase when I was in my teens, back in the 1970s. Originally it
was the title of a novel published in 1958 and a film released in 1963,
starring Marlon Brando. According to Wiki, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Ugly American</i> “depicts the failures of the US diplomatic corps, whose
insensitivity to local language, culture and customs and refusal to integrate
was in marked contrast to the polished abilities of East bloc diplomacy and led
to Communist diplomatic success overseas.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
The term is
apropos in today’s social and political contexts.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
When I see the
hatred and vitriol spewed from the likes of Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Chris
Christie, Marco Rubio, and Carly Fiorini, my stomach turns. Worse is the rabid
applause and cheers from their supporters. Trump’s supporters attacked a Black
Lives Matter protester at an Alabama campaign stop.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
But it doesn’t
stop there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hatred and fear ooze
like toxic waste over the landscape of our country. It is overwhelming but it
is also deadly and violent.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
My husband Ronald
and I went to see the movie <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Trumbo.</i>
For those who don’t know who Dalton Trumbo was, he was one of the most
successful screenwriters in Hollywood, that is, until the House Un-American Activities
Committee charged him with being a Communist.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
It was a dark time
in our history. The Cold War was raging, and America became paranoid. That
meant people who did not share the very narrow definition of patriotism were
subjected to investigation and possible prison sentences. Trumbo was one of
many who served a sentence. Many of the accused weren’t Hollywood royalty but
regular folk like teachers and firefighters. Some lost their careers, their
homes, their families, and even their lives. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
The House
Un-American Activities Committee conducted these investigations from 1938 –
1975. Neighbors turned in neighbors, friends turned in friends, and many people
believed that doing so protected the freedoms we so often take for granted in
this country.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
But the opposite
occurred, because our First Amendment Right that guarantees freedom of speech
and freedom of religion was under attack. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Trumbo said, “Democracy
means that people can say what they want to. All the people. It means that they
can vote as they wish. All the people. It means that they can worship God in
any way they feel right, and that includes Christians and Jews and voodoo
doctors as well.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Today we are
dangerously close to repeating history. Some GOP candidates have called for the
shutting down of Mosques and even internment of all Muslims. Today Donald Trump
announced his new proposal that would prevent ALL Muslims from entering this
country, even American citizens who travel outside the country.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
One of his
supporters, standing in line to watch Trump speak in Mount Pleasant, NC, said
of Muslim Americans, ”Ship them all out.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Historically, we
have done this before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We interred
Japanese Americans during WWII, some of whom had been Americans for
generations. Jim Crow systematically segregated and contained black Americans through
socio-economic oppression and meted out violent and deadly retribution on those
who did not comply. The Trail of Tears, the forced migration of the Cherokee,
Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations from their ancestral lands
in the Southeast to Oklahoma, led to thousands of Native Americans perishing
during the arduous journey.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
It’s important to
remember that every new wave of immigration in our country caused paranoia and
fear. Jewish, Italian, and Irish immigrants were all considered dangerous to
“the American way of life.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
What is the
“American way of life” if it does not include the diversity of our citizens and
a mainstream culture that is the melange of multicultural and sub-cultural contributions?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
We are not a white
country. We are not a Christian country. We are a country that is predominately
of Euro-ethnic heritage, the majority of which are Christian, but that does not
represent all of us.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Whenever a whole
group of individuals is demonized we are hurting our country and our citizens.
In this case, because many people refuse to be inclusive and, instead, feed
their own paranoia and fear, we are letting extreme Islamic terrorists win. They
count on irrational responses, and there are many Americans who are more than
willing to comply.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
In addition such hatred, fear, and paranoia feed the virulent hate of a growing group of
radicalized white citizens who perpetrate their own terrorist acts against
other Americans, such as the murder of nine black worshippers at the Emanuel
African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston and the murder of three and
injury of nine at the Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs. America is amnesic on these terrorist acts because the San Bernardino
terrorist act better fits a narrative that includes arming more citizens rather
than passing common sense gun control and blaming one group of people for
terror in our country.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
The ugly Americans:
people applauding the murders of unarmed black men; turning their backs on
Syrian refugees who are fleeing unimaginable circumstances; shouting their
hatred of fellow Americans who choose to worship or not worship in ways that are not congruent with fundamental Christianity.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
What’s worse is
the hatred directed toward President Obama at this time when we should be
standing united behind him. How dare Donald Trump, or any of the other
candidates, think he can out strategize the President when he doesn’t have
access to the information the President has nor the large number of experts
advising him. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
I can’t see how
that will help us stay safe, especially when we don’t share the same definition
of what it means to be safe. There is a sector of America who believes safety
lies in removing everyone who doesn’t fit the narrow and untrue definition of
American – white and Christian, in whatever manner it takes to get rid of them.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
How can we
discover who the radicals are when we are busy damning whole groups of people, most of whom are innocent?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
President Obama
said, “When we travel down that road [of discrimination] we lose.”</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Albert Einstein
once said,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Insanity is doing
something over and over and expecting different results.” We are dangerously
close to repeating history and the outcome won’t be different. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OE7G_bZSFjA/VmZNNk5duZI/AAAAAAAAAtU/u6hlrS9ozdc/s1600/nbc-fires-donald-trump-after-he-calls-mexicans-rapists-and-drug-runners.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OE7G_bZSFjA/VmZNNk5duZI/AAAAAAAAAtU/u6hlrS9ozdc/s320/nbc-fires-donald-trump-after-he-calls-mexicans-rapists-and-drug-runners.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;">
The Ugly American </div>
Diannehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00367333776511320196noreply@blogger.com0