I love that Colin Kaepernick has taken a stand against the injustices of people of color.
It takes courage to do what he has chosen to do.
It takes courage to take a stand that you know will be unpopular but is right nonetheless.
As much as I believe in what he's doing and applaud him for it, I wonder if I'd feel the same way if it was Ben or Frankie.
Would I be as supportive of them?
Or, would I remind them of the cost of standing up, even when you are right?
The answer is . . .
I would have tried to stop them, wrong though that would have been.
Here's why.
Growing up in the segregated South, my brothers and I were taught to "go along to get along." My parents knew the real danger of pushing back in any way.
We lived with terrorism long before 9/11.
To push back against the status quo meant repercussions.
Folks losing their jobs, their livelihoods, and too often, their lives was the threat we lived under every day. It was the fear we learned to live with.
Of course, we recognized the gains we made because of those brave folks who took a stand on our behalf, but it wasn't enough to nudge us from the sidelines.
So, I thank God for the people who had the courage to do what we wouldn't do, then and now.
Wednesday, September 14, 2016
A Courageous Act
An excerpt from The Intercept - H/T Ben
Barbara Lee’s Lone Vote on Sept. 14, 2001, Was as Prescient as It Was Brave and Heroic
By Glenn Greenwald
In an op-ed she published in the San Francisco Chronicle nine days later, she explained her vote by pointing out that the resolution “was a blank check to the president to attack anyone involved in the Sept. 11 events — anywhere, in any country, without regard to our nation’s long-term foreign policy, economic and national security interests, and without time limit.” She added: “A rush to launch precipitous military counterattacks runs too great a risk that more innocent men, women, children will be killed.”
For her lone stance, Lee was deluged with rancid insults and death threats to the point where she needed around-the-clock bodyguards. She was vilified as “anti-American” by numerous outlets including the Wall Street Journal. The Washington Times editorialized on September 18 that “Ms. Lee is a long-practicing supporter of America’s enemies — from Fidel Castro on down” and that “while most of the left-wing Democrats spent the week praising President Bush and trying to sound as moderate as possible, Barbara Lee continued to sail under her true colors.” Since then, she has been repeatedly rejected in her bids to join the House Democratic leadership, typically losing to candidates close to Wall Street and in support of militarism. I documented numerous other ugly attacks when I wrote about her for The Guardian in 2013.
But beyond the obvious bravery needed to take the stand she took, she has been completely vindicated on the merits.
https://theintercept.com/2016/09/11/barbara-lees-lone-vote-on-sept-14-2001-was-as-prescient-as-it-was-brave-and-heroic/
Barbara Lee’s Lone Vote on Sept. 14, 2001, Was as Prescient as It Was Brave and Heroic
By Glenn Greenwald
In an op-ed she published in the San Francisco Chronicle nine days later, she explained her vote by pointing out that the resolution “was a blank check to the president to attack anyone involved in the Sept. 11 events — anywhere, in any country, without regard to our nation’s long-term foreign policy, economic and national security interests, and without time limit.” She added: “A rush to launch precipitous military counterattacks runs too great a risk that more innocent men, women, children will be killed.”
For her lone stance, Lee was deluged with rancid insults and death threats to the point where she needed around-the-clock bodyguards. She was vilified as “anti-American” by numerous outlets including the Wall Street Journal. The Washington Times editorialized on September 18 that “Ms. Lee is a long-practicing supporter of America’s enemies — from Fidel Castro on down” and that “while most of the left-wing Democrats spent the week praising President Bush and trying to sound as moderate as possible, Barbara Lee continued to sail under her true colors.” Since then, she has been repeatedly rejected in her bids to join the House Democratic leadership, typically losing to candidates close to Wall Street and in support of militarism. I documented numerous other ugly attacks when I wrote about her for The Guardian in 2013.
But beyond the obvious bravery needed to take the stand she took, she has been completely vindicated on the merits.
https://theintercept.com/2016/09/11/barbara-lees-lone-vote-on-sept-14-2001-was-as-prescient-as-it-was-brave-and-heroic/
Sunday, September 11, 2016
Saturday, September 10, 2016
Happy Birthday Frankie!
It's hard to believe you're 33 today!
Where does the time go?
It was 33 years ago on a Saturday morning, like today, that I started to bleed and my doctor decided that you would be born that day.
It was a tough pregnancy.
By this time I'd been in the hospital for over a month, as this pregnancy was considered high risk. This was long before the quickie drive-by hospital stays that are the norm today.
The previous year I had Lydia, who had a litany of health issues and only lived for two weeks. After two pregnancies in two years, we were advised to wait a while before trying for another child. I knew that waiting wasn't an option because of fear and sadness that gripped me after losing her. So, mere months after her death, I was pregnant with you.
With Ben, I had issues.
With Lydia, she had problems.
With you, it was my turn again.
I had placenta previa, a condition that was potentially life threatening, but I felt fine. So good in fact, I was lifting things and moving furniture, as we were setting up our new home, getting everything ready for your birth.
Well, therein was the problem.
I exasperated an already tenuous situation, and in my third trimester, I started to bleed and was hospitalized. After a week or so, I begged to be released to go home because Ben needed me. He was just shy of two years old.
My doctor complied. I went home and foolishly went back to moving furniture. Again.
Color me stupid.
I had already lost one child. You'd think I'd have the presence of mind to do everything in my power to prevent that from happening again.
What was I thinking?
I don't know where my head was.
Anyway . . .
Of course, I started to bleed again, and this time I was hospitalized for over a month, waiting for you to grow bigger and stronger to increase your chance of survival outside the womb.
So, early that Saturday morning, when I notified the staff of the bleeding, surgery was prepped and you were born. It happened fast. So fast in fact, that your dad didn't make it as he had to find someone to watch Ben. By the time he arrived, you were born.
You looked so much like Lydia, it was hard at first.
The resemblance was remarkable.
You were both born a month early, weighing within an ounce of each other.
After you passed the two week mark, you started to fill out and come into your own person. Or maybe, I started to see you as you, and not so much in her image.
One of my favorite memories of your birth was Ben's reaction to you. He was tickled pink. So excited to have a little brother. That excitement didn't wane until you were five months old and started to smile. Then he was done.
It took a while, but he came around again, and now I'm thrilled that you're best buds.
We've had some wonderful times, and some tough times, but through it all, I've been so proud of you.
Here's some advice, unsolicited though it may be.
That is . . . be happy.
Find your happy place and drop anchor there.
Do what makes you happy.
Be with people who make you happy,
But . . .
Understand that your happiness should never be dependent on someone else.
You have to be happy with you, and for you.
Other people are responsible for their own happiness.
I realize this seems like a contradiction, but I promise, it's not.
It took me twenty years to figure that out.
Ok.
No more advice . . . today.
Just love.
Happy birthday Frankie!
Where does the time go?
It was 33 years ago on a Saturday morning, like today, that I started to bleed and my doctor decided that you would be born that day.
It was a tough pregnancy.
By this time I'd been in the hospital for over a month, as this pregnancy was considered high risk. This was long before the quickie drive-by hospital stays that are the norm today.
The previous year I had Lydia, who had a litany of health issues and only lived for two weeks. After two pregnancies in two years, we were advised to wait a while before trying for another child. I knew that waiting wasn't an option because of fear and sadness that gripped me after losing her. So, mere months after her death, I was pregnant with you.
With Ben, I had issues.
With Lydia, she had problems.
With you, it was my turn again.
I had placenta previa, a condition that was potentially life threatening, but I felt fine. So good in fact, I was lifting things and moving furniture, as we were setting up our new home, getting everything ready for your birth.
Well, therein was the problem.
I exasperated an already tenuous situation, and in my third trimester, I started to bleed and was hospitalized. After a week or so, I begged to be released to go home because Ben needed me. He was just shy of two years old.
My doctor complied. I went home and foolishly went back to moving furniture. Again.
Color me stupid.
I had already lost one child. You'd think I'd have the presence of mind to do everything in my power to prevent that from happening again.
What was I thinking?
I don't know where my head was.
Anyway . . .
Of course, I started to bleed again, and this time I was hospitalized for over a month, waiting for you to grow bigger and stronger to increase your chance of survival outside the womb.
So, early that Saturday morning, when I notified the staff of the bleeding, surgery was prepped and you were born. It happened fast. So fast in fact, that your dad didn't make it as he had to find someone to watch Ben. By the time he arrived, you were born.
You looked so much like Lydia, it was hard at first.
The resemblance was remarkable.
You were both born a month early, weighing within an ounce of each other.
After you passed the two week mark, you started to fill out and come into your own person. Or maybe, I started to see you as you, and not so much in her image.
One of my favorite memories of your birth was Ben's reaction to you. He was tickled pink. So excited to have a little brother. That excitement didn't wane until you were five months old and started to smile. Then he was done.
It took a while, but he came around again, and now I'm thrilled that you're best buds.
We've had some wonderful times, and some tough times, but through it all, I've been so proud of you.
Here's some advice, unsolicited though it may be.
That is . . . be happy.
Find your happy place and drop anchor there.
Do what makes you happy.
Be with people who make you happy,
But . . .
Understand that your happiness should never be dependent on someone else.
You have to be happy with you, and for you.
Other people are responsible for their own happiness.
I realize this seems like a contradiction, but I promise, it's not.
It took me twenty years to figure that out.
Ok.
No more advice . . . today.
Just love.
Happy birthday Frankie!
Friday, September 9, 2016
I Love This!
http://www.upworthy.com/one-man-turned-nursing-home-design-on-its-head-when-he-created-this-stunning-facility?c=upw1&u=6861cbea6edfdfe5a709ee39ad3c14b64135e61f
Even in Death
An excerpt from Atlas Obscura -
The Persistent Racism of America's Cemeteries
Not only is segregation still an issue but also America risks losing important history in its forgotten graveyards.
By Jennifer Young
Earlier this summer, the city of Waco, Texas issued an order to remove a fence in the city’s public burial ground, Greenwood Cemetery. But it wasn’t just a cosmetic change: Using a forklift and power tools, City of Waco Parks & Recreation staff cut apart the chain-link fence that had been used to divide the white section of the cemetery from the black section.
The cemetery had been racially segregated since it opened in the late 1800s. It was operated by two sets of caretakers, white and black, until the city took over the cemetery about 10 years ago.
Waco is not the only Texas community to struggle with the surprisingly robust ghost of Jim Crow: This spring, the cemetery association of Normanna, Texas, about an hour outside Corpus Christi, was sued by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund for barring a white woman from burying the ashes of her Hispanic husband there. Although the cemetery association later relented, the U.S. Department of Justice is investigating. No Hispanic people are buried within the Normanna cemetery—there is one sole tombstone with a Spanish surname, located just outside the cemetery’s chain link fence.
Until the 1950s, about 90 percent of all public cemeteries in the U.S. employed a variety of racial restrictions. Until recently, to enter a cemetery was to experience, as a University of Pennsylvania geography professor put it, the “spatial segregation of the American dead.” Even when a religious cemetery was not entirely race restricted, different races were buried in separate parts of the cemetery, with whites usually getting the more attractive plots.
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-persistent-racism-of-americas-cemeteries
The Persistent Racism of America's Cemeteries
Not only is segregation still an issue but also America risks losing important history in its forgotten graveyards.
By Jennifer Young
Earlier this summer, the city of Waco, Texas issued an order to remove a fence in the city’s public burial ground, Greenwood Cemetery. But it wasn’t just a cosmetic change: Using a forklift and power tools, City of Waco Parks & Recreation staff cut apart the chain-link fence that had been used to divide the white section of the cemetery from the black section.
The cemetery had been racially segregated since it opened in the late 1800s. It was operated by two sets of caretakers, white and black, until the city took over the cemetery about 10 years ago.
Waco is not the only Texas community to struggle with the surprisingly robust ghost of Jim Crow: This spring, the cemetery association of Normanna, Texas, about an hour outside Corpus Christi, was sued by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund for barring a white woman from burying the ashes of her Hispanic husband there. Although the cemetery association later relented, the U.S. Department of Justice is investigating. No Hispanic people are buried within the Normanna cemetery—there is one sole tombstone with a Spanish surname, located just outside the cemetery’s chain link fence.
Until the 1950s, about 90 percent of all public cemeteries in the U.S. employed a variety of racial restrictions. Until recently, to enter a cemetery was to experience, as a University of Pennsylvania geography professor put it, the “spatial segregation of the American dead.” Even when a religious cemetery was not entirely race restricted, different races were buried in separate parts of the cemetery, with whites usually getting the more attractive plots.
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-persistent-racism-of-americas-cemeteries
Thursday, September 8, 2016
I Want This Guy to Wait on Me
From Stumble Upon - I was going to cherry pick the article, but I think it needs to read in its entirety to appreciate. Enjoy!
Guy Documents His First Week Of Work At Target, And It Couldn’t Get More Hilarious
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1TyQra/:W5WO3Mhu:qUZGdJog/www.boredpanda.com/first-work-week-target-cashier-kimpossibooty
Guy Documents His First Week Of Work At Target, And It Couldn’t Get More Hilarious
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1TyQra/:W5WO3Mhu:qUZGdJog/www.boredpanda.com/first-work-week-target-cashier-kimpossibooty
Wednesday, September 7, 2016
Nationalism vs. Patriotism
Excerpts from The Undefeated -
THE COURAGE OF COLIN KAEPERNICK
Given all that’s going on in America, he got it right
By Michael Eric Dyson
Nationalism is a harmful belief that can lead a country down a dangerous spiral of arrogance, or off the precipice of political narcissism. Nationalism harbors the belief that no matter what one’s country does, it must be supported. If a nation practices racism, homophobia, sexism, xenophobia or the like, it must be celebrated and accepted at all costs. Patriotism is a bigger, more uplifting virtue. Patriotism is the belief in the best values of one’s country, and the pursuit of the best means to realize those values. If the nation strays, then it must be corrected. The patriot is the person who, spotting the need for change, says so clearly and loudly, without hate or rancor. The nationalist is the person who spurns such correction and would rather take refuge in bigotry than fight it. It is the nationalists who wrap themselves in a flag and loudly proclaim themselves as patriots. That is dangerous, as glimpsed in Trump’s amplification of the worst racist and xenophobic sentiments in a generation. In the end, Trump is a nationalist, and Kaepernick is a patriot.
~~~~~~~~~~
What the controversy has also revealed is that, for the most part, the world of sports, especially football, despite all of the black bodies that make it go, is still a deeply and profoundly white enterprise that cherishes its own viewpoints and recoils at true difference. That’s why only the gridiron is integrated, with nearly 70 percent of the players black. The league’s front offices teem with white men whose outdated viewpoints, and narrow understandings of race – and sometimes, whether intending to be or not, their bigoted perspectives – hamper true progress. The players in football and basketball may be overwhelmingly black – and in the case of baseball, increasingly Latino – but the front offices of major sports are a white man’s game.
Thus when we hear statements by anonymous NFL executives that they don’t want Kaepernick near their teams because he’s a traitor, that he has no respect for our country, and “[expletive] that guy,” and that “I have never seen a guy so hated by front office guys as Kaepernick,” they betray the tolerance for fatally narrow views of black life. As long as black athletes keep their mouths shut and play the game, they’re fine. Once they range beyond deference and obedience, they’re out of bounds, and huge penalty flags are thrown.
Kaepernick’s courage has also thrown a harsh light on just how painfully inadequate are the memories, historical consciousness, and learning of some of our leading, black former football players, who now offer commentary in the media. They clearly don’t understand that without some brave soul in the past like Jim Brown within their guild speaking up at the “wrong” time, they wouldn’t today enjoy the perks of fame and wealth. Without protest and social pressure, the major sports leagues would not have been integrated. Rodney Harrison, Hines Ward and Jerry Rice were incredible athletes who offer insightful commentary about football. However, criticism of Kaepernick reveals their atrocious ignorance. Harrison argued that Kaepernick’s heart is in the right place, but that he’s “going about it in the wrong way.”
http://theundefeated.com/features/the-courage-of-colin-kaepernick/
THE COURAGE OF COLIN KAEPERNICK
Given all that’s going on in America, he got it right
By Michael Eric Dyson
Nationalism is a harmful belief that can lead a country down a dangerous spiral of arrogance, or off the precipice of political narcissism. Nationalism harbors the belief that no matter what one’s country does, it must be supported. If a nation practices racism, homophobia, sexism, xenophobia or the like, it must be celebrated and accepted at all costs. Patriotism is a bigger, more uplifting virtue. Patriotism is the belief in the best values of one’s country, and the pursuit of the best means to realize those values. If the nation strays, then it must be corrected. The patriot is the person who, spotting the need for change, says so clearly and loudly, without hate or rancor. The nationalist is the person who spurns such correction and would rather take refuge in bigotry than fight it. It is the nationalists who wrap themselves in a flag and loudly proclaim themselves as patriots. That is dangerous, as glimpsed in Trump’s amplification of the worst racist and xenophobic sentiments in a generation. In the end, Trump is a nationalist, and Kaepernick is a patriot.
~~~~~~~~~~
What the controversy has also revealed is that, for the most part, the world of sports, especially football, despite all of the black bodies that make it go, is still a deeply and profoundly white enterprise that cherishes its own viewpoints and recoils at true difference. That’s why only the gridiron is integrated, with nearly 70 percent of the players black. The league’s front offices teem with white men whose outdated viewpoints, and narrow understandings of race – and sometimes, whether intending to be or not, their bigoted perspectives – hamper true progress. The players in football and basketball may be overwhelmingly black – and in the case of baseball, increasingly Latino – but the front offices of major sports are a white man’s game.
Thus when we hear statements by anonymous NFL executives that they don’t want Kaepernick near their teams because he’s a traitor, that he has no respect for our country, and “[expletive] that guy,” and that “I have never seen a guy so hated by front office guys as Kaepernick,” they betray the tolerance for fatally narrow views of black life. As long as black athletes keep their mouths shut and play the game, they’re fine. Once they range beyond deference and obedience, they’re out of bounds, and huge penalty flags are thrown.
Kaepernick’s courage has also thrown a harsh light on just how painfully inadequate are the memories, historical consciousness, and learning of some of our leading, black former football players, who now offer commentary in the media. They clearly don’t understand that without some brave soul in the past like Jim Brown within their guild speaking up at the “wrong” time, they wouldn’t today enjoy the perks of fame and wealth. Without protest and social pressure, the major sports leagues would not have been integrated. Rodney Harrison, Hines Ward and Jerry Rice were incredible athletes who offer insightful commentary about football. However, criticism of Kaepernick reveals their atrocious ignorance. Harrison argued that Kaepernick’s heart is in the right place, but that he’s “going about it in the wrong way.”
http://theundefeated.com/features/the-courage-of-colin-kaepernick/
Spot On!
I ran into technical difficulties trying to embed this video, so here's the link instead. It's Trevor Noah on Comedy Central discussing Trump's effort to get the black vote.
Hilarious!
http://www.cc.com/video-clips/4vdhn2/the-daily-show-with-trevor-noah-donald-trump-tries-to-woo-black-voters
Hilarious!
http://www.cc.com/video-clips/4vdhn2/the-daily-show-with-trevor-noah-donald-trump-tries-to-woo-black-voters
Sunday, September 4, 2016
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