November 3, 2015- January 6, 2020

 I went to a funeral once where the person while eulogizing the decedent stated their year of birth and their year of death and emphasized  all the living is in the hyphen.  When you look back to the presidential election which took place on November 3, 2015 which elected donald trump as the 45th president and look at where we are now as a nation, as a people, as human beings, all the destruction is in the hyphen.

donald trump ran his campaign and presidency baiting the base hatreds, fears, evils and prejudices of citizens (majority white folks) that felt maligned by the country and its government. White folks that felt like Blacks and immigrants were getting too big for their britches and as as result putting their (white) way of life at risk. Data shows that white folks will in the coming decades be the minority.  I believe their biggest fear is that as a minority they may be subjected to the behaviors that perhaps they exhibited when they thought all was right in the world and white folks ruled. Leading up to November 3, 2015 and for the four years following the United States of America saw rises in hate crimes, white folks who have apparently for years harbored these prejudices and hates were emboldened to display them every time an opportunity whether real or fabricated presented itself. Why? because the person in the White Hose spewed the same rhetoric. he brought voice and validation to what they always believed to be true, that if you are not white you are not right but rather lessor than. They wanted to "Make America Great Again".  One can only assume this meant the return to the pre-civil rights era.  A return to a time when white folks were unquestioned in anything they did. When blacks and browns and immigrants were overtly  disadvantaged, redlined, red circled, discrimintated against, kept out of housing, education, medical care, access to financing, good jobs all the things that are supposed to be the American dream.  A dream not always available to everyone.

The neo-nazi, white supremacist found a leader that "legitimatized" them.  They had to be legit, he was the president and he supported their views.  And with that it became open season on any non-white folks, non-european immigrants, queer folks and other white folks that didn't and don't share their beliefs and ideologies. 

This hyphen represents for me some of the darkest times in America.  

During this period it became open season on Black men, women and children.  The killings carried out by the very folks hired to protect the community.  Cops killed Black men and boys for just the mere fact that they were Black. The killings that brought this all to a head were George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.  George Floyd who was executed on national tv.  

There were scores ahead of him. And each time the victim was demonized, marginalized or criminalized all for the purpose of  rationalizing of the actions of the cops and the downplay of the severity of the killing epidemic. Social media was flooded with videos of white folks fighting with cops, pulling their weapons, stealing their cars and living to screw up another day. In contrast social media was also flooded with black men and women being pulled from their cars for traffic violations and being tased, and beaten and shot while cops yelled stop resisting to handcuffed folks that were either not moving or dead.  It became evident that Black Lives didn't Matter in this country and after Ferguson and Baltimore and other cities around the country that began to see the outright attack on the black community, the Black Lives Matter organization grew.  It was met with All Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter all again looking to minimize and rationalize and discredit what was happening to people of color in this country.  But when a white cop put his knee to the neck of a black man laying on the ground, hands cuffed behind his back posing no threat and the cop kept his knee there on that mans neck for 7 minutes executing him on national tv it was the capping moment. Only to be followed by a group of white cops showing up at the home of a black woman Breonna Taylor and shooting her in her own own home. The attack was based on a no knock warrant looking for a person already in custody who did not reside at the home. And those cops walked away unscathed. There were so many other incidents before and many many after -folks accosted, brutalized, killed for jogging while Black, driving while Black, sleeping while Black, working while Black...Living Black. The summer of 2019 was filled with protest that were peaceful in nature but in some situations erupted into violence. There was rioting and looting. While that behavior was not the majority of activity that occurred it was what was primarily focused on.  What didn't get as much scrutiny were the infiltrators that started much of the violence. BLM was then labeled by trump  as a terrorist group while he referred to neo-nazis that killed a person in Charlotte as "very fine people".  trumps pied piper affect on his followers would keep this country in crisis from November 3, 2015 until January 6,2020 when his followers at his behest staged an insurrection, an all out attempt to overturn the 2020 election results which ousted trump from office.   

As I write I understand this is so high level it doesn't do justice to the full gravity of the situation and environment in which we had been living. It was 4 years of terror. 

Level Setting

 I am an inconsistent writer. 

I could point to many reasons but, why bother it is a fact and I own it.  

I will say this however, the election results in 2016 knocked the wind out of me; that election laid me flat, and all my energy went to making it through the next four years.  That fateful election night around 11 pm I went to sleep  hoping and praying Hilary would pull it out.  Then, 3 am the next morning my phone rang, it was my daughter fighting hard not to go into an all out panic attack. Her anxiety was at 9.99. trump had won, he would be the next president and, for a moment time stood still. In an instant the world changed.  

The day following the election I sat in my office with a co-worker; we cried. We cried because we were old enough to remember what life was like in the 40's, 50' and 60's. We are close enough to remember what life was like for people of color in this country under the laws of segregation and Jim Crow.  We knew the civility that folks seemed to practice even if they didn't believe in it would become the anomaly.  

trump during his campaign unleashed an emboldened form of hate that was not only accepted but hailed. As a result of his ignorant rhetoric, political positions and baseless lies as well as  his base supporters and their beliefs words like misogyny, xenophobia, racist/racism, sexism and neo-nazi would become part of our every day vocabulary. Our world and our politics which were by no means perfect leading to this moment and at times were polarizing were manageable. And managing in such an environment was not exactly the best of worlds but it was a landscape that was familiar and could be navigated. 

The top would be blown off this country and, for as much hate as we faced, there was a fire being lit. Activism was being (re) ignited. And amid all the turmoil of  unarmed Black men and women being killed in the streets Black Lives Matters strengthend and grew and folks of color would decide we didn't want the old "normal". We would no longer except the status-quo of working twice as hard for half as much.  Sorry but we will no longer be sorry.  While neo-nazi militia groups were growing and by Homeland Security standards would become the biggest threat to the United States outweighing the Taliban, people of color, LGBTQ+. women and our allies would organize forming and raising voices and votes.  A new type of politician would gain traction  and "The Squad"  would emerge.  Four congresswomen Reps. Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley along with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would prove to be a force on the Hill.  Stacy Abrams would become synonymous with voter rights and,women of color through Ms Abrams' leadership and tenacity would literally change long held political seats from red to blue.

Within days of that election being called when donald trump was elevated to the highest position of power and leadership in our country and the world, you could feel the air shift and not for the better.  

Over the next 4 years we would be rudderless. More to come.

Life Practices at 60+

When I was about to turn 40 there was an article in ESSENCE magazine which outlined the 40 things a woman should experience or own by the time she turns 40. Then came along the movie The Bucket List which again was about listing out those things that you should do before you get too old, too broke or too consumed to experience. So, now that I am getting closer to 70 than 60, and have (so far)survived the coronavirus pandemic my priorities have changed. And, as we have all come to realize tomorrow is not promised it means living in the moment, being present and actually experieincing the experience. So,  I no longer look to check off a  40 by 40 list  or a bucket list but i have a few life practices that I try to incorporate into my every day life....

1.  Embrace retirement;

2.  Take care of my health - physical, spirtitual and mental

3.  Love on my family

4.  Practice my yoga and meditation

5.  Declutter my closet, drawers and home

6.  Watch a movie I can watch over and over and still find funny 

7.  Watch a movie I can watch over and over and still cry at the sad parts

8.  Find my happy place and go there often

9.  Sunday dinners with the family

10.A warm and welcoming home

Looking Down the Barrel

 It is Janary 29, 2021 at 1:50 AM EST and I cannot sleep.  The stuff tumbling in my head just won't let me... so here i am looking at the only option that may get me a good nights sleep. Brain dump....

I am perplexed by where we are as a country, we are looking down the barrel of calamity and the folks that should know better are the ones with their finger on the trigger.

We are not a perfect country. We are far from perfection and that is obvious not only via the inequities that we have been governed under that have roots far before this country was even "established". Roots that would determine power structures and hierarchies and lay the ground work for how non white people would be treated in this world regardless of the country they were in, even if they were the native inhabitants of that country.  But, here we are January 2021... 

The United States has been the role model for democracy in the world. We have been that social experiment that other countries look to either directly or indirectly to determine how they wish to rule or govern.  We have served as that comparative point as countries have struggled with Democracy, Monarchy or Dictatorship rule. We have been the underlying force or the catalyst in some of these countries as they have fought through the process of modeling their governments.  And at the end of the day love us or hate us these countries look in some way to US to understand the possibilities of what may be. Today, you have to question what kind of example are we.  

Let's do a movie flashback - four year earlier.  The United States and the world are stunned to learn that Hilary Clinton lost the election.  Although winning the popular vote by a spread of more than 4 million she lost on the basis of our electoral college a voting representation created to appease slaveholders following the civil war which would place the power of determining the presidency squarely in the hands of primarily southern states regardless of their population. There was a lot going on with that 2016 election - the Russians, probably the only ones not surprised by the outcome,  had a strong influence in our electoral process. But at the end of the day we accepted our fate and oh what a fate it was - 4 years of chaos, lies, swindling, hypocrisy and baiting the most basic and divisive elements of our society. The elements of race misogyny, and xenophobia to name just a few,   We watched as our federal courts even at the highest level got stacked with judges that would continue to push for the status quo of racial inequality, gender bias, and maintaining a social and economic framework that would keep white men in power.  So much there to unpack.  

Move the timeline forward November 3, 2020 election day... so much activity leading up to this day.  The turnout was historic - 62% of the voting population exercised their right to vote. Over 156,000,000 votes were cast. The most ever votes for a sitting president of 74 million but he was beat. He was beat by Joe Biden who garnered 81 million votes or 51.3% of all votes cast translating to an electoral win of  306 votes to trumps 232.  This in trumps own words represents a "landslide victory" as this is the margin that he won the electoral college by in 2016.   The race was too close to call on election night and counts and recounts took over a week and Biden was finally called President- elect. Oh and not to mention that Biden has a Female Vice President who is also a woman of color - Black and Indian.  With all of this trump refused to concede and began his tantrum touting the election was rigged, no way could he have lost and, the inciting begins. 

The remaining part of November and December 2020 see no less than 60 challenges of the election taken to court by trump and his team.  The challenges are with either withdrawn or thrown out... all this talk of fraud and the election being stolen and no data, no examples, nothing provided to substantiate any of these claims. But yet, trump and his base continue to challenge... and this goes all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States and gets thrown out... but still he holds tight... it was a steal. And now there are congress people and senators refusing to accept the results of the election that trump's own people said was the most secure election in our history.  Did I mention this is all in the midst of a pandemic where at this point over 300,000 people have died from Covid-19.... yeah that has been going on since March 2020. And, our economy was tanking, folks out of work and support resources slow and trump and his team creating a full cluster around relief and prevention and vaccines being rolled out.  Food lines are as normal as covid testing lines.  

January 6th. A day that will now rank in history with events such as  D-Day, Pearl Harbor, 9/11.  This was the day a coup was attempted in the United States of America. A true seditious insurrection.  January 6th is the day that the electoral votes are ceremoniously presented to Congress and Senate and the winner of the presidential election is formally and finally validated which then culminates with the inauguration on January 20th.   This day started with a "Stop the Steal" campaign like event headed by trump and his cronies. Calling on his thousands of supporters who had flooded into Washington DC to storm the Capitol and keep him in power.  It was horrible. It was seditious.  He had militia, he had neo-nazi's, he had proud boys.  These rioting thugs carried the trump flag higher than the American flag their mission to overthrow the government to keep their leader in place. People died this day.  Hundreds were injured the majority of them law enforcement... so apparently from a group that lived by the motto "blue lives matter" they demonstrated that only holds if the blue lives work with them not to stop them. One police officer was killed, bludgeoned to death with a fire extinguisher, others were beat and stabbed - one was stabbed with an American flag pole. This was horrible and played out on the world stage for all to see televised around the world. Here this country which is the role model for democracy was under siege and that siege was led by the sitting president and supported in the legislative body by some members of Congress and some in the Senate. Shame on US. 

And as horrible as that is here is the most harrowing piece of this.... now that a new president is at the reigns our Republican representatives want to sweep this under the rug.  Let bygones be bygones. Did I mention that 99.9% of the rioters/insurrectionist where white folks.  The insurrection failed so, what the heck just move forward. Before Biden was inaugurated Congress voted to impeach trump for his acts of treason and because of the tight timeline an impeachment trial could not occur until he was out of office. Since trump  is now  out of office many Republicans are saying oh well let's move on and suggesting Democrats are being divisive by keeping this going.  This from the party that bitch slapped Democrats for 4 years while acting as a barrier to anything that would move the country forward.

So, current day here we are staring down that barrel of calamity.  What is the precedent this country is willing to set.  Insurrection only counts if it is successful?  That you can be a complete criminal in office and once you are out of office we just move on, no accountability.  Does that mean that folks that commit crimes against humanity once out of power are no longer responsible for their crimes.  How many years did we hunt down war criminals after WWII, after the genocide in Rwanda? Are we saying because those events are long over folks are no longer accountable. We had a sitting president who for his own egotistical and greedy reasons was willing to topple our government. Willing to teardown the country. Tear up the Constitution so, he could stay in power a job that he really didn't want as demonstrated by his last 30 days of office being in hiding.  At the end of the day we all know this was about his ability to say "look how great i was, people were willing to overthrow the government because I was so great". And worse yet we have people still sitting in seats of power defying the oath they took and still calling the election a fraud.   We are a hot mess. And, if we don't get our shit together we will continue to be a mess. trump, some of his cronies, some congress people and some senators broke the law. They committed crimes which put our democracy at risk.  They must be held accountable.

Accountability is key.  Those in power who incited, supported, planned and helped execute this insurrection should be brought to face the charges and the consequences.  The so called leaders that want to look the other way need to do the job they were elected to do and protect the constitution and thereby protect the citizens so we can continue with this social experiment and push for all to have access to the  aspects of this country that have been so elusive for so many for so long.

Good night. 

The Virus

 

In March of 2020 I started writing this blog, we were just going into lockdown.  I was living and working in Baltimore at the time and thought being locked in alone would be the perfect time to pick my writing back up.  But even in the middle of a pandemic while being locked down life or sometimes the lack there of can get in the way.   This is what I started with....
The world is experiencing a pandemic.  It is a coronavirus.  It is a "novel" virus meaning it has not been seen before.  It has been tagged Covid-19. The first inklings of a new virus was sometitme in the December/January timeframe.  It is spread from person-to-person.

• Between people who are in close contact with one another (within about 6 feet).
• Through respiratory droplets produced when an infected person coughs or sneezes
• These droplets can land in the mouths or noses of people who are nearby or possibly be inhaled into the lungs.

And, that is where i stopped. 

Fast Forward to January 2021.  We are now nearly a year into this pandemic. As of this writing 86M folks world wide have been infected 21M of those infected are in the United States and, of that 21M nearly 400K have died. The US accounts for nearly 25% of the cases worldwide. The virus has affected the black and brown community more severely than the white community. The current administration is directly responsible for the rampant spread and related deaths.  The president, it pains me to even write his name, first ignored the information provided, then downplayed it, then hog tied our leading scientist and medical leaders, then politicized the number one prevention - wearing a mask to the point where his followers stormed state houses and local governments whining about their civil rights being infringed upon to the point that the virus has now run rampant across our country.  We got a first hand view of selfish behavior by those entitled and emboldened by the dumbest individual ever elected to high office.  We watched our economy tank, our education system having to reinvent how to teach remotely, small businesses being shuttered and food lines that had not been seen in this magnitude since the great depression. Our health care system has been taken to brink of collapse with hospitals running out of bed, field hospitals being errected. Nursing homes are a death sentence for their residents, if the virus breached a nursing home the results are catastropich. Depression and other mental health issues have been exasperated due to isolation and domestic abuse rose as folks were forced into close quarters for extended periods without relief. 

As other nations around the world are taking actions to protect and support their citizens the "leaders" in this country looked to an asshole for direction and got shit as a result.

What the pandemic has shown us, what those of us in the Black community have always known, is that there are serious inequities in healthcare, both access and delivery, all based in race.  Black and brown folks die from the virus 3 to 4 times more often than their white counterparts.

Essential employees are the folks that most of you walk past and don't even acknowledge such as sanitation workers, grocery store workers, postal workers, food service workers, janitorial staff, transportation folks, first responders, and teachers. The invisible workers that you don't think about but they are always there and most not even making liveable wages and yet, we found we can't function without them. And let's never forget our front line clinicians and hospital workers who have tirelessly held the line working in war zone like environments and all they ask is that you wear a mask, take precautions and act responsibly. But, some many of our citizens are oppositional to the very activity which is no swear off anyone's back that spread continues seemingly unimpeded.  At one point cold storage trucks were rolling into cities to handle the dead as morgues and funeral homes could not handle the volumes. 

The Corona Virus - Covid 19 is a great summation of what the past 4 years in this country have been - a shit show.  

In November 2020 the asshole was voted out and in December the first vaccine was approved for distribution in the US.  Another cluster.  Of the 25M doses available in this country only 5M have been distributed at this point. Again the fuckery of an administration that can't strategize or execute on a plan for exiting  through an open door let alone moving the vaccine to every state. 

People still refuse to wear a mask and continue to attend large gatherings and super spreader events - the White House hosted at least 4 such events infecting staff, politicians, secret service and anyone else that attended either by choice or requirement (employment). 

Many of us have experienced a loss due to someone dying from the virus either directly or indirectly and yet there is fear over receiving the vaccine primarily because folks are concerned that the government had too much say in what was or wasn't done around development so the trust level is low. 

I wear my mask, limit my interactions and trips outside the house and will get the vaccine when it is available. And, I pray. 

Hoping to reach a point of "post covid".