What Choice?

The idiocy spewed by Kanye West that slaves had "the choice to be free" deserves a rebuke but you will not see that in this place. What you will get instead is a brief look at my own family. Both sides emigrated from Saint Domingue (Haiti) before the revolution birth a free new black nation. My family on both sides left. They were taken by their parent who allowed them to be free half-black children or with their owners as slaves to Louisiana. By 1820 both sides of my family, free and slave were in Louisiana and Mississippi. Before either state became a part of the United States my people free and slave were living on that land. Before the ignorant people who came to this country far later than my family. They who wear sheets, burn crosses or carry tiki torches to assert their rights supersede everyone else's right to life and freedom.

My family, both sides were in this land bearing the grinding harshness of slavery on sugar plantations or having to live insular lives to remain free. Were it not for the Toussaints and Dessalines who understood liberty and desired it for themselves and their people my family both sides would have like everyone else on that island continue to endure the hell of enslavement until a Toussaint or a Dessalines is born to break the chains of slavery. Without that desire for liberty, there would be no Haiti and no east to west coast United States without a lot more fighting than what occurred for it. Because of Hait's revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte was forced to sell the Louisiana Territory to the upstart nation, The United States, increasing its size by a third. Liberty is in the DNA of the survivors of the Middle Passage, the horrendous trip from the coast of Africa to the Carribean and Brazil packed in the bottom of slave ships like cords of woods instead of sentient beings. Imagine working for free and by force sun-up to sun-down to make your captor rich. Or imagine being free, but that existence and worse travel make you susceptible to being captured by those slave catchers.  Then they can insist because they are white that you are a runaway slave when you are a not. A free person then had to carry Freedom Papers to affirm your freedom while having to pray that the slave catcher is literate and honest enough to accept that you supposedly are free. Imagine being vulnerable to becoming a slave when in truth you are free. In reality, neither side of my family was free.

Vote Blue!

The experiment is over! We have experienced a full year with this retrograde administration, and we are now a sorrier country for it. It is now an emergency! We have experienced fascism for ourselves, and most of us who are sane are awakened to do our duty and our best by voting for progress and sanity. VOTE BLUE! Our lives are at stake! Our children's lives are at stake. We teeter on the precipice of conventional was, or God help us a nuclear war. The lying never ceases,. We are on a destructive path increasing into the hands of the very few more and more money weakening the middle class and starving the poor. Our media has encouraged what we have as leaders to continue in this way. No system is untouched. The Congress has abandoned the majority of the people for the wealthy few. Our judicary, especially the United States Supreme Court have followed the way of the Republican Congress weakening the methods to restrain Gerrymandering, corporate cash thereby bringing forth the increasing of polluted air, water, and land for money!

What can we do about this? We are not yet powerless and at the mercy of our present government. We can change directions towards definite continuous improvement by VOTING BLUE! Vote for every Democratic Party Member on your ballot. Bring back sanity, reason, progress, justice, and fairness to this country. Take the time and make the time to go out in vote. Be patient wait is you have to for it is too serious a matter to give up. Vote.

Just Vote BLUE! 2018

How Much Will The Media's Disapproving Yowling Over Syria Affect President Obama?

Best article I've read on Huffpost in a very long time. The media has less credibility than Donald Trump's claim to billionaire status. Hint: If he were one why would he collect a check for a sad TV show? The media should be reduced to showing 50 seconds news clips of their nonsense; at least we would know when they will shut up.
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Syria and My President the War Mongeror or Don't Start Nothing Won't Be Nothing!

All of a sudden Syria is joining the Chemical Convention and agreeing to open their storage sites to inspection. My President's threats are real and he has proven that he doesn't mind bombing so while our lazy shiftless media and many politicians might be snickering I'd call this a win for my President. I know that I was in the minority on bombing Syria but there is a line that was set in 1925 after WWI that gassing people is a war crime.

If you believe that it was because of Putin's intervention then I've got several slightly used bridges to sell you. Mr. Obama has been willing to use those drones. Pakistan is curiously quiet these days. The cost of war is death. I would so much prefer it is the death of our enemies that we anguish rather than our own soldiers. There is no need to send troops when we can locate and bomb every where we think there are chemical weapons. Assad has no shame and has been very harsh and ruthless with his own people. Until he realized that My President was seriously going to handle him like he did Pakistan.

I would like most people would rather live peacefully without war and/or violence. However as those people who have had to face bullies know nothing stops a bully like a good beat down. Assad refused reasoning until he saw that beat down coming. My President ain't scare of a fight but he would rather have peace and no one having to face chemical weapons used against them.

Going Home to New Orleans...My Annual Pilgrimage

Every summer since I started working for my local school system I go home to New Orleans to visit my family and my oldest and best friends. Never will I lose the love I have for the people, food, customs, music, colloquialisms and history of New Orleans. Like Austin in Texas, New Orleans is an anomaly in a backwards red state. The city is mostly blue with a strong underlining of white privilege control of money and patronage. The economy is built upon tourism. Those who work in that industry work hard labor paying miserly wages. The system was sustained through low rents, family homes handed down and simple needs. In other words, those not so economically successful could survive since food was relatively cheap and utilities too. After Hurricane Katrina, real estate taxes went up and with it insurance rates, and rental housing too. There are fewer grocery stores and those that exist in areas like New Orleans East are not as well kept as those in the predominantly white affluent or up and coming neighborhoods.

Many former New Orleanians want to return home. The home they left does not exist. The new systems in place are not for them. New Orleans is fast becoming a mini New York meant for the wealthy while stuck with the stubborn poor. The school system is a hodgepodge of wildly fluctuating and various quality schools. Only the wise consumer oriented parents with excellent detective skills manage to locate good schools. The school system students are mostly black and mostly poor. The exam schools are majority white. Most affluent parents send their children to parochial schools that have always been segregated or mostly segregated.

Multi-million dollar housing development using HUD (Housing and Urban Development) money is designated to build luxury apartments. Meanwhile there is a severe shortage of affordable housing for the working poor. So, where is the fight against this mess? A few people have raised concerns but the very people who need the housing, decent education for their children are focused on surviving.

I love going home. I am glad though to come back to a blue state and especially a blue city where the discussion is not about how to shaft the working poor. It would be wonderful if the powers that be in New Orleans would be more interested in helping than ridding themselves of poor people.

John Henry Spooner Shooting VIDEO: Evidence Shows Darius Simmons Killed (GRAPHIC)

And so it begins...
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The Day After The Verdict: Florida v. Zimmerman

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The Killing of Trayvon Martin was a lynching. It was predicated on an assumption that a black man must explain to an unknown white man why he was in a certain neighborhood. This is a centuries old question that black men have had to answer or face possible death or imprisonment. During the Antebellum period, slaves or free people of color needed to show proof as to who they were and why they were out of their area. Sadly, this is true today some 148 years later that we must prove our legitimacy, our right to simply walk around on the sidewalks of any America city as the free people the United Sates of America Constitution 13th Amendment says we are able to do as citizens. It says: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." Formally abolishing slavery in the United States, the 13th Amendment was passed by the Congress on January 31, 1865, and ratified by the states on December 6, 1865.[Library of Congress website: We according to "Amendment IV have: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

That part about "persons" means self. That means as a free American we have the right to walk freely, not answer questions from non-law enforcement officers, and not be killed for doing what is perfectly legal. Now, it seems as though George Zimmerman, the man that shot and killed Trayvon Martin and his legal team may seek to get an order of immunity so that Mr. Martin's family cannot sue him in civil court where there is a lower bar of preponderance of evidence versus reasonable doubt. That is galling! The Martin family legal team surely planned for this action and again America must wait for some semblance of justice for Trayvon Martin he certainly did not get it last night.

WATCH: Your Duly Elected Representatives Standing Up For Their Principles Before It Was Cool

Rep.John Lewis is a great man. The best that Georgia offers America.
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A President's Finest Hour

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It is true that the message of acceptance for blacks in America was President John F.Kennedy's finest hour. Some 248 years (1865) ago the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery in the United States was ratified. In 1965, the Civil Rights Movement with President Lydon B. Johnson's signature made voting a right and not a privilege for blacks in former slave states and he signed the public accommodation law that meant that blacks could eat, ride and sleep in places along with anyone else who could pay for it. That I remember was a very happy day for my parents. The law was finally on their side and going to be upheld.