John Lewis Died

I know very little about John Lewis.  He fought for Civil Rights--since before the 1960's.  He was quite a congressman fighting for his district and for all people.

The representatives in my state are nothing to write home about.

I know that the men and women that fought and fought hard to make this nation the nation that was promised in the constitution, are dying.

They are dying and they are leaving us to continue on.

There is an acting head of the department of homeland security, appointed without congressional approval or oversight, that has militarized warriors in large cities where their are protesters.  They are unidentified and uninvited by the cities they are in.  Rumor has it they are mercenaries supplied by Betsy Devos' brothers defense company.  They are taking protestors into custody.  No charges.  No crimes.  Releasing them with threats not to return to protesting.   And this is approved at the highest level.  I dare to guess that it was actually suggested by the current president.

The department of homeland security was created in 2002 in response to 9/11.

What happened on 9/11 was seen as the greatest affront to our nation since Pearl Harbor.

How many people died at Pearl Harbor during the attack?

The total number of military personnel killed was 2,335, including 2,008 navy personnel, 109 marines, and 218 army. Added to this were 68 civilians, making the total 2403 people dead. 1,177 were from the USS Arizona.  https://www.bing.com/search?q=how+many+died+at+pearl+harbor+total&qs=AS&pq=how+many+died+at+pearl+harbor&sk=AS1LS1&sc=6-29&cvid=C996A24B8FB547E88B0959549969C91E&FORM=QBRE&sp=3

How many people died on 9/11/2001?

2,977 people died, and 19 hijackers committed murder/suicide, and more than 6,000 others were injured. The immediate deaths included 265 on the four planes (including the terrorists), 2,606 in the World Trade Center and in the surrounding area, and 125 at the Pentagon.  https://www.bing.com/search?q=Total+deaths+on+9%2F11&cvid=54f3d309fb614438bf4e2d347ca8acb9&FORM=ANAB01&PC=U531

Both events cost the lives of less than 3,000 people.  On the date I write this, over 140,000 Americans have died of Covid-19 since the beginning of the year.
I'm telling you that, for a little perspective, as its a virus, not a shootable enemy.

Our own Civil war cost us between 640,000 and 700,000 lives.  War was in our fields and in our streets.  People in uniform were shooting each other.  People in uniform were shooting people not in uniform.  People were starving in prison camps.  People were freezing at campsites.  People were dying of wounds and dying of disease and of hate.

And all to stop the ownership of one person by another.  Most of those fighting didn't have actual skin in the game.

The black men that joined did, the rest were just doing what we regular folks do, following.

Slavery did not benefit poor white men in the south.  The enslaved men were very frequently better builders and farmers and blacksmiths.  The skilled jobs were actually being done for the cost of buying a person and providing just enough to get the owner's their moneys worth.  The poor white men might be hired for things like overseer, but usually they struggled along on small and unattractive plots of land trying to feed their family.  Apparently, all they had to look forward to was feeling superior to the people that weren't free.

The North, where slavery was already illegal, as much because the north recognized that free labor made it hard for poor whites to make a living, as for the ideal of religious right and our constitutional rights, went to war, because they were called to join as the south had seceded.  The southerners were oath breakers.  And, it's still what regular folks do.

War! War is mostly a stupid answer to a simple question.

The Golden Rule, a simple thing found by some name in every Religion and every philosophy, guaranteed that with a little thought, they all knew owning other people was wrong. They knew they didn't want to be owned.

A 4 year old could have told them that.

We currently have protestors in the streets supporting "Black Lives Matter".  It's all about the idea, so crazy, I know, that Police shooting black people for not moving fast enough when they are told to, not staying out of white neighborhoods, even when they live there, not holding toy guns when they are children, is wrong.

That same generic 4 year old would agree with them.

But now, we have a militarized federal government organization ignoring all the laws governing this land to stop protests.

They did that at Guantanamo, waterboarding and imprisoning people with no charges filed, no judge and jury.

So now, we are going to do it where we live, on our streets, stopping our rights to protest, stopping our rights to assemble, ignoring our rights to remain free without charges being filed.

Our own police are all for that.  They hate BLM; too many of our men in blue are only loyal to the blue, far too many, are also loyal to the white.  Plus, for some reason, our police, instead of just joining the military, decided they wanted to be military-like with their fellow citizens.  We appear to be in a modern war.

“no nation can maintain its freedom in the midst of continuous warfare.” said President Eisenhower, our last General turned POTUS.  "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist."   https://www.npr.org/2011/01/17/132942244/ikes-warning-of-military-expansion-50-years-later

Yet, here we are.  Our nation has the largest military-industrial complex in the world.  We spend more than any other nation.  We spend more than the total of the next 6 high spenders.  Our Country truly has the ability to destroy the world.

And our current POTUS, a man of limited self-restraint, is the Chief of that monster.  The military currently leading us at the Pentagon has repeatedly refused to commit acts of war on our own citizens.  But this POTUS loves to fire those that don't do what he says.  He keeps going down the hierarchy till he finds someone that either agrees with him, or would love to be famous.

Now, our 18 year old DHS is acting every bit the adolescent that it is.
Shades of Kristallnacht, Gestapo, Putin's KGB, North Korea's Ministry of Social Security.  

Paranoia?

It got bad in 4 years.
Trump hates brown people like Hitler hated Jews.
There are still children in cages that our country took away from their parents.
DHS is in urban camo and military gear throwing BLM protestors into rented minivans.

At least 35% of the people are still loving them some Trump.

John Lewis fought for at least 60 years and died at 80, the fight unfinished.

Put your flags at half-mast.  We are a nation in peril.

Register to Vote.
Vote.
Wear your mask.
Social Distance.
And turn that phone into a video recorder if you see something going down.  Be a witness for the soul of our country.  Figure out how to live stream ASAP so you are prepared.

If we all fought like John Lewis, maybe those 4 year olds won't have to turn into 14 year olds that have figured out we are all hypocrites.

And remember, do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Poverty, so many lives lost, yet it is the web that creates everything we want to change.

Below are links to tables and graphs showing poverty levels, by state, by year, by race, by ethnic group, by age.  It's been tracked and study ad nauseum.

https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/poverty-rate-by-raceethnicity/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D

https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/a-guide-to-statistics-on-historical-trends-in-income-inequality

https://aspe.hhs.gov/system/files/pdf/154286/50YearTrends.pdf

https://www.npr.org/2019/09/10/759512938/u-s-census-bureau-reports-poverty-rate-down-but-millions-still-poor

https://www.poverties.org/blog/poverty-statistics

https://www.census.gov/topics/income-poverty/poverty.html

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We have a beautiful statue in a harbor--Lady Liberty--“Give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses.”, a gift from France in celebration of our first 100 years as a nation.  A And the poor came to us, the tired from war and oppression came to us, the hopeless came to us----and we gave them---poverty.

I hear you arguing, telling me, they just have to work hard, they just have to improve themselves.  We are all equal.  We all have the same opportunities.

Do you really believe that?

• Do the children in Flint Michigan( and we don't know how many Flint Michigans actually exist in this country, we don't check and if we find out, we don't tell) whose brains were poisoned by lead due to a government that failed to provide the same quality of water to the poor cities as the wealthy neighborhoods, ever have equal opportunity?  
• Do the children receiving the shitty serving of funds for their schools because the land surrounding their home is cheap have the same opportunity as the upper middle class neighborhoods that get the best of everything due to the high property taxes in that area?  (Nevermind the rich sending their children to $45,000 a year elementary schools and hiring masters prepared tutors if the kiddies don't get it)
• Do the children that spent the night cowering in their room while the police breakdown the doors of their neighbors, go to school the next day as well prepared as the child that went to school after a peaceful night in a house that doesn't know the sound of violence and fear.
• All people born into bondage were born into poverty.  Freedom and human rights must be present for a person to not be living in poverty.
• All people living in circumstances in which their children are forced into schools whose sole purpose is to remove any trace of their birth culture are born into poverty.  The many nations of people that were not exterminated by our government's goal of "Manifest Destiny", were impoverished by the forced relocation to reservations on poor land and the use of education to kill their native languages and destroy their crafts, rituals, and beliefs.
• All immigrants that were brought here, not for their own good but for their use by those wealthy businessmen that wanted to run a bigger plantation, a cheaper farm, a faster track for the railroad, were delivered, not into the land of opportunity, but into the land of poverty.
• Every immigrant group that left a place of persecution, violence and war in which they sided with the "losers",  entered this nation to live in a state of poverty.  From the Bond servants from Europe, to those escaping the famine of Ireland, to the Hmong that fought with us in Vietnam to the Central Americans that came up to escape the gangs that were birthed in the United States, then sent back home to ravage the places they had lived in before.  
• And let us not forget those who were born of parents that suffered addiction, born of parents without education--for whatever reason,  born of parents labeled "Convict", born of parent with untreated mental illness.  

There is a lot of information to study and ponder in those few links, but to understand poverty, you must either live in it, through it, or up against it.  To help you see the difference between the sadly tragic effects of poverty as seen in graphs and numbers, you must see people.  Individuals that, for whatever reason, are living in poverty, have a very different view of life than a person born into and raised in a stable home where at least one parent had a well-paying job that they were secure in and at least one parent that was capable of caring for the child(ren) in a way that was both nurturing and protective.  There have been people that were born into poverty as long as the United States has been a nation.  But what are the components of poverty?

• A daily struggle to insure everyone in the household eats enough that their stomach isn't growling all night.
• Making decisions like--do we get gasoline to go to work or pay the water bill this month.  (and on time!!! those late fees eat up the grocery money)
• No one in the family ever seeing a physician except in the emergency room---even if you qualify for medicaid, the physicians don't make appointments for the same month you call, the docs are paid in a capitated manner and making too many low pay appointments a month costs the Doctor money.
• Finding housing that is affordable but in a safe place.  You can get cheaper out in the rural areas, but no work and you need a dependable car as many rural areas have a central grocery store 10 to 50 miles away.  The suburbs have nothing affordable unless you qualify for section 8 housing and may take years and years on a long waiting list.  The urban areas have plenty, but it ranges from apartments with so many people in poverty they smell like desperation and a new pair of shoes can get you killed as everyone wants a new pair of shoes.  Don't judge---how many pair of shoes did you buy last year.  A new pair of shoes should not be an unaffordable luxury.  The other option is the currently-heading-down neighborhoods full of old and unmaintained homes---the final step before gentrification is the buying up of those houses to rent out, by people looking to make a profit.  The buyers don't even clean them out before renting them, forget fixing roofs, heaters, windows.  And they still rent at twice the price of a mortgage payment for the amount paid for the house, but people with credit don't want to live there---too many poor people renting nearby.
• Transportation--to work, to grocery stores, to schools, to medical care---poverty lives in food deserts, the clinics in walking distance are frequently less than wonderful, the schools are in areas where the property taxes are low so their funding is also low. 
• Childcare in a qualified preschool is not within range by distance or by cost.  When you live in poverty, you aren't donating thousands to the best prep schools trying to guarantee your child a place, you are trying to find a person nearby that will watch them for an hour or 8 hours for a low price or as a trade off.  Predators, both for financial and sexual reasons are known to volunteer to watch your kids, but you have no internet access so just think they  really love kids.  Or, you are scared, lock the kid in the house/apt while you go to the store, the job, or whatever else you can't live without for a while.  Five year-olds in charge of three year-olds and babies are not well cared for.  Before you call them skanky parents, what was the longest you set in your house with just the kids and no other person.  Poverty doesn't really allow for play dates and mother's day out.
• Now, lets touch on the complications that make it so hard for people in poverty to get out of poverty:  born into poverty, born to parents with addictions, to parents that were raised in our wonderful foster child system--not always the best, but no adult family when at 18 you are suddenly all on your own, raised by poorly educated parents or foster parents and getting your own poor education---while your stomach rumbled and your mind was focused on walking home past whatever predators awaited you, taught by teachers that mean well but have no idea why you can't just do your homework, bring your school supplies, show up clean and on time,  kids that have PTSD from things like witnessing violence or being the victim of violence and peer pressure to try this, try that, wear this, get that---but with no money.  
• Children raised in poverty do not see their parents struggling to get by as a role model to follow.  They love their parents; in jail, hustling for money, lying to the kids about what they are doing to make more money, but they don't want to be them.  So who do they try to emulate?  Who in the area has the money? the power?  Yes, in poverty, the heads of the gangs, crime lords, and the rare athlete or performer that comes home in a shiny car to move mom out, that is the hero.  That is who they want to be.  But being born with exceptional talent is not something you can emulate.  Neither can you get that lucky break that everyone of them got, noticed by the right person at the right time; just by wishing on a star.  Hollywood is full of young people trying to do exactly that, they are currently couch surfing or living in a car, or under bridges, waiting tables, or strolling on a corner, just waiting to be noticed.

Can this cycle be stopped?  Of course it can.  

Basic income for everyone would be a start.

Schools all subsidized at the state level, not based on local property taxes, would help, as would every student having an individualized education plan that allowed each to learn at their own speed and to their own ability. 

We will not all be Rhodes Scholars  and College bound, but the bright poor person should be able to go to college without a parental payout of 20-100 thousand a year.  We all should.  College is not just about tuition, but also books and a place to live and food to eat---without leaving school owing half a million dollars before even getting a job.  

All fulltime jobs should pay more than the individual poverty level where the job exists.(be assured, poverty level in podunk, mid-america is not the same as the poverty level in metropolitan coast city.)  If the company owner can't afford that, they should go do that job themselves---they are not yet a nonworking business owner.  And, if the job is  more than 3 days, its full-time.  Wait staff needs pay, not tips.  Pay your employees;  they didn't show up on their own hoping to make some money doing for the rich.(how feudal is that old system)  If you need part time, it needs to provide prorated benefits and hours so the person can work a second job without 24 hour days.

Childcare needs to be part of work benefits, paid sick time and maternity leave for both parents needs to be paid, mothers and fathers need a chance to bond with their new offspring. 

And Convicts need to be trained in prison for real jobs with halfway houses and jobs arranged with social workers not just parole officers that only care about drug use and violations.  If you want them permanently destroyed by their prison time, then just leave them in for life.  AND NO MORE SLAVE LABOR OR FOR PROFIT PRISONS.  NO MORE INMATE QUOTAS or even traffic stop quotas.  Crime is not our money maker.

Legalize Drugs, fix it where the supply is only through legal channels and affordable to the poor addict as well as the wealthy .  Alcohol is legal so bootlegging is way down, do the same with everything, including the stuff that the addicts need, free clinics for addicts, daily meds, combine it with the meds for mental illness, and free treatment for addiction recovery and mental illness without the nasty looks from those treating them.  Get rid of the money in the Crime syndicates and the motivation for selling drugs goes away.  Same happens with sex trafficking and weapons.

Poverty is not a birthright and it is not a punishment from god.  Our own capitalism and favoritism toward the wealthy creates this ongoing problem.  We have a 20% poverty level.  We are the richest country in the world.  If northern Europe can figure it out, we can too.  

Looking down at people worse off than you are is not really that important to your well-being.  Our own history created those in poverty.  What we do next needs to end that.  

July 5th--return to Manifest Destiny? or perhaps instead a return to the Ideal of our constitution

“This movement is openly attacking the legacies of every person on Mount Rushmore,” Trump said. He lamented “cancel culture” and charged that some on the political left hope to “defame our heroes, erase our values and indoctrinate our children.” He said Americans should speak proudly of their heritage and shouldn’t have to apologize for its history.
Proud words.  Sounds like the "Proud Boys".
These words were said at Mount Rushmore by the sitting POTUS before a maskless crowd of 7500 people with no room for social distancing.  The chairs were zip-tied together to prevent moving them apart, during a pandemic that has already killed over 130,000 people.  

The Lakota people were protesting the desecration of their sacred land, stolen from them, then used to place the faces of the leaders of the country that pushed them out of the treatied land with a final battle at Wounded Knee in 1890.  

"Although Mount Rushmore was constructed with the intention of symbolizing "the triumph of modern society and democracy", for the original land occupants, the Lakota Sioux, the monument embodies a story of "struggle and desecration". The U.S. Government promised the Sioux territory, including the perpetuity of the Black Hills in the Treaty of 1868. That lasted only until the discovery of gold on the land and soon after white settlers migrated to the area in the 1870s."  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Rushmore 

Manifest Destiny was the popular belief that any land coveted by Euro-Americans was, by providence, rightfully theirs for the taking.  It was an absolution for stealing land and killing the people and cultures that had inhabited it before they wanted it.  It was "GOD'S PLAN".

Apparently, God likes white people more.  God Plays favorites.  God is all about making white people rich and powerful at the expense of brown and black people.

How big of hypocrite do you have to be to believe that.  Sounds a lot like a televangelist requesting the last dime of poor people for seed faith---The mustard seed is all about a cash return.

So, who are our heroes that the protestors are defaming and what values are they erasing?

Right now, the protests are against the murder of unarmed, uncharged, and unjudged black and brown people by the very people our taxes are paying to protect us all.  During this, the statues of confederate generals have come under attack.  Statues placed in places that never saw that general and never fought for the confederacy.  Places that were not even states before 1865 have statues commemorating these men because 50 years after the war was lost by the confederacy, the Daughters of the Confederacy, in an effort to maintain a racial hierarchy all over the country, gathered money and paid to place these statues as a reminder.  It was just another foot on the head of our citizens with African ancestry.  

“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.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/675958-we-hold-these-truths-to-be-self-evident-that-all-men#:~:text=Quote%20by%20Thomas%20Jefferson%3A%20%E2%80%9CWe%20hold%20these%20truths,are%20Life%2C%20Liberty%2C%20and%20the%20pursuit%20of%20Happiness.

All men, and while we have no equal rights for women in the constitution, I take the editorial we, as in, humans, all humans.

No Where Does It say "white men", or "except brown people", or "if their ancestors came from Europe"

And all the government's powers are derived from the consent of the governed.

The American people celebrated their Independence from a a tyrant in 1776.  The American people includes a rainbow of people, a multiverse of cultures, a plethora of beliefs.

What we all share is a vision of a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, not just for the rich, not just for the white, not just for the male or the protestant.

WE ARE ALL AMERICAN.