Winter of Sorrows

In the latest editions of it can't get any crazier, we went to bed last night with the news reports that dumb has endorsed narcissist and the papers are having a field day.

My daughters are in middle school. They and their friends have all said they will move if Donald Trump is elected President. I posted that if there was anyone on my Facebook page who supported him, they can kindly leave my existence.

Trump is more than dangerous because of his racist rhetoric, he has incited violence against Muslims, blacks, Latinos, and LGBTQ. There was a focus group of his supporters who liked that he "tells it like it is" - meaning they really want to spew off the most vile pile of doggie dung from their mouths and do so without ever being called on it.

Trump's base pandering of everything, even being seen with a Bible for those conservative Christian Republicans, is worse than anything I ever imagined in politics.

Granted, a lot of white folks are and have been living in a GOP/Tea Party created fear since 2007, but this is beyond the pale (pun intended). They are as white with fear as the snow that has my middle schoolers at home today hiding out under blankets. It is all just so irrational.

If the news across the national stage wasn't bad enough, we have Governor Snyder poisoning people in Flint with the city water department sending resident bills for the orange lead-filled water. The water shut off in Detroit and news of water poisoning in Louisiana, area all hitting the news that it is "not just Flint" where there seems to be a deliberate GOP attempt at environmental genocide.

President Obama vetoed the Republican led bill to kill the Clean Water Act.

They only see profit, save a few dollars, that was the motive of businessman Snyder and his appointee who is not the Emergency Manager of Detroit Public Schools, the same schools with black mold and science-experiment-mushroom-fungi growing out of the walls.

This is not a new issue. Michael Moore did a documentary about his hometown of Flint and the deliberate economic destruction of that blue collar town. It is on the east side of the Great Lakes State, a bit landlocked from the fresh water, dependent on Detroit for access to that precious commodity. The Governor, to save a few pennies, used the dirty rusty Flint River, the same river the car makers would not use because it corroded its parts. No concern about the corrosion of human lives. Such is capitalism in 2016.

Water was at the issue after Hurricane Katrina when thousands of mostly poor black people were cut off from the basic need of live, despite being surrounded by the flood waters. They were deemed thugs for going into waterlogged stores to get bottled water for babies, but their fellow white Hurricane victims were deemed heroes for foraging for their families. Double standards.

Black Lives Matter environmental protesters have been paying attention and calling notice to the issues in Detroit for some time. Their marches and activism has been against the city that shut down the water of people with even a small due balance. Literally cutting them off from a life source that their city sits on.

Other people in different parts of the country have been fined for collecting their own rainwater, deemed illegal, even jailed. Nestle has been buying up waterworks across the country, the CEO announcing that water is not a human right.

These are things that the so-called good christian missionaries go to third world countries to rectify, why the Shoeman gets our old shoes to trade for clean water systems in Haiti, still ravaged after the Earthquake. It is something that seems absolutely crazy that we are still discussing the need for clean water in a world that has plenty of it.

Flint is only one of many places that will see this crisis. Missourians got a small taste when Valley Park and Eureuka were told to not drink the water after the waste plant was flooded during the Meramec River overflowing its banks during the last two days of 2015. It is a frightening thing to not have the thing the human body can not go without. You can live without food for forty days, but water? Three days, some can stretch it to eight-to-ten. Our human bodies are 60% water, the organs will shut down without it, nothing works without being hydrated. Now, think about that for a little child, the ten people who have died from the water in Flint, the children presenting with irreversible lead poisoning. This is genocide.

It makes one stop and wonder, through the year and almost two that people have been protesting, acting, and organizing around Black Lives Matter, if it will be the deliberate poisoning of a town that will finally get the so-called good people to pay attention.

This seems to be the winter of sorrows and it has just begun. Stay tuned.

                                                                                                                                                                   Tayé Foster Bradshaw lives with her family, lattes, pens, and books along the Meramec River in Kirkwood, MO and has fond memories of growing up with her father's relatives along Lake Michigan in Benton Harbor/Benton Township. "The lake, river, and ocean literally feed my soul. I can't imagine a world without being able to walk along the beach, it makes me wonder why it is not protected as much as it should be." TFB.
©, 2008-2016. Antona Smith. Tayé Foster Bradshaw Group.All Rights Reserved.