As I See It

 UPDATE: 

They Just Overturned Roe V. Wade!

They are the evil we knew them to be

The handmaid did her job and in one fail swoop they eroded fifty years of the rights of women to have autonomy. 

My daughers

your daughters

We are more than just a womb

But that is what the U.S. Supreme Court just ruled.

But yt boys with teenytinytimmies get to walk around with their rights on full display.

                                                                                                                                                           

I intentionally tried to guard my mind, heart, soul, and spirit over the course of the weeks of the January 6 Insurrection Hearings.

Perhaps it was because I didn't want that level of intensity from the evil I witnessed on my big screen TV back in 2021 to become center stage during our family celebrations.

My last child, second daughter, graduated high school on June 10.

Leading up to her big day was filled with honor programs and graduation activities.

She deserved to not have our home filled with the terrifying testimony.

Like me, she, too, had witnessed it.

But I did read.

I read the recaps and for a few instances, watched the testimony replay.

There was something gut wrenching that I could not listen to my sisters, the Black women, talk about being targeted by the President of the United States.

Black women are already the most unprotected,  unloved, unwanted, undesired, un of all un in this country. To add this to it was deeper than a slight or an insult. It was down right beyond criminal.

But I saw her face.

And read the transcript.

Because she would not be a pawn in their criminal enterprise of trying to keep a petulant sullen overlyindulgedandspoiledmanchild in office.

Of course, we all know, as history tells us, that he is just the face, not the mastermind, we know the, but his megalomaniac personality and cult following made him especially dangerous.

We are in trouble.

We have always been in trouble.

We are imploding.

What worries and bothers me are the so many people who don't seem to think it will impact them.

Mama Fannie Lou Hamer famously wrote that until she was free, none of us are free.

This country was founded on genocide and profited from human and sexual trafficking. The especially evil system of chattel slavery that dehumanized those of African descent, makes this soil tainted with the blood of the original sin.

Maybe that is why they keep trying to get rid of African Americans.

From the 12MM ancestors and the descendants of those whose name, language, customs, culture, and origin was attempted to be stripped from them, we persevered and we remained. We did not let them "Break Our Spirit" as sis Beyoncé dropped her lyric the other day. We kept on living and will indeed.

But the nation is deeply flawed, cracked, the foundation is about to be like a house dropping off the side of a muddy mountain.  It was never solid.

When you try to build a premise on a few yt men in charge of everything, it is never sustainable. Those who wanted to become the master of the system ended up being enslaved themselves.

You can not dehumanize someone without losing your own humanity.

So they fought tooth and nail to be relevant.

From convincing their women that their only worth was their womb and they had a duty to replenish what they think they lost as 2040 is not some distant memory. They know they are not the majority and never were. 

It is why they have that seething desire to be controlled, the U.S. Supreme Court with a 6-3 majority is poised to take away every liberty we have enjoyed.

All for yt men.

And men who think they are yt, but they are delusional.

It is not sustainable.

I went to see the Opera, Parable of the Sower, the other day at the Shubert Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut.  Toshi Reagon opened with a monologue about our relationships and how do we care for each other.

Throughout this play, based on Octavia Butler's then apolycaptic, we were reminded that we are living in these scary times. Corporations already control the water, the food, even the babies can't eat and the latest news is that women will be unable to get the feminine hygiene products they need.

We are in trouble.

But that same U.S. Supreme Court made it ok for every backwoods and suburban JohnnyJimBiff to have his phyllic symbol to make himself feel big and important. They struck down the New York law. At least the congress voted to take some control back from those assault weapons.

Humans being inhuman and do we have to have more babies slaughtered for the sake of a flawed ideal of whiteness being superior?

I don't know how we get out of this except to all stand up and say enough.

In the closing talk back of the Opera, Toshi Reagon told us to "divest from people who are trying to kill you, divest the best way you can."

There are calls for the expansion of the court and that is past time to happen.

There are calls for impeachment of at least three of the justices, two for their lying during their confirmation hearings and one because the spouse was connected to the insurrection. Two of them appointed by the orangemenacecriminal so perhaps their very seat is invalid?

What I do know, as a seminary trained woman who has read all thirty-three Bibles, is that we do not get out of this without connection to each other, without realizing there is a deep reckoning coming, and without knowing that no amount of man-made religious dogma is going to make white people feel safe as long as they see everyone else as other.

I don't have an answer this foggy morning in New England, sipping my rosemary vanilla latte sitting in my sunroom with my Moleskins and Lamy pens at my side pondering the world, I don't have answers.

What I do know is that we are in trouble.

Trouble I wrote about and talked about back during the election of that Black man that terrified the existence of so many white people.

No one really wanted to listen to me back then.

Who was I to say?

I wasn't a big name preacher or prophet. Social media was just ramping up and who was following this work-at-home mom writer sipping her lattes and putting together the pieces of the world.

But I was right.

It is not too late, though.

Toshi Reagon mentioned that the Earth, she will do what she needs to do to replenish herself, even if it means letting go of those who ruined her in the first place. She made the point of how we are connected to all living species and we, human beings, need to step off our self-destructive agenda and realize that we do not get out of this alive - alone. We need each other. She said we are in "ecological relationships to others on this planet." 

She asked us to know who we can connect with because we will need that. Then the folk singer gave us that hook, "fight, fight, strategize, stay together, equal rights." Of course, we all should have done more to protect those precious rights to exist that some thought they could horde and not impact everyone around them.

We could have done more, all of us. 

To say no to those who were exploiting the fears of the vulnerable that created eighteen year old monstermurders who slaughter innocents. 

More than just tell them that their manhood was connected to an AK-47 when they can't even get an apartment or buy a drink for themselves, but they can destroy tomorrows.

Beyond these devices that created so many keyboard warriors over the past decade, but eroded any sense of human decency.

We are in trouble, but it is not too late.

"God is Change. The only lasting truth is change." - Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower

                                                                                                                                                                      

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