I had a short post ready for today until my friend Amelia Shenstone posted this piece written by Hamden Rice. It is powerful. Read it and share.
Category: racism
I am what I am
The Friday Photo
January 10, 2014
Foul ball on the Braves new stadium
Yesterday, the team formerly known as the Atlanta Braves, became the Cobb County White Flight. The team web site included this as critical to their reasoning for leaving downtown Atlanta: “There is a lack of consistent mass transportation, a lack of sufficient parking and a lack of direct access to interstates.”
I’ve been to some games and as I recall, I exited directly from I-20, turned left at the top of the ramp, and drove about 1/4 mile to the parking lot directly outside the stadium. Does Braves management not know that I-20 stretches over 1,500 miles from Texas into South Carolina (making it an easy interstate for fans to use when coming from the east or the west).
The Downtown Connector isn’t much further past the stadium exit on I-20, which means fans traveling on I-75 or I-85 have easy access to The Ted.
For those who take MARTA to the game, an easy access station is about half a mile from the stadium. When I ‘ve been to a game the sidewalks are crowded with people walking from nearby Underground (with lots of parking) or the train station.
Jay Bookman has a short column today on how Cobb County’s GOP Chair Joe Dendy couches his support of the team’s new location. Bookman quotes Dendy saying, “It is absolutely necessary the (transportation) solution is all about moving cars in and around Cobb and surrounding counties from our north and east where most Braves fans travel from, and not moving people into Cobb by rail from Atlanta.”
Nevermind the “moving cars” issue because clearly the current stadium’s location near three major interstates isn’t the problem.
The real dilemma for Cobb County Conservatives is exactly who might choose to go to an MLB game in the suburbs by rail. And that’s a foul ball.
The whispers are getting louder
During the dark years of the Bush/Cheney Presidency, I began to think that one outcome would be a fundamental social and economic revolution in our country. I think, and hope, the whispers are getting louder.
Among good friends and family
What I might write here about Moral Monday 12 on July 22 won’t add anything better than what has been captured in the photos and two videos below.
- My nephews Dillon and Andrew are on the left, my friend Sarah Chew is behind the sign on the right. Photo credit to Armed Democrats for the man in the middle of this collage.
My sister Mary Helms on News 14 Carolina:
The NAACP’s video includes my Guilford College classmate Amy Evans Axon at 5:40
Checking in at mid-year
This year I decided to be physically present in my beliefs by showing up. I started 2013 with wise and funny women at the North Carolina coast. Being Present has led me to stand silently while same-sex couples requested, and were denied, marriage licenses in Decatur. Being Present has taken me to a TEDx conference, the nation’s largest Climate Change action in DC, and a ribbon-cutting for the Dublin High School solar energy installation.
Next week I’ll Be Present with Guilford College alums at an unofficial Guilford College Reunion organized by alum Tom Dawson. We’ll come together in Raleigh, North Carolina at Moral Monday outside the state Capitol. Tom’s call to gather includes:
Why: This is not an official college reunion. Our truest reunion will always be in the field helping others.
We’ve seen so many Guilford friends representing their communities and the highest principles of their education and selves. Let’s meet up for a common purpose and represent together. This is a good way to connect across communities and bring out people who haven’t come to a Moral Monday yet, but are concerned about North Carolina.
When: 5:00, July 22 rain or shine
Where: Come to the word “Awed.” You can find it under the you are “a child suitable to be awed” inscription on the Public Instruction Department building on the left side of the commons facing the general assembly. Closest streets are the North Wilmington and East Lane Streets.
Who: Guilford alumni, students, faculty, kids, partners, friends, it’s complicateds, Quakers, strangers you meet on the street who have that certain “glow” about them. It’s a big field. Let’s fill it.
What: Wear Guilford colors if you like. If the spirit moves us, lets form a “Silent Bloc.”
My sister, Guilford College ’88, and her sons will go with me to Raleigh. She’s already working on a sign to carry. I’ll probably make mine with my nephews after I arrive.
It is important to me that I stand with my family for them, for my friends in North Carolina, for my high school and college alma maters, and for the millions who call the Old North State their home. I’ll be in the best of company.
Thinking out loud about black men
There’s been A LOT of commentary and punditry, and several peaceful demonstrations, since The Verdict was announced Saturday night. I have heard and read a little of the coverage, but I prefer to focus on what change we as individuals, and as a country, can do to protect our children, ALL our children.
It occurred to me in the still dark hours this morning while I listened to NPR (my husband got up extra early to start on a project at work) that we really need to make our streets and communities safe for black men of every age, and to get to the heart of the matter, all men of color. While we’re at it, let’s make the streets safe for gay and transgendered men of all colors.
Then I thought about how unsafe our streets, homes, schools, Armed Forces, and businesses are for women.
Maybe I should have had a second cup of coffee, but next my mind frog-leaped to the fact that as long as we compartmentalize our calls for justice based on the most recent murder, mass shooting, movie, or state legislature vote, we are not setting the lens wide enough to see the whole picture.
I’m not suggesting that we can come up with an overnight “one size fits all” solution to the injustices and inequalities in our country. Unfortunately, as the Supreme Court’s Voting Rights Act ruling shows, change can take generations. It’s just that I don’t think Treyvon Martin’s generation can, or should have to, wait any longer.
Caution: threatened, straight, Bible-thumping, white men working
My head just exploded, again, over the narrow-minded, blinders on, knuckle-dragging, Conservative Christian, threatened white man’s mentality trotted out on The Georgia Gang yesterday by Phil Kent, Gov Nathan Deal’s appointee to the state’s Immigration Enforcement Review Board. Dick Williams suggests an S-Corp “solution” to same sex marriages to further demonstrate just how ass-backwards some people can be when their Stone Age values are being rolled back.
http://vimeo.com/69431536
Wilcox County students say ‘Love has No Color”
The students in Wilcox County are tired of segregated private proms, so they are doing what their parents and school leaders won’t do: organizing an integrated prom so everyone can get dressed up and have fun, together. It will be the colors of their dresses and bow ties that matter the night of April 27, not the color of their skin. They set up a page on Face Book and are raising money for their dance, which will be held in Cordele.
Bran Long at Better Georgia sent out this email yesterday:
If you haven’t already heard, Wilcox County high school students have said they won’t go another year with a segregated prom.
It’s 2013 and integration is long overdue.
Since they couldn’t get the support of their high school or many of their parents, they’re just going to do it themselves.
The AJC just reported on Better Georgia’s challenge to elected officials in Georgia to support Wilcox County’s student-organized integrated prom.
It’s pretty simple: love has no color.
So while we’re waiting to see which elected officials publicly or financially support this integrated prom, here are two things you can do to help right now:
1. Get on Facebook and ‘Like’ their page. Then share it on your page and spread to your friends.
2. Use the Twitter hashtag #integratedprom to spread the word and encourage your elected officials to support this simple effort.
Lot’s of Georgia’s problems are big and too difficult for one person or one group to fix alone. Broken roads and schools. Defunded health care. Rampant corruption under the Gold Dome.
But this problem is both big — and easily fixed.
Don’t just sit on the sidelines. Support these brave kids as they teach the adults in their community a lesson in compassion and love.
This one is easy.
Thanks,
Executive Director
Better Georgia
What kind of cheese is on the menu today?
While I was outside at the Dublin High School solar panel groundbreaking ceremony earlier this week, I could hear the sirens’ song beckoning me to the swank Kroger grocery store just up the road.
It didn’t take long to find what I needed, and I began looking for the last thing on my list, “good” cheddar cheese. I walked past the dairy cases but didn’t see what I wanted. I looked again, no luck, and nothing close to it. In all that looking back and forth I saw this sign:
Below it were all kinds of grated cheeses, cubed cheese, and string cheese. I was at a complete loss for what “Hispanic cheese” is, and why these particular cheeses are considered “Hispanic” (Hispanic should be capitalized, FYI).
I wandered back to the deli section, found some Tillamook cheese from Oregon (yum) and paid for my groceries.
Then I asked to speak with a manager.
The young cashier paged Craig Justice. He introduced himself and I asked him if he could “educate” me on a product. We walked to the dairy aisle and I asked him what exactly “Hispanic cheese” is. He wasn’t sure. We looked at all the grated cheese for a while and he said “Maybe for tacos?”
As we stood there I said that in our part of the world, as he probably has seen and heard, Spanish-speaking people aren’t really welcomed here unless they are picking vegetables (and even then, “welcomed” is a stretch). While we talked he finally saw two types of cheese with all Spanish labeling that were obscured from our view.
Labeling them “Hispanic” still didn’t seem right to me. Justice asked for a suggestion and I offered Latin American, which indicates culture, food, geography, history and language instead of a term that is fairly derogatory when used here. he pointed to other signs behind us that read “Latin American” and “Asian.”
Justice agreed there could be other ways to point customers to these those items, and he said he would look for other signage options. And then he did this:
Wow.
I admire Mr Justice for listening, having an open mind, and being committed to customer service. And acting.
I don’t go to Dublin very often, but I do get to the über swank Kroger in Milledgeville pretty often. I do so hope they have Tillamook cheese there too.
Be The Lorax
There is no time to wait.
Be The Lorax wherever you are.
A tribe of 40,000 strong
Washington County, where I live in Middle Georgia, is small, about 20,000 people living in a county with white clay, rolling hills, and woods filled with deer.
Yesterday I watched the area at the Washington Monument fill with twice as many people as those who call Washington County home to make their concerns about our natural resources, climate, and health, clear to the country.
I met fellow tribe members from Burlington College in Vermont on the DC Metro Sunday morning. The young man who chatted with me was wearing a tie, I suspect because the day was planned to be of historic proportions.
A father with his young son, perhaps four years old, wearing a Forward on Climate button, navigated Union Station. Travelers from New York and New Mexico jockeyed for hot coffee before setting out in the bitter cold for the Washington Monument.
On our way to the monument we walked past a small group of people wearing bright yellow t-shirts. 
They weren’t smiling, and they seemed to want to debate and record people rather than participate. Clearly they weren’t there because of passion, and their sad, plain flyer with pro fossil-fuel data identified them as the hired hands the industry pays and outfits for events which threaten their profits.
We streamed in with signs and banners. We came by car, train, bus, and plane. Great-grandchildren perched on the laps of their elders in wheelchairs. Children carried cheerful signs with bright suns and flowers, lettered in the distinct print young children use.
We bounced on our toes to warm our feet. Couples held gloved hands. Before long we were a sea of fleece and down jackets.
And we marched, this river of people from across North America. Women from First Nations walked in front while men towards the back kept a steady beat on a large handmade drum. So many people, so many colors, shapes, ages, and reasons for being there to say, together, that the old ways must change.
We walked away from the yellow t-shirted few, greeting the people around us while we chanted and smiled. I walked with two women from Canada, then students from Earlham College and Appalachian State. New Yorkers opposed to fracking wore their signs over their chests and backs. Three men carried wooden numbers on tall stakes spelling out 350.
We cheered and chanted in front of the White House, calling for the President to make good on his words about Climate Change and how we will fuel our country. He had escaped the bitter cold for a weekend in Florida, but we were sure our voices were heard.
Our message was clear and our voices were strong. We made history yesterday standing shoulder to shoulder for the future we want for the youngest who were among us.
No Dodging women
The Super Bowl commercials seem to have generated more discussion about sexism, violence, and race than creative”wow” factor (GoDaddy’s Kissfest spot wasn’t just lacking in creativity, Democratic campaign strategist and Sunday morning political pundit Donna Brazil thought viewers may have lost their dinner over it).
Audi seems to land at the top of every critic’s list for the Prom Night spot it ran early in the evening. Forbes columnist Jennifer Rooney summed up the ad’s offenses: sexual assault, violence, and sports car driven machismo (no pun intended). Add Doritos for stereotyping and mimicking little girl’s play, Mars candy making M&Ms unpalatable, and a Calvin Klein ad that left a lot of men thinking they need to put the wings and beer down and clear off the Nordic Track, and the season for Super Bowl ads was pretty disappointing.
And then Dodge Ram Trucks told “The Rest of the Story” complete with a Paul Harvey
voice-over.
The beautifully produced spot giving American farmers much-needed recognition in front of a huge global audience made critics and viewers swoon. However, Dodge’s commercial was so busy marginalizing women and minorities who farm, that I had no idea whose trucks had just been advertised.
Based on the Dodge commercial one might think that “farmin’ is man’s work” and really, white men’s work.
I counted 12 white men, 2 white boys, 1 white women, 1 black male, 1 Hispanic male, 1 Hispanic woman, 1 white girl, 2 pair of white hands (I don’t know what the gender is of the person holding the baby chick, could be a young boy or young woman), and one white family (with two adult men at the table). I couldn’t determine the race of two men.
The United States Census of Agriculture used to think only men farm too. Up until 2002 it only collected data on one operator per farm, which meant the “womin folk” weren’t counted if there were men folk on the farm.
Between 2002 and 2007 the number of women led farms grew by 19 percent to over 1M women strong. The 2007 US Census of Agriculture reports that 30 percent of our nation’s farmers are women, and we run 14 percent of the farms as the principal operator.
Some of the staunchest allies I have met fighting proposed coal plants in Georgia are women farmers. They understand what will happen when a coal plant begins sucking 16M gallons of water a day from the groundwater that waters their livestock and crops. One woman asked if she could even call her produce organic if it is exposed to such high levels of coal plant toxins. And what will their land be worth if coal emission stacks cast a shadow over their fields?
My friend Laura Norris grew up, and farms, in Ben Hill County. There are stretches of time when she works her family’s farm alone and puts in long days in steamy south Georgia. Laura told me, “I come from a long line of hard-working farm women. My grandfather was a farmer and his wife and three daughters worked in the fields right beside him. When my 98 year old Great Aunt was in her last year of life, we asked her if there was anything she’d like to do again if given the chance. She smiled and said, “I’d like to crop tobacco one more time…”
Long before there were trucks to drive, women farmed, raised barns, herded cattle, cooked what they harvested, and women made the money stretch a little further.
Farming will make you humble. It will make you stay up at night worrying that there isn’t enough rain, or too much. Will the price I can get support my family? Will we have enough hay this winter?
We need to make a special effort to support the farmers who show up at local farmer’s markets with vegetables still wet with last night’s dew. They are our friends and neighbors, sharing their love of the land in our communities and what it can give to us in return for good stewardship. And millions of them are women.
Hey lady, your racism is still showing (a follow up to The Friday Photo, August 31, 2012)
At the end of August I posted a Friday Photo and report by Ari Shapiro on NPR’s Morning Edition which included comments about the Obamas made by Bobbie Lucier, a veteran’s wife. Her comments came across as poorly veiled racism directed primarily at Michelle Obama (although she couldn’t manage one kind word for the President either). The report sparked a slew of comments via social media and NPR’s Ombudsman addressed the report and listener comments too.
As chance would have it Shapiro ran into the Luciers and got to ask some follow up questions. Mrs. Lucier’s answers did nothing more than convince me more firmly that in fact the reason she dislikes the Obamas so vehemently is due to her own racist views.
Lucier said Jacqueline Kennedy and Laura Bush knew how to dress like First Ladies, specifically saying that wearing sleeveless dresses and shorts, or emphasizing strong muscles are not what a First Lady should do. Really Mrs Lucier?
While Mrs. Lucier was busy digging her racist hole even deeper, she had to make excuses for the way she had dressed to attend Romney’s event.
Go figure.
The many colors of being an American
The Friday Photo
A weekly photo inspired by art, community, and spontaneity
September 7, 2012
Delegates at the Democratic National Convention, September 6, 2012
Hey lady, your racism is showing
The Friday Photo
A weekly photo inspired by art, community, and spontaneity
August 31, 2012
- The First Family, official White House photo
Yesterday on NPR a story aired about Romney’s speech before a veteran’s convention in Indiana. The report focused in part on the challenges Obama has winning the support of older veterans.
A woman married to a vet, Bobbie Lucier from Manassas, Virginia said this when asked about the President, “I don’t like him, can’t stand to look at him. I don’t like his wife. She’s far from the First Lady. It’s about time we get a First Lady in there who acts like a First Lady and looks like a First Lady.”
Mrs. Lucier didn’t say what a First Lady should look like, or how she should act, but what she said about Michelle Obama did speak volumes about what Mrs. Lucier thinks a First Lady shouldn’t look like.
What I think I heard Mrs. Lucier say is she doesn’t like either of the Obamas because they are black.
Mrs. Lucier, your racism was on display to the world yesterday thanks to NPR. Ari Shapiro should have asked a follow-up question about what a First Lady should look like and how she should act. That’s an answer I would love to hear.