I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: politics

  • we are all Wonder Women


    Four years ago I published this piece and today felt a need to remind ourselves and others of our power. To whom it may concern: Do Not Try to Control our Bodies. Bad idea. We will remember in November.

    Huge thanks to my good Sister Marla Wood for posting this powerful image on her FB page. I thought when I saw it, wow, this is a great theme for Women’s History Month. Let’s get down to it.

    In March, 2021 women are in powerful positions across the globe. Vice President Kamala Harris cast a deciding vote in the US Senate March 04th. to break a tie (50 Democrats for – 50 Republicans against) beginning debate on President Biden’s massive $1.9 trillion Covid Relief Bill approved by the House of Representatives. Bi-partisan support for the bill? No, not really.

    But the first woman veep in American history who also serves constitutionally as President of the Senate said hey boys, either jump on this train to help people who are sick, jobless, grieving the loss of loved ones, struggling to keep food on the table and/or a roof over their heads for their children because of a pandemic the previous administration chose to ignore as science fiction – or don’t. This train is leaving the station.

    Celebrate Women’s History Month by discovering the Wonder Woman you are!

    *****************************

    Stay safe, stay sane and please stay tuned.

  • CELEBRATE International Women’s Day!


    “Invest in Women — Accelerate Progress“

    (theme for 2024)

    In South Carolina where Pretty and I live, 54% of the population are women, but not one woman sits on the South Carolina Supreme Court; we are the only state in the nation without a female justice. Only six state senators out of 46 are women, 20 out of 124 House members are women. These statistics indicate we rank 48th. of 50 states in women’s legislative representation according to the Center for American Women and Politics.

    Do the math: only 15% of the lawmakers making our laws in this state on reproductive rights, on health care for women and children, on domestic violence, on gun control, on climate change, on school safety, on police brutality against people of color, on issues affecting marginalized populations in the state, on banning books that promote inclusiveness and social justice – on these and all other laws in our state affecting every citizen – only 15% of those lawmakers are women.

    The voting odds are stacked against women, and history is not on our side, either. Women’s groups have been talking about underrepresentation in our state for nearly forty years. One of the true pioneers for women’s rights in South Carolina, Barbara Moxon, began a group called Advocates for Women on Boards and Commissions in 1988. I was the treasurer for that organization which developed extensive publicity on the need for more women political appointees while also providing aid and encouragement for female members to apply for appointments. We had limited successes in our efforts.

    The consequences of the 2024 election in November will have a generational effect not only on the nation but also on our state. Bravery, courage, dogged persistence, and financial support will be mandatory for any woman who puts herself forward in the political climate of these challenging times, but I am thrilled that a woman who has been my close friend for a very long time has answered the call for a change in leadership by campaigning for a Senate seat in South Carolina District 10.

    This woman has spunk, and I have always admired spunk combined with proven leadership qualities. I will have more to say about her in the days to come during her campaign, but for today as part of your celebration of International Women’s Day, please go to her website; get to know her better, and invest in a woman who will accelerate progress for all. http://www.franciekleckley.com.

    You tell it, Sister Girl.

    Onward.

  • Joe and Jill went up the hill

    Joe and Jill went up the hill


    Joe and Jill went up the hill – to fetch a higher polling

    Joe fell down, he hit the ground

    But Jill continued strolling.

    Up Joe got and off did trot

    As fast as he could trotter

    Got up to speed at Walter Reed

    While Jill took on crackpotters.

    When Jill came home, Joe was that glad

    He grinned to see the numbers.

    The polls were high in the blink of an eye

    And Barack was out from his slumbers.

    *******************

    Here are a couple of numbers: 48 mass shooting in 45 days in the USA.

    Stop the insanity.

    Remember in November. Elect Dems who favor gun control.

  • the Orangeburg Massacre: yet another people’s struggle against oppression

    the Orangeburg Massacre: yet another people’s struggle against oppression


    In 2006, Cleveland Sellers’ twenty-two year old son Bakari was elected to the South Carolina Legislature, making him the youngest African American elected official in the country. Speaking with emotion at a SC State memorial service to honor those lost in the Orangeburg massacre, Bakari Sellers said, “We join here today in our own memorial to remember three dead and 27 injured in yet another massacre that marked yet another people’s struggle against oppression. These men who died here were not martyrs to a dream but soldiers to a cause.”

    The Orangeburg Massacre occurred on the night of February 8, 1968, when a civil rights protest at South Carolina State University (SC State) turned deadly after South Carolina highway patrolmen opened fire on about 200 unarmed black student protestors. Three young men were shot and killed, and 28 people were wounded. The event became known as the Orangeburg Massacre and is one of the most violent episodes of the civil rights movement, yet it remains one of the least recognized.

    The above excerpts from HISTORY.com editors on February 07, 2022, related to an event known in South Carolina history as the Orangeburg Massacre which took place on February 08, 1968. I remembered the year, but I didn’t remember the Orangeburg Massacre when I moved to South Carolina in 1974.

    I was in my first year of a “real” job in February, 1968, working for one of the Big 8 CPA firms when the Orangeburg Massacre occurred. While I sat in my cubicle on the 17th. floor of the Bank of the Southwest building in Houston, Texas, I didn’t realize history was being made by students my age at historically black South Carolina State University in the small town of Orangeburg, South Carolina, more than a thousand miles from where I sat.

    Imagine being a black student at SC State, going to a bowling alley with friends on February 05, 1968, only to be turned away by owner Harry Floyd who claimed his All-Star Bowling Triangle bowling alley was exempt from the Civil Rights Act of 1964 since his bowling alley was private property. Whites Only, the sign said.

    Students from SC State and nearby Claflin University began nonviolent protests that lasted for two nights, but on the third night their nonviolence took an extremely violent turn when South Carolina highway patrolmen opened fire on about two hundred unarmed black student protestors. Three young black men were killed with another twenty-eight protestors wounded.

    The three students who were shot and killed by the police were: Freshman Sammy Hammond was shot in the back; 17-year-old high school student Delano Middleton, whose mother worked at SC State was shot seven times; and 18-year-old Henry Smith was shot three times. (History.com)

    Among the wounded that night was a young civil rights activist named Cleveland Sellers, Jr., who was born in neighboring Denmark, South Carolina, a town with a population under 2,000 when he was born in 1944; he had returned to his home state in 1967 to pursue a teaching career following years of activism in the Civil Rights Movement which put him on the government’s radar as a militant. On the night of the Orangeburg Massacre Cleve Sellers was shot in the arm, taken into custody at a local hospital and charged with inciting a riot on the campus. Two years later in September, 1970, a South Carolina judge allowed the state to convict him of rioting at the bowling alley. Sellers was sentenced to one year of hard labor but released after seven months. He was the only protestor prosecuted – nine police officers were charged with shooting at the protestors…all were acquitted.

    Harry K. Floyd, Sr., owned and operated the All-Star Triangle Bowling Alley until his death in 2002 at which time his son Harry K. Floyd, Jr., took over. The Floyd family closed the bowling alley in 2007 due to “financial difficulties” according to wikipedia. The site remains on the National Register of Historic Places and has supposedly been bought by a nonprofit in 2020 with the goal of turning it into a memorial for the Civil Rights Movement in Orangeburg called the National Center for Justice.

    February 08, 2024, marked fifty-six years since the Orangeburg Massacre, and I felt Black History month was an opportunity to remember, to honor the personal sacrifices made by ordinary citizens who refused to yield to discrimination based on their race. Cleveland Sellers, Jr., went on to serve his native South Carolina by becoming the director of the African American Studies Program at the University of South Carolina, by becoming the 8th. president of Voorhees College in Denmark, and by raising his youngest of three children, Bakari, to follow in his footsteps as an activist who honored the Orangeburg Massacre.

  • the Civil War, old tapes, social media and crazy liberals

    the Civil War, old tapes, social media and crazy liberals


    As the race toward the 2024 election begins to heat up with Iowa caucuses in the rear view mirror, the New Hampshire primary next Tuesday,  I look more frequently at the map of the red states and blue states that make up our United States to wonder anew at Abraham Lincoln’s commitment to keep the country united as one. I understand the problem better for sure. I always wondered how brother fought brother on different sides during the Civil War. They were family first after all, right? Not so fast, my friend. A post I published in the summer of 2017 is a reminder of how messy families can be – particularly when we get together in cyberspace.

    My grandmother invented social media via the telephone party line we had in our little town as surely as Al Gore invented the internet. She relished listening in on other people’s conversations and delighted to repeat juicy gossip at her kitchen table… but please dear God, don’t ever mess with her family.

    This week I did something I almost never do. I responded on social media to a post made by a first cousin twice removed who has a world view that I have long ago accepted as different from mine. Most of the time I hide his offensive posts from my timeline and move on.

    I can’t bring myself to “un-friend” him because I truly love the little boy I remember visiting us in Richards so often with his grandmother who was my grandmother’s sister. But this week he posted that liberals must have a “mental illness” to think the way we do, and that struck a nerve for me.

    You see, I grew up during a time when being a homosexual was considered to be a mental illness. Think about how you would feel if you grew up believing that you had a secret mental illness and, if exposed, you could be institutionalized. Lock her up. Throw away the key. I heard an old tape begin to  play in my mind.

    Somehow our thread on Facebook took an unpleasant turn, as I already knew it would and we got into a discussion regarding a prevailing Muslim  belief in some places that gays should be killed. Unfortunately, one of my cousin’s friends chimed in with the following comment: “We knew someone many years ago that would probably want to buy a plane today, load them (gays and lesbians) up and drop them off over there (wherever Muslims live). I sure miss him.”

    Wow. I was transported to a conversation I had in the early 1990s with a client who sat in my office and said, “If it were up to me, I’d take all those queers and put them behind barbed wire in Kansas and tell them to stay there.” I didn’t respond then. The old tape was playing louder now.

    One of my mother’s most infamous quotes for me was that she wished all those gays would go back in the closet where they belonged. She would be happy to slam the door shut. The old tape was so loud now I could barely hear myself think.

    Luckily, I didn’t accept the old tapes as I don’t accept my cousin or his friend’s thinking about who I am today. I’ve spent my entire adult life working for equal treatment and fairness – my liberal social justice beliefs. In 1974 the American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder. I was 28 years old. In 2017 at the age of 71, I am personally declassifying liberalism as a mental illness.

    I resolve to limit my social media interaction with my first cousin twice removed to Happy Birthday wishes. No need going up that blind alley again.

    I feel better already.

    *******************

    P.S. Sadly I have “un-friended” my cousin twice removed in the intervening years since 2017 because I had to get out of his kitchen. I couldn’t take the heat.