I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: politics

  • say it ain’t so, Rafa

    say it ain’t so, Rafa


    Rafael Nadal announced yesterday he will become the tennis ambassador to Saudi Arabia in an effort to promote the visibility of tennis in the kingdom which will open a Rafa Nadal Academy there for the purpose of developing young talent in the country.

    “Everywhere you look in Saudi Arabia, you can see growth and progress and I’m excited to be part of that,” Nadal wrote in a statement. “I continue to play tennis as I love the game. But beyond playing I want to help the sport grow far and wide across the world and in Saudi there is real potential.” (Josh Fiallo, The Daily Beast, January 16, 2024)

    Okay, cyberspace friends. Hopefully your jaw found a soft landing on that news. My jaw felt like the ground hit by the ball dropped in Times Square in New York City at midnight on New Year’s Eve. I felt gobsmacked, somehow personally betrayed by a close friend. Obviously Rafa and I aren’t close personally, but I have loved him throughout his career since he began playing professional tennis in 2001 as a sleeveless young fourteen year old boy with more guts than glory back then. It was the same year Pretty and I got together, and we will have our twenty-third anniversary next month.

    My feelings for Rafa were that he was not only one of the greatest tennis players of all time but also a humble, good guy who had respect for the game of tennis and everyone who played it. Say it ain’t so, Rafa. Where in the world did you look in Saudi Arabia to see “growth and progress everywhere?” Did you look at their treatment of homosexuals, for example?

    The Wahabbi interpretation of Sharia law in Saudi Arabia maintains that acts of homosexuality should be disciplined in the same way as adultery – with death by stoning. Homosexuality or nonconformant gender expression can also be punished by corporal punishment, flogging, imprisonment or forced ‘conversion’ therapy. In 2019, the Saudi Arabian government orchestrated a mass-execution of 37 men who were accused of espionage or terrorism, five of whom were also convicted of same-sex intercourse after one was tortured into confessing. (Fair Planet May 27, 2023)

    Rafa, the following tidbit from the Human Dignity Trust hits closer to home for me – did you see it?

    In April (2020) a Yemeni blogger living in Saudi Arabia was arrested for advocating for equality for LGBT people. In July he was sentenced to ten months’ imprisonment and a fine, followed by deportation, under ‘public indecency’ laws. While in detention he was subjected to solitary confinement, beatings, and torture.

    While the Saudi Tourism Authority has apparently updated its website according to CNN Travel in May, 2023 to say gay travelers are welcome in the kingdom in an effort to attract more overall revenue from international tourists, no governmental assurances have been made to make LGBTQ+ individuals feel safe.

    And Rafa, did you read this post on the status of women in Saudi Arabia by Tracey Shelton in January, 2023 on abc.net.au?

    Rei na Wehbi, MENA regional campaigner for Amnesty International, said while Saudi Arabia is “rebranding its image” as a progressive state, the underlying reality is very different. “‘Positive’ changes have mostly been social reforms and are very far from genuine human rights reforms in Saudi Arabia,” she said.

    “They are meant to deflect attention from the continued brutal crackdown on activists and human rights defenders and other flagrant human rights violations.”

    She said most human rights defenders, independent journalists, writers and activists have been arbitrarily detained. In 2019, just as the kingdom announced that women could drive, the women who had campaigned tirelessly and publicly for precisely this right were arrested and locked away. More recently, Salma al-Shehab, a PhD student and activist who posted support for women’s rights activists on Twitter, was re-sentenced to 27 years in prison in January, 2023.

    Money talks, right, Rafa? But will you sell your soul for twenty pieces of silver…or twenty gazillion? Will you sacrifice your personal integrity for an alliance with a country recognized around the globe as a repeated offender of human rights – not to mention terrorist organizations connected to the events of 9-11 in New York City? I cringe at the thought.

    I am a seventy-seven year old woman who has loved you like a family member for more than two decades, but you have broken my heart over your alliance with a country that in my opinion is aligned with evil.

    Say it ain’t so, Rafa.

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

    And don’t even get me started on the Women’s Tennis Association going to Saudi Arabia for its season-ending finale this year. OMG. What are they thinking?

  • say it plain, say it loud

    say it plain, say it loud


    Benjamin Mays was the child of former slaves,. He was born on an isolated cotton farm near Ninety Six, South Carolina in 1894. His parents were sharecroppers. The darkest years of Jim Crow segregation were just descending on the South; humiliation, mob violence and lynching by whites were common threats for African Americans. Mays learned at an early age the searing lessons of racial inferiority. He had a vivid memory of being stopped with his father by a group of armed, white men on horseback. “I remember starting to cry,” Mays wrote. “They cursed my father, drew their guns and made him salute, made him take off his hat and bow down to them several times. Then they rode away. I was not yet five years old, but I have never forgotten them.”2 (American RadioWorks: A Century of Great African American Speeches)

    In 1940 following a fascinating journey from this inauspicious beginning Mays became the President of Morehouse College, a respected black school for men in Atlanta; Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Morehouse graduate in 1948 and considered Mays to be his “spiritual mentor and intellectual father.” On April 9, 1968 five days following the assassination of King, Mays delivered his eulogy in an open-air memorial service on the Morehouse campus where a crowd estimated at over 150,000 people attended.

    As we celebrate the actual birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929) with a federal holiday in the United States in 2024, the words of the Mays eulogy still speak plain and loud.

    “God called the grandson of a slave on his father’s side, and the grandson of a man born during the Civil War on his mother’s side, and said to him, ‘Martin Luther, speak to America about war and peace. Speak to America about social justice and racial discrimination. Speak to America about its obligation to the war. And speak to America about nonviolence.‘

    Let it be thoroughly understood that our deceased brother did not embrace nonviolence out of fear or cowardice. Moral courage was one of his noblest virtues. As Mahatma Gandhi challenged the British Empire without a sword and won, Martin Luther King Jr. challenged the interracial injustice of his country without a gun. And he had faith to believe that he would win the battle for social justice. I make bold to assert that it took more courage for Martin Luther to practice nonviolence than it took his assassin to fire the fatal shot. The assassin is a coward. He committed his dastardly deed and fled. When Martin Luther disobeyed an unjust law, he accepted the consequences of his actions. He never ran away and he never begged for mercy. He returned to the Birmingham jail to serve his time...

    Morehouse will never be the same, because Martin Luther came by here. And the nation and the world will be indebted to him for centuries to come… 

     I close by saying to you what Martin Luther King Jr. believed. If physical death was the price he had to pay to rid America of prejudice and injustice, nothing could be more redemptive. And, to paraphrase the words of the immortal John Fitzgerald Kennedy, permit me to say that Martin Luther King Jr.’s unfinished work on earth must truly be our own.”

    Say it plain; say it loud. America remains indebted to Martin Luther King, Jr. on what would have been his 95th. birthday in a new century, and his unfinished work on earth must truly be our own. We have much to do.

    Onward.

  • Barbie, Beyonce, Taylor? Yeah, but my vote goes to Ruby and Shaye for 2023 women of the year

    Barbie, Beyonce, Taylor? Yeah, but my vote goes to Ruby and Shaye for 2023 women of the year


    I’ve gone through a tough time this last year with political current events under the Republican control of the House of Representatives where they were more obsessed with finding and keeping a Speaker than confronting America’s dilemmas at home and abroad in 2023. The refugees at our borders desperately seeking safety and security while citizens in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California struggle under the weight of thousands of immigrants crossing their southern borders every day; blocking international aid packages for the people of Ukraine and Israel who are waging desperate wars to protect democracies against terrorism; embracing the Big Lie of the 2020 presidential election – the People’s House no longer represents the majority of the people in this country. They do, however, manage to scare me to death.

    I’ve had several moments of hope in the past year but no personal giddiness until a jury in New York awarded $148 million to Shaye Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman on December 15, 2023 in a decision against former New York City Mayor Rudy Guiliani for his targeted destruction of their lives through defamation of their characters following their service as election workers in Georgia for the 2020 election. Joy to the world, I thought in keeping with the season, accountability reigns. These courageous Black women have persistently sought justice for the loss of their identities for the past three years, and a jury of their peers rewarded these sacrifices in a tangible manner.

    CNN December 20, 2023

            Shaye Moss speaks while her mother Ruby Freeman listens

                      ************

    But Giuliani refuses to keep his mouth shut about the two women who defeated him. All is still not calm nor particularly bright in the former mayor’s mind.

    “On the heels of winning a $148 million defamation judgment Friday against Rudy Giuliani, former Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss have again sued the former New York City mayor seeking to “permanent bar” him from making additional defamatory comments about them…

    In a 134-page complaint filed Monday, attorneys for the two women wrote that Giuliani “continues to spread the very same lies for which he has already been held liable,” citing comments made last week to ABC News’ Terry Moran outside of court, in which Giuliani insisted that Freeman and Moss were “changing votes.”

    The two women asked the court to prevent Giuliani from “making or publishing … further statements repeating any and all false claims that plaintiffs engaged in election fraud, illegal activity, or misconduct of any kind during or related to the 2020 presidential election.”  (ABC News, Lucien Bruggeman, December 18, 2023)

                   *************

    I congratulate the Barbie financial empire creators, Beyonce and Taylor Swift for their amazing accomplishments and recognitions in 2023 – feminist has returned to favor in a world that needs a woman’s touch. But remember Shaye Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman, too, for their historic win against a man who picked the wrong battle and lost.

    Deck the halls with boughs of holly, fa la la la la, fa la la la. ‘Tis the season to be jolly, fa la la la la, la la la la. I’m in the mood to deck a few halls.

  • the Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter holiday card collection

    the Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter holiday card collection


    Following the shady corruption of power in the Nixon administration, the American people were ready for a newcomer outside the beltway of Washington, D. C. In walked Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter, a peanut farmer from Plains, who was a Sunday School teacher in a Baptist church with a reputation for honesty and integrity. He was just the recipe needed in the 1976 election after the Watergate years.

    I had followed and admired Jimmy Carter even before his run for governor in 1970 so I was hopeful for what his administration could accomplish from the White House. Alas, being an outsider must be much more difficult  than I thought, and for Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter it was a mountain too high to climb. The many good measures he accomplished including the Camp David Accords were often lost in the rhetoric surrounding the hostages in Iran that were released on the day Ronald Reagan took office at the end of Carter’s one term.

    Jimmy Carter was only 56 years old when he left the Oval Office for his home in Plains, Georgia, but he and his wife Rosalyn have continued to be advocates for the poor and disenfranchised since he returned home. In 2002 he won the Nobel Peace Prize for his open resistance to the War in Iraq in addition to his countless contributions toward creating and preserving democracy around the world. The Carter Center has been a model for presidential libraries, a thriving institution whose motto is “Waging Peace, Fighting Disease, Building Hope.”

    During the last years President Carter not only wrote a number of books but also found a passion for painting. Pretty and I are always grateful for the Christmas cards we faithfully receive every year from Rosalyn and Jimmy Carter, and we are particularly happy whenever the cards are works of art by the former president.

    Enjoy with us.

    2018 message: Blessings, love, and peace to you this Christmas

    (Cardinals in Winter, original painting by President Jimmy Carter)

    2017 message: May the Joy and Peace of Christmas be with you now

    and throughout the new year

    (Mountain Laurel, original painting by President Jimmy Carter)

    (White Dove, original painting by President Jimmy Carter)

    d

    And finally, just for fun, this one designed by Amy Carter who “created this original painting of her with her father carrying a Christmas tree home from the woods.”

    Message: May your home be filled with the warmth of family and friends

    this holiday season and throughout the New Year

    I couldn’t have said it better myself.

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

    Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter have been the best of Americans who served their country on a very large stage during their time in the White House and perhaps offered us their best guidance in the years following. I originally published this piece in 2018 but thought this year we Americans needed a reminder of our own ideals. The Carters are flawed individuals somewhere in their DNA, aren’t they, because none of us are saints; however, regardless of politics, give me the character, courage, conviction, compassion and commitment of this couple from Plains in the White House any day of the week and twice on Sunday.  Waging peace, fighting disease, building hope.

    Slava Ukraini. For all children everywhere.

  • the truth tellers

    the truth tellers


    At a press conference following her loss in the finals at Wimbledon in 2019, Serena Williams was questioned about why she lost. Although she tried to say her opponent played a brilliant match, the members of the press wouldn’t let it go. They asked her if she thought her lack of match play during the year had hurt her, whether her role as a mother took too much time away from her tennis, and finally someone said they wondered if she spent too much time supporting equal rights or other political issues. Serena’s quick response to that question was “The day I stop supporting equality is the day I die.”

    I can identify with her answer because I believe my actions to support equality and social justice are two of the dominant forces of my life, but alas, I lack the tennis skills that give Serena Williams a universally recognized platform. Writing has been my platform for supporting equal rights during the past seventeen years; it has been the curtain call for the third act of my life – my love affair with words: collecting, rearranging, caressing them to make sense of an ever-changing world. Flannery O’Connor said I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I write. I get that because I can start with a feeling, but sometimes my thoughts trail along behind my words that come from a mysterious place yet to be revealed.

    This poster given to me by my friend Linda many years ago hangs in my office today with words from author Anne Lamott to writers about why they write. “It is as if the right words, the true words, are already inside of them, and they just want to help them get out.” The true words I release, however, are not necessarily everyone’s truth. I have learned over the years that truth is not an absolute for every person but rather a fluid concept capable of manipulating minds at odds with what I believe truth to be. For example, remember Kelly Anne Conway’s remarkable explanation of “alternative facts.” Those two words took America on a roller coast ride of a reality show called Believe It or Not DC Style for the past eight years, and unbelievably created a deep wedge that pit family members, friends, co-workers, even institutions against each other with no sign of relief in next year’s political environment.

    Truth telling may be a lost art, truth tellers may bend with the winds, but fundamental values of equality and social justice must not be either lost or warped. As Serena said, the day I stop supporting equality is the day I die.

    And I ain’t ready to go yet. Onward.

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

    For the children.