I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: racism

  • no justice rolling down – or up – for Breonna Taylor

    no justice rolling down – or up – for Breonna Taylor


    A makeshift memorial in downtown Louisville, Ky., for Breonna Taylor in September 2020. Taylor was killed March 13, 2020 in her home during a botched narcotics raid carried out by Louisville police. Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

    (from NPR special series America Reckons with Racial Injustice on March 13, 2021 by Brakkton Booker and Rachel Treisman):

    “Before Breonna Taylor’s name became synonymous with police violence against Black Americans, she was an emergency medical technician in Louisville, Ky.

    The 26-year-old Black woman’s friends and family say she was beloved, and relished the opportunity to brighten someone else’s day.

    Exactly one year ago, Louisville police gunned her down in her home. Now, her name is a ubiquitous rallying cry at protests calling for police reforms, and many social justice advocates point to her story as an example of how difficult it can be to hold police accountable for violent acts.

    The Louisville incident unfolded during a botched narcotics raid, when (3) officers forced their way into her apartment in the early morning hours of March 13, 2020. Taylor was not the target of the raid and the suspect police were searching for was not at Taylor’s home.”

    On September 23, 2020 Brett Hankison, one of the three police officers involved in the killing of Breonna Taylor, was indicted on first degree wanton endangerment charges by a Louisville grand jury. No officers were charged directly with her death, according to CNN reporters.

    The trial for Brett Hankison on three counts of first-degree wanton endangerment of Taylor’s neighbors was originally set for August 31st. but has now been moved to February 01, 2022.

    On April 26, 2021 Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the Department of Justice would open an investigation into the practices of the Louisville, Kentucky, police department. According to reporting in USA Today on April 26, 2021 by Masood Farivar the justice department is conducting its own criminal investigation into Taylor’s death.

    Detectives Myles Cosgrove and Brett Hankison, along with Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly, fired 32 times into Taylor’s apartment with reportedly five or six shots hitting her but have never been charged for her death. Cosgrove has been determined to be the person who fired the fatal shot that killed Taylor and was dismissed from the Louisville police force – as was Hankison. Sgt. Mattingly retired from the Louisville Metropolitan Police Department on June 01, 2021 after twenty-one years of service with full pension benefits.

    Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. says “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

    I have felt from the beginning, and continue to feel, the murder of Breonna Taylor affects me indirectly in a profound way. Injustice in allowing her death to go unpunished is a threat to justice everywhere, and I cry for justice for her today.

    Breonna Taylor, say her name.

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    Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated and please stay tuned.

  • how could I skip when I was two and seventy

    how could I skip when I was two and seventy


    Three years ago I published these reflections (with pictures) a week before my 72nd. birthday. I don’t know why, but I thought they deserved a second read. We’ll see what you think?

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    I had a very sweet Happy Birthday message today on my Columbia High Class of 1964 (Texas) message board from one of my boyfriends who I noticed sent me birthday greetings for the past 3 years on this website which I never check. Thanks so much to Tim for remembering me. I immediately went to Facebook and added him as a friend so that I can send him birthday greetings on whatever day his might be. I confess I have been remiss in wishing others a Happy Birthday unless I am prompted to do so by the Big Brother of Facebook who is forever watching over me.

    I am struck by how soon my 72nd. birthday will be…April 21, one week from today. Sweet Lady Gaga, as The Red Man famously said, how did this happen. My first birthday card came from my personal Medicine Man Dr. Martin and his entire staff. These are the people who see me most frequently, and I appreciated the Life is Meant to Live and be Celebrated sentiments. I figure if they’re hopeful for my future, I should be, too.

    I’ve received not one, but two, birthday cards from former President Jimmy Carter and the Carter Center, both of which were quite lovely and one signed by the President himself. Why two, you might ask, as I did. And then, of course, my bank ATM machines have been unusually prompt on good wishes whenever I’ve made withdrawals in April which I assume has something to do with their corporate guilt for the outrageous service charges they favor me with every month.

    The message board for the 1964 Columbia High School graduating class in West Columbia, Texas took me back 54 years to that senior year when I was about to graduate from high school and leave my little town of Brazoria, Texas that was 15 miles from the Gulf Coast for summer school at the University of Texas in Austin 90 miles away. Big changes were on the way for me, but take a look at the images of my senior year when I was voted by my fully segregated all white 90+ students class as the Best All Round favorite, or as my dad invariably teased me by saying, she was the best all the way around.

    Return with me to those thrilling days of yesteryear when my mother was always so happy for me to be dating a boy.

    Note particularly the hands and feet

    (Poor photographer – he must have spent hours on that pose)

    (our mascot was the Roughneck)

    I am the one on the far left with fist pumped

    (one of the original fist pumpers)

    Senior prom

    (different boyfriend, Kerry, who gave a huge corsage)

    my mother rolled my hair until I left for college

    Note black and white striped shirt – 

    I was calling a junior high basketball game. 

    Yes, that’s right.  A teenager in public with my hair rolled.

    Mom made it a condition of my going to the gym.

     

    Senior Follies – and they were

    I sang an unremarkable rendition of the St. Louis Blues,

    but the bright yellow fringe dress was memorable.

    my lifelong love of tennis began here…

    on real tennis courts. Hard cement. 

    But I saw myself playing at Wimbledon.

    …and basketball, too

    as Coach Knipling used to say about my game,

    Sheila is short and slow, but she can shoot a free throw

    and of course, the political

    deals were struck between me

    and my good friend Leon

    who made an awesome VP

    The photos today are courtesy of me with my cell phone and my yearbook so quality leaves much to be desired, but you get the general idea of this 18-year-old baby dyke trying her best to be straight but  unknowingly about to add complexity to her sexual awareness through life in a women’s dormitory at the state’s largest university where the population of the dorm was greater than the population of the town where she grew up. Talk about trouble.

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    Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated and please stay tuned.

     

     

     

     

  • in case you missed these amazing Olympians

    in case you missed these amazing Olympians


    (from Forbes Business online August 05, 2021)

    “There Are More Openly LGBTQ+ Olympians At Tokyo 2020 Than All Other Games Combined…

    BIG NUMBER: 182. That’s at least how many openly LGBTQ+ athletes there are competing at the Tokyo 2020 Games, according to Outsports. In Rio, there were 56. In London, 23.”

     

    Openly gay Raven Saunders of Charleston, South Carolina celebrates after winning Silver Medal in shot put competition. (Reuters, Dylan Martinez photo)

    This afternoon Raven returns home to Charleston but will not be greeted by her number one fan and sacrificing supporter, her mother, who died on August 03rd. in Orlando, Florida where she and Raven’s younger sister Tanzania were attending a watch party for Athletes of Team USA. For Raven the loss of her mother is one that causes her “heart and soul to cry out” as she posted on social media earlier this week. Any daughter, LGBTQ+ or straight, can understand the pain we feel when the woman who gave us life is no longer with us. Pretty and I send prayers for comfort to the family of Clarissa Saunders during these difficult days.

    Our family also extends our gratitude to Raven Saunders and the remainder of the out LGBTQ+ athletes competing in the Tokyo Olympics. Whether you won a medal in your sport or didn’t, you are all winners to us every time you have the courage to proudly proclaim who you are in your own back yard or on an international Olympic stage.

    Onward.

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    Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated and please stay tuned.

  • in the event you missed the news today

    in the event you missed the news today


    “An emotional President Joe Biden marked the 100th anniversary of the massacre that destroyed a thriving Black community in Tulsa, declaring Tuesday that he had ‘come to fill the silence’ about one of the nation’s darkest — and long suppressed — moments of racial violence.

    ‘Some injustices are so heinous, so horrific, so grievous, they cannot be buried, no matter how hard people try,’ Biden said. ‘Only with truth can come healing.’

    Biden’s commemoration of the deaths of hundreds of Black people killed by a white mob a century ago came amid the current national reckoning on racial justice.” —— Jonathan Lemire and Darlene Superville in the AP

    Neither my American history class in West Columbia, Texas in 1963 nor my American history lectures at the University of Texas in Austin in 1966 mentioned the Tulsa Massacre of 1921. “Just because history is silent, ” President Biden said today, “does not mean that it did not take place.”

    Today we as a nation have an opportunity to acknowledge an oppressive silence about an unspeakable horror that created a generational deprivation of justice and equality which should be the rights of every American. We must not only admit the betrayal but also support actions to make amends to those survivors of the Massacre, their descendants, their home town.

    I believe as individuals we also have an opportunity, an obligation, to speak truth to our families, friends and elected officials at all levels of government about the importance of equal treatment for everyone regardless of our differences. Nelson Mandela said:

    “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”

    May that be our truth.

    Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated and please stay tuned.

  • leaving on a jet plane – returning with a rough landing

    leaving on a jet plane – returning with a rough landing


    Ok – who put that bird on my head?

    Our good friends Nekki (with monkey on shoulder) and Francie contacted Randy at Travel Unlimited who made the arrangements for Pretty and me to celebrate not only our birthdays but also our vaccinated selves with a little rest and relaxation in the Dominican Republic which is adjacent to Haiti on the island of Hispaniola – in case anyone is interested in geography.

    In July, 2014 Pretty and I flew from South Carolina to Puerto Vallarta in Mexico. The trip was a mixed bag of fun and frustration for me for several reasons: tropical heat with few air conditioners for very spoiled gringos, hills within the city that seemed higher to climb every day, the realization that my knees were beginning to rebel as I tried to keep up with Pretty who is one of the world’s foremost explorers in foreign lands – and is fourteen years younger than I am. We met wonderful people, though, and brought home a new game for us called Mexican Train that we both loved. Thankfully, it’s played with dominoes and can be played while seated.

    What neither Pretty nor I realized at the time was we wouldn’t be taking another trip that required jet planes until May, 2021. This past week we visited Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic, yet another tropical climate more than 1,300 miles from our home in South Carolina, a place where the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea meet. My laptop didn’t make the trip with me, the weather was perfect and, although I didn’t try parasailing, I was entertained by those who did.

    breakfast, beach, discussing lunch, margaritas, lunch,

    pool, discussing dinner, Presidente cerveza and margaritas,

    dinner, wine, sequence, spades —- repeat the next day

    Pretty made friends with margaritas again –

    as Nekki supervised pool recreation

    I was amazed at the warmth, the genuine friendliness, the kindness of the people we met at the all-inclusive resort. I, too, was cynical and skeptical of their care for us at first as being more concerned with our American dollars than for our having a memorable visit to their country. I know that tourism is very important to the Dominican economy. Yet, I felt the culture’s respect for their elders – my white hair was treated with a dignity I don’t receive here at home where senior citizens may be ignored or considered a liability while youth is celebrated with a fervent passion.

    When we came home to South Carolina this week, the news stories were very much as we left them with the exception of the Republican Party’s removal of a woman who had served as Chair of the House Republican Conference in the 116th. Congress.  Representative Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) was removed for her unwillingness to participate in the “war against the Constitution…and the unraveling of democracy” which took place when the Party refused to accept the 2020 election results.  I have never been a fan of anyone whose last name is Cheney, but I admire her for her truth telling which has come with a remarkably high price.

    As one of the vicissitudes of life that my daddy claimed would intervene in the best laid plans of mice and men, I had traveled in a jet plane without incident to another country only to have a rough landing on the asphalt of a road near our home as I walked my dog Charly on Friday, the 14th.  Not even the 13th.

    As I bent to be a good neighbor to retrieve Charly’s deposit onto the grass of a very pristine yard we walked pass every day, Charly noticed a car passing by and jerked the leash from my hands which, in turn, jerked me to the pavement. High drama ensued, but two Good Samaritan women in separate cars stopped to rescue me. They called 911, an EMS vehicle picked me up and took me to the ER of our Lexington County Hospital. One of the women took Charly, who was horrified by my inability to get up and continue our walk, home. The other woman sat down next to me on the grass of the pristine yard. We had a lovely chat.

    All’s well that ends well, right? The cat scan in the hospital revealed no fractures or bleeding, released me on my own recognizance with a list of instructions for the elderly in how to prevent falls. I have now read the instructions and find no mention of being careful when retrieving dog poop. 

    My face resembles Rocky’s face after a boxing match, my bionic knees are now blue with a tinge of black, but my good spirits refreshed by my vacation remain. And the concern of my granddaughter for my “boo-boo?” moved me to tears. I am the luckiest Nana today.

    Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated and please stay tuned.

    P.S. One of the women who rescued me stopped by our home that night of my accident and brought us a lovely plant in a gorgeous pot. I was touched twice by her kindness that day.