I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

storytelling for truth lovers

  • black women called “Mayor” from sea to shining sea


    A world wide pandemic from an attack by an unseen enemy known as Covid-19,  increasing public protests across the country led by Black Lives Matter against systemic racism in the criminal justice system and other institutions,  police brutality in the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Rayshard Brooks; the deaths of two iconie Civil Rights leaders: Congressman John Lewis and Reverend C.T. Vivian – the crises facing the mayors of American cities in 2020 was a perfect storm of despair from the loss of people, jobs, faith in the federal government and too often hope for the future. And yet, a growing number of black women stepped up courageously to meet the challenges of local government leadership..

    “I’m an independent reform candidate. I do not represent the past.” – Mayor Lori Lightfoot

    Indeed, Mayor Lightfoot was elected mayor of Chicago, Illinois in April, 2019 to shine a bright light into the future as she became the first openly gay African American woman ever elected mayor of a major American city.  Chicago is located in the Great Lakes region of the Midwestern United States, the 3rd. largest city in the country according to the 2020 census with a population of over 2.6 million people.

    Two thousand miles west of Chicago on a peninsula between the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay lies the 16th. largest city in the country: San Francisco, California. In July, 2018,  London Breed was elected mayor of that city in a special election to become the first African American woman to serve as mayor of this municipality which has a population of almost 900,000 people. According to Jay Barmann in the San Francisco News Tuesday, September 15, 2020, Mayor Breed said:

    “People are pretty much tired of what we’re living in, as it relates to COVID. I’m tired of talking about it. I’m tired of living in it,” Breed said in her usually candid fashion in a press conference Tuesday. “I’m tired of doing all the things you are tired of doing, because I want to enjoy my life. I want to live. I want to go back to normal.”

    But, she cautioned, we still haven’t turned any corners on the coronavirus, it’s still spreading in the Bay Area, and there’s even been an uptick in hospitalizations in San Francisco in the last week. “We are not out of the woods when it comes to COVID,” she said. (end of quote)

    The driving distance between San Francisco on the West Coast of the US  all the way across the country to the Mid-Atlantic region of the East Coast where the 20th. largest city in the country, Washington, D.C. is located, is a distance of approximately 2,800 miles. DC has a population of more than 720,000 people according to the 2020 census and in the mayoral race in 2014 Muriel Bowser became the first African American woman to be elected mayor of her city. Mayor Bowser brings a refreshing approach to gun control:

    “You have a mayor who hates guns. If it was up to me, we wouldn’t have any handguns in the District of Columbia. I swear to protect the Constitution and what the courts say, but I will do it in the most restrictive way as possible.”

    Ranking 36th. on the list of American cities by population sits Atlanta, Georgia with a population of almost 525,000.  Atlanta is 625 miles south of Washington, D.C., considered to be part of a sub-region of the US known as the Deep South,  and is located among the foothills of the Appalachian mountains. Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, an African American woman, was elected mayor in 2017. In a speech addressing the Democratic National Convention in August, Mayor Lance Bottoms had these remarks on the importance of voting in the 2020 election:

    “We know how important it is that we elect real servant leaders, leaders like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris—people of honor and integrity, who hold justice close to their hearts and believe that the lives of my four Black children matter. In the words of womanist poet Audre Lorde, “Your silence will not protect you.”

    Finally, I felt compelled to check out black female mayors in other places like, let’s say Atlanta’s neighboring state of South Carolina, my home state for the past fifty years. Tann Vom Hove, senior fellow at City Mayors Research, listed two black female mayors from Hampton County (Francenia Ellis in Furman, pop. 275; Patricia Williams in Brunson, pop. 550), one from Union County (Mary Ferguson Glenn in Carlisle, pop. 450), one from Charleston County (Miriam Green  in Awendaw, pop.1,300), one from Laurens County (Stellarteen Jones in Gray Court, pop. 800),  and one from Calhoun County (Helen Carson-Peterson in St. Matthews, pop. 1,900).

    Through my personal research of watching the 6 o’clock local ABC news last night, I was introduced to Mayor Alfred Mae Drakeford who is the first African American female mayor of Camden, SC in Kershaw County. Camden is 40 miles west of our house, has a population of 7,200 and is full of Revolutionary War history but is better known in our home as one of Pretty’s favorite “antiquing” towns.

    Thank goodness for the black women mayors wherever they are regardless of the size of their cities – may they continue to serve their communities and always strive to preserve the Constitution of the United States against all enemies not only in 2020 but also in years to come.

    America, America, God shed her grace on thee – and crown thy good with sisterhood from sea to shining sea.  Amen.

    Stay safe, stay sane, and please stay tuned.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • breaking news: interview with a Mushy Middler


    My fake news interview with a Mushy Middler was first published here in August, 2017, one year after the US presidential election of 2016. With the 2020 election less than two months away, I wondered whether the mythical “mushy middle” is as powerful today as it was four years ago or whether our current climate of increased political unrest has caused this group to dissipate.  American voters are either “for” or “against” with no room in the inn for a middler. True or false in 2020?

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    The mushy middle – and I’m not talking Hostess Twinkies here. No, the “mushy middle” and the “soft center” are names given by politicians and pollsters to the highly sought after mostly silent majority of the electorate who have never attended a rally other than a pep rally at school, never written letters to the editor, regularly watch both Fox and CNN  for their news, don’t give a tinker’s dam about confederate statues, and pal around with friends whose major topic of conversation isn’t politics. Holy Smoly, life must be much less stressful in the mushy middle, or is it?

    Inquiring minds want to know, so I’ll Call It took to reality blogging and found a card carrying member of the Mushy Middle who agreed to be interviewed as long as she could remain anonymous in order to avoid “outing” any of her middling friends. The interview was conducted two days before the Eclipse.

    I’ll Call It: For the record, is it true you identify as a member of the Mushy Middle?

    MM: Yes, that’s true. I am a proud member of the Mushy Middle and I’ll tell you why – I am always Undecided until the very last moment before I step into the voting booth. I vote for the person – not the party because I don’t like either one of those behemoth political machines that are 100% responsible for the mess we’ve made in our country. Basically, I think all politicians are crooks. 100%.

    I’ll Call It: I see. Well, do you mind telling me the name of the person you voted to elect President in 2016?

    MM: I voted for Donald Trump, but I didn’t tell anybody…not even if they asked, and a lot of those pollsters called me to ask. I thought it was nobody’s business if you care to write that down.

    I’ll Call It: Hm. Yes, I’ll definitely put that down; thank you for that bit of information. I really appreciate it. Do you mind telling me what characteristics of Donald Trump appealed to you?

    MM: Certainly. For one thing, he wasn’t Hillary Clinton. Everybody knows she’s a crook and a liar – they’ve already proved that with those emails of hers, haven’t they?

    I’ll Call It: Well, actually no. But surely that wasn’t the only reason you voted for Donald Trump?

    MM: Of course not. Are you calling me one of those women haters who don’t want other women to succeed – is that what you’re trying to say because if it is, I’m calling off this interview right now. I’m beginning to get a sneaking suspicion you’re trying to trap me into saying something I don’t mean, and I don’t like it one little bit. As a matter of fact, I don’t like you. Period.

    You’re one of those elitist bloggers running around putting words in people’s mouths and making up phony photos showing KKK members with machine guns, for God’s sake. I have friends in the KKK, and they are super nice people who wouldn’t hurt a fly.

    I’ll Call It: No, that’s simply not true. White supremacists and KKK groups aren’t the good guys really. They go against everything America has stood for since we got started. They don’t believe in equality and justice for all. Their beliefs are the antithesis of our core beliefs in a democracy.

    MM: Oh yeah? Well, who else cares enough about our country’s history to try to preserve these beautiful statues we’ve had everywhere for two hundred years? What are we going to do with all the holes where the beautiful statues were? Has anybody thought about that?

    Furthermore, I get it. I see you are not anything but a fake news reporter, so I am terminating this interview. Don’t ever let it be said that a Mushy Middler can’t smell a skunk a mile away. Adios. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

    I’ll Call It: But I wasn’t done – we never got around to why the Mushy Middle is  apathetic to the political happenings in America today or what you thought about Steve Bannon’s being kicked out of the West Wing.

    MM: I am sick to death of jerks like you who think you’re so smart and know everything. I don’t want to be on your side or their side. I just want to go my own way so leave me alone! Who’s Steve Bannon?

    P.S. Okay, so maybe the interview wasn’t as successful as I’d hoped, but I learned one thing for sure. Clearly the Mushy Middle isn’t as apathetic as advertised. Holy Smoly.

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    Stay safe, stay sane and please stay tuned.

     

     

     

     

  • Pride Day at the 2020 US Open!


    The theme of this year’s 2020 US Open grand slam tennis tournament is Be Open.

    “When you keep an Open mind, great things can happen. In the game, and out in the world…Generations of tennis players have been inspired by the examples set by Althea Gibson, Arthur Ashe, Billie Jean King and many more who challenged the sport to remove barriers to fairness and justice by epitomizing the values of diversity, inclusion and respect…for each other, and for the game itself.” (US Open.org)

    the official poster (designed by Dan Stiles)

    When I watched the first US Open televised in 1968, I was a twenty-two-year old closeted lesbian (or so I thought) living alone in Houston, Texas, looking forward to the weekend visits of a girl who didn’t share my enthusiasm for either tennis or romance. Fifty-two years later I am married to a wonder woman who has shared both those passions with me for the past twenty years. Life is good.

    Today was Pride Day at the 2020 US Open, a celebration of the LGBTQ+ community I could never have imagined in 1968 or even in 2001 when Pretty and I began to watch the Grand Slam tennis tournaments together. And yet, here we are watching Serena Williams play in her 20th. US Open while her adoring husband cheers from the almost empty arena. The digital “fans”  give the eerily quiet matches a surreal quality, but the excellent play almost makes me forget a pandemic that necessitated the solitude.

    Thanks to the US Open for jumping through a ton of hoops to make another Grand Slam event possible in a chaotic year, for keeping the safety of everyone involved uppermost in their minds, and especially today for recognizing Love is more than a tennis score.

    Happy Pride!

    Stay safe, stay sane and stay tuned.

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • this country doesn’t love us back


    “There are other cases… of officers who seem to be ‘trigger happy.’ In a number of instances, Negroes have been shot, supposedly in self-defense, under circumstances indicating, at best, unsatisfactory police work…and at worst, a callous willingness to kill.”

    (Excerpt from 1947 report “To Secure These Rights” produced by Harry Truman Committee on Civil Rights as quoted in opinion by Washington Post columnist Colbert I. King on June 19th, 2020)

    We know about the callous willingness to kill from the names of just a few of the many African Americans who speak from their graves, American lives lost at the hands of police brutality in cities across the country. Samuel DuBose – Cincinnati, 2015. Terrence Sterling –  Washington, D.C., 2016. Freddie Gray – Baltimore, 2015. Michael Brown – Ferguson, Missouri, 2014. Walter Scott – Charleston, South Carolina, 2015. Rayshard Brooks – Atlanta, 2020. Tamir Rice – Cleveland, Ohio, 2014.  Trayvon Martin – Sanford, Florida, 2012. Breonna Taylor – Louisville, Kentucky, 2020. Eric Garner – New York City, 2014. George Floyd – Minneapolis, Minnesota, 2020.

    This week Jacob Blake’s name was added to the 2020 infamous roll call of victims of “unsatisfactory police work” – this time in Kenosha, Wisconsin. As destructive wild fires raged in California claiming the life of a helicopter pilot attempting to douse the inferno, as a Category 4 Hurricane called Laura gathered the power to strike along the Gulf Coast shores in Louisiana bringing life threatening winds and water reminiscent of Hurricanes Katrina and Ike, as the number of American lives lost in the worst pandemic of our history reached the dubious milestone of 180,000 +,  a police officer shot an unarmed African American man seven times in the back when he attempted to get in the car where his three young sons waited and watched. Jacob Blake will likely be paralyzed if he survives the bullet wounds.

    Doc Rivers, head coach of the NBA franchise Los Angeles Clippers, had an emotional reaction to the police shooting in an interview on August 25th. “…we’ve been hung, we’ve been shot…it’s amazing why we keep loving this country, and this country doesn’t love us back…the training (for police) has to change. My dad was a cop, I believe in good cops. We’re trying to get them to protect us like they protect everyone else…as an American you need to be outraged at that video. All we ask is that you live up to the Constitution.”

    Yesterday the wide world of sports came to a grinding halt as athletes from both the NBA and WNBA, major league baseball and soccer teams all joined together to promote social justice through police reforms long overdue in our nation by boycotting their respective games. Players across the board said this killing of black people through police brutality must stop. Our lives do matter, they agreed, and we want to see genuine criminal justice changes that guarantee our families equal safety and protection under the law. Tennis players rallied around the protest of Naomi Osaka by postponing the semi-finals at the Western and Southern Open scheduled for play today. No justice, no peace, no sports.

    Senator Kamala Harris reminded us in a statement this afternoon that our pledge of allegiance calls for “one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” We know, and we have always known that promise is unfulfilled for people of color, but now cell phones record that broken promise every time a video of these egregious acts goes viral on social media to be seen by anyone and everyone. Pretending, denying, disavowing, obfuscating no longer are viable options for people of good will who embrace the truth.

    Wake up, America, it’s time to love them back. We can, and we must, do better.

    Stay safe, stay sane and stay tuned. By all means, VOTE in November.

     

     

  • families first


    No justice, no peace. No Donald, no Mike. Just Joe and Kamala.

    Four years ago I was overjoyed when the first woman of a major political party was nominated to be President of the United States. From Seneca to Selma to Shirley Chisholm to Stonewall, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s vision of the beloved community has been slowly bending the arc of the moral universe toward justice and equality for all. This week with the  Democratic Party’s nomination of a woman of color to become Vice President of the United States  I am once again optimistic for people of good will in America to prevail in November, to reverse the current administration’s attempts to bend that arc in a different direction.

    “She taught us to put family first—the family you’re born into and the family you choose,” said Senator Kamala Harris about her mother in her acceptance speech for the vice presidency this week at the Democratic National Convention.

    In 1946 I was born into a Texas family that was part of a generation later identified by historians as the Baby Boom generation (1946 – 1964). WWII ended, the young soldier boys returned home to marry their teenage girlfriends who were waiting for them and then boom, here came the babies. Millions of us born into families who now had amazing educational opportunities through the miracle of the GI Bill to do what their parents couldn’t have done. My father took advantage of the veterans’ benefits to enroll in college while he also worked to support his little family of me and my mom. He was the first and only person in his family to earn a college degree, a degree that enabled him to become a teacher, coach and then superintendent at the same small rural school he attended as a child.

    While daddy was teaching and coaching, he encouraged my mother to make the half-hour commute from our home to Sam Houston Teachers College in Huntsville five days a week so that she could finish her college degree she started at Baylor University during the war. I was in the fourth grade when my mother enrolled and in the sixth grade when she graduated. She came to teach music part-time the next year when I was in the seventh grade, and I have to say it was a nightmare being in my mother’s class while going to a school where my father was superintendent.

    But I survived…and in my home with two parents who were educators there was never a discussion about going to college when I finished high school. No. The discussions were about which college I would attend and how education opened doors of endless opportunities. My father once told me the whole earth was my territory – that I could be anything I wanted to be if I worked hard and believed in myself.

    For seven years after graduating from the University of Texas in 1967 I explored different parts of my territory while I worked in several jobs as a CPA in the early 1970s from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Northwest  to the southeastern Atlantic Coast state of South Carolina. Every position I had the story was the same: I always was paid less for equal work. I was in a nontraditional occupation for a woman in those days and felt frustrated – even angry – at the unfairness of a system that ruled the kingdom of numbers.

    I was with my father in his hospital room in Houston in 1974 following his surgery for colon cancer, but he was talking to me even then about my career and the reality of my territory. Why don’t you be your own boss? Why don’t you set up your own business if you don’t like how you’re being treated? That is exactly what I did for the next 40 years. I found my place in my territory, but my father wasn’t with me on the journey. He died from cancer in 1976 at 51 years of age. He was my mentor, my friend and a wonderful example of public service in an era that valued educators.

    In 1958 at nineteen years of age Kamala Harris’s mother left India with the blessing of her family to come to America to discover a cure for cancer. She married Kamala’s father who had immigrated from Jamaica to study economics at the University of California Berkeley where he met her mother, and Kamala was born in Oakland in 1964 – the last year of the Baby Boomer demographic cohort – into a family that literally included the whole earth as their territory at a moment in history when the Civil Rights movement was at an inflection point. As Kamala’s parents pushed her in a stroller while they marched for equality in the streets of Berkeley they gave her the foundation for a passionate belief in civic responsibility, but neither one could have known that stroller would roll her all the way to Washington, D.C.

    I am grateful for Kamala’s family, for the family I was born into, for the family I have been allowed to choose, for the opportunity to explore a territory my father could not have envisioned and for the potential of passing a better democracy to my granddaughter who may begin her life with a Black woman of Indian ancestry as the Vice President of the United States.

    Stay safe, stay sane, stay tuned and vote in November.