Kamala Harris, Lady Liberty

WHAT A GREAT DAY TO BE ALIVE! This is especially true for Kamala Harris who has a great chance of becoming the first female president of color. But is it really a great day for her?

Throughout time women have been at the forefront of great change. And while on that forefront, they have been ATTACKED viciously. There is also an expectation, Kamala Harris will face sexism, racism, and misogyny as she runs for president. So far, the biggest attack of her opposition has been about the way she LAUGHS. Imagine, being mocked for the way you laugh when you have an impressive resumé when it comes to fighting for the rights of others and prosecuting law breakers. It's like when a little boy says you have cooties because his vocabulary is so limited, and he cannot express what he truly feels.

If we look through history, we will find a large number of women who overcame the personal attacks to forge new paths for the better of community, state and country. In my book, When Will Eve be Forgiven?, I look at several women who were demeaned for their greatness and dedication for change. It has never been an easy path for women, and it won't be for Kamala Harris. 

I want to talk about one woman from my book, Mati-Hari. I choose her because the most vicious attack on Kamala Harris is that she SLEPT her way to the top. The attack on successful women only excelling if they have sex has been used since the creation of man. Christians have been taught how wicked women are using their sexuality to usurp men. This doctrine of women being deceptive and not trustworthy was introduced with the matriarch of women, Eve, in the Christian Bible. Sexy, curvaceous, deceitful, and wanton; these are the words used to depict Eve in the Garden of Eden

Courtesan, artist, free-spirited bohemian, Mati-Hari transformed her mysterious past into a future of world-renowned fame and admiration. Her stage name was Margaretha Geertruida “Grietje” Zelle MacLeod. She was born August 7, 1876, in Leeuwarden. Mati Hari became known as a promiscuous, flirtatious dancer who openly flaunted her body. She would progressively shed her clothes until she wore only a jeweled braw and some ornaments upon her arms and head.

She would live a life of intrigue seducing men of power and position. Accused of spying and even being a double agent between Germany and France she would be tried by a court February 13, 1917, found guilty and executed by a firing squad October 15, 1917.

From the time of her birth till the time of her death, Mati-Hari defined who she was and who she wanted people to know her as. Time nor circumstance limit who she wanted to be, and history recorded her as the person she declared she was. After her death, her head was embalmed and kept in the Museum of Anatomy in Paris. Her head was discovered missing in 2000 and could have disappeared as early as 1954.

Here, a woman clearly used her sexuality in an effort to help her country. Kamal Harris has not used her sexuality in the way Mati-Hari did. Mati-Hari did not hide who she was and how she operated. Neither does Kamala Harris.

In 2004, Vice President Harris was elected District Attorney of San Francisco where she was a national leader in the movement for LGBTQ+ rights, officiating the first same-sex wedding after Proposition 8 was overturned. She also established the office’s environmental justice unit and created a ground-breaking program to provide first-time drug offenders with the opportunity to earn a high school degree and find employment, which the U.S. Department of Justice designated as a national model of innovation for law enforcement. And years earlier, in 1990, she joined the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office where she specialized in prosecuting child sexual assault cases.

In 2010, Vice President Harris was elected Attorney General of California where she oversaw the largest state justice department in the country. She took on those who were preying on the American people, winning a $20 billion settlement for Californians whose homes had been foreclosed on and a $1.1 billion settlement for students and veterans who were taken advantage of by a for-profit education company. She also defended the Affordable Care Act in court and enforced environmental laws.

In 2017, she was sworn into the United States Senate where she championed legislation to fight hunger, provide rent relief, improve maternal health care, expand access to capital for small businesses, revitalize America’s infrastructure, and combat the climate crisis. She questioned two Supreme Court nominees while serving on the Judiciary Committee. She also worked to keep the American people safe from foreign threats and crafted bipartisan legislation to assist in securing American elections while serving on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Her life's journey has not come close to a woman who uses her sex to help her community, state, and country. 

The adjectives used to describe women have not changed much since biblical times due largely to the fact human nature has not changed much either. The Book of Proverbs in the Christian Bible has more vivid adjectives describing womanhood than any other book in the Bible. 

The list of adjectives include: adulterous, aged, angry; bad, beautiful, brawling; careless, chaste, clamorous, comely, compassionate, complacent, contentious; deceitful, devout, diligent, discreet, dishonest, domestic, drunken; elect, evil; fainthearted, fair, faithful, foolish, foreign, fretful; glorious, godly, good, gracious, grave, great,; haughty, high-principled, holy, honest, honorable,; impudent, indiscreet; jealous,; kind, loose, loving; obedient, odious, outlandish; peevish, peaceable, pitiful, prudent; quarrelsome, reverent, righteous; sensible, serious, shamefaced, shameless, silent, silly, simple, sober, steady, strange, submissive, subtle; temperate, trustworthy; unloved; virtuous; wayward, weak, wealthy, whorish, wicked, wily, worthy; and young.

In the coming days and months, there will be many words used to describe Kamala Harris, but Kamala has clearly defined herself through her past accomplishments and future vision for an America where the rights of every person, regardless of their sex or color, is upheld. ADJECTIVES are just that, adjectives. BUT here RECEIPTS are her receipts. She has proven herself time and time again.

So, let them talk. Women have withstood slander and defamation throughout history, and it never stopped them. It's an old trick. As my book, When Will Eve be Forgiven?, highlights, we, women, are free or should be free from MISOGYNY and live into who we are. If I am correct, the nastiness coming towards Kamala, will only fuel her in her purpose. She's a fighter and not a wilting violet. It is a great time to be alive and witness the strength and fortitude she will display as she vies to be the 47th president of the United States. We are witnessing HISTORY. It's not CLOTHES off but GLOVES off for Kamala Harris.

Murder is American History

 

  What is LIFE like for Black people post slavery in America?

    It is a life in America, a country in which they are native born members, still having to check a box proclaiming they are AFRICAN AMERICAN. 

    It is a life in America, a country their ancestors made into a rich super power in the world by their FREE labor, where history erases their PROFOUND contributions of toil, torture, and death.

    It is a life in America, a country in which they have had to continually fight for the right to have rights, where no one gets the continual injustices perpetrated against a SKIN COLOR.

    It is a life in America, a country comprised of immigrants, where lynching remained an unpunishable crime until 2022. MURDER IS A PART OF AMERICA'S PAST HISTORY AND IT'S PRESENT HISTORY.

    If you Google Emmet Till, Wikipedia will be the first thing to pop up and the first paragraph will say:

"Emmett Louis Till (July 25, 1941 – August 28, 1955) was an African American boy who was abducted, tortured, and LYNCHED in Mississippi in 1955 at the age of 14, after being accused of offending a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in her family's grocery store. The brutality of his murder and the acquittal of his killers drew attention to the long history of violent persecution of African Americans in the United States. Till posthumously became an icon of the Civil Rights Movement."

    

    The story of Till has been told for years and recently captured in the film (2022) directed by Chinonye, Chukwu and written by Michael Reilly, Keith Beauchamp, and Chukwu, and produced by Beauchamp, Reilly, and Whoopi Goldberg. It has grossed $11 million against a production budget of $20 million. It was not a blockbuster movie, but that was not the intent. 

    If you went to the movie and sat until the end, you would have seen the death of Emmet Till inspired the Antilynching Bill. The Emmett Till Antilynching Act is a landmark United States federal law which makes lynching a federal hate crime. The Act was not law until 2022! 

    Lynchings were violent public acts that white people used to terrorize and control Black people in the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly in the South. Lynchings typically evoke images of Black men and women hanging from trees, but they involved other extreme brutality, such as torture, mutilation, decapitation, and desecration. Some victims were burned alive.

    A typical lynching involved a criminal accusation, an arrest, and the assembly of a mob, followed by seizure, physical torment, and murder of the victim. Lynchings were often public spectacles attended by the white community in celebration of white supremacy.

    The highest number of lynchings during that time period occurred in Mississippi, with 581 recorded. Georgia was second with 531, and Texas was third with 493.Black people were the primary victims of lynching: 3,446, or about 72 percent of the people lynched, were Black. But they weren't the only victims of lynching. Some white people were lynched for helping Black people or for being anti-lynching. 

    1619 is the year used as the date slavery began in America. 1619 is the date it was approved and sanctioned to torture, terrorize, and MURDER Black people in America. The history of MURDER is what govenors like Ron DeSantis are trying to erase from American History. He fails to realize these horrors have been woven in the DNA of the victims and will not go gently into the night. 

    The lynching of Michael Donald in Mobile, Alabama, on March 21, 1981, was one of the last reported lynchings in the United States. Several Ku Klux Klan (KKK) members beat and killed Michael Donald, a 19-year-old African-American, and hung his body from a tree. It has only been 42 years since the LAST LYNCHING in America!!

     In 2021, there were 18 Ku Klux Klan groups in the United States. The term 'hate groups' includes groups which have beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people. Their activities can include criminal acts, rallies, speeches, meetings, leafleting, or publishing (Published by Statista Research Department, Jun 2, 2023). In 2021, there were 733 active hate groups in the United States, down from 1,020 in 2018. The term 'hate groups' includes groups which have beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people. Their activities can include criminal acts, rallies, speeches, meetings, leafleting, or publishing. 

    The Emmett Till Antilynching Act amends the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act and prior hate crime laws to define lynching as any conspired bias-motivated offense which results in death or serious bodily injury. It was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on February 28, 2022, and U.S. Senate on March 7, 2022, and signed into law on March 29, 2022, by President Joe Biden.

    Today, the subject and memory of Emmet Till will be recounted by the news media on a continual loop. The younger generation will largely ignore this pivotal piece of history. Many of the older generation will grumble people should leave old stuff alone and quit talking about it. There will be the group of people happily proclaiming how much America (people) have changed and we no longer live in a time where racism and it's cruelty were almost entertainment and a group activity. And there will be people enraged for too many reasons for me to account or understand. Many Americans will have even  MORE hatred for the Democratic president, Joe Biden, for his attention to the Black Community.

Today President Biden will designate a national monument at three sites in honor of Emmett Till and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley — both of whom served as catalysts for the civil rights movement. Biden is expected to sign a proclamation on Tuesday, July 25, which will be the 82nd anniversary of Till's birth.

The new monument will be established across three locations in Illinois and Mississippi in an effort to protect places that tell Till's story, as well as reflect the activism of his mother, who was instrumental in keeping the story of Till's murder alive.

    For people on both sides of this history of MURDER, there are strong feelings. Some want to FORGET and some who want to REMEMBER. Today is another day where the heart, mind, and spirit of the people who make up America will bee seen. Today will show what life in America is like for a Black person post slavery in America.