God Never MEANT

” God never meant for a person to own another person!” Harriet Ross Tubman said this in 1848.As I watch the anger and violence exploding across our country, I am filled with so many emotions but the main ones are fear and anger. Anger then fear, then anger again at being made to feel afraid AGAIN! I keep trying tofind the “bad guy” the “enemy” a clear cut villian that I can level my own anger and blame at. But, there isn’t one, but many.. Not all cops are bad and not all men of any color are innocent..The target keeps moving around like a snake in the leaves,just when I think I have it figured out, a new perspective appears, derailing my old way of thinking(I must have re-written this piece 5 times in the last months! I think all it takes for evil to take root is for one person or group to get it in their heads that they have the God-given right to terrorize, kill or force their will on to another human being or group. I believe that real evil is less a case of hate and more a case of indifference. an unwillingness to acknowledge or even see what is right under ones nose. Like the saying goes” All it takes for evil to prevail, is for good men to do nothing” Many a black comedian has made jokes about getting pulled over by police for DWB(driving while black) Well there is another absurd behavior going on that doesn’t yet have it’s own acronym but if it did it would stand for walking alone while being female…! This means, if you are a woman walking down the street by yourself, for more than a couple blocks, well then, yo must be a hooker! I f you don’t believe me try it yourself sometime. Watch the cops slow down and stare at you, Watch the men pull over in their cars and try to wave you over. For some one like me who used to walk everywhere( before my accident, that left me half paralyzed in a wheelchair)all the time, this became maddening!! Even now that I’m in a wheelchair, when I am sitting alone in front of my low- income housing building waiting for my bus, I STILL get this dumb behavior…Cops staring, men pulling over…Even had a man walk right up to me and ask “how much?” Just to show you how absurd yet pervasive this thinking is! The last part was actually pretty funny…I mean, what could I possibly do for him that he couldn’t do for himself, and probably more efficiently?! But seriously, after awhile, as a woman, you start to feel like you need to have a man by your side at all times just to be safe in the world! Now, I watched that video of George Floyd being murdered by that police officer in absolute horror, I believe we ALL did! And when I heard that in his final gasps of life, he cried out for his mother, my heart plummeted and a cold chill ran up my spine. How alone, outnumbered, helpless and completely devoid of any power does a person have to be to where all they can do is call out for their mama? Well, I KNOW and that’s why this affected me so viscerally. Back in the 90s I was living in FT. Lauderdale, Florida. At the time, I was working at one of the many nightclubs in the area. One night, I had to leave my shift early because I wasn’t feeling well….While walking to my car, I had to cross the street from the club to the overflow parking area because when I got to work that night the main lot was already full. So, being aware that this secondary lot was poorly lit, I kept my head on a swivel and remained hyper vigilant of my surroundings.. Upon entering the parking lot, I was suddenly blinded by a searchlight shone right into my eyes, I had been ambushed, and now surrounded by 6 thug police officers, they were all in full uniform..gunbelts and all! They were shoving me back and forth inside their circle while laughing and jeering..they were exposing themselves and trying to force my head down onto their exposed penises, they had their hands inside my cloths grabbing my breasts my crotch, everywhere..I was so scared all I could do was cry and beg them to stop, I couldn’t fight back, If I would have even hit one of them it would be assault on a police officer, a felony that I could go to prison for, they made sure to remind me of this along with the fact that nobody would believe ME over the 6 of them(I knew they were right) so begging and crying wasn’t making them stop, they told me I wasn’t begging convincingly enough. They made me get on my knees with my hands folded under my chin and crawl around begging in that position. Now,totally terrorized, demoralized and humiliated.. my head slumped down and I just tried to curl up into as tight of a ball as I could and wait for it to end. Finally, one of the younger officers said,” OK, guys, that’s enough, let’s let her go.” I was so grateful I jumped to my feet and ran half naked the rest of the way to my car, got in and locked all the doors and drove off…I was numb with shock, finally dead inside(or so I thought)untill I got about 5 miles down the road and suddenly had to pull my car to the side of the road, for fear I would crash… The sound that erupted out of me started at my toes and came out of my mouth the anguished scream of some kind of trapped animal..I was screaming and crying and kicking and punching all over the inside of my car. So, cops YA , I GET IT!! Some of them have strayed very far from their origional vows to serve and PROTECT…..Some, not ALL. Definitely not ALL I know many good ones that are absolutely horrified when I tell them this story! But there ARE corrupt, bad cops out there too and this is so dangerous because we are tought as young chidren to trust and obay these officers, they just HAVE TO be honorable! Now, on the other hand, in the spirit of “fairness” I also need to add to my story that in my 20s I was attacked and raped at knifepoint by a man that happened to be black. While he was raping me he told me that I must look him in the eyes like I was in love with him or he would kill me.. When he finished, he looked down at me and said” I own you now, you are my property , I can do anything I want to with my property.. now, I am going to pimp you out.. You need to get me some money now!A little while later, I noticed a police car stopped at a red light a block or so away. As they got near, I through myself on the hood of their car screaming” help!!! He is gonna kill me!! I was super lucky to have survived that… many women do not! but do I hold this againsed all black men? Of course not!I know now, as I knew then that he was just one bad apple, not the whole bunch! I’ve shared some of my personal stories with you here today, not looking for pity but in an effort to identify, to let you know that I am not speaking to you from a place of sheltered privlege but from a place of deep knowing of exactly what it feels like to be treated unfairly and even horribly abused, just for being in the “wrong body” at the wrong time, and I’M still calling out for peace, hate answered with hate only creates an endless cycle of more hate

The world siply cannot stand anymore hate and violence….Oh! I AM full of homicidal RAGE sometimes over what happened to me in my life(oh! you bet your ass I am I’ve been getting raped repeatedly since I was 3 years old..5 men had their way with me by the time I was only 13! I’ve had to learn ways to deal with that rage without hurting anybody else.. That is MY RESPONSIBILITY! I have no right to hurt some one else because I am hurting..! I’d like to go back to Harriet Tubman for a minute. When Harriet was first escaping slavery from her own plantation, she ran into a woman named Hanna Leverton. Hanna was a white woman and a Quaker wife. She was the first white person that had the courage to help Harriet..Hanna and her husband risked their own lives to do what was RIGHT and KIND! They took Harriet in, hid her, fed her, gave her clean clothes and helped her on her journey North to freedom. Hanna and her husband were the first in a long line of Quaker families helping slaves escape the south with Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railway. Working TOGETHER, Harriet and the Levertons saves dozens and dozens of black slaves lives. Women of that time , really “got it” Save for the quaker wives, most women’s marriages turned out to be little more than indentured survitude wrapped up in a pretty bow! Most women had no power in their marriage, even their children BELONGED to the husband, to the point , he could actually sell them like livestock to factories and work houses. knowing that her children could be taken from her at any time, kept the women in line, along with the fact that untill as late as the 1920sin the United States, it was perfectly legal t beat your wife with a leather strap, as long as it was no wider than 2 inches! Women Knew that power over another person was wrong, it hurt and it killed souls..That’s why we helped and stil do, We are your sisters in arms!! So, as we approach this new “civil war” that the media is telling us we are on the brink of…Let’s not be duped into making it a black against white thing, a white against brown thing, or even a women against men thing..Let’s all fight the REAL MONSTER here..The powerful taking advantage of the powerless, in all the forms that it takes..incest, rape,murder, human trafficking,politicians and the wealthy elite and most recently the roving gangs of terrorists that infiltrated the Black Lives Matter movement for their own agenda, while simultaneously killing black men, women and children with your “self indulgent” rage ….Shame on you! Stop now! You are making God cry and Mother Nature wince Because God never meant for a person, ANY PERSON (including you) to own another person PERIOD!