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Feeling Hope for a Better World in the Middle of My Pain

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Seeing Robert Mueller hover over Donald J. Trump like a starving owl gliding in the winds above its soon to be swooped up prey – well that kind of makes my day.

And the way I’ve being feeling lately, with my daughter having passed away, I appreciate any little chuckle that comes my way.

Now, I don’t usually like to laugh at somebody else’s expense, at somebody else’s pain, as that goes against the grain of my nature.

But this man has touched emotions in me I didn’t even know I had. I mean one day I’m listening to somebody on MSNBC or CNN describe one of his daily shenanigans and I find myself jumping up on my feet yelling out loud “Why doesn’t somebody off that sick-jive–ass mother____r!”

  [Read more…]

Waiting for Dark Clouds to Lift Someday

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As I go along day to day, trying to move beyond the dark clouds that hover over me, I find myself indulging in reviving a few precious memories.

I see me in chorus in junior high school. Mr. Sidney Dawson is coaxing us to “sing it like you mean it” with a soulful expression on his face as he holds his hands over his heart.

I’ll always remember the day when we showed up at the Pioneer Hotel to perform, and the bellman said, “I can’t let you colored people come through the front door.”

And Mr. Dawson said, looking as serious as a heart attack: “Well, the mayor and some other VIPs are expecting us, and you gonna have some tall explaining to do – because we ain’t going in through no back door!”   [Read more…]

Thoughts Rising from the Darkness of My Grief

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Folks say to you, when you’ve lost a child: “I can’t imagine your pain.”

And they’ve got something there because the pain wrestling my emotions to the ground is unimaginable. Losing a child is in a category all by itself. It’s surreal.

I looked for a photo to go with the mood I’m in and I saw one that matched just how I am feeling, how I seem to be trudging through a burnt out forest on an LSD trip gone horribly awry with bees stinging the very fabric of my soul.

I’m reeling from the very thought that my daughter Debbie’s death was against the natural order of things: she was supposed to some day mourn me — not the other way around.   [Read more…]

Remembering Debbie

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Debbie, my first born,
is gone, and now
is but a sweet memory for me
as I mourn.
With tears in my eyes
I reflect on our journey in life together
since she arrived,
seemingly out of the rich blue
of the Tucson skies
on January 4th, 1957,
a wonderful clear and cool
sunny winter day –
when I was but an
eighteen-year-old freshman …   [Read more…]

Call to Action: We Need Transparency, Not Secrecy, in Selecting New Chief of Police

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In the next few months we will have a new San Diego Chief of Police and I hope that whoever gets the job can do something, for me, no one has been able to do: create an environment wherein I don’t find myself squirming a bit every time a police officer rolls up behind me or next to me. I just can’t help it, though, with my life’s experiences.

Now, hey, don’t get me wrong, I’ve known some good police officers — parents at my schools, guys I grew up with, dudes I’ve toked and toasted with, played ball with — it’s just that the bad seeds among them can be downright scary at times.

Police-community relations have concerned me enough that I’ve tried, every now and then over the years, to make our police department more humane.   [Read more…]

So Proud of My Son and the Dojo Café

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I felt so proud of my son, Carlos, the other day when I walked away from the grand opening of the Dojo Café, a little place on wheels he and his friends, Tayari, Peter, Nancy, and Christina put together for City Heights.

I was particularly wowed because it seems he just got here as I have vivid memories of him falling asleep in my arms after a little baby-dad play.

Then it seemed like it was only a matter of days that I was blown away by his wizardry on the soccer field and the moves he grooved to dancing on stage. On the other side of the coin, I remember wanting to, on family road trips while the van was still moving, climb over my seat and strangle him to release the pressure off that last nerve of mine he had stomped on. Oh, his energy! Dude had no off switch whatsoever. Loved him dearly never-the-less.   [Read more…]

Notions of Love Rising Out of the Darkness in Las Vegas

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I just left Vegas a few days ago, with very fresh memories of how loud and all aglow it was, which makes it particulary difficult for me, in these moments, to fathom a man mowing down people who are having a good time as though they were foes on a battlefield.

Such a tragedy tears at your heart and it came at a time when we Americans are already suffering as we seem to be spinning aimlessly away from embracing each other as fellow citizens.

Like, for example, the situation with NFL players, of all people, who kneeled on one knee, before us and the world, when our anthem was being played to bring awareness to the ongoing racism people of color face – and, instead of “we the people” condemning the injustice these citizen-athletes highlighted, we yelled at them and booed them and called them un-American when protesting is about as American as being an American can be.   [Read more…]

Seeking Equality with a White-Supremacist-in-Chief in the White House

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Some dude on television was trying to make a case that the president is not a white supremacist.

But, hey, I’ve dealt with white supremacists for 79 plus years and I have to say that Donald J. Trump is not only one, he’s the best example of such a being I have ever seen.

Take what he did with Jemele Hill, the ESPN sportscaster, my latest hero. She called him out on his white supremacism and he wants her fired and wants the network to apologize to him for her “untruth.” Scratch the prefix “un” and you see what he really wants her to apologize for.   [Read more…]

We Can Display Our Patriotism In Many Ways

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Colin Kaepernick remains a free agent and we need to continue to press the question “Why is that?”

Dave Zirin writes “The truth is ugly as sin. The NFL is denying Colin Kaepernick employment not because he isn’t “good enough” but because he is being shut out for the crime of using his platform to protest the killing of black kids by police. This makes the league’s right-wing billionaire owners’ silk boxers bunch up. NFL owners don’t make pariahs out of players who beat women or face accusations of murder.”   [Read more…]

Pillars of the Community: Seekers of Unity in a Climate of White Supremacy

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I heard talk on TV about people being “stunned” that the president would say that both sides were at fault when he had “rebuked” (if you really want to call it that) the white nationalists’ stunningly violent and reckless behavior in Virginia just the day before.

Stunned about what? I would have been stunned if he hadn’t taken his words back. What happened was the dude desperately had to get back to his true self, back to speaking from the dark places in his mind.   [Read more…]

Making America Without-So-Many-Crises Again

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I just hurriedly clicked off a discussion on TV concerning how Trump might do in the 2020 race for the presidency.

What little I heard was too much for me because with all I’ve seen of this man it’s idiocy just mentioning his name in regard to his being re-elected. That such a conversation can even take place in our democracy says to me that we are undoubtedly, in a bad place, in a state of social and political disgrace, a.k.a. crisis.

Just look at us. It’s like we’ve lost our way. I mean there’s an NFL quarterback who can’t find a job because he took a knee during the singing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” without us, for a moment, addressing the crippling racism in our country that he was protesting. No word in defense of his patriotism or against our national shame by the top dog in the Land of the Free.   [Read more…]

A Genealogy Adventure with Slave and Supercentenarian Moses Williams

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Donya Williams, the four-times great-granddaugter of a man named Moses Williams, asked me if I would help draw attention to some research she and a cousin are doing titled: Stronger Together: The Moses Williams Genetic Genealogy Project.

So I started reading a bio she sent me of their work and can’t help but think they already know what they’re doing.

I was barely into reading other information when the names Strom Thurmond, 50 Cent, Al Sharpton, and L.L. Cool J jumped out at me – names I wouldn’t ever expect to appear in the same sentence.

I mean what could a white Southern senator who loves the KKK and a man who raps, “There’s no business like ho business” and a melodramatic Baptist preacher “Keepin’ it Real” and the creator of “Mama Said Knock You Out” possibly have in common?   [Read more…]

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