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Millennials Are a Beautiful Sight to See

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Millennials. So many of us see them as lazy, naïve, un-motivated “Me-Me-Me” kinds of human beings who somehow threaten to bring the world to an apocalyptic end – all while taking a selfie.

But from all I’ve ever seen, it’s the millennials, the 20 year olds and 30 year olds — and to think of it, the 40 year olds — of any time who are at the forefront of societal change.

I mean, Thomas Jefferson was thinking, “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” when he was 33.

On behalf of the Lakota Sioux people, Sitting Bull — a spring chicken at the time, and being no Tonto — said to the powers-that-be: “Reservations? I don’t think so!”   [Read more…]

Everybody’s Talking About the ‘I’ Word

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Hey, y’all, have you heard?
Everybody’s talking ‘bout the “I” word.
“Impeachment,” in other words:
throwing The Donald to the curb;
finally fed up
with him on our last nerve
like a cowboy riding a wild bronco
wrangled from the herd;   [Read more…]

What’s Love Got to Do With It?

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By Ernie McCray

Tina Turner once sang “What’s love got to do with it?” And, ordinarily, as one who is a “love my neighbor as thyself” kind of guy, I’d answer: “Everything.” Giving my love is pretty much how I’ve managed to survive in the Milky Way. I don’t know any other way.

But how loving am I? Really? I had never asked that question before receiving an email recently from an old friend, a high school classmate — in response to something I had written about The Donald. She wrote:

Dear Ernie. I believe that Mr. Trump is a deeply disturbed man. The only way I know of to soften that pain in my heart and gut is to send him love.
Love, Katie

The words “send him love” jumped out at me like a very well smashed tennis ball coming at me at the net. I had to duck as I sat at my iMac. The thought of sending this president love practically gave me a heart attack.   [Read more…]

Stream of Consciousness as a Brief Getaway

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By Ernie McCray

PRELUDE: What’s written here are words that poured from me when I tried to, just for a few moments in time, air my mind of all the mania that seems to come from the White House from time to time aka all the time. It’s as written, word for word, with punctuations added to tidy it up a bit.

Ready, set go! Whew! What a world! What’s up, girl? Hard to breathe, easy to see, and hear, though, don’t you know. But it’s a mess at best. Some kind of crazy ass test. Lord have mercy on all the rest that has to exist with whatever this is. Whatever this is. Some crazy kind of show biz. Tis. T-I-S. Tis. What is the universe to think of this experiment that’s run into a ditch, a sink hole, where there’s a risk of not getting out?   [Read more…]

The Truth Can Set Us Free

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Jim Comey. My man! I wish I could shake his hand. I mean I’ve got to put aside my deep deep deep disdain for the FBI to give props to a man who has come through with something I’ve so much wanted somebody from a high place to do – call Donald J. Trump out for what he is: a liar. For all the world to hear and see.

Of course he was stating the obvious but it needed to be said just as he said it: out loud – because some of us and the media keep cutting him slack with witty intellectualizing about what a lie really is, how a lie might not be a lie if it wasn’t intended to be a lie. What a lie all of that is.

Now, to be fair, I’d say that kind of logic might be the case with your typical run-of-the-mill fabricator, but Donaldo is a master liar. He can’t open his mouth without lying, the lies flying off his tongue like bullets from a machine gun, it seems. I mean forget “liar, liar, pants on fire” this man’s entire wardrobe is on fire. His closet is ablaze.   [Read more…]

Cheers to the San Diego Free Press, a Player in My Life’s Journey

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My journey in life has been down many a highway, leading me this way and that way. Mostly wonderful, though, I must say.

I could go on and on for days about the stops I’ve made in this voyage, about the human connections that have sat well in my soul: like my relationship with the San Diego Free Press, SDFP, which, by the way, is celebrating it’s fifth year of treating us San Diegans to an array of progressive news and views.   [Read more…]

We Have Entered the Trump Zone

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I don’t know about y’all but, with all the Three Stooges kind of shenanigans going on in the White House, I feel like we’ve entered the Trump Zone. It’s definitely not the Twilight Zone, that’s for sure.

The Trump Zone’s stories go way beyond any episode I’ve ever seen on the Twilight Zone. No character in the Twilight Zone comes close to the main character in the Trump Zone, an orange faced villain with hair a scarecrow would refuse to wear, a man who, wherever you look, he is there.

Go on the internet. There he is. Read the paper. There he is. Turn on the TV. There he is. Buy a magazine. There he is. Take in a few deep breaths to meditate. There he is. Podcast? There he is. He’s a piñata, a poop emoji and a figure in coloring books, a favorite Putin joke. His name is on golf courses and buildings, toilet paper, red caps, tote bags, t-shirts, pins, buildings, coffee mugs, bumper stickers, placards, Trump scented candles, balloons…   [Read more…]

Making our Schools Safe for Muslim Students in a Climate of Hate

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There’s a survey highlighting that a large number of Muslim students are being bullied at school. Our school district picks up on it and looks at ways to make them feel safe on their campuses. And before you can say “Way to go!” to the school system, a bunch of hateful folks come up with some “reverse discrimination” kind of BS.

They whine about those students being given “special treatment.” They blabber about the schools surrendering to Sharia law and caving into demands made by the Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). They claim falsely that CAIR is a “covert supporter of Islamic fundamentalism rather than a supporter of a reformed Islam compatible with the Constitution and laws of the United States.”   [Read more…]

Keeping a Neighborhood “Be the Best” Spirit Alive

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Recently I received an email from a friend asking me if I would lead a conversation that would begin with a piece of art, next April, on issues important to Dunbar, the neighborhood in Tucson, where I spent the first 24 years of my life.

I couldn’t get back to her with the answer, “Yes,” quick enough. I can’t think of anything I’d rather do, in life, than take part in a rap session on behalf of a community that resides at the core of who I am as a human being.

I mean, I am Dunbar personified. I long ago bought into the neighborhood’s esprit de corps, “Be the Best” which was our motto at Dunbar School, the K-9 all-black school. Such thinking has pretty much been my life’s Golden Rule.   [Read more…]

A Cactus Speaks of Persistence (Thoughts about the Restorations of the Murals at Chicano Park)

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I shakily tried to take a picture with my AT&T 3G cell phone of a cactus painted by Mario Chacon. I acquired it from him a while back in Chicano Park. I had to shade the painting from the glare of a blue sky with the sun shining high and bright and far and wide and finally I got about as good a picture as I was going to get no matter how hard I had tried.

Trite as it may seem my persistence in getting this snapshot was based on Mario telling me that the protrusions reaching out from the cactus spoke to the persistence of the indigenous people.

Being a simple minded person, that colored my thinking as I walked around the park with other people who were there, like me, to celebrate the restoration of the murals. Murals, as I see them, that stem from the long trail of heartaches that have plagued the Americas since the Spanish came by in drive-by style and created a reality wherein folks who had hunted, farmed, and gathered on those rich lands for thousands of years suddenly found themselves in poor standing in the only world they had ever known.   [Read more…]

Happy Birthday, Ernie McCray: Still Pushing for What’s Good in the World at 79

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Streams of Consciousness the Day Before Turning 79

By Ernie McCray

Tomorrow. April 18th. If I make it I’ll be 79. 79.

Can’t wait to jam as a 79-year-old man. No, indeed. Time flashes at some kind of supersonic speed. Glad I’ve got me a beautiful woman and some mellow weed…

And there’s so much greed with people in need… And they choose to shoot at each other and drop bombs on each other in all kinds of weather, no thoughts of whether a timeout should be called at some point in human history…   [Read more…]

Keeping the Spirit of Martin Luther King Alive Through COMD

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Martin Luther King once said “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.”

Those words sure ring true today as the folks in the White House have little to no interest in anything even resembling “social uplift” and it seems our nation is “approaching spiritual doom” at a blinding pace.

And, as I write these words, U.S. missiles are flying in Syria with talk of more such attacks, and nothing “socially uplifting” ever rises from scenarios like that, especially at a time when this administration plans to give the Pentagon 54 billion dollars, a 10 percent raise – at the expense of our schools and the arts and our housing needs and our ability to feed the elderly and keep the citizenry well and protect the planet …

And so many people are down with what’s going on, elevating our president from a ding-dong “who doesn’t have a clue” to an overnight war hero.   [Read more…]

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