March for our lives

This gun owner summed it up

On March 24th, 2018, I joined millions of people throughout the entire world who marched against the toll being taken on innocent people, many of whom are mere children, because of the not only lax but also ridiculous gun laws in the USA.

These marches were organized by the students who were survivors of the latest mass shootings, this time on Valentine's day at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland Florida.


I live about two miles from where this massacre took place but due to what I heard would be parking constraints, I went up to North Lauderdale City Hall, where a group was also marching in solidarity with the Parkland students.

This was a much smaller march but just as enthusiastic as the bigger one in Parkland and the gun owner with the placard saying "This gun owner says no AR-15," summed up our sentiments  exactly, for most of the frequent massacres are carried out by persons who lawfully bought assault rifles, then turned them on civilians.

Look at what that white terrorist did in LasVegas with the dozens of assault rifles that he had transported to his hotel. He murdered 58 music lovers and injured 851, in one fell swoop and using weapons which he acquired legally, Cruz murdered 17 students in 6 minutes with one such rifle which he too had legally acquired although he was only nineteen years old, in other words, too young to buy liquor!

Some students bearing placards wait for the march to start 

This madness is caused by the laws in the USA which allow civilians to buy and keep assault rifles but this is counter to the wishes of  67% of the population according to a February 20, 2018 poll conducted by Quinnipiac University.

That same poll shows that only 29% are opposed to the banning of this weapon.

He came out to make his feelings for the NRA known

Why should civilians
want assault rifles which are clearly weapons of war,  except to murder people?

The National Rifle Association (NRA) which is a white terrorist organization, has for decades paid politicians in Congress, the Senate and the presidency, to keep these weapons on the streets under the guise that to ban them would be a violation of the constitution which gives individuals the right to bear arms.

That is absolute crap.

 I have never heard anyone who is calling for the banning of assault rifles and greater regulation of guns in general, calling for the banning of all guns. However, these assault weapons are designed to kill numerous people quickly and that is what everyone has a problem with as that type of weapon is only necessary when one is on a battlefield.

Will the new energy being injected into the issue by the young people demonstrating and mobilizing people all over the world, which caused close to 750,000 persons to gather in in Washington DC alone, be effective?

I am sure it will despite the fact that a number of politicians, including president Donald Trump, have sold their souls to the NRA.  His campaign got almost $50 million from the NRA for his presidential campaign and he promised the young people who went to see him, to take action, but reversed his decision the minute the NRA went so see him at nightfall!

However, despite the fact that leaders like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell and numerous Republican legislators are also on the payroll of the NRA because these young people influenced support in 80 countries in every continent except Antartica. They have pledged not to give up and have made a solemn undertaking to get registered to vote as soon as they reach the required age, power-hungry politicians who had previously been swayed by campaign contributions, will soon have to either bow to the  majority of voters while the NRA watches their millions in contributions go down the drain or get out of politics for the good of the nation.

People socializing after the march in North Lauderdale

In Isiah 11;6, it says  "The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them" and while most of this prophecy has yet to be manifested, what I saw on Saturday, convinced me that the last prediction quoted above, is right on target .

Cancer is no longer a death sentence

Dr. Grace Wang  (L)  poses with six-time survivor Jackie

On Saturday 10th March, I got a great opportunity to see close up the great work being done by the cancer society, survivors, their doctors, nurses, and caregivers, to totally abolish the idea that this disease is a death sentence.

 As one who has long subscribed to that theory, my eyes were opened when I  met a lady who has so far survived and lived a fairly normal life for fifty-one years since her operation. 

Further reinforcement came from a long-time friend Jackie Simmons with whom I had lost contact, but who now brought me up to date on her own victory over six different cancer surgeries over an eighteen year period. These ranged from breast to stage four "inoperable" lung cancer in 2009 when she was given seven months to live. 

Jackie credits her survival to the loving care of Dr. Wang and Dr. Sudana Shaheb.

 Dr. Wang is a world-famous Oncologist at the Miami Cancer Institute who Jackie said has for decades, gone way beyond the call of duty to ensure not only her survival but also that of the hundreds of the patients whose care she had responsibility for.

 Dr. Shaheb an Australian medical doctor and anthropologist of East Indian descent, is a professor of medicine at the University of Havana, who regards an appropriate diet as the perfect cure for all diseases. He is on retainer from several Native American tribes who have become susceptible to numerous diseases because they have moved away from the kinds of foods which had nourished their bodies for centuries. Jackie credits him with having also saved her life after her lung surgery, by redirecting her to consume the foods that are compatible with her particular gene pool.

After only a few hours of assisting in the Jamaican booth at the event and listening to Dr. Wang, I am now totally convinced that most people unnecessarily over-react and do themselves serious psychological damage, from the very moment they get the dreaded prognosis, thus defeating or retarding their own recovery, simply because they ignore or are ignorant of the exciting advances being made in treatment and the current  phenomenal survival rates.

I must admit though that my own ignorance about the disease is partly because I have never really had close family affected, apart from an aunt who whose death certificate said death from pancreatic cancer although she was over ninety years old and had already contracted several different illnesses during a prolonged period.

So Saturday I learned about many aspects of the disease, the research and up to date developments at this Relay for Life, held at the Baptist Hospital in Kendall, Florida. 

Relay for life is held worldwide to raise funds for cancer research and I also gathered from the address by Dr. Wang, that the Cancer Society of the USA had funded forty-one

scientists who were awarded Nobel Prizes for cancer research. She also outlined some of the latest revolutionary and life-saving drugs which are now available as a result of experiments facilitated by funds raised at events such as Relay for Life.

At this event Jamaica featured large, under the leadership of both Jackie Simmons, a former Jamaica Tourist Board executive and Dr, Wang herself, along with strong support from volunteers, both Jamaicans and others, drawn from survivors and friends. 

Our booth was the largest and the most beautifully decorated with flags and banners, some hand painted and donated by friends and well-wishers and of the $250,000 overall target set for the day, we raised a whopping $68,000!

While a large bulk of the funds came from donations and the silent auction, our booth also buzzed all day as patrons flocked to buy our world famous beef, chicken and vegetable patties, rock cakes, Tortuga Rum cake, banana chips, gizzada etc. Another best seller was a large selection of orchids.

Jackie leads the 16 and over batch of survivors

In the afternoon, survivors (you are considered a survivor if your cancer is in remission for five years or more) medical personnel and other caregivers walked silently around the hospital grounds.

The survivors were grouped by the number of years they had survived ..... five years and over, 11 years and over, 16 years and over followed by a batch that had survived less than five years so far.

This while all the lights were dimmed but the surroundings glowed with candles lit in memory of those who had passed.

Candles honoring survivors light up the surrounding

For me personally, it was an extremely educational yet enjoyable day.

The dangers of Mistaken Identity.

Have you ever been the subject of mistaken identity? I imagine every single human being has been mistaken for someone else at some time or the other as so many of us have common features. However, most of us have been fortunate in that these incidents only cause us a minor inconvenience at worse or a good laugh.

Here I am with my big afro.

I have long concluded that I have a common face for hardly a week passes without some stranger who I have never seen before in my life, saying to me "Where do I know you from” or worse "Hey Joan, didn't I  jst glimpse you in .....last week"  (a place I have never been or visited recently) or even calling me by some other name. 

However, my most dangerous experience of being mistaken for someone else occurred in Germany many years ago. This was during the period when that country was split into distinct parts, communist East Germany and West Germany.

I had been traveling in the west and although this was long before 9/11 which brought in escalated security checks at airports, I noticed that every domestic airport I went to, I was body searched before I took off and after I landed.

I started to wonder if it could be because at the time I had a wonderful body, why every German security person wanted to touch me up!

However, at the third domestic airport, I was disabused of this by a German-speaking friend who told me she overheard an officer saying, "She looks just like Angela Davis."

Regrettably, I had never seen Angela in the flesh but I certainly knew who she was. However, I never saw a resemblance between myself and the person I had seen on tv and in the newspapers apart from the fact that we each had large afro hairstyles. She, however, seemed much fairer than I and even appeared to have freckles.

I guess to most white people though, all black women with afros would look alike!

For the benefit of those who do not know who that famous and extremely brilliant lady is, she is currently a law professor at a leading university in California but in the late sixties and seventies,  during the civil rights struggle, she was a force to be reckoned with.

At that time, she and numerous other black people in the USA, did not see any sanity in Marin Luther King Jr's strategy of peaceful resistance which only caused unarmed marchers to be attacked and mauled by vicious dogs, beaten with  batons by police or even murdered by armed white terrorists and members of the security forces.

Angela and others of her ilk, therefore decided that it was better to go down fighting. In other words, death before dishonor.

At that time, the USSR was the other superpower and as the USA practiced apartheid at home and supported it in every form abroad, the USSR took the opportunity to project itself as the savior of the oppressed by giving practical support to civil rights and black liberation struggles all over the world.

 It wasn’t surprising therefore that Angela and many who struggled against these ills during that era converted to communism.

To put a stop to her activism in the USA, law enforces in California charged her with purchasing the weapons which were used in an assault on the Marin County courthouse in which four persons were killed. However, once tried, she was exonerated so by mid 80's when I was traveling in Germany, I assumed she was no longer considered a dangerous person as she had long returned to teaching.

I, therefore, found it quite amazing that the Germans still had her on a "watch list" and mistook me for her. In retrospect though, I now suspect it was because she had been a vocal and dedicated communist, they weren't taking any chances. And I guess the fact that I had traveled to East Germany and had my passport stamped didn't help.

So although that experience reminded me of the possible complications and dangers that can arise when one is mistaken for another, I have been very lucky.  For we all have seen reports of how, before DNA evidence was accepted by the courts, hundreds and possibly thousands of people were incarcerated because they were mistaken for someone else and worse many were even put to death!

Yes, there are lots of people all over the world who bear more than a passing resemblance to others but thank heavens it has caused no harm for the vast majority of us.

I can't help wondering though how life was for anyone who was mistaken for an Osama Bin Laden when he was considered the most dangerous man on the planet and how dangerous it must be for anyone in the USA, who is unfortunate enough to bear even the slightest resemblance to Kim Jong-un!