Charleston, S.C

On visiting a new city, I usually take the hop on hop off bus tour, but none was available in Charleston, so I took a city tour with Adventure Tours.

After that tour, I concluded that  Charleston remains a solidly segregated city. (You never get a second chance to make a first impression !).

Beautiful Charleston was established in 1670,  and is named in honor of King Charles 11. It is the oldest city in South Carolina. 

During the Transatlantic Slave Trade, about 40 percent of enslaved Africans brought into the country passed through Charleston Harbor, and while many were sold around the south, a great number were kept there to enrich the greedy and brutal land owners.

It is today a very beautiful city with magnificent architecture, emphasizing the affluence of its bloody past.

It is today a very beautiful city with magnificent architecture, emphasizing the affluence of its bloody past.

 Of course, as Christianity has always walked hand in hand with slavery and oppression, on my visit there in 2024, I wasn't surprised at seeing the vast number of Churches that this one city had! (It's recorded as 400 churches).

All buildings have to maintain their original look on the outside but inside can be used for anything.  

A private dwelling

Even through my visit was so many centuries after slavery was allegedly abolished,  I had no difficulty imagining how it must have been during that horrible period and the Jim Crow era, as the disparities are still so obvious. 

For where the multi-million dollar mansions were located (average price $7 million for one of those residences, we were told), you would see the white people lolling around, tanning, walking their dogs, jogging, enjoying a leisurely life, while the black people were outside tending the lawns, cleaning and fixing the roads.

I had to shake my head in disbelief at the disparities which were so obvious today!

Interestingly, Charlson was voted seven times as the best tourist destination in the world by Travel and Leisure, we were told. And yes, you see hundreds of tourists on the streets.

 Of course, they are mostly white, and I learnt at the African American Museum, that most who visit that city, come to see if they can experience some of the 'Scarlett Ohara' lifestyle, as portrayed in Gone with the Wind!

On the table in front, roses made from sweetgrass which young afro American boys sell on the streets as they hustle to make a buck.

It was pathetic scene in such a wealthy place.

I don't know what the racial situation is in offices is, but that's what I saw on the streets outside.

The regular market where you get great Gullah art and craft.

Everything about Charleston still seems to revolve around color, I concluded.

This is the Citadel, which was established in the early 1820's with the formation of a militia and state arsenal, to defeat a slave revolt.

 In 1842, it became an academy, establishing it as the South Carolina Military Academy.

 In 1910 it was renamed The Citadel, but it took sixteen years after legal segregation ended in public schools, for this important institution to admit its first black student!

An actual aircraft on the lawn at the Citidel

You can get a tour of the city in a horse drawn carriage

This elegant jail was originally built for white prisoners!  

Senator Tim Scott

Considering its history and present appearance, Charleston is naturally a solid bastion for the Republicans. 

So, who better to try to hide the troubling realities other than the one and only Tim Scott, who is now striving to be Donald Trump's vice president!

 Despite its current distasteful racial situation and troubling past, I must commend the local authorities there for necessary futuristic action!

 For it was there at the Visitor Center that I found a restroom where women don’t have to wait in long lines while no one uses the men’s restrooms!

 You see, there, both women and men use the same restroom.

Just close your bathroom door.

I have always wondered why architects don't just design buildings with twice as many female rest rooms as men’, but this is also a solution to our problem!😆.

Yes, pretty city and fururistic, but Charleston still left me feeling depressed and uncomfortable!

.

Reflections.

This Gleaner story of January 18, 2024, under the headline; “Football dream fading, Second denial of US visa puts Munro graduate’s scholarship goal in jeopardy,"  only caught my attention because it involved my ‘brother’ school.  ”

I am surprised how little comment this story has elicited though, since it depicts so vividly, the popular experience with bureaucracies can cause, summed up thus;  He /she who plays by the rules get, shafted.”

According to the report; The dream of 20-year-old Munro College graduate Oral Thompson to pursue football internationally appears to be fading after his efforts to pick up a university scholarship in the United States were halted with his second denial of a student visa four months apart. Thompson, who has been offered a partial scholarship to attend the University of Northwestern Ohio, has until the second week in March to settle and begin classes at the private institution in Lima, Ohio. Football dream fading."

Most of us appreciate that America is a country of immigrants, (the only non-immigrants being the Native Americans) so most residents there are not intolerant of others trying to gain better opportunities by traveling to that country.

However, the Republican Party tends to be outrightly anti-immigrant and their current leader never fails to denigrate us, to the point of saying immigrants contaminate their blood.

On the other hand, the current policy being pursued by the Democratic Party is one that encourages chaos and illegality.

Over the years, I have heard tragic stories about families being torn apart for years and sometimes even decades, because of the difficulty, the exasperating legal process and the long time it takes to obtain legal visas, whether to migrate or even just visit.

I am sure this tiresome experience has not just frustrated Jamaicans over the decades, but indeed people from all over the world, who are trying to get to the USA.

Now, under the present Biden administration however, all you have to be able to do is learn to climb a wall or squeeze through barbed wire, to enter the USA.

Don’t waste your time trying to enter through the legal process, as young Thompson is now learning!

To make it even better for those who favor illegality over going through legal processes, they can get numerous benefits that not even those who were born there are able to!

For example, California is giving the law-breakers free health care, while thousands of those persons born in the USA or who migrated there legally but don’t qualify for Medicaid or Medicare, get left without health coverage, if they cannot afford a policy through Obama Care.

Recently too, children in New York were deprived of in-person education, because their classrooms were given to illegal immigrants. In cities like NY, LA, San Francisco, Chicago etc, while citizens live on the streets because they cannot afford the rent, illegals can get free accommodation!

Because it’s now a free for all too, terrorists, criminals and smugglers can enter, no problem while aspirants who play by the rules, can't.

No wonder Biden is seeing a massive fall-off in support from most categories of his voters in poll after poll, for most people are law-abiding and prefer due-process to a policy that victimizes the law-abiding people while rewarding law-breakers!

Biden’s immigration policy will go a far way in encouraging voters to turn away from the Democrats in the upcoming elections.  

His policies can only benefit Trump and his Maga supporters.

For no reasonable person supports policies that victimize honest people while rewarding law breakers.

 

Thank you Val Demings

Val Demings deserves a special award!

For the benefit of those who don’t know her, she is the person challenging Republican Marco Rubio for a senate seat in Florida.

To tell the truth, as I am new to Florida, I had never heard about her until I started to see her ads for the senate seat on tv. However, I now know she is a former chief at the Orlando Police Department and the elected Representative for the Florida's 10th congressional district in the US Congress since 2016.

In my book, the special award she deserves is for exposing Republican men, a few brain-washed females and conservative members of the Supreme court, for supporting violent criminals while trying to victimize further, their female victims.

 In one of her television ads, Ms. Demings, as a former police officer, reminds the naïve that rape and incest are criminal offences. 

And I might add, extremely violent offences.

For in their rush to persecute women and children who are violated by these violent offenders and will no doubt suffer mental trauma for years to come,  the Republicans regularly paper over these criminal acts and show no disapproval of them!

For centuries, the debate about nurture versus nature has been topical with no side winning. However, wouldn’t most children born of violence be doomed to themselves perpetuate violence? Is it therefore surprising that statistics show that violence in the USA is increasing exponentially.

I say no surprise, as children naturally carry a lot of the traits inherited from their parents.  While no comprehensive study has ever been done, I suspect that a high percentage of the persons conceived via rape or incest, end up as purveyors themselves. Especially with  powerful voice like the GOP treating these violent acts as nothing. 

For in their rush to take away control of our bodies from us, that’s exactly what they are implying. In fact, one even gets the impression that they think violent rapists and incestuous men are saints and their victims, sinners.

Thank you Val Demings for clarifying the matter so succinctly.

Ignore the facts at your peril!

 

 

 

 

 

Trump with or without brains?

Some Republicans seem confident that they can get their beloved Donald Trump to be the President of the United States in 2024, without having to put up with Trump himself and his unattractive baggage!

How is this going to be achieved?

Pick Ron DeSantis, Governor of Florida to be their candidate.

They are so impressed with this politician that already he is being dubbed Trump with brains!

Further, a survey done by The University of New Hampshire, found that support for DeSantis has more than doubled since last October to 39% while 37% of likely voters said they would vote for Trump and only 9% said they would vote for former vice president Mike Pence.

Having a Trump with brains would be a dream for Republicans but it would be hazardous to the health of entire world. For if Trump was not so rash and unpleasant, he would have gotten a second term and can you imagine how catastrophic that would have been?

To begin with, there would be no Ukraine today as he would have fractured NATO and have helped Putin in any way he could.

Autocracy would become the order of the day in the USA too. For as the January 6^th enquiry is showing, Trump would have destroyed every institution set up to protect democracy.

Now what about DeSantis?

When he was running for governor, he demonstrated what a Trump cultist he was by even airing a series of tv ads showing him teaching his baby daughter to read, using Trump’s Art of the Deal!

He is also an autocrat who will whittle away at the liberties that Americans have become accustomed to.

Already, he has welcomed the return of young women to the dark ages, where they are no longer in control of their own bodies. He has even started to personally censor text books being used in the schools. (don’t say ‘gay ‘ bill which even censors the teaching of anything to do with slavery!)

Billboad protesting DeSantis' censorship

As to freedom of expression, Disney discovered to their chagrin, that if they wish to do business in Florida, they cannot disagree with anything DeSantis says!

The economy too will be in turmoil for what the republicans loved about Trump and hail as his economic prowess, is the policies that make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

A win for Trump with brains or dumb Trump, will be the same misery for the majority of the American people.

Of guns and conservatism

I find most members of the Republican Party in the USA (aka conservatives) very dangerous indeed. For if their philosophy is to be believed, when young children who are raped or been the victim incest, they must be reminded of the horror every day by being forced to carry an unwanted child for nine months.

On the other hand, if anyone wants an assault weapon to murder innocent children or anyone, they must be allowed to get it.

For why else would a civilian want an assault weapon except to commit mass murder?

I am not at all anti-gun, for in my book if someone wants to have a gun to protect themselves or their family, or to go hunting, they should by all means be allowed to do so.

However, there are guns for various types of activities. So, for example, some people tell me that assault weapons should be allowed for hunting. But my understanding of hunting is that it is a sport, so shouldn't the poor animal have some kind of a chance of survival?

According to the U.S. Department of Justice (in a 1994 debate,) "assault weapons are semiautomatic firearms with a large magazine of ammunition that were designed and configured for rapid fire and combat use."

I think the most relevant word above is combat, for that is really what they are designed for.

That means war.

Is it this love for weapons of war among a significant proportion of the Republicans in my book, which have caused America to start so many wars against far less armed nations too. For example, recent incursions into places like Iraq, and Libya.

It seems to me too, that American philosophy is really built on bullyism....... I have better weapons so I will kill you and take what you have.

Wasn’t that the entire foundation of the nation as they tried to wipe out the native Americans? And they have carried on that tradition over the years with non-whites being the targets under Jim Crow and ever since. (Heard of the Tulsa Massacre etc?)

According to the National Library of Medicine, assault weapons and other high-capacity semiautomatics appear to be used in a higher share of firearm mass murders (up to 57% in total)"

Would you believe the majority of decent Americans oppose having assault weapons in civilian hands?

 According to Gallup, between 57-61% of persons polled in the USA think assault weapons should be banned, but the legislators have consistently ignored these facts.

So why are most Republican legislators opposed to the banning of assault weapons when their constituents want them to be.

Corruption it would appear.

 In the USA, there is a well-entrenched method of bribing legislators called lobbying.

This is how Wikipedia begins its description of lobbying;

“In politics, lobbying, bribery, persuasion or 'special' interest representation is the act of a legally sanctioned attempt at influencing the actions, policies, or decisions of government officials, most often legislators or members of regulatory agencies.”

Among the richest organizations which use lobbyists in the USA; are gun manufacturers and the NRA (National Rifle Association). Why you may very well ask? The answer lies in the piece published by the Huffington Post in 2017 entitled "Assault Weapons Sales Boom Fuels Gun Industry Profits, And Tragedy." (It is interesting to learn via the History Newsletter, that the NRA opposed access and carrying of weapons in the 1960's when the Black Panters were the propoonents and whites were scared out of their pants by them!The NRA Supported Gun Control When the Black Panthers Had the Weapons - HISTORY)

 It is therefore my view that until the USA addresses the corrupt system of lobbying, they will forever be shedding tears and saying prayers for victims of mass murders, be they mere infants, Texas May 24th, black people two weeks before in Buffalo, or people in churches, cinemas, malls etc.

Yes, every country suffers from crime with which violence is often associated. For humans will forever reach for weapons with which to harm others, be they sticks, cars, guns etc.

 But must the USA continue to make it easy for anyone with a grudge to kill people by the dozens in the flash of an eye, simply because that is what the NRA and gun manufacturers want?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

AMERIKKKA?

If President Obama had done anything close to what president Donald Trump has been accused of, he would not have been impeached but lynched.

That was the consensus opinion of the participants of color, who in their latest podcast entitled “Politics across generations,” discussed the current impeachment process being conducted by Congress. They based their opinion on the premise, that the laws in the USA are enforced differently when people of color are accused of anything as opposed to when the privileged whites are. (link; https://anchor.fm/politicsacrossgenerations/episodes/Impeachment--democratic-candidates-e9d50s.)

These podcasts are hosted by 24-year-old Shadrach Williams, a 2017 graduate of Florida International University (FIU) and author the popular self-help book “A month to re-create Reality” available at Amazon.com link; https://www.amazon.com/Month-Re-Create-Reality-Change-Mentality-ebook/dp/B07V78Y8ZT/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=a+month+to+change+your+reality+by+shadrach+williams&qid=1573.

The podcasts provide Political education from the perspective of the Baby Boomers and the Millennial generation coming together to understand each other’s viewpoints and discuss the issues, candidates, as well as their ideas, for the upcoming 2020 elections. 

Joining him in the discussions are; fellow FIU graduate, Psychology major Shadaen Stephens and author Joan Williams who recently published; 2020 DECISION; SOCIALISM, RACISM OR HAPPINESS, an outsider’s perspective of the choices available to voters in the USA for the 2020 presidential elections. It is available at; https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001KJ40KG

Delving further into Trump’s actions which are being sanctioned by the Republicans, it was observed that one defense being put forward was that because the economy is doing well, Trump’s criminal activities should be overlooked. However, that was rejected on the grounds that, simply because one is successful in one area, it does not mean their criminality in other areas should be overlooked.

The discussants compared how laws in the USA are enforced against people of color versus how it is against whites. This was reinforced by the revelation that America is now being spelt by many Generation Z youth, with 3 k’s (KKK!) 

Participants also found it intolerable that a US president can never be charged for a crime while he is in office, not even murder.

Turning to Democratic Party politics, it was observed that there seems to be a level of dislike for billionaires in that party, with one participant wondering if this was not based on a philosophy of “envy” among the socialists in that party!

During the animated debate that followed, the observation that in the USA, money can buy lot including delegates, was made and the other discussants were reminded by the moderator, that in 2016, Trump was supported Vladimir Putin, who is allegedly the richest person in the world. 

Moderator Shadrach Williams can be contacted via; gratestj@gmail,com