I have just returned from Bryan Stephenson's esteemed Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama, and I can't stop thinking and writing about it. Poems have been pouring out of me. It is the unfathomable horror that those in power could be so cruel-- unimaginable cruelties starting with the Middle Passage when people were forcibly taken from homes and lives they loved, forced into ships, shackled (naked) by their arms, legs and torsos, sent in the underground belly of the ship where it was brutally hot and they received ONE meal a day and ONE glass of water. It took months to travel by boat under these deplorable conditions, and many died on the ship or jumping overboard when they could escape the shackles--two million to be exact. Still , ten million made it to port cities ftom the East coast all the way down South to Florida. There were 24,000 humans enslaved in New York alone and a huge number in Baltimore, Maryland. Wrap your head around this: these men, women and children were bought off as property, and as such treated to whippings, floggings, up to ten people in a one room house where they slept on the floor, often had nothing to keep them warm, had little light and very little food. They were forced to labor for rich plantation owners under the worst conditions: fields of tobacco, rice, cotton, building trains and roads and buildings. If they were "lucky" they were indoors cooking, cleaning, raising children, while their own children--as young as four or five, were outside laboring in the hot sun. And this did not end with the Civil War. Reconstruction saw a blood bath unleashed when African- American people dared to reclaim their "personhood", which included getting educated, voting, starting businesses and purchasing land. There were chronic, constant threats of violence and ugly name-calling: vermin; rats; words which suggested dehumanization. Let's not forget the victims of mass lynchings, which were still on-going into the 1950's. Just remember: Emmett Till was killed in the 1950(s). America was born out of this history of violence, name-smearing and other ugly atrocities.
The horror of this legacy is that it is not over. In fact, Donald Trump, in his run for the presidency in 2024, is constantly engaged in inflamatory language, and has stoked a political climate of "fear and trembling." More precisely, his platform is built on lies, terror, accusations and ugliness, every step of the way. He has employed the word "bloodbath" on several occasions. He has threatened his political opponents with jail time and executions. Just last night, in his political rally where many children were present, he used the word, S...T in his description of Kamala, and had the children chanting it repeatedly, so reminiscent of Nazi-Germany. This legacy of violence has sought to disenfranchise voters of color, so it is beyond my comprehension why any AFRICAN-AMERICANS could possibly vote for him. This is the New Jim Crow. Also, what Jewish person in his or her right mind would vote for him, when Tump's rhetoric utilizes horrible anti-semitic tropes. HIS LANGUAGE IS THE LANGUAGE OF THEM AND US.
And who is them? Immigrants are his first target, though his ancestors were immigrants, who left their homes to make a better life for their family. Every issue comes down to immigrants, including awful inventions of people eating dogs and cats, violence and crimes, which--according to him--are all the result of illegal migrants, a disclaimer proven entirely false.
But THEM is also, according to an answer he gave to a Latino man questioning his veracity as a potential president, the police officers who had guns to protect the capital on January 6th. When the man said, "there was much violence that day," his response, "THEY had guns, We did not."
So I end where I began, the Legacy Museum, a reminder that the world of violence, disenfranchisement, a call to arms (a January 6th will surely happen again if he does not win), is here to stay. And sorry folks, Vance is no better: he is a wolf in sheep's clothing, also one of the inventors of the Hatian immigrant lie, and an author of the introduction to the 2025 project. This ticket has already gotten the support of White Supremacists who have called for another Civil War if--like they said in 2020--their man does not win. And who is THEM? All of us who agree this is not the kind of world they want for themselves and their families. I would think everyone is on board for hope, positivity, morality, integrity and decency, not a constant barrage of insults, negativity and lies.
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