If It's Plastic, Take It!

I've decided to refrain from writing about health care reform until after the votes are counted. It has been a lovely day so far and I can see no good cause to ruin it by contemplating the potential failure of the reform bill. I had an early meeting today which got me out of the house to experience the 75 degree weather first hand. However, since I've returned home I've been ensconced in my overstuffed armchair, catching up on the hours of mindless television that I've accumulated on my DVR. My excuse is that I'm still recovering from my cold.


I have a new passion, a show called The Marriage Ref. Married couples voluntarily come on the show and discuss issues upon which they disagree; a three panel celebrity team offers opinions as to who is right and who is wrong; and the Marriage Ref makes a final call, pronouncing one party the winner. The network has not said whether it has any plans to air Divorce Court immediately following.


The episode that I watched featured four couples with guest refs Martha Stewart, Cedric the Entertainer (wonder if his parents go by Mr. & Mrs. the Entertainer), Jason Alexander, and host Tom Papa, aka the Marriage Ref.


First up was Pat and Mimi, married 35 years. "It was love at first sight," gushed Mimi. Pat seemed a bit less enthused, "Uh, yeah."


Pat and Mimi were debating where to spend their retirement. Mimi had her heart set on Los Angeles where she could have sunshine and movie star sightings. Pat longed for the serenity of Howe, Indiana, in the heart of Amish Country. He imagined riding with his beloved Mimi in a buggy; however, Mimi preferred a sports car.


"I need lots of excitement!"


"We could go to all those barn sales, drive a buggy, and I've heard that the people in Howe are kind and friendly."


"And boring."


Mimi was also concerned about the cold in Howe and her lack of stylish boots, which of course she wouldn't need in LA.  Mimi won, sort of. The panel recommended voting for the move to LA because they feared that Mimi would make life a "living hell" for Pat if they moved to Howe, Indiana.


Two of the other stories were interesting, but the one that I most identified with was the tale of Sam the kleptomaniac and his suffering wife Pam. (The Sam/Pam name thing was never explained. Did they look for a mate with a rhyming name?)


Pam's distress arose from Sam's need to remove every bottle of shampoo, bar of soap, shower cap, hair conditioner and whatever other toiletries he found in a hotel room. Sam traveled a lot for work and had accumulated quite a stash of tiny toiletry items. He also stockpiled toilet paper scarfed from the hotels. Pam pointed out that his need for stuff generally made their luggage over the weight limit which necessitated a security check of their luggage causing Pam unnecessary embarrassment when the contents of the luggage were revealed.


I had flashbacks watching Pam and Sam. In 1998, I was hospitalized for the first time in my life. After five days, the hospital released me. My parents showed up to take me home to my apartment. They came with plastic bags. Everything except the hospital bed was fair game.


Me: Mama, are you sure that you should take that water pitcher?
Mama: They can't use it any more. It's plastic. You can't sterilize plastic.


Meanwhile, my dad obviously had plans for surgery at some point as he was gathering all the latex gloves from the glove dispensary box in my room. The hospital provides every patient with a plastic wash pan; mine was a lovely shade of teal which made it stand out a bit when my mother stuck it on the shelf underneath the wheel chair that was the mandatory transportation for patients beign released.


"Mama, are you sure that you're supposed to take all those straws and cups?"


"Yes dear, you've never been in the hospital before. They want you to take all of this stuff. They can't sterilize plastic."


As we left the hospital, I was convinced that we were going to be arrested at any minute. I was relieved when the orderly rolled me through the door; I got into my parents' car; my father pulled away from the curb and I didn't hear sirens.


As for Pam and Sam, the decision was in Sam's favor. Martha said that hotels expect guests to take the toiletry items. Oprah has said the same thing, and Mama was a firm believer that all hotel toiletries were meant to be taken, so I guess it must be true. However, the reasoning is that all the toiletries have the hotel logo on them and it reminds the consumer how pleasant a stay he or she had and makes them want to come back. I just don't think that this applies to the hospital. My stay was okay but I had no desire to ever return; however that teal color wash pan has proven useful over the years.

You Just Have to Find the Light

Every now and then I get to a place that I don't like very much. It's dark, empty and very lonely. I've been making visits there for as long as I can remember. My first conscious memory of visiting the dark place was when I was five.

I've been thinking about writing about this place for years. I used to think that I was the only person who visited the dark, empty, lonely place but I eventually learned that it wasn't true.

Last week I read about Andrew Koenig, a man whom I've never met, but I know him. He was a fellow visitor of the dark place, but he lingered there too long and was unable to leave.

I recall the theme song from M*A*S*H; it had that refrain that hypnotized me: "Suicide is painless; it brings on many changes; and I can take or leave it if I please." I sang that refrain in my head for years.

The first time I tried to kill myself I was fourteen. I took an overdose of Valium. My dad had been in an accident on his squad car and injured his leg. The doctor had prescribed Valium to help him rest. I came home from school and was alone in the house. I took all of the pills that were in the bottle, but there were only four or five. No one noticed anything was wrong until I was attempting to wash dishes after dinner and was rather wobbly on my feet. I don't recall much of the evening; my sister, who was 12 at the time, has supplied some of the missing details. My mother called the doctor. I'm not certain what she told him but she put me to bed to sleep it off. My sister watched me all night, afraid that I was going to stop breathing. I am still sorry for putting her through such trauma.

My father was visiting this Christmas and asked me about why I dropped out of college without graduating back in 1977 (I eventually went back to school and finished what I had started). I explained that I had been on the verge of an emotional breakdown. I told him that I had been on a downward spiral for years, ever since my suicide attempt back in 1971. He looked puzzled and asked me where he was when I made this attempt. I told him that he was there, but I recognized that he honestly didn't remember.

Please don't judge my parents harshly; I don't any more. They didn't have a clue as to what to do with me. My father left all child rearing decisions to my mother. I believe that he really doesn't remember. As for my mother, she couldn't accept that a part of me was broken, she wanted me to be whole and thought that by pretending that I was fine she could make it so.

It has taken me years to understand that my parents elected not to notice my emotional pain because they had no mechanism for dealing with it, no frame of reference for how to help me.

There are a lot of people who are in the dark place. It's not just dark, it's unrelenting darkness. A pitch black place where there is a total absence of light and the worst part is that you believe that there will never be an end to the darkness. You feel that you have only two options--to live with that oppresive darkness squeezing your chest so hard that every breath hurts, or end the suffering, escape the dark by ending life itself. It's not death that you desire; it's the absence of the hurt. You just want the darkness to go away.

Over the years I've developed a sort of sixth sense for suicides. When I was still teaching, I was a part of a team of four teachers and we taught 80 students among us. We took a personal interest in our students and tried to intervene as soon as we became aware that a student was having academic problems. We had a team meeting with one of our students whose grades had begun to slip. One of us asked a fairly innocuous teacher type question, "Where do you see yourself in ten years?" She responded, "I won't be doing anything in ten years." My colleagues just looked puzzled and considered her response to be teenage doublespeak meant to confuse adults. I looked at her and had this moment of total clarity. My question hung in the air, "When did you decide to kill yourself?" I remember that she didn't look surprised although my colleagues gasped rather loudly. When she spoke her voice was soft and quiet, "Last night."

I don't recall her name any more although I can still see her face. I hope that she is still hanging with the world; I hope that she has found her way to navigate the dark times. The name that I do remember is that of another of my students who went home and hanged herself one day.

I wish that I could tell you how to stop someone that you love from taking the ultimate step but it's not that simple. Both of those young women were suicidal; one I heard and the other I didn't. I was able to tell one that I understood and that the darkness really wasn't permanent, but the other, I didn't catch; I didn't hear her pain. It's not a science and blaming yourself is futile.

I've found my own way but I don't presume that the conclusions that I've reached have any universal application. I find it of comfort to recognize that I am not alone. There are a lot of people who find themselves in the dark place at various times in their lives. The beacon for me is that I've come to believe that there is a light somewhere in that darkness and that if I just hold on long enough I will find that light again. 

I think that suicide is about hopelessness, a sort of emptiness that seems infinite. I've worked through a lot of this with the help of some good therapists over the years. In addition to talk therapy, I believe that depression may be linked to a chemical imbalance and when that is the case,  prescription medications are necessary. My medication of choice is Paxil.

I've also learned to allow myself to give in to the dark. Sometimes I refuse to function. I sleep a lot, cry a lot, and demand nothing of myself for a day or two. I think of it as my renewal time.

I encourage parents to listen and to not be afraid to make direct inquiries if you suspect that your child is suicidal. You can't plant the idea in your child's mind by asking but you may get an honest answer if you ask an honest question. Suicide is the third leading cause of death among young people between the ages of 10 and 29. Gay, Lesbian, and transgender young people are even more likely to attempt suicide.

We rarely talk about suicide. Survivors tend to bury their attempts, to refrain from sharing their stories. I think that there should be a Suicide Anonymous organization where survivors can go and say, "Hi, my name is Sheria and I'm a suicide survivor." People who are contemplating suicide could come and share their thoughts in a safe environment and hear from people who fully understand where they are and how they got there. We could also tell them with credibility that suicide is not an answer.

I cannot declare that I am safe from suicide. To do so would be arrogant. I can say that I no longer consider suicide to be a desirable option. I choose life with all of its sorrow because there is also such sweet joy in living. I accept the darkness because I know that it is not endless. I decided that the time was now for me to write about this part of me because I'm tired of the secrecy and the shame. I know that there are others out there who have wrestled with these same demons and I think that it is important that we share the hope. When I was younger, I used to think that dying young was brave; now, I know that real bravery is choosing to live.

The video is of Kathy Mattea, a singer whose voice is like a cup of hot chocolate. I was fortunate enough to see her perform live; it was one of the best concerts that I've ever attended. This song is one of my favorites, "Standing Knee Deep in a River (Dying of Thirst)." I found this cool widget that has the lyrics. Just use the controls to the right to pause, slow down, or increase the speed of the scrolling.



Lyrics | Standing Knee Deep In A River (Dying Of Thirst) lyrics

A Little Less Conversation and A Lot More Action: Join the Virtual March for Real Health Care Reform

If you follow me on Facebook, pieces of this post will sound familiar.

President Obama released his proposed health care reform legislation this week; you may find the proposal as well as highlights and summaries at whitehouse.gov. The hue and cry that President Obama's health care reform proposal doesn't include a public option began immediately following the release of his proposal. The public option has become both the boogeyman and the holy grail of health care reform.

Loud voices on the progressive left have repeatedly stated that they would rather see no health care reform than have reform without a public option (the holy grail of health care reorm). They've made the inclusion of the public option the litmus test of health care reform legislation. Loud voices on the conservative right, have demonized the public option and are just as vocal in asserting that they will not accept a public option.

The folks opposed to the public option and the supporters of it have both placed way too much emphasis on the exclusion or inclusion of that single piece of health care reform efforts to the detriment of getting some of the larger issues addressed.

So let's look at what the President's proposal includes:

(1) Provides federal authority to regulate insurance rates in direct response to the super rate increase attempt in California;
(2) Creates marketplace competition and consumer choice via the provisions for the exchange plan;
(3) Closes the donut hole in Medicare prescription drug coverage, which will provide immediate relief for seniors on Medicare;
(4) Increases tax credits for health insurance premium;
(5) Provides waivers for low income families and individuals regarding mandatory insurance;
(6) Prohibits denying health insurance to persons with pre-existing health conditions;
(7) Extends consumer protections against heath insurance practices; and
(8) Adds new protections that prohibit all annual and lifetime limits.

The above is not a review of all of the provisions of the President's proposal. I think that we are a nation with the attention span of a one-year-old. The Internet has made it possible for each of us to carefully review primary documents rather than rely on the news media to tell us what those documents say. Before you decide what you think of the President's proposal, READ IT! Once you get to the site, follow all of the links to ascertain what each proposed Title does.

When you're done, if you share my belief that we don't have the luxury of waiting possibly another decade for health care reform, then take action. MoveOn.org is conducting a Virtual March for Real Health Care Reform on tomorrow, February 24. All that you have to do is take less than three minutes to register for the virtual march and then indicate when you will call your Senators on tomorrow. MoveOn will send a fax to your senators from you (see photo to the left). I've checked out the participation numbers on the map on MoveOn (just roll your cursor over the map to see the numbers) and the numbers are pathetic. When you don't participate in telling government what you want, you can't complain about what it does. MoveOn is a progressive organization; this is our chance to drown out the voices of the tea party protesters. If we truly want change then we have to act; the campaign slogan was always, "Yes we can!"

Sex, Race, and John Mayer

I like John Mayer's music and the man can really play a guitar. Unfortunately, he's not so good when it comes to giving interviews. He seems to have two basic topics--sex and race. He touched on both and even mixed the two together in his interview with Playboy magazine.


The two remarks that have put him on the hot seat are:

MAYER: Someone asked me the other day, “What does it feel like now to have a hood pass?” And by the way, it’s sort of a contradiction in terms, because if you really had a hood pass, you could call it a nigger pass. Why are you pulling a punch and calling it a hood pass if you really have a hood pass? But I said, “I can’t really have a hood pass. I’ve never walked into a restaurant, asked for a table and been told, ‘We’re full.’"

PLAYBOY: Do black women throw themselves at you?

MAYER: I don’t think I open myself to it. My dick is sort of like a white supremacist. I’ve got a Benetton heart and a fuckin’ David Duke cock. I’m going to start dating separately from my dick.

Check out the entire interview for more context and a few more doozies from Mayer. I also suggest that you check out Mark Olmsted's insightful blog entry about Mayer's faux pas, What John Mayer Should Have Said.


I intensely dislike the word nigger, no matter who uses it. I spent 20 minutes debating whether or not to spell the word out in this post or use the euphemistic "N-word." I refuse to defend anyone's right to use it, but as I've pointed out before, under no circumstances does a white person get to use it. You just don't have the right, sorry.


However, rather than think that Mayer's use of the word was an indicator of racism on his part, I think it was more about youthful arrogance. He wanted to appear to be real and down with it (whatever it is), so he chose to demonstrate how in touch he is with his inner black person by casually dropping the word even as he acknowledged that as a white man he could never fully appreciate the racial discrimination endured by black people. If you read his initial observation without the n-word that becomes evident. I don't think that John Mayer even came close to being racist in his intent or in what he actually said. He was a bit incoherent and probably needs to stop attempting to address serious topics in interviews. Perhaps he needs to write his notes in his palm.


As for his comments regarding relationships with black women, I suspect that he was trying to appear hip and humorous when he should have simply stated, "I've never opened myself up to a romantic or sexual relationship with a black woman."


The media and bloggers have been making mincemeat out of Mayer, accusing him of being a racist. Mayer has apologized repeatedly and even shed a few tears. I feel sorry for Mayer, but I suspect that he will survive.


The hoopla has moved me to again consider the color line. We use the term racism far too liberally; there is a qualitative difference between prejudice and racism. We are all subject to prejudices against groups with whom we do not identify. Racism goes beyond prejudice. Racism is predicated on a belief that certain groups of people are "other," and therefore undeserving of fair and equal treatment. Racism is based on believing that any disadvantages or hardships that the other faces are because of their negative qualities such as laziness or a propensity towards violence. Racism allows the racists to feel superior in all ways to the victims of their racism.


Over use of the term racism denigrates the seriousness of the term. Applying the term to every incident of insensitivity merely detracts from the seriousness of actual racism and makes the use of the term racism akin to the boy who cried wolf--when real racism rears its ugly head, people tend to dismiss it as much ado about nothing.


Racism is not a fiction perpetrated by black people simply to annoy white people. Racism is real. Nor do I believe that we should simply ignore remarks that do not rise to the level of hate implicit in racism but are nonetheless based in prejudice; we should use them as starting points for honest discourse about racial prejudice and racism. The first step is identifying what we mean by the words that we use. As long as all we do is toss about accusatory language, we will never understand each other.

As for Mayer, saying something stupid isn’t the same as racism. Perhaps John Mayer, Tiger Woods, and John Edwards could form a support group for men who screw up publicly.

If Ignorance Is Bliss There Are Some Very Happy Folks in America

My friend Jack (Self-Sufficient Steward) posed some questions to me that I've been mulling over for a bit:

What would happen if Senate Democrats MADE the Republicans actually use the filibuster to kill a decent health care bill? (Perhaps a bill without the pork, but with a public option.) How would the country respond if they saw the Republicans reading the phone book day after day to kill health care reform?

I don't think that it would matter. I think that the people who support health care reform would continue to do so and become even more disgusted with the Republican party, and those who oppose health care reform would continue to express their opposition and cheer the Republicans on for protecting them from Obama's plans for advancing socialism.

I wasn't certain of my answer when I read Jack's questions a week ago, but yesterday I read the results of a recent poll that confirmed what I have suspected for some time--how do I say this in a civil fashion--there are a lot of people who can't think their way out of a paper bag. The reality of the Republicans carrying on a marathon filibuster to prevent health care reform should offend the sensibilities of the American public but I don't think that those already opposed to health care reform would find it offensive. On the contrary, I think that they would applaud the Republicans.

The poll was commissioned by Daily Kos and conducted by non-partisan independent pollster Research 2000 and included 2,000 people who identified themselves as Republican. Believe it or not, I actually have friends who are Republicans (okay only two that I can think of) and I don't consider one's choice of political party affiliation to be a sign of ignorance. I accept that my view of the role of government differs considerably from the view of government traditionally espoused by the Republican party. However, responses to this poll reveals a level of paranoid belief in utter nonsense that cannot be challenged by logic because anyone who believes this idiocy is immune to logic and truth.

The subtext to all of the opposition by some members of the public to any health care reform is a belief that undeserving people will gain benefits at the expense of hard working Americans. Who are these undeserving people? Well in the minds of the tea party followers they are non-white or in the U.S. illegally or don't speak English, or triple whammy--all three! The anti-health reform folks never imagine the people needing help looking just like them even though the reality is that it's not only minorities who need an improved health care system.

I don't think that Americans who do not already support health care reform will be offended in the least by watching the Republicans publicly demonstrate their commitment to blocking health care reform by filibustering. Instead, they will applaud their champions. I am reminded of a line from a poem by Erica Jong, "The best slave doesn't need to be beaten; she beats herself." Jong was writing of women cooperating in their own oppression, but it is applicable to the health  care reform mess as well. The majority of people working so avidly against health care reform are themselves vulnerable to the capricious whims of the health insurance industry, nonetheless they choose to reject reform as a socialist plot cooked up by President Obama to destroy the country, filling message boards with cries of, "Stop Obama care!"

Dont't take my word for it. Decide for yourself, but first read some highlights from the Daily Kos poll:

63% of Republicans believe Obama is a socialist while 21% disagree and 16% are not sure.

42% believe Obama was born in the U.S. while 36% do not, with 22% undecided. 

53% believe Sarah Palin is more qualified to be president than Obama while 14% do not and 33% are undecided. (I'm betting they also believe that the world is flat.)

31% believe that Obama is a racist and hates white people, while 36% say he is not a racist and 33% are undecided. (Clearly these people haven't been victims of racism long enough. I've never been undecided as to whether or not someone was a racist.)

24% say they believe Obama wants terrorists to win while 43% say Obama does not want terrorists to win, and 33% are undecided.

Not surprisingly, given that they believe Obama to be a foreign born, terrorism supporting, racist purveyor of socialism, 39% say Obama should be impeached; 32% disagree and 29% are undecided.

All of the questions were not about Obama:

67% say the only way for an individual to go to heaven is through Jesus Christ while 15% say it is possible through another faith, and 18% are undecided. (For some reason it gives these good Christian folks a real charge to think of others burning in hellfire.)

91% support the death penalty, 4% do not, and 5% aren't sure. (It's the undecided folks that really bug me. It's either yes or no, make up your mind!)

68% oppose Congress making it easier for workers to form and join labor unions, 7% favor it and 25% are undecided. (Now that corporations are persons, if they treat their workers unfairly, we can send the corporations to therapy to learn how to deal with their issues.)

For more results from the poll, check out Daily Kos. To read an interesting analysis of the poll results click here.

Two Voices Remember: The 50th Anniversary of the Sit-in of the Greensboro Four

One of the unexpected pleasures of blogging is making new friends. I met Nance Meeker, Mature Landscaping, through a mutual friend, Jack, Self-Sufficient Steward. Recently, Nance, a fellow southerner, proposed that we co-write a blog entry to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Sit-in of the Greensboro Four. The sit-in by four college students at the Woolworth’s lunch counter marked the start of the modern civil rights movement. This is a rather long entry, Nance and I each had a lot to say about how and why the sit-in resonates with each of us. Our voices alternate, weaving our independently written pieces into what I hope is a cohesive whole.

Nance: February 1st marks the 50th anniversary of the Sit-in of The Greensboro Four, an historic event which, due to the media attention it received and the momentum it launched for desegregation, has been called the Dawn of the Modern Civil Rights Movement. My hometown marked the anniversary by opening the International Civil Rights Center and Museum at the old Woolworth & Co. building on Market Street on January 20th. The museum includes both a full-sized restoration and a child-sized replica of the lunch counter…and that seems fitting, for I have a child-sized, vivid memory of the time and the place.

Before the sit-ins, that particular Woolworth’s was familiar to me for Saturday morning visits to kid-level displays of the kind of five-and-dime, “Made In Japan” trinkets no six year old could resist; it’s lunch counter gained my devotion for vanilla-spiked fountain Coca Colas and buttery grilled cheese sandwiches on white bread…manna meant for all children. Black children could shop at Woolworth’s, but they could only eat standing with their parents at a designated “Non-Whites” area at the end of the big counter…and few parents would choose such a meal for their child.


By the time of the sit-ins, I was twelve and had outgrown Saturday visits to the dime-store after dance class; in seventh grade, I was being taught to read the newspaper seriously and to study current events as part of the flow of history. I was old enough to understand that something monumental, and monumentally sensible, was happening in our hometown. It seemed to pre-teen me that the grown-up rules for segregation, the visible manifestations of Jim Crow laws that were sometimes marked with signs and sometimes merely “understood,” were just stupid. I was sorry for the tension stirred by the protests, for there was real fear that harm would come to the college kids thought to be primarily involved, but I was pulling for them.

Sheria: I was born March 26, 1955 in Wilson County. The year before I was born, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its first decision in Brown v. the Topeka Kansas Board of Education, striking down legal segregation.

Nance: To a child’s mind, separate doors, separate toilets and water fountains, the designated back seats of the bus, and the forbidden seats at the counter were all in the same class as the arbitrary rules of children’s games like Keep-Away, Red-Rover, and Hop-Scotch: somebody just made up such silliness and it only worked if everybody agreed to play the game. The Sit-in marked the day some smart folks refused to play. My 12-year-old opinion was: “Well, it’s high time and I’m glad somebody was brave.” I didn’t realize that the brave folks were not all that much older than me, but that would have made sense to me, too. I know now that the sit-in did not occur in a vacuum, that there had been a long history of resistance to Jim Crow and substantial challenges to segregation elsewhere in the country that had grown over the previous twenty years. Now, it’s clear that the actions of the Four could not have been attempted in the South at an earlier time.

On February 1, 1960, four young AT&T College students, Ezell Blair, David Richmond, Joseph McNeil, and Franklin McCain (seventeen years old) did a little late afternoon school supply and sundry shopping (toothpaste!) at Woolworth. When they had made their purchases, they sat down at the Whites-Only lunch counter and ordered coffee and doughnuts. This was so unprecedented, so unlikely a thing, that they were ignored and remained un-served until Woolworth’s closed at 5:00 p.m. Franklin McCain recalls:


"I think the waitress and the counter people were so perplexed and so surprised they tried to ignore us: 'They're not, they can't be sitting there! They're not sitting there! I can't believe what I'm seeing!'"

Sheria: I wasn’t quite five years old when four young AT&T College students, Ezell Blair, David Richmond, Joseph McNeil, and Franklin McCain sat down at the Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, NC and ordered coffee and donuts. It was 1960 and I don’t remember the sit-ins but I know all about them. The adults in my life talked about them for years.

Nance: It was some time before anyone thought to call the store’s owner. According to the timeline provided by the Greensboro News and Record, on February 2nd, the Greensboro Four were joined by twenty-five men, along with five young women from Greensboro’s Bennett College for “colored” women. By February 3rd, sixty-three of the sixty-five available seats at the lunch counter were occupied by protesters, and, on February 4th, five young white women from Greensboro Women’s College (UNC-G, today) joined them. There were many unsung heroes in those first days.


Ann Dearsley, Jeannie Seaman and Marilyn Lott were among the Greensboro Women’s College students. In an excellent interview with the Greensboro News and Record (January 17, 2010), Ann Dearsley-Vernon recalls:

“We just read it in the newspaper one morning, and by mid-afternoon or early afternoon, we arrived” …The girls ordered nothing. The waitress backed away. An arts major, Dearsley-Vernon began sketching faces in the crowd on her lined notebook paper — even as, at one point, someone pressed a knife against the back of her Woman’s College jacket. The young women stayed until closing time but did not come back again... As the women stood up for their principles, there was still the matter of getting back to campus once the store closed.


Realizing their predicament, a group of young black men — who Dearsley-Vernon would come to learn were members of the N.C. A&T football team — joined hands around them and escorted the three past the angry crowd.


Back at school, the women were chastised by school officials and told they would have to leave. That changed after parents intervened, but Dearsley-Vernon didn’t get to walk across the stage to receive her diploma. Still, she doesn’t regret being guided by her convictions that day.


“Of many actions in my life,” she said, “this is one I would do again.”

The protest group eventually grew to over 300 (on a day known as Black Saturday) and was largely peaceful, although there was a regular police presence and unnecessary arrests were made. Logistics during the protest were a problem; the protesters could not risk being stopped along the route to Woolworth’s. The people who provided assistance to the original Four and who joined them to keep the counter manned throughout store hours are often referred to collectively as “The Fifth Man.”

Edward Lee McAdoo remembers being spit upon and threatened as he provided transportation from the colleges to the sit-in.

McAdoo’s job was to drive reinforcements to the lunch counter demonstration in his ’57 Galaxy convertible when the protesters thinned.

“David said, 'Cause, we’ve got to keep those chairs filled,’” McAdoo said, referring to his cousin, David Richmond. When McAdoo wasn’t giving rides, he sat alongside the others at the counter. Beginning the second day of the protest, he kept coming back.

“He dropped everything and became our main supporter,’’ Jibreel Khazan (formerly Ezell Blair, Jr.) said of the former Marine. “He was very upset that he came home from service and was treated like a second-class citizen.”

McAdoo had to be extra careful as he rumbled back and forth downtown.

“I knew I couldn’t get arrested because I had a job to do,” McAdoo, now 74, recalled. “I had to get the people there. When the police tried to make an arrest, I’d move back in the crowd.”

Of course, the real heroes were the four young men who dared to do the unthinkable first, and who kept coming back again and again…the backbone of the beginning of the end of segregated dining in America. There is some disagreement about whether the protests were planned solely by these young men or whether the female students at Bennett College, along with a professor, were the original planners, but the Greensboro Four had the weight of the entire history of the country riding on their shoulders that first day.

Sheria: What I remember is the segregation that continued to prevail long after those first sit-ins. My mother would take me, and my younger sister and brother with her when she went shopping. The grocery store was fine. It was a black grocery store. Not black owned, the owner was white, but it was on the black side of town and only black people shopped at the store. Of course, we weren’t black then; we were colored.

Nance: The news coverage these early North Carolina events received sparked lunch-counter sit-ins throughout America, an unstoppable movement that changed everything for the country. Back home in Greensboro, the protest ran on (only briefly interrupted by a few days of store closure) until July 26th, the day Woolworth’s on Market Street was formally desegregated.

Sheria: However, there wasn’t much shopping on the black side of town, and we had to venture downtown for clothing and toiletries. Some of the stores had signs that proclaimed, “No Colored Allowed;” however, most of them wanted money, regardless of the color of the hand that proffered it. Many of them had separate entrances, a white only entrance and a colored only entrance. Some allowed us to enter through the same door but had restrictions on how we could shop. There was a ladies clothing store called Barshays. I remember my mother shopping for a hat there and the sales clerk made her put a white cloth over her hair before she could try on any hats. Only black women had to do that. Still, it was better than the stores where you couldn’t try on any items of clothing and all sales were final.

I learned practical things like which stores had two water fountains and two bathrooms. If there was only one fountain and one bathroom it was marked white only. If there was a second fountain or bathroom, it would be for colored only. Downtown Wilson merchants ignored the Brown decisions of 1954 and 1955 that declared that separate but equal was inherently unequal, and that segregation was outlawed.

However, my biggest disappointment was that I couldn’t sit at the lunch counter at the dime store and have a soda with crushed ice. Wilson had a Roses Five and Dime Store and it sold everything. I was always thrilled to follow my mother around, staring at all the wondrous items that lined the store’s shelves. At the front, near the checkout line, was the lunch counter where people sat on stools and ate hot dogs, and ice cream, and drank sodas with a straw. Except black people weren’t allowed to sit at the counter and had to go down to the far end where there was a sign, Coloreds. We could purchase food and drink but we couldn't sit down at the counter to consume them.

In spite of Brown, in spite of those four young men sitting at that lunch counter in Greensboro, the restrictions, the blatant practices of racism continued until I was a teenager. My memories of this are clear and are my own, not stories told to me by the adults. Wilson’s famous barbecue restaurant for many years was a place named Parker’s Barbecue. It had a huge dining room but I didn’t see it until I was in my teens. Colored people had to purchase their food at the back door; we weren’t allowed to come inside and sit down. Even after the law changed, customs didn’t change.

The Wilson that I grew up in had a white waiting room and a colored waiting room at the health clinic, the train station, the doctor’s office, even the stone benches in front of the court house where designated by skin color. The facilities were never equal in quality. Sometimes, white people my age who grew up in Wilson tell me that they don’t remember this. I used to think that they were either intentionally lying or just damn stupid. However, I’ve come to another conclusion. I think that when you are not the object of the discrimination, that the existence of it often makes no impression on you; perhaps oppression only leaves lasting scars on its victims.

Sometimes, people who are much younger than I am, ask why we tolerated it, why we didn’t just push for equality, after all the law was on our side. I tell them the other story that the grownups talked about when I was growing up. In August 1956, when I was 17 months old, Emmett Till, age 14, was murdered in Mississippi.

Two white men, J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant, beat him, gouged out one of his eyes, and shot him in the head. Then they attached a 70 pound cotton gin fan to his body and threw him in the Tallahatchie River. His crime was being too familiar with the wife of one of the perpetrators [the details vary, some say he whistled at her and other stories say that he said “bye baby” as he was leaving the store where she worked]. The all male and all white jury deliberated 67 minutes before acquitting the two men. Following the trial, Look magazine paid Milam and Bryant $4,000 to tell their story. Double jeopardy had attached and so the two admitted to killing Emmett Till, explaining that they initially planned to just teach him a lesson but that Till was defiant and refused to show any fear, and they killed him to make an example of him.

Milam died in 1980 and Bryant in 1994, both of cancer. Neither ever expressed any remorse for what they had done.

I find what those four young men began at the Woolworth’s lunch counter nothing short of miraculous. I don’t know that I would have had that much bravery. They were college students; one of them was only 17. I think that they surely must have had some fear; I have no doubt that they knew the story of Emmett Till.

Nance: Within that first week of lunch-counter desegregation, around 300 blacks sat for a meal at Woolworth’s five-and-dime. I like to think that some of them were able to relax enough eventually to enjoy some pretty good grilled cheese sandwiches.

Sheria: On this 50th anniversary of that glorious act of civil disobedience, I salute Ezell Blair, David Richmond, Joseph McNeil, and Franklin McCain and all of those brave men and women that joined them day after day at that lunch counter and at lunch counters across America. The world in which I live now is so different that there are times when I almost forget what it was like to live in a world that pretended that separate was equal; almost…

Idealism Is Not a Four-Letter Word

A good friend recently observed, "Democracy is about majority rule, and Obama wants consensus." I actually agree with my friend's broader argument that Obama needs to assert authority and take the reins if he is to succesfully move his agenda forward, especially health care reform. However, I fundamentally disagree that democrary is about majority rule.

I think that it is a valid assessment of what Democracy has become, but the truth of what Democracy is intended to do is to make certain that the rights of the few aren't trampled by the many. That was the intent of the founding fathers in their drafting of the consititution.

This isn't just supposition on my part; it's based on the writings of Jefferson, Franklin, and others on the principles and purposes of government. The founding fathers were well read men, familiar with the theories and principals of government. They certainly had their flaws, but they did not lightly undertake creating a new nation. It's not the majority that needs protecting; by sheer numbers they have power to do as they please. The constitution protects the few, those whose voices who would otherwise be drowned out. Democracy is not majority rule, real democracy is about consensus.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

The rights spoken of are individual rights and the very purpose of government is to protect those rights, not to ensure that the majority has its rights enforced at the expense of the minority. The tragedy is that too many elected officials have forgotten that and so have the people. Majority rule is simply a variation on "might makes right" which is the very ideology rejected by the Declaration of Independence and our Constitution.

The right often references "majority rule." I see it in the comments left after news stories and blog posts. They declare that Obama is ruining this country and trying to take away the rights of the majority and give them to illegal aliens and minorities. If the concept of majority rule were allowed to fully play out, personal liberties and freedoms would wax and wane dependent upon who was in power. I hate to think what would have become of the civil rights movement under a philosophy of majority rule. Indeed, most progressive change takes place in spite of majority rule, implemented and pushed forward by laws designed to protect the rights of groups that are marginalized by the majority. Government cannot be run on a principal of majority rule; if it were, someone would always be being shafted.

Is this an idealistic view of democracy? Of course it is, but re-read the Declaration of Independence, and the U.S. Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights. All of these writings, which form the foundation of our government, are filled with idealism. To be idealistic isn't to be naive, it is to believe that striving to be better than we are is what makes us human; idealism is the very core of the best of humanity.

I was drawn to Obama's candidacy because of his idealism, his belief that we all could be better than we are. Has his idealism made him vulnerable? I think the answer is yes, but I also think that he's learning how to balance his idealism in an arena that does not value idealism or its mate, integrity.

Idealism is not about being a starry-eyed dreamer, it's about adhering to your principals; it's about believing that how you accomplish your goals is just as important as accomplishing them.

Btw, Jack, I read your comment and I will get around to answering your intriguing question.

Conservatives Win; Progressives Whine: How progressives handed conservatives a win in Massachusetts

I've never been so depressed by the results of a another state's election of someone to the U.S. Senate. Republican Scott Brown defeated Democrat Martha Oakley for the U.S. Senate seat left vacant by the death of Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy. Brown ran on his party's platform--he opposed gun control, tax increases, gay marriage, and partial-birth abortion and supported waterboarding to interrogate suspected terrorists. He also promised to be the "41st vote" against the health care reform bill now in Congress. Coakley ran on her party's platform as well--she supported the Democratic health care bill, abortion rights, gay marriage, and climate change legislation with a "cap-and-trade" mechanism. However, she opposed Obama's planned troop increase in Afghanistan.

The one point on which I agree with the commenters following the news story that I just read is that Brown's victory is evidence that a lot of people oppose health care reform or Obama care as they like to call it. Indeed, they oppose President Obama's agenda in its entirety. Perhaps that's why I still think that getting some version of health care reform is the right thing to do. Too many rightwingers oppose even the flawed Senate version of the legislation for the bill to be totally without merit. The right doesn't want this bill passed. Looks as if they may get their wish.


I don't believe that the right is responsible for this loss of a senate seat; I think that fault rests squarely on the backs of the progressive left. We refuse to understand the political game. We whine like spoiled children and clamor for instant results. When we don't get everything that we want in the first battle, we declare that our leadership has betrayed us.

One thing that the right consistently has is solidarity. No matter how whacko some of its members are--Palin, Beck, Limbaugh--they never publicly turn on them. On the other hand, progressive liberals have been quick to attack every decision made by Obama that doesn't fit with the progressive agenda, which only helps to feed the anti-adminsitration fervor of the conservative right.


The right never publicly abandoned former president George W. Bush even after he led us into multiple non-declared wars,, increased the deficit by trillions, and set into motion the events that would lead to the largest bailout in U.S. history. On the other hand, the progressive left whines and stomps its feet because Obama won't just paddle Joe Lieberman and any other recalcitrant Democrat. We scream for Obama to shove health care reform through even though the office of the president does not wield that sort of power under our system of government. There is still this little document known as the Constitution which clearly provides that there are three branches of government and delineates the power of each. Behind the scenes negotiations and compromises take place because that's the way it was designed to be. If we want to change it, a constitutional amendment is needed. It's not an impossible task but it's not a simple one either. Neither Obama nor his staff can simply circumvent procedures. There is no authority that permits the president or his staff to  threaten difficult  Senators to get them to vote for the president's agenda.


The progressive left has been busy publicly criticizing the administration, forgetting the adage that a house divided among itself cannot stand. Meanwhile, the right has been moving in lockstep. How else to explain Brown's win in a state in which Obama won by a 26 point margin in 2008 and that elected perhaps the most liberal senator ever to seve nine terms? I am depressed but not because the conservative right has won a victory but because the progressive left handed it to them gift wrapped.

Sometimes The Sky Really Is Falling: The Conrad/Gregg Commission Bill

It just goes to show you; it's always something.--Roseanne Roseannadanna (Gilda Radner)

I just read Senate Bill 2853, entitled the Bipartisan Task Force for Responsible Fiscal Action. It's also referred to as the Conrad/Gregg Commission bill. By any name, it smells like rotting meat. A fellow blogger, Nance of Mature Landscaping, alerted me to this nasty little piece of work making its way to a Congressional vote.

Bill Content
The bill creates a bi-partisan task force to "to assure the long-term fiscal stability and economic security of the Federal Government of the United States, and to expand future prosperity and growth for all Americans." We all want fiscal stability, so what's wrong with this bill?

It assigns unheard of power to the task force that it creates. The 18 member task force is to review our existing fiscal imbalance, analyze the factors contributing to the imbalance, and propose solutions including legislation. Still doesn't sound like the sky is falling, but it gets more interesting. We need to break out the hard hats.

Any legislation submitted by the task force for consideration is to be fast tracked. Instead of the usual process of evaluation, discussion, submission of amendments, time for the public to contact their elected officials, all the standard practices of government, legislation from this task force will be excused from any meaningful review and discussion.

The bill provides that the task force submit its report and proposed legislation no later than November 9, 2010. Motions to consider the proposed legislation can be made beginning two days after it is submitted and a vote on the motion must be taken with no allowance for raising points of order or any other mechanisms to delay voting on a motion to consider the proposed legislation exactly as written. Debate is limited to 100 hours evenly divided between those for the proposed bill and those against. The proposed bill may not be amended. Ultimately, Senators and Representatives are limited to voting yes or no with insufficient time for consideration of whatever the proposed legislation from this task force contains.

Real Life Impact
SB 2853 is a not so thinly disguised attempt to place in the hands of the task force it creates the authority to dismantle Social Security and Medicare. The fast track status accorded legislation proposed by the task force will do an end run around any opportunity for advocacy groups to offer a rebuttal to any proposed legislation. The omnibus bill that is likely to be proposed will be able to be submitted for consideration to the House and the Senate within two days of its release from the task force; if you have ever attempted to review a piece of federal legislation you know that reading the average bill takes a lot longer than two days. Such a bill could be presented, debated, and passed before anyone not on the task force knows for certain what provisions it contains.

As time consuming as is the legislative process, shortening that process is a bad move. No bill is ever perfect in its first incarnation. The legislative process is essential to ensure that no bill is signed into law without close and detailed scrutiny.

It is not uncommon, indeed, it's highly likely that the longer a bill is, the more there is an increased likelihood of the inclusion of a rider or two that is often undiscovered except through the  time consuming process of debate and examination that typically precedes adoption of new legislation. The amendment process provides an opportunity to correct oversights, to delete obstructions, and to just make the bill better.

You Can Do Something
This bill hasn't received a lot of media attention. On its face, it appears rather innocous. At no point does the bill reference Social Security or Medicare, or any social programs for that matter. However, the power that this bill proposes to grant will make it possible for anti-Social Security and anti-Medicare foes to steamroll over these programs in the guise of fiscal responsibility, to severely decrease funding for these programs or to cut them out entirely.

The Senate will be voting on the Conrad/Gregg Commission Bill (SB 2853) this week. Your senators need to hear from you. The National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare (NCPSSM) has designated tomorrow, January 19, as call in day.

You can contact your senators to tell them to vote no on SB 2853 by calling 800-998-0180. You will hear a short message explaining the urgency of contacting our senators, then the service will ask you to enter your Zip Code after which it will connect you with the offices of your senators.

You may also click this link to obtain direct contact information for our senators.

The video below from NCSSPM provides a clear critique of the potential damage from passage of this bill.

The Concerns of All Humanity

An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dr. King was a man of words and his words reveal much that resonates with me. The above quotation is one of my favorites. It expresses what I believe to be at the core of hope for positive change. We are individuals and we are humankind. In the words of John Donne, "the death of any man diminishes me." The Christian Bible states the same concept in terms of being our brother's keeper. Other religions express the same concept of a responsibility to the whole of humanity that transcends individual needs and desires.

Dr. King conditions having a meaningful existence, what he calls "really living," on moving beyond viewing the world only through the lens of individual goals. To really live, we have to move beond a me centered life to a life in which we see ourselves as a part of the whole of humankind. In Tuesdays With Morrie, Morrie conveys a story of two waves rushing towards the shore. One fears crashing against the shoreline and becoming nothing except foam on the sea. The other wave is not afraid, stating, "I'm not just a wave, I'm part of the ocean."

This responsibility to each other is not an easy choice. It means being willing to sacrifice individual wants if such a sacrifice is necessary for the larger good. Many of us resist this path. Much of the opposition against health care reform is couched in terms of individual needs and an attempt to minimize the direness of the need: I don't want to have to pay more taxes; it's not fair that I have to pay for people who won't work to have health care; anybody who wants health care just has to go to an emergency room.

So strong is our love affair with individualism that we continually measure not whether other people need our help but whether they deserve our help. When our elected officials discuss funding for social welfare programs, invariably the discussion turns to the merit of the individuals who need the services of these programs. I confess that I do not understand this obsession with ascertaining if someone is deserving of help prior to providing assistance.

There are those who constantly declare that we are a Christian nation. I think that's a sweeping generalization that fails to take into account the diversity of beliefs in this country. Nonetheless, from what I know of the Bible, at no point does Christ ask of anyone seeking his help, "Do you deserve it?"

Dr. King's words remind us that our obligation to humankind is an absolute, that it is not for us to demand that those in need prove their worth to us in order to merit our concern. On this official celebration of the Dr. King's life and works, I can think of no better way to honor his memory than to embrace our collective responsibility for all of humanity.