Tag Archives: election

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Selma ~ In Memory of ~

03/21/2023 Nativegrl77

This month marks the 1965 marches in Selma, Alabama — a moment in American history that is layered with bravery, fear, hope, hatred, violence, perseverance, and triumph.

In many ways, Selma is the quintessential American story of people banding together against all odds to stand up for the promise of freedom and fairness. It is a story that deserves to be told, explored and understood by every American in this country.
Whether we realize it or not, every one of us was touched by this courageous moment that is often considered the emotional and political peak of the Civil Rights Movement.

It is because of events like the Selma marches … and the entire Civil Rights Movement … that makes the completing of the National Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall so important.

The construction of the Museum is more than halfway complete. But to ensure we can open the Museum’s doors in early fall of next year as scheduled requires additional support from those of us who understand the importance of building this place of remembrance, celebration and reconciliation. Please help keep us on track with a donation of $ 25 or more today.

When I think of African American history, I often think of Selma, Alabama and the Civil Rights crusaders who made the historic marches and all of the African-American heroes, famous and not famous, and the white supporters who came together to push freedom forward.

I’m thinking of people like Amelia Boynton who was beaten, tear-gassed, and left for dead during the Bloody Sunday March. Ms. Boynton lived to tell her story and she is now 103 years old. But it is up to people like you and me to build our Museum to make sure her brave story lives on forever.

That is why the Museum embarked on the very important task of interviewing people who were foot soldiers in the Civil Rights Movement, to give them the chance to tell their stories and have them preserved and shared in ways that resonate with people from all backgrounds.

So as we spend this month commemorating the heroes who courageously marched from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, please take your celebration one step further by making a special contribution of $ 25 or more to the Museum that will forever share this important history with the world.

On behalf of the entire Museum, thank you again for your leadership and support.
All the best,

Lonnie G. Bunch
Founding Director

~ Culture & History, ~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Brown V Board of Education ~~ Equality & Opportunity – Women’s History Month

03/15/2023 Nativegrl77

Brown v. Board of Education (1954)
PBS.org Image result for brown v board of education

Brown v. Board of Education (1954), now acknowledged as one of the greatest Supreme Court decisions of the 20th century, unanimously held that the racial segregation of children in public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Although the decision did not succeed in fully desegregating public education in the United States, it put the Constitution on the side of racial equality and galvanized the nascent civil rights movement into a full revolution. Image result for brown v board of education

In 1954, large portions of the United States had racially segregated schools, made legal by Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which held that segregated public facilities were constitutional so long as the black and white facilities were equal to each other. However, by the mid-twentieth century, civil rights groups set up legal and political, challenges to racial segregation. In the early 1950s, NAACP lawyers brought class action lawsuits on behalf of black schoolchildren and their families in Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware, seeking court orders to compel school districts to let black students attend white public schools. Image result for brown v board of education

One of these class actions, Brown v. Board of Education was filed against the Topeka, Kansas school board by representative-plaintiff Oliver Brown, parent of one of the children denied access to Topeka’s white schools. Brown claimed that Topeka’s racial segregation violated the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause because the city’s black and white schools were not equal to each other and never could be. The federal district court dismissed his claim, ruling that the segregated public schools were “substantially” equal enough to be constitutional under the Plessy doctrine. Brown appealed to the Supreme Court, which consolidated and then reviewed all the school segregation actions together. Thurgood Marshall, who would in 1967 be appointed the first black justice of the Court, was chief counsel for the plaintiffs Image result for brown v board of education .

Thanks to the astute leadership of Chief Justice Earl Warren, the Court spoke in a unanimous decision written by Warren himself. The decision held that racial segregation of children in public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which states that “no state shall make or enforce any law which shall … deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The Court noted that Congress, when drafting the Fourteenth Amendment in the 1860s, did not expressly intend to require integration of public schools. On the other hand, that Amendment did not prohibit integration. In any case, the Court asserted that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees equal education today. Public education in the 20th century, said the Court, had become an essential component of a citizen’s public life, forming the basis of democratic citizenship, normal socialization, and professional training. In this context, any child denied a good education would be unlikely to succeed in life. Where a state, therefore, has undertaken to provide universal education, such education becomes a right that must be afforded equally to both blacks and whites.

Were the black and white schools “substantially” equal to each other, as the lower courts had found? After reviewing psychological studies showing black girls in segregated schools had low racial self-esteem, the Court concluded that separating children on the basis of race creates dangerous inferiority complexes that may adversely affect black children’s ability to learn. The Court concluded that, even if the tangible facilities were equal between the black and white schools, racial segregation in schools is “inherently unequal” and is thus always unconstitutional. At least in the context of public schools, Plessy v. Ferguson was overruled. In the Brown II case a decided year later, the Court ordered the states to integrate their schools “with all deliberate speed.”

Opposition to Brown I and II reached an apex in Cooper v. Aaron (1958), when the Court ruled that states were constitutionally required to implement the Supreme Court’s integration orders. Widespread racial integration of the South was achieved by the late 1960s and 1970s. In the meantime, the equal protection ruling in Brown spilled over into other areas of the law and into the political arena as well. Scholars now point out that Brown v. Board was not the beginning of the modern civil rights movement, but there is no doubt that it constituted a watershed moment in the struggle for racial equality in America.

History of Brown v. Board of Education

UScourts.gov

Re-enactment – Use a readers theater format to re-enact the case.
History of Brown v. Board of Education – Learn about the background and similar cases.
Justice Thurgood Marshall Profile – Read about Justice Thurgood Marshall’s early life, education, and legal career.

The Plessy Decision ~~ Separate but Equal?

Although the Declaration of Independence stated that “All men are created equal,” due to the institution of slavery, this statement was not to be grounded in law in the United States until after the Civil War (and, arguably, not completely fulfilled for many years thereafter). In 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified and finally put an end to slavery. Moreover, the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) strengthened the legal rights of newly freed slaves by stating, among other things, that no state shall deprive anyone of either “due process of law” or of the “equal protection of the law.” Finally, the Fifteenth Amendment (1870) further strengthened the legal rights of newly freed slaves by prohibiting states from denying anyone the right to vote due to race.

Despite these Amendments, African Americans were often treated differently than whites in many parts of the country, especially in the South. In fact, many state legislatures enacted laws that led to the legally mandated segregation of the races. In other words, the laws of many states decreed that blacks and whites could not use the same public facilities, ride the same buses, attend the same schools, etc. These laws came to be known as Jim Crow laws. Although many people felt that these laws were unjust, it was not until the 1890s that they were directly challenged in court. In 1892, an African-American man named Homer Plessy refused to give up his seat to a white man on a train in New Orleans, as he was required to do by Louisiana state law. For this action he was arrested. Plessy, contending that the Louisiana law separating blacks from whites on trains violated the “equal protection clause” of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, decided to fight his arrest in court. By 1896, his case had made it all the way to the United States Supreme Court. By a vote of 8-1, the Supreme Court ruled against Plessy. In the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, Justice Henry Billings Brown, writing the majority opinion, stated that:

“The object of the [Fourteenth] amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the equality of the two races before the law, but in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to endorse social, as distinguished from political, equality. . . If one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane.”

The lone dissenter, Justice John Marshal Harlan, interpreting the Fourteenth Amendment another way, stated, “Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.” Justice Harlan’s dissent would become a rallying cry for those in later generations that wished to declare segregation unconstitutional.

Sadly, as a result of the Plessy decision, in the early twentieth century the Supreme Court continued to uphold the legality of Jim Crow laws and other forms of racial discrimination. In the case of Cumming v. Richmond (Ga.) County Board of Education (1899), for instance, the Court refused to issue an injunction preventing a school board from spending tax money on a white high school when the same school board voted to close down a black high school for financial reasons. Moreover, in Gong Lum v. Rice (1927), the Court upheld a school’s decision to bar a person of Chinese descent from a “white” school.

The Road to Brown

(Note: Some of the case information is from Patterson, James T. Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy. Oxford University Press; New York, 2001.)

Early Cases

Despite the Supreme Court’s ruling in Plessy and similar cases, many people continued to press for the abolition of Jim Crow and other racially discriminatory laws. One particular organization that fought for racial equality was the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) founded in 1909. For about the first 20 years of its existence, it tried to persuade Congress and other legislative bodies to enact laws that would protect African Americans from lynchings and other racist actions. Beginning in the 1930s, though, the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Education Fund began to turn to the courts to try to make progress in overcoming legally sanctioned discrimination. From 1935 to 1938, the legal arm of the NAACP was headed by Charles Hamilton Houston. Houston, together with Thurgood Marshall, devised a strategy to attack Jim Crow laws by striking at them where they were perhaps weakest—in the field of education. Although Marshall played a crucial role in all of the cases listed below, Houston was the head of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund while Murray v. Maryland and Missouri ex rel Gaines v. Canada were decided. After Houston returned to private practice in 1938, Marshall became head of the Fund and used it to argue the cases of Sweat v. Painter and McLaurin v. Oklahoma Board of Regents of Higher Education.

Murray v. Maryland (1936)

Disappointed that the University of Maryland School of Law was rejecting black applicants solely because of their race, beginning in 1933 Thurgood Marshall (who was himself rejected from this law school because of its racial acceptance policies) decided to challenge this practice in the Maryland court system. Before a Baltimore City Court in 1935, Marshall argued that Donald Gaines Murray was just as qualified as white applicants to attend the University of Maryland’s School of Law and that it was solely due to his race that he was rejected. Furthermore, he argued that since the “black” law schools which Murray would otherwise have to attend were nowhere near the same academic caliber as the University’s law school, the University was violating the principle of “separate but equal.” Moreover, Marshall argued that the disparities between the “white” and “black” law schools were so great that the only remedy would be to allow students like Murray to attend the University’s law school. The Baltimore City Court agreed and the University then appealed to the Maryland Court of Appeals. In 1936, the Court of Appeals also ruled in favor of Murray and ordered the law school to admit him. Two years later, Murray graduated.

Missouri ex rel Gaines v. Canada (1938)

Beginning in 1936, the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund decided to take on the case of Lloyd Gaines, a graduate student of Lincoln University (an all-black college) who applied to the University of Missouri Law School but was denied because of his race. The State of Missouri gave Gaines the option of either attending an all-black law school that it would build (Missouri did not have any all-black law schools at this time) or having Missouri help to pay for him to attend a law school in a neighboring state. Gaines rejected both of these options, and, employing the services of Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, he decided to sue the state in order to attend the University of Missouri’s law school. By 1938, his case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, and, in December of that year, the Court sided with him. The six-member majority stated that since a “black” law school did not currently exist in the State of Missouri, the “equal protection clause” required the state to provide, within its boundaries, a legal education for Gaines. In other words, since the state provided legal education for white students, it could not send black students, like Gaines, to school in another state.

Sweat v. Painter (1950)

Encouraged by their victory in Gaines’ case, the NAACP continued to attack legally sanctioned racial discrimination in higher education. In 1946, an African American man named Heman Sweat applied to the University of Texas’ “white” law school. Hoping that it would not have to admit Sweat to the “white” law school if a “black” school already existed, elsewhere on the University’s campus, the state hastily set up an underfunded “black” law school. At this point, Sweat employed the services of Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and sued to be admitted to the University’s “white” law school. He argued that the education that he was receiving in the “black” law school was not of the same academic caliber as the education that he would be receiving if he attended the “white” law school. When the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1950, the Court unanimously agreed with him, citing as its reason the blatant inequalities between the University’s law school (the school for whites) and the hastily erected school for blacks. In other words, the “black” law school was “separate,” but not “equal.” Like the Murray case, the Court found the only appropriate remedy for this situation was to admit Sweat to the University’s law school.

McLaurin v. Oklahoma Board of Regents of Higher Education (1950)

In 1949, the University of Oklahoma admitted George McLaurin, an African American, to its doctoral program. However, it required him to sit apart from the rest of his class, eat at a separate time and table from white students, etc. McLaurin, stating that these actions were both unusual and resulting in adverse effects on his academic pursuits, sued to put an end to these practices. McLaurin employed Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund to argue his case, a case which eventually went to the U.S. Supreme Court. In an opinion delivered on the same day as the decision in Sweat, the Court stated that the University’s actions concerning McLaurin were adversely affecting his ability to learn and ordered that they cease immediately.

Brown v. Board of Education (1954, 1955)

The case that came to be known as Brown v. Board of Education was actually the name given to five separate cases that were heard by the U.S. Supreme Court concerning the issue of segregation in public schools. These cases were Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Briggs v. Elliot, Davis v. Board of Education of Prince Edward County (VA.), Boiling v. Sharpe, and Gebhart v. Ethel. While the facts of each case are different, the main issue in each was the constitutionality of state-sponsored segregation in public schools. Once again, Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund handled these cases.

Although it acknowledged some of the plaintiffs’/plaintiffs claims, a three-judge panel at the U.S. District Court that heard the cases ruled in favor of the school boards. The plaintiffs then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

When the cases came before the Supreme Court in 1952, the Court consolidated all five cases under the name of Brown v. Board of Education. Marshall personally argued the case before the Court. Although he raised a variety of legal issues on appeal, the most common one was that separate school systems for blacks and whites were inherently unequal, and thus violate the “equal protection clause” of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Furthermore, relying on sociological tests, such as the one performed by social scientist Kenneth Clark, and other data, he also argued that segregated school systems had a tendency to make black children feel inferior to white children, and thus such a system should not be legally permissible.

Meeting to decide the case, the Justices of the Supreme Court realized that they were deeply divided over the issues raised. While most wanted to reverse Plessy and declare segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional, they had various reasons for doing so. Unable to come to a solution by June 1953 (the end of the Court’s 1952-1953 term), the Court decided to rehear the case in December 1953. During the intervening months, however, Chief Justice Fred Vinson died and was replaced by Gov. Earl Warren of California. After the case was reheard in 1953, Chief Justice Warren was able to do something that his predecessor had not—i.e. bring all of the Justices to agree to support a unanimous decision declaring segregation in public schools unconstitutional. On May 14, 1954, he delivered the opinion of the Court, stating that “We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. . .”

Expecting opposition to its ruling, especially in the southern states, the Supreme Court did not immediately try to give direction for the implementation of its ruling. Rather, it asked the attorney generals of all states with laws permitting segregation in their public schools to submit plans for how to proceed with desegregation. After still more hearings before the Court concerning the matter of desegregation, on May 31, 1955, the Justices handed down a plan for how it was to proceed; desegregation was to proceed with “all deliberate speed.” Although it would be many years before all segregated school systems were to be desegregated, Brown and Brown II (as the Courts plan for how to desegregate schools came to be called) were responsible for getting the process underway.

resource: PBS.org UScourts.gov Dec 9, 1952 – May 17, 1954

60 plus years and the struggle for Equity and Opportunity continues! In this 21st Century we still have folks pushing separate – Nativegrl77

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44 Women Who Have Run for President

03/13/2023 Nativegrl77

Women Presidential Candidates

Women Who Ran for President

By Jone Johnson Lewis

Women’s History Expert

Who were the early women candidates for president? Hillary Clinton in her 2008 run for the Democratic nomination for US President came the closest so far that any woman has come to winning the nomination of a major political party in the United States. But Clinton is not the first woman to run for United States President, and not even the first to run for a major party’s nomination. Here’s a list of the female presidential candidates, arranged chronologically by each woman’s first campaign for the office. The list is current through the 2012 election; women running in 2016 will be added after that election’s over.

Who was the first woman to run for president?

What woman ran for US president first? And which women have run since?

73208640.jpg - Kean Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Images — American feminist politician and radical Victoria Claflin Woodhull and her sister Tennessee Claflin attempt to assert their right to vote in New York and are denied, circa 1875. Kean Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Victoria Woodhull

Equal Rights Party: 1872
Humanitarian Party: 1892

Victoria Woodhull was the first woman to run for president in the United States. Frederick Douglass was nominated as Vice President, but there’s no record that he accepted. Woodhull was also known for her radicalism as a woman suffrage activist and her role in a sex scandal involving noted preacher of the time, Henry Ward Beecher. More »

Belva Lockwood

National Equal Rights Party: 1884, 1888Belva Lockwood, an activist for voting rights for women and for African Americans, was also one of the earliest women lawyers in the United States. Her campaign for president in 1884 was the first full-scale national campaign of a woman running for president. More »

Laura Clay

Democratic Party, 1920Laura Clay, a Southern women’s rights advocate who supported state suffrage amendments so that the Southern states could limit suffrage to white women, had her name placed in nomination at the 1920 Democratic National Convention, to which she was a delegate. More »

Grace Allen

Surprise Party: 1940Comedian and actress, partner with husband George Burns on the George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, Grace Allen ran for president in 1940 as a publicity stunt. She was not on the ballot — it was, after all, a stunt — but she did get write-in votes.

Margaret Chase Smith

Republican Party: 1964She was the first woman to have her name placed in nomination for president at a major political party’s convention. She was also the first woman elected to serve in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. More »

Charlene Mitchell

Communist Party: 1968Nominated by the (tiny) Communist Party in 1968, Charlene Mitchell was the first African American woman nominated for president in the United States. She was on the ballot in two states in the general election, and received less than 1,100 votes nationally.

Shirley Chisholm

Democratic Party: 1972A civil rights and women’s rights advocate, Shirley Chisholm ran for the Democratic nomination in 1972 with the slogan, “Unbought and Unbossed.” Her name was placed in nomination at the 1972 convention, and she won 152 delegates. More »

Patsy Takemoto Mink

Democratic Party: 1972She was the first Asian American to seek nomination as president by a major political party. She was on the Oregon primary ballot in 1972. She was at that time a member of the U.S. Congress, elected from Hawaii.

Bella Abzug

Democratic Party: 1972One of three women to seek the Democratic Party nomination for president in 1972, Abzug was at the time a member of Congress from the West Side of Manhattan. More »

Linda Osteen Jenness

Socialist Workers Party: 1972Underage for the Constitution’s requirements for the presidency, Linda Jenness ran against Nixon in 1972 and was on the ballot in 25 states. In three states where Jenness was not accepted for the ballot because of her age, Evelyn Reed was in the presidential slot. Their vote total was less than 70,000 nationally.

~ In the Library

Terry McMillan excerpted in Essence 2008 … Black History is American History

03/12/2023 Nativegrl77 1 Comment

By HILLEL ITALIE, AP National Writer Hillel Italie, Ap National Writer – Tue May 18, 6:29 am ET

NEW YORK – In honor of its 40th anniversary, Essence magazine is bringing back an old friend: Terry McMillan.

A few pages of excerpts from McMillan’s “Getting to Happy,” a sequel to her million-selling “Waiting to Exhale,” will appear in the next four issues of Essence, starting with the June edition, which came out this week. It’s a familiar place for McMillan, whose ties to the magazine date back to the 1970s, when she was in college and won an Essence writing contest.

“They’re like family,” McMillan, whose book comes out this fall, says of Essence, “and Essence readers have been a large part of my audience.”

Essence senior editor Patrik Henry Bass noted the magazine’s long support for black women writers, including Alice Walker, Toni Morrison and Gloria Naylor. When Essence started, Morrison’s debut novel, “The Bluest Eye,” had just been released. Walker was years away from writing “The Color Purple” and Toni Cade Bambara had yet to publish her first book.

“Nobody in the mainstream media was paying attention to these women,” Bass says.

“We wanted to do something special for the anniversary and when I heard that Terry was writing `Getting to Happy,’ I said, `Terry, what do you have so far? Could you do something original for us?’ And she said, `Well, I just finished the sequel and we thought, “Why not do excerpts?”‘ She couldn’t believe it, because so few people do excerpts anymore.”

McMillan’s “Waiting to Exhale,” published in 1992, tells of the personal and professional conflicts of four women living in Phoenix. The novel sold more than 1 million copies and is still cited as a landmark for convincing publishers of the large audience size for black fiction.

McMillan, whose other books include “How Stella Got Her Groove Back” and “The Interruption of Everything,” said she had no intention of writing a sequel to “Exhale” until she spoke at a church in Oakland, Calif., around a year ago. A resident of the Bay area, the author was still getting over her vicious, public feud with ex-husband Jonathan Plummer and read a poem about her experience.

“So these women responded big time to this poem, and there was this aura, women crying and all kinds of stuff. When it was time to sign books, there were women I had gone to college with, women who had been ex-professors, financial aid counselors. I spoke to them and realized how many of them had never been married, how many were divorced, how many never had children,” she says.

“I wanted to be able to dramatize that in some way. I didn’t want to tell just one woman’s story. And that’s when it dawned on me that I had four women I might be able to turn to. I got the paperback off the shelf and looked over it and said, `You know, they were the perfect candidates.'”

McMillan, 58, is a native of Port Huron, Mich., who, in 1987, self-published her first novel, “Mama.” She became a major best seller with “Disappearing Acts” and a superstar after “Waiting to Exhale.” Her appeal has long been her rough take on relationships, a knack that Essence seems to have appreciated long ago. The topic for the magazine’s writing contest: Are black men and women closer than they used to be, or further apart?

~ my 2cents ...

Marxism? Socialism? What ism are you?

03/11/2023 Nativegrl77 1 Comment

beaseedforchangestickersGREEN just another rant …

So, is anyone else finding it almost amusing to see how easy folks seem to throw out labels to describe the actions comments, and stances of candidates of the Democratic Party in a time when this government is seemingly in a kleptocracy moment while living a kakistocracy with a wannabe autocratic tendencies…

trump, is NOT popular and lost that vote by approximately 3Million. The plan to change America was set a while back, and it appears or seems Mcconnell and the other republicans like paul ryan were waiting for their chance …. and if you remember ryan’s comments, he said something about how he has been waiting for a “Unified republican government”. Thing is, no one really wanted that acting gig until the birther grabbed us by the …bleep and while setting all our government agencies on fire, the rule of law, regular order, and norms being replaced with dic-tator wannabe behavior. NOW, we need to trust the Democratic Party because our morality seems at risk each day in the hands of republicans! This makes you think back to at least POTUS41 … Not too long because you’ll get sick, but then reality steps in as POC continue to be targeted, police seem triggered more than ever and the problem of a certain group of males continues to gain access to guns hurting others and in most cases, themselves and that is a shame. We have more kids, babies, Seniors, POC massacred at malls, kids in school lockdown,but nowhere to hide, and never ever forget all the babies who have died. There are lockdown drills, some states have given teachers guns yet, and another mass shooting occurs, but nothing changes. There was a case of a teacher threatening to shoot her students after having just had training… It makes you wonder what could go wrong and sadly more unarmed black men and women are dying or are dead!

We have had so much Chaos and btw; the whole thoughts and prayers, thing, is NOT enough anymore.

The idea that an activist is actually run over, and some states decide to pass red flag laws but can’t improve background checks, is amazingly offensive. We should all know that even folks belonging to the NRA think better background checks are reasonable, but the gun industry is very strong and so when its fav pr organization says to jump many rs and most do jump … though in this era of trump many instances of violence have erupted, it also will be a timeline few will want to remember in the new year of 2021

We have to remember the bush timeline, aside from the obvious, is sad; the guy acted impetuously then drove our economy into a ditch literally while Wall Street’s “creative accounting procedures” finally came to an ugly head. There was once an epic documentary called House of cards by David Faber on CNBC. It was a cruel reminder and or an awakening at how greed affects the mind; it was a truthful documentation of the nasty journey our economy took … for whom, by whom, and how it (they) brought all of us down with them knowing the Government would pay for it all along …

Unfortunately, the current trump unreality show doesn’t look at all like the one we watched shortly after our financial system collapsed because this is a moment in time when the question below isn’t so far-fetched… or worse a dystopian society?

Are You having an existential crisis?

The existential crisis is something many people may face at one point or another in their lives when the world seems to become less meaningful and purposeful. People may question the inner logic of social systems, of their religion, of everything they have once held true, and they do so while becoming much more conscious of the brevity of life.

What is an existential issue?

Quite simply, these are issues that have to do with the plight of human existence, with the meaning of life, and what meaning, if any, our lives have.

trump has definitely set off a cause and effect with certain behaviors of human nature

… is anyone else questioning their inner selves? Hoping trump supporters are; of what it means to affirm one’s own individual personal choices and the consequences for such choices …and yes in this current hostile environment living an authentic life is important but at risk

If we have to subscribe to labels … idk call me a Marxist who believes in Socialism at this time. lol

I also believe in capitalism, but only with a lowercase c … We need someone who cares, who is socially responsible, and who believes the gap between the haves and none needs to shrink; school me …what can be wrong with caring for all the people of the US … not just the one percent… especially since that one percent has been wheeling and dealing; and that attitude about prosperity trickling down to Main street is still bs .

Obama was not a socialist or a Marxist … he was a centrist, a person whose political opinions may not be extreme: a person whose beliefs fall between those of liberals and conservatives … The question is, what do trump supporters call him now?

Nativegrl77