Fear Her… Fear Liberty

“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

“Fear Liberty” – Multimedia artwork, 12 July 2019, by D. Denise Dianaty

Fear her… Fear Liberty
Once upon a time of hope…
Liberty shone her light,
welcoming unto the world
Proclaiming covenant…
The America she shown upon
Now dims… now hides her light,
unkind… harsh… unwelcoming…
Denying covenant…
No quarter for those tempest-tost
No hope they may breath free
No more the Mother of Exiles
Covenant is broken…
Your huddled masses turned away…
Her lamp, not lifted… shuttered.
The Golden Door is dross.
Fear her… Fear Liberty.

©12 July 2019, by D. Denise Dianaty
This words of this poem, like so much of my poetry, were inspired by the creation of the artwork. The poem flowed from the process.

A Prayer for Our Nation and Hillary

There’s a palpable fear in our nation… a genuine disquiet weighting our hearts and minds, bearing down upon us, crushing our sense of peace. We hear loud voices proclaiming such hatred and bigotry and racism in the name of our Faith, in direct contradiction to our Savior’s own commandment.

John 13:34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” 


I OFFER THIS PRAYER FOR US ALL:
Gracious God of hope and love, we humbly pray
Your mercy upon our world, now and for all time. 
We honor You and pray Your will be done and Your peace that passes understanding come upon us. 
We come to You in humblest gratitude for all the blessings you have heaped upon America. 
We thank You for giving our hearts and our minds recognition of the truth. 
We honor You for the mission for which You call leaders to serve in the world. 
And, we thank You for Obama and Hillary who have heeded Your call to service. 
Father in Heaven, we ask Your healing grace upon the hearts of all humankind. 
We plead for Your intercession in the hearts and minds of all Your creation. 
In this time, there is fear in our hearts, Lord, for the future of our nation and the hope of our children. Fear and worry bear us down and lay weighted upon our hearts and our minds. 
We hear hatred shouted so loud from the hearts of those claiming Your name, Father. 
It tears at our hearts, and it disquiets our minds, and it wars against our peace in You. 
We feel the world becoming dark and frightening, overwhelmed by hatred and violence. 
We see that hatred manifested not only against each other, but manifested directly against Hillary Clinton. 
We know she is not perfect, Lord. 
Neither are we. But we hear Your commands from her lips,Your commands, through your only Son, to treat each other with kindness and love. 
All Mighty Father, we raise her up to be perfected to fulfill Your mission for this nation. 
We plead on her behalf, please surround her with Your hedge of protection, Omnipotent Lord. 
Holy Lord, we seek Your solace and the Holy Spirit’s guidance to turn our words to Your purpose.

May the meditations of our hearts
be acceptable in Thy sight,
Oh Lord, our strength and our redeemer.

~In Jesus’ Holy name

We pray all believing,

Amen

Barack Obama Had A White Mama…

It’s absolutely foolish to keep pointing out that Barack Obama is biracial and was born to a white mother. That old, despicable one-drop-rule was an actual, enforced social and legal assertion that if your ancestry contains one drop of sub-Saharan African blood that you are considered black. And, all the cultural context of that same one-drop-rule is why you, personally, feel the need to keep pointing out that his mother was white when someone calls him “the first black president.”

Yes, Barack Obama had a white mama. It doesn’t make you NOT a racist to remind us of the fact. We get it; we know all about his mama. It doesn’t make you any less bigoted to remind us that the first black president is biracial. It only shows how desperately you want to deny Black Americans that victory in their cultural advancement in our society.

When someone accuses you of racism for hateful remarks about Obama, it doesn’t make your unreasoning hate any less racist or bigoted to point out that his mother was white – because, her whiteness never counted to non-blacks before. I’ll grant you may genuinely believe you’re not a bigot. I’m sorry to be the one to inform you, but you don’t get to decide if you’re a bigot. The person or people on the end of your vitriol, whose sensibilities tell them you’re bigoted against them, get to decide. Moreover, when groups like the KKK and WBC share your viewpoint, it’s time and past time to question your viewpoint and examine your soul; if you cannot see that, then yes: You are a bigot.

A little modern history lesson on mixed-race Americans – and I mean VERY modern: Until as late as the 80s, laws were still being enforced that determined if you had any traceable African ancestry, that you were legally black. For example, as late as 1983, the one-drop-rule was still in practice in Louisiana.

Culturally, white and Asian people BOTH refused – and largely still refuse – to acknowledge children of African biracial birth as one of their own race. Let me be clear: If a white parent and a black parent have a child, other white people don’t acknowledge the “white” of that child - the child to other white people was and is black; If an Asian parent and a black parent have a child, other Asians saw and still view that child as black. 

However, from the earliest days of the legalization of biracial relationships, black people began evolving on the issue to accept the biracial child as a black child. At least three generations of biracial adults born since that legalization have grown up only ever black to the entire society of America. 

Biracial people of African ancestry identify as black because they have been and still continue to be marginalized as black people by everyone else. 

To have spent the last century convincing biracial people of African descent that they are black, and to now claim otherwise because you don’t like being suspected of racism is hollow and preposterous.

Is America becoming the monster?

What is this movement in our nation that has wretched-up Trump as the GOP’s best and brightest hope? I think it’s symptomatic of a deeper society wide disintegration. It’s so distressing I cannot adequately express how despicable and bone-deep horrifying I find it. It’s yet another layer of Hitler-esque rhetoric.

If elected, Trump will have his Muslim database,

Trump will have his wall and Latino immigrant expulsions;

McCroryism (that’s best way I’ve seen to define this new Jim Crow or McCarthyism standard codified by McCrory and his NC cronies, a standard spreading disease-like all across the nation) will criminalize transgenders, and won't stop until it encompasses all LGBTQ folk;

The entire GOP continues waging war on the middle class and working poor, and continues to grind the middle class down to join the ranks of the working poor wage slaves;

The libertarian styled agenda of the GOP would like to even abolish the minimum wage, but certainly wants to end Social Security and Medicare as we know it;

They want to go backward and penalize the sick and poor for needing healthcare… (the Nazis called them “useless eaters;”

The fundamentalists and evangelicals will have women at home, barefoot and pregnant with no right over our own bodies;

Higher education is already being priced out of reach and the GOP/libertarian agenda includes ending public schools;

…and an endless litany of much more.

It fully looks like history repeating itself. The way things are going, I fully expect Trump’s database to lead to internment camps at the least – the history of the internment of Japanese Americans in WWII overrides anyone’s disclaimer of that not being possible in America. A Muslim database will not stop with Muslims – those things never do. They’ll add every element of society that doesn’t fit their narrow vision to that database.

There seems to be a diminishing of the American ideal we’ve always cherished and held out to the entire world. America is supposed to be the safe haven… the bastion against the intolerance of hate-fueled fascism. Are we becoming the evil from which the world turned to us to escape? Is America becoming the monster we need to escape? Is that American ideal fading? Is it already lost?

by D. Denise Dianaty

© 14 May 2016

Pick up your own copy of my autobiographical book of poetry at My Life In Poetry

Or, get your copy of my short romance novella, The Dance Plays On… A delicately sad tale of transcendent love, a perfect kiss, and haunting, beautiful tragedy… 

Our Citizen Duty to Vote

by Cameron Stell
Social Media Commentator
Blogger
https://twitter.com/cameron_stell

Educated Voting

One of my earliest memories is of my parents taking me into the voting booth with them. I watched as they placed an “X” by each choice they made. What was fascinating to me was that their ballots didn’t always match. They would study the positions of each candidate in the newspaper in the days leading up to the election. This exercise for every election instilled in me the importance of voting at an early age. My parents didn’t always agree on a candidate, but they never argued about politics.

I also learned that it is also important to educate myself on the candidates’ positions. I can remember voting in my early adulthood and coming across a slate of candidates in local elections for which I hadn’t done the research. I knew absolutely nothing about their beliefs. I decided then and there to skip the vote on those candidates. I didn’t think it fair of me to vote without having done the research. From that point forward, I have never gone unprepared into the voting booth.

When I was much younger, political discourse was exciting and one was often able to see things from his or her opponent’s point of view. Politicians were able to compromise and pass legislation for the greater good. I have nostalgia for the time when people could have differing opinions without getting angry or hurling personal insults.

Our right to vote is an integral part of our democracy and should never be neglected or taken for granted. We owe it to ourselves as well as to everyone else in our great country to cast an informed vote in every election. I truly believe we live in the greatest country in the world. We have to overcome the ultra-extreme partisan divide that is currently tearing our country apart and work together to fix the problems we have. Our future and our children’s future depend on it.

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by Sunny Mera, 
Author All in Her Head

http://www.sunnymera.com

To Protect My Voice…

I vote to protect my voice, to protect my daughter's future, and to build a world where I want to be.  I haven't missed a primary election in years.  And I do my best to vote in every general election.  I know it is my duty to choose the best leader possible.  This year it isn't an easy choice. However, I will vote and recognize that it is my privilege to vote.  

After the birth of my daughter I was diagnosed with severe mental illness.  I was lucky to be identified as needing mental health care early by my healthcare providers. I was never criminalized for my mental health condition, something many people face in today's environment with more prisons than treatment programs.  

I believe we need more treatment and less prison time for people with mental illness. The time for shame and stigma of biologically based illnesses are over. Stigma and shame need to change and I participate in the process hoping that someday my efforts will make a difference in someone else's life.  

As a society it is the duty of citizens to pick people up and put them back on the ladder of life when people start to fall off.  As an able citizen in recovery from severe mental illness I appreciate my civic duty to vote.  I am part of the process. I vote to build a community where we want to live.

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by Annalisa Parent
Author and Writing Coach 
www.DateWithTheMuse.com

Get It While the Gettin’s Good 
If you’ve ever followed the hashtag #FirstWorldProblems on twitter, which pokes tongue­-in­-cheek fun at how good people in the first world have it, you’ll understand what I’m about to say. In a country where we face such inconveniences as waiting a full five minutes for someone else to make our hamburger, or having to drive all the way across town to buy the cell phone we want, it can be easy to see voting as an inconvenience­­: the long lines, the standing, the research it takes to know who’s who... 

And yet, as the old saying goes, when you take things for granted, the things you are granted get taken. The rights we have were not given freely; they were hard­-won. Perhaps because many of us did not fight those battles personally, because time or distance separate us from those who did, we overlook the privilege and rights we have, thinking them irrevocable. 

Well, think again. Democracy disappears when the people who are its foundation cease to invest. A government of the people need, by definition, people to maintain it and support it. 

According to Al Jazeera­ America, only 42 percent of Americans voted in the 2014 midterm elections, the lowest level of voter turnout since 1978. 58% of Americans thought voting was unimportant, took their rights for granted, and let someone else make their decisions for them. 

Power is a delicate thing. It is easily seized and hard to hold onto. Every time a person decides not to vote, he or she relinquishes power to someone else. Is that person trustworthy? Does that person have interests in maintaining democracy, or in seizing power for him or herself­­--because every time you don’t vote, that becomes a real possibility. 

Democracy requires participation and investment. It’s not an inconvenience or a chore; it’s an honor and a privilege. Just ask anyone living under a totalitarian regime­­ what would they give for the burden of having to choose amongst a pool of candidates who best represents their values? 

Ask those who fight for our nation every day, or think back to the Civil War, when President Lincoln so famously honored those who had fought with the express purpose: 

That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. 

Do not let this cause be in vain. Do your simple part of getting out of your chair, and dragging yourself to the polls. We cease to be a democracy when we cease to participate in the decisions that shape our lives. 

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by Jennie Baron
Author
http://jensauthorblog.blogspot.com

Raise Your Voice
Like many Americans, when I was young I was taught that the constitutional right and responsibility to vote were almost sacred. Now we are living through an election cycle where the stakes are too high not to vote. Yet people are more turned off voting than ever. More people are giving up this civic duty and handing over their futures to others. 

Voters do not appreciate the privilege mostly because their vote often does not seem to matter. As a liberal-leaning voter in a red state, I entirely understand. I’m frustrated feeling that no elected official truly represents me.

Frustration with the system has led to people disenfranchising themselves by choosing not to vote. So many truly disenfranchised groups fought long and hard in this country for the right to vote; sometimes, I wonder if they fought in vain.

 Of course the system is flawed. No system created by human beings is perfect. But it’s what we have and no one has yet come up with a better idea. Think about the voters in countries who’ve recently gained this right we take for granted, their pride and happiness in voting. Even amid rumors and allegations of corruption in the voting procedure.

They finally had their voice.  Why don’t we, as Americans, raise our voices for the values we stand for? 

The right to vote is also one of our best methods of expression.  I want to be able to express my dissatisfaction with the politicians others elect, and I would be hypocritical if I didn’t participate in the process.

So, everyone, you may be cynical that your vote won’t count, but I urge you all to vote anyway, at every opportunity. Whichever candidate you choose. You’re choosing your — our nation’s — future.

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by Tammy Boehm
Poet and Author

Shut up, or show up…

Unless one resides under an outcropping in the middle of Death Valley, it is painfully apparent that we the people are in the throes of yet another election year. Fraught as it may be with candidate posturing on all levels from Joan of Arc championing to consecutive bouts of urinary Olympics, we do ourselves a serious disservice if we choose to lose the remote and simply ignore the state of things until oh, Christmas time. Sure, there are those who fully engage, foaming at the bit for every moment of debate, of early polling numbers and whatever spin Fox deems adequate to garner twenty minutes of air time but for a lot of us politics on any level is comparable to getting one’s gums scraped sans lidocaine. For a few of us that pain is even more intense and a bit lower. 

Let’s face it. The incumbent, love him or hate him is on his way out and it’s anyone’s White House. Since the tax payin’, pitch fork weildin’ villagers, love to light a lantern and ferret out a monster, most of the candidates at this point are getting our attention by stacking the digested hay as high as it can go with an effigy of the opponent tacked to the pile. A bonfire gets our attention. 

Unfortunately, the only way to stop the political weanie roasts is for we the people to put down the pitchfork, click the off button on the remote and get out there and cast our vote. And it is to our detriment when we warm our hands over those bonfires, voting against the monster du jour rather than educating ourselves on the real issues and positions of each candidate. Especially in an election year where there seems to be no clear choice, at least to this American the only logical choice I can make is to educate myself on the issues rather than the personalities and cast my vote. Besides, if I do this and I don’t like the results say by Christmas, I can pick up my pitchfork again and start slinging that digested hay with the vindication that I didn’t vote for that idiot. 

As a chick with quick fingers and little filter, I could use this opportunity to join in and make a pitch for my personal favorite, with appropriate deferral of any negative positioning against those I deem less suited for POTUS for the next four to eight years. I’d be within my rights to taut my conservative Christian lifestyle as indicative of my candidate support. But I am also a bit of a maverick and I truly believe my quick fingers and my lack of filter would be better utilized if I simply chose the side of “Get out there and vote.” Stop letting the raucous and verbose minority define us as a nation. You and I are better than that. Show up, or shut up. That’s my mantra. Spoken in love and seasoned with salt. Peace.

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by Chad Bittner Hurt
Poet
https://m.facebook.com/alliselvo/

Be the new leaf…

This fall, I welcome you to be  a new leaf over turning. 

Countless proud people are rolling in their graves, hoping for an emboldened you. Our hearts are awakening to the possibility of a good living king not as a single person ruling everything but more over a philosophy manifesting in a democracy, a social democracy I dare say that still fosters competition and creativity but provides a baseline from which our hearts and minds can leap. 

Everyone deserves food, a home, and health. Only then will we fly into great wonder rather than continue to drop in this corporate oligarchy we've allowed to persist. To borrow words I read fleetingly while scrolling, this feels like this is the last season of America and the writers are just going nuts! I realize that this may be our rock bottom. In fact I pray it is. We all know how much lower we could go. So I say choose to wake up before too much blaring of the alarm clock, take note before we break! Put out faith and energy in infrastructure for future generations, invest in focusing on New local industry and energy revolutions.

Leaving out CEO leaders to lord over empty corrals. We can organize and build a quality future while they’re busy playing games. VOTE!

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by D. Denise Dianaty
Poet, Artist, Author, and Blogger
https://www.facebook.com/denise.dianaty
https://twitter.com/MomzillaNC

Don’t Choose Apathy – Choose Hope

Choosing not to vote is an abrogation of our Citizen Duty to vote. But, more than that, refusing to vote is giving up… it’s abandoning hope. Everyone comes out loud and vociferous for the presidential elections, decrying the system. Then, when the election is over, all those agitators fade into the woodwork. 

If we want our votes to count, we have to vote every time and we have remain engaged even when there’s not a coming election. If you want to do something about the two party system – which everyone acknowledges is not working as it should – then you cannot sit back and wait for elections. Congress and White House administrations are operating a public arena, for all the world to follow, all the time, not just in an election year. Bring your election year activism to every day and be part of the change. 

Moreover, the history of both parties demonstrates how change can be created from within the parties. Whatever your party, the evolution of political parties in America is historical and undeniable fact. You CAN create change in the system, both by activism and by voting. Refusing to vote is nothing less than apathy.

Sitting on the outside, condemning the system that is THE ONLY SYSTEM WE HAVE is not creating change; only coming out for elections tells the politicians that they just have to wait out the election year to go back to business as usual. Refusing to vote tells politicians they don’t have to worry about your concerns because you won’t vote – if you don’t vote, you won’t exist to them. If we want change, we have to be part of the change all year, every year. We have to engage and keep engaging all the time. With citizenship comes responsibility. It is our Citizen Duty to VOTE every time there is a vote. 

Your vote is always an act of HOPE. As a citizen, choosing not to vote is the ultimate act of apathy, of abandoning hope. “Apathy is acquiescence is compliance is approval.” ~MomzillaNC

There is always a solution: it requires our activism and our active hope – and, always, our VOTE. “Hands and hearts and minds and voices committed to working for tolerance, peace and social justice everywhere, always.” ~MomzillaNC

Image provided by Annalisa Parent