Part of the Series: “She ain’t right in the head, she just ain’t right.”

If you were going to start a cause, you would hire the best ad agency in New York. They would do focus groups. Your group would get the best name to sell its product, cause, service – whatever.

Instead a slew of great causes have come down the pike, several of which, I hear more time being spent arguing about the name of the group, and what does the name of the group mean, and who is excluded from the group, and who is included. And if anyone doesn’t like a name, any name, then she/he is a traitor.

I declare, I can’t even.

Dadgummit, Black Lives Matter – get over it. They do. This does not exclude anyone. We are watching human beings die in real time on worldwide television. Care.

Take a knee.

De-militarize the police. Period.

By any other name a rose is still a rose. Or a rotten apple.

A lifetime ago some bad apples moved into our apartment complex. It was sprinkled with police. There were 10 units in the apartment block and more than half the tenants moved out the first month. All but one moved within another couple – my X. Punks had one, two and then three of the 10, but they sold the fun extra drugs to their police pals who lived in  four of the ten apartments.

I was scared, scared, and everyone knew it. But the guy in uniform said to me, “They won’t bother a cop’s girlfriend.” Sick f–k is what I should have said then but I was utterly naive. I just kept begging my husband to move away but he simply could not face them. No one in their right mind would pick a fight with either the punks or the cops.

I reported all of them. I got drunk for the first time in my life, got the neighbor’s tap shoes and tap danced on the roof of one of the cops’ pickup truck. Nothing seemed to break the ice. Then one of the punks paid another visit and that was it. No one was safe. He would not leave. I took the kids and left and then got a whipping for that.

Damn right defund the uneducated cowboys. So the punks were selling the pills that kept the cops awake and the downers to put them to sleep. They sold the fun drugs that the cops could use to entice their little turkey gobblers – all way under age.

I dared to open my mouth. I was stupid. I took my babies to complain to the sergeant. What a horrible mistake that was, I wasn’t even safe across town. I had dared to object to the cost of needing law enforcement.

I wasn’t about to get porked. I was most disappointed in my mother, but her advice was the most practical: Shut up and sleep with whoever you have to, to stay safe. I left and never was with my family, any of them, again.

I worked three jobs to eat. Always had to keep an extra restaurant job so dinner came along. Working a full 40-hour week by grade 11, and by 21 a food waitress with a learning glitch.

But I still held true to my life. I still gave time every week to the shelter and worked helping the mission. I worked all the hours I could get, selling clothes, antiques, deli restaurant. I even sold industrial chemicals for a while and spent several years selling cemetery lots. My love was selling my stories. That took longer.

I point the finger. It wasn’t just the bad apples – it was the apples who were the lookouts and who had their backs. The apples who cover up for the bad apples are just as bad.

Thank you Me Too.

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What happened to our wonderful coat of many colors country like Joseph where all the brothers should share in the love of their father. But all was not equal for those in need. We clean the floor of the hospital that we cannot afford to be a patient in.

This is a very, very old story. After the last great pandemic, the plague of a few hundred years ago, life changed for all. The “peasants” of that time and those places wanted and got change. The rich could toil and grow their own vegetables and suffer their own labors.

World over, all peoples are calling out for their rights. The rights and hopes of all peoples could be met. Why fight to have only one set of solutions. We can have all solutions. Share, care. Take a knee and protect each other from punks – in uniform and out.

Guy Fawkes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes

My mother married a Lebanese man in 1962 Alabama. By even census standards he was a “white man” But not so much perfectly in the south did he get and keep a pass. He and his son, being stopped regularly for being brown – even light brown.

I speak of times with my stepfather:

Our Colors ~ That Is My Mother You Are Talking About

https://marionettastrungout.wordpress.com/2018/06/15/our-colors-that-is-my-mother-you-are-talking-about/amp/