WHY I’M VOTING FOR JILL STEIN AND CONSIDER THE TRUMP THREAT A MYTH
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BILL CLINTON SIGNING HIS URBAN HOUSING PROGRAM -
THE PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX, WHICH BECAME ONE
OF HILLARY'S BIGGEST POLITICAL CONTRIBUTORS
I'm going to be voting third party for the first time in my life, but I consider it the most important vote that I've ever cast. Even though I know that Jill Stein is not going to win, I consider my vote for her a vote for democracy, and against corruption. It's going to send a clear and unequivocal message to the Democratic Party to never, EVER try to play with my right to choose again. And if Donald Trump wins, oh, well. Maybe that'll have the unintended consequence of waking people up - and besides, Hillary is no better, and could very likely be much worse. We can only speculate about what Trump might do, but we've already experienced the kind of destruction the Clintons are capable of bringing upon us. We're still suffering from their last stint in the White House.
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If Trump wins, he won't be able to bust a grape. If you think Barack Obama hit a brick wall when he became president, just imagine what Trump will face. He’s a buffoon and one of the most hated politicians in the history of American politics, so he has absolutely NO support worth mentioning. Where Obama only faced a hostile Republican congress, Trump would be facing both a hostile Republican and Democratic congress, and a hostile American public as well. So all he’d be able to do is sit up in the Oval Office and play with himself. As a result, the worse thing that he would bring to the country is continued gridlock, and make us the laughingstock of the world, which we deserve.
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Yes, most Republicans secretly believe in everything Trump is spewing. The only thing they don't like about him is he's a loose cannon and he's saying what they believe out loud. That's why I think he could very possibly win this election. Although many claim to be against him, once they get into the secrecy of the polling booth they may very well vote for him, but the Republican Party can't afford to support him if he gets into office, because then they would take on his baggage, incur the hostility of the American people, render themselves a renegade party, and be voted out in droves in the next election.
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On the other hand, Hillary has a political machine in place within the Democratic Party and the support of essentially ALL of Wall Street, so she'd be in a position to do serious damage. It has been reported that the Clintons' net worth is well over $200 million. They also control the $2 billion Clinton Foundation, so they're comfortably entrenched in the very corporate culture that has the American people virtually enslaved. Their daughter, Chelsea, is married to Marc Mezvinsky, an American investment banker, co-founder of hedge fund, Eaglevale Partners, and was formerly an investment banker at Goldman Sachs. Thus, the Clintons and Wall Street are, literally, in-laws. So Hillary would continue the process that they began the last time they were in the White House - robbing the American people blind, and turning our democracy into a corporate plutocracy. So Hillary, her reckless greed, and corporate allies are the greater threat to America.
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IN SIX YEARS ON WAL-MART'S BOARD OF DIRECTORS
HILLARY CLINTON NEVER LIFTED A FINGER TO HELP
EITHER WOMEN OR THE WORKERS
The Clintons walk like liberals and talk like liberals but they always seem to leave conservative policies in their wake. They've been more successful in promoting the conservative agenda and destroying the American middle class way of life than any other administration since the Civil War, including Ronald Reagan's. They're responsible for NAFTA, which allowed $20 an hour jobs to be sent out of the country to be performed by people who make less per week than many upper-middle class Americans spent on lunch per day, and they gutted Glass-Steagall (which President Roosevelt put into place to prevent Wall Street greed from plunging the nation into a second Great Depression), which led directly to the 2008 Wall Street crash. Clinton also abolished the Fairness Doctrine (no, it wasn't Reagan as many people think. Reagan simply prevented it from being elevated from a regulation to a law, but Clinton abolished it outright). That led to the creation of the corporate media culture and propaganda machines like Fox News that were then allowed to spew conservative propaganda and disinformation with impunity.
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Clinton's "Welfare Reform" led to the undue suffering of millions of poor Americans. And then, after colluding with Ronald Reagan to flood the Black community with crack cocaine while governor of Arkansas, after becoming president, even as Black people were running around calling him our “first Black president,” Clinton signed the most draconian crime bill in United States history to incarcerate on a massive scale the very victims of the crime that HE committed, just to prove to Republicans that he wasn’t “soft on coons” - and he actually paid states EXTRA to give those victims longer sentences. As result, today there are more Black people under the control of the prison industrial complex than were enslaved in all of America in 1850, a decade prior to the Civil War, and that very same prison industrial complex became one of Hillary Clinton's largest and most prolific political contributors.
BILL CLINTON CASUALLY VIOLATING THE
VOTERS RIGHTS ACT AND THUMBING HIS NOSE AT THE LEGACY
OF MARTIN LUTHER KING IN A BLACK POLLING
PLACE IN MASSACHUSETTS
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Thus, as a direct result of Clinton’s unconscionable actions the lives of hundreds of thousands of Black people have been completely destroyed - and it’s still having a negative impact on Black people today. There's currently a huge part of an entire generation of young Black people who don't know anything about their culture, and don't really know what it means to be Black, because the people who were responsible for teaching them were either dead, in prison, or mentally disabled by the affects of crack cocaine. As a direct result, instead of developing their potential and preparing for the future, many of these young people, who were literally raised by the corporate media, has been conditioned to believe that their role in life is to be criminals, drug addicts, and at the very bottom of society. In addition, they're being mesmerized by the media by being fed a constant diet of music that celebrates drug use, killing one another, and referring to the very womb of their culture as "bitches and hoes." So their fate is all but sealed. And worse, they're unfit parents for the generation that's coming up.
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So when anyone even suggests that I should vote for Hillary Clinton, I'm absolutely insulted, because it clearly demonstrates that they are, at the very least, completely indifferent to the atrocities that the Clintons committed against the Black community - and unbelievably, this includes many Black people!!! These people will say, "Okay, okay, so they destroyed a generation of Black people and herded others into concentration camps, but what else have they done wrong?" Give me a break!!!
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Racism is not just the aggressive hatred of Black people, it's also the complacent acceptance of atrocities committed against them. If the Clintons had committed a fraction of the atrocities against Jews as they have Black people, Hillary wouldn't have even been able to run for office. But American's casual indifference toward the suffering of Black people is about to come back to bite 'em, because the new paradigm in this country is not just about racism. We're currently knee-deep in a class war against people who don't care any more about poor and middle class White people than they do Blacks or other minorities - and Hillary's one of them. The New York Times reported the following:
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“In lucrative paid speeches that Hillary Clinton delivered to elite financial firms but refused to disclose to the public, she displayed an easy comfort with titans of business, embraced unfettered international trade and praised a budget-balancing plan that would have required cuts to Social Security, according to documents posted online Friday by WikiLeaks . . .
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“In the excerpts from her paid speeches to financial institutions and corporate audiences, Mrs. Clinton said she dreamed of ‘open trade and open borders’ throughout the Western Hemisphere [NAFTA on steroids]. Citing the back-room deal-making and arm-twisting used by Abraham Lincoln, she mused on the necessity of having ‘both a public and a private position’ on politically contentious issues [in other words, sometimes it's necessary to lie to the people]. Reflecting in 2014 on the rage against political and economic elites that swept the country after the 2008 financial crash, Mrs. Clinton acknowledged that her family’s rising wealth had made her ‘kind of far removed’ from the struggles of the middle class [or in other words, I’m one of you].”
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New Democrats, also called Centrist Democrats, Clinton Democrats or Moderate Democrats, are a relatively conservative ideological faction within the Democratic Party that emerged after the victory of Republican George H. W. Bush in the 1988 presidential election. Describing themselves as "centrist", they are an economically conservative and "Third Way" faction which dominated the party for around 20 years, starting in the late 1980s after the US populace turned much further to the political right. They are represented by organizations such as the New Democrat Network and the New Democrat Coalition.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Democrats
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RECKLESS AND IRRESPONSIBLE BEHAVIOR
How Clinton Donor Got on Sensitive Intelligence Board
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. HOW DID THEY KNOW THIS GUY WASN'T A RUSSIAN SPY?
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So, what do I like most about Jill Stein? That's easy - she's not Hillary Clinton. And finally, I’d like to respectfully suggest to the American people that they're being played by the Clintons . . . again.
. . . . Oh, and for those of you who are prone to give your genitals priority over your intellect, in the video below, notice the condescension and distain in which Hillary Clinton treats NPR correspondent Terry Gross as opposed to the respect she gives Terry's male colleagues like Anderson Cooper and others, in spite of the fact that they were asking much more biting questions. Hillary is not a woman, she's a political robot who's only dedicated, or loyal, to one thing - Hillary Clinton.
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It's hard to believe that in 2016 Black people are still engaged in hot debate over which bigot we should support. Because the fact is, regardless to whether either Hillary Clinton, or Donald Trump, wins this election, Black people are going to be up Shit Creek.
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Even as we were running around calling him our “First Black President” Bill Clinton was paying states EXTRA to give the victims of mass incarceration, due to the crack cocaine that HE was hugely responsible for flooding into the Black community, longer sentences. So the fact is, we can only speculate about what Trump might do, but we've already SEEN the atrocities that the Clintons are capable of.
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While admittedly, Trump looms as an ominous figure over this election, the Black community is still suffering from the atrocities that the Clintons have ALREADY committed against us the last time they were in the White House. So even a blind man should be able to see that since we’ve already experienced the Clintons' deceit and malevolent disregard for the Black community up-close and personal, we don’t really know WHAT they might do once in office for a second time.
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The Clintons are renown for three things - political manipulation, lying, and circumventing the law. They think of average Americans as the “little people,” and that the laws designed for the rest of us to follow don’t apply to them. Yes, the Republicans have had them under constant investigation and they keep slipping through the cracks, but that doesn’t mean that the allegations aren’t true. If you were robbed, even though the robber escapes conviction, he’s a criminal nevertheless, because a criminal is one who commits crimes, whether he’s been convicted or not. We’ve seen that scenario at work in the recent FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton. If you or I worked for the State Department and put Top Secret information on our home computer we’d be thrown UNDER the jail, but the Clintons have connections, and having connections powerful enough to place a person above the law is a threat to our democracy.
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In that regard, even as I write, an indictment against arms dealer, Marc Turi, is being dropped in order to protect Hillary Clinton. According to a report by Politico, “A Turi associate asserted that the government dropped the case because the proceedings could have embarrassed Clinton and President Barack Obama by calling attention to the reported role of their administration in supplying weapons that fell into the hands of Islamic extremist militants [ISIS].” So again, we don’t know what the Clintons might do if returned to the White House. Clinton supporters try to justify their support by claiming, they'll save us from Trump. Okay, but who's going to save us from them?
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So it's really amazing to see so many Black people (including the Congressional Black Caucus) jumping up and down and rallying behind people who's already cut our throats. This situation clearly demonstrates that the number of Black people who have a tendency to be self-serving, distracted, and/or uninformed is a serious threat to our culture. It's enough to make one more than just a little concerned over the ultimate fate of the Black community as a whole. Because if we don’t wake up - and in a hurry! - we’re lost. We’re already being dismissed as a people; that’s why society is completely ignoring our children being poisoned with lead contaminated water, the inner city being poisoned with crack cocaine just so the powers that be could raise a little extra cash, and Black people are being shot down in the street with complete impunity. We’re allowing ourselves to become totally meaningless.
As I’ve pointed out several times in previous articles, when Bill Clinton was the governor of Arkansas, he colluded with the Reagan administration to flood the Black community with crack cocaine in order to fund Reagan’s illegal war in Nicaragua. Then when he became president he signed the most draconian crime bill in the history of the United States and created the prison industrial complex that led to the mass incarceration of the victims of HIS crime - Black people. There after, that very same prison industrial complex became one of Hillary Clinton’s biggest political contributors.
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BILL CLINTON CASUALLY VIOLATING THE
VOTERS RIGHTS ACT IN A BLACK POLLING
PLACE IN MASSACHUSETTS
So many Black people either don’t understand, or don’t care, that as a direct result of Clinton’s unconscionable actions the lives of hundreds of thousands of Black people have been completely destroyed - and it’s still having a negative impact on Black people today. There's currently a huge part of an entire generation of young Black people who don't know anything about their culture, and don't really know what it means to be Black, because the people who were responsible for teaching them were either dead, in prison, or mentally disabled by the affects of crack cocaine. As a direct result, instead of developing their potential and preparing for the future, many of these young people, who were literally raised by the corporate media, has been conditioned to believe that their role in life is to be criminals, drug addicts, and at the very bottom of society. In addition, they're being mesmerized by the media by being fed a constant diet of music that celebrates drug use, killing one another, and referring to the very womb of their culture as "bitches and hoes." So their fate is all but sealed. And worse, they're unfit parents for the generation that's coming up. So due largely to Bill Clinton’s actions, much of the Black community has gone from Miles Davis and John Coltrane, to THIS . . .
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Yet, in spite of the horrendous atrocities that Bill Clinton committed against the Black community, when he wanted to get Hillary and himself back into the White House,he had the audacity to go to the NAACP and try to apologize. But what’s even more amazing is that Black people were foolish enough to accept it!!! The Black Congressional Caucus couldn’t wait to endorse Hillary Clinton, and Black people were falling all over one another as they flocked to the polls to help her win the primaries. The absolute ignorance of the Black community in this matter is beyond sad, it's disgusting. Due to our own cluelessness - our failure to remain informed, and our tendency to vote name-recognition and/or genitals over intellect - we’ve now placed ourselves in a position of having to choose between cyanide or strychnine. So no, I'm not voting for either one of those demagogues. I’m simply not going to allow them to force me to play the pick-a-bigot game. If I did I would never be able to live with myself.
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As I mentioned earlier, if we keep allowing them to play us by having to choose a "preferred bigot," that gives them carte blanche to cut our throats whenever, and however deep they choose, and then just trot out one of their Bogeyman cronies - who they might have just had lunch with 10 minutes earlier - to scare us into re-electing them every election (“Yeah, I know I haven’t always treated well, but you don’t want him, do ya!!!?”). They've been playing Black people like that every since we've had the right to vote, and I'm shocked that today’s modern and so-called “sophisticated” Black people are naïve enough to go for that tired-ass bullshit game.
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Black people need to take a page out of the Jewish handbook - once you show them you're their enemy, you're their enemy FOREVER, and under ANY and ALL circumstances. That's the only way to protect yourself in this highly manipulative political environment. All Jesse Jackson had to do was say “Hymietown” and the Jews ran him out of politics. In contrast, Bill Clinton is hugely responsible for more Black people being under the control of the prison industrial complex than there were slaves in America in 1850, so the Clintons have done a hundred times more harm to the Black community than the Klan. If the Clintons had committed a fraction of the atrocities against the Jews as they have to Black people, Hillary wouldn't have even been able to run for office, and the Jewish attitude is absolutely right in that regard. They learned that lesson from hard and bitter experience, but Black people seem to be kinda slow in seeing the light.
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So while I'm not one who's very big on organized religion, in this case, I think I'll place my faith in God instead of the Democratic Party. Since my right to choose was stolen from me by the Clintons, Debbie Wasserman Shultz, and the DNC, I'm certainly not gonna reward them for that undemocratic treachery with my vote. I'm just gonna follow the advice of the old folks and "put it in the hand's of the Lord." So I'm gonna to vote for Jill Stein and the Green Party and then let God sort out the consequences. After all of the other atrocities the Clintons have committed against Black people, I am definitely not gonna allow them to rob me of my vote, come Hell or high water; it would set a horrible precedent, and far too many people have fought and died to give it to me.
BLACK INTELLIGENCE: THE MOST CLOSELY GUARDED SECRET IN AMERICA
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KAI AND ERIC, JR.
Most Black people have well above average intelligence. We have to just to survive in America. Every day, from the time we get up, until the time we go to bed we have to navigate our way through all manner of bigotry, both overt and covert. Racism is so pervasive in the lives of Black people that many of us don't even have to think about the intellectual strategies necessary to outwit most bigots - we do it on autopilot. As a result, we've developed an intellectual muscularity that we don't even have to think about.
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As Naturalist Charles Darwin pointed out in his book, On the Origin of Species, all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that increase the individual's ability to compete, survive, and reproduce. In other words, the adversity that Black people have been forced to endure over the centuries has caused nature to step in to enhance our innate intellectual abilities in order to help us to survive in a hostile environment. So the adversity that we’ve endured over the centuries is serving to make Black people MORE rather than less. It is causing us to evolve as we speak, but it's up to Black people themselves to recognize, develop, and utilize that potential.
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A HOME IN THE BLACK MIDDLE-CLASS
SUBBURB OF BALDWIN HILLS, CA.
President Barack Obama, and the Imafidon family at the bottom of this article, are graphic examples of the fact that the evolutionary process mentioned above may already be revealing itself. As the son of an African immigrant, in ONE generation Barack Obama rose to become one of this nation's greatest presidents, and he possessed the intellectual muscularity to handle the entire Republican establishment like they were a group of irate children. He also saved the world from a second Great Depression, and if it weren't for the Republican Party's eight-year tantrum of ignorant, racist, and childish obstructionism, America would undoubtedly be experiencing the greatest era in its history at this very moment. And then there's the Imafidons, a Nigerian family, acknowledged as THE most brilliant FAMILY in the United Kingdom.
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Those facts are significant when it comes to defining what Black people represent. But facts such as these tend to be ignored, or played down in a bigot drenched America, because they don't conform to America's preferred view of reality. America prefers to define Black people based upon the images of the most dysfunctional among us. But I intend to explode that myth, not only for the average uninformed White person, but for the many Black people who have been brainwashed by the mass media into embracing their tainted view of reality. If we portrayed White people in the same way that Black people are being portrayed, all White people would be seen as hillbillies.
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As I've mentioned in a previous article, racists tend to be the mediocrity of White society, so they try to use the fact that they were born White to define themselves and to compensate for their lack of personal value. Their entire sense of self-esteem is based more upon group association than individual value and accomplishment, and their entire claim to personal significance is, "Well, at least I'm better than them." Well, here are the facts:
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In the Live Science Article, Low IQ And Conservative Beliefs Linked to Prejudice, it states unequivocally that "There's no gentle way to put it: People who give in to racism and prejudice may simply be dumb, according to a new study that is bound to stir public controversy." That's what drives radical conservatives so crazy about President Obama - he's walking, breathing, evidence that they cannot claim superiority by virtue of the color T-shirt they were born in, and that simple fact alone is causing them to suffer a severe attack of cognitive dissonance before the eyes of the entire world. That's also why they were so determined not to allow President Obama to be as successful as he could have been, even if it meant destroying the country.
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But Obama's not the only chink in their armor. These people feel such a desperate need to be superior that they’ll go to any length to try to substantiate that claim, even if they have to corrupt both logic and reality to make it conform to their point of view. For example, how can they claim to be superior to Black people while at the same time claim that America is such a devoutly Christian Nation? If Jesus Christ had been born in the desert with blond hair and blue eyes they wouldn’t have had to crucify him - he would have died of Sunburn. Jesus Christ was a man of color. So how can you claim to be superior to a man that you also claim to worship? One would think that a “superior race” would have recognized the flaw in that logic.
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So now this entire nation, including the future of our children, is being threatened by the desperate attempt of a handful of insecure bigots to maintain their delusion of superiority, and as far as they’re concerned, if the country has to be sacrificed for that cause, so be it. That's what makes it so important for Black people to begin to develope the innate intelligence that we've been both hiding, and/or, holding a cultural antagonism toward.
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What do I mean by a cultural antagonism toward intelligence?
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The root of the problem that we’ve traditionally had in the Black community among the more dysfunctional among us is not a lack of intelligence but our attitude toward knowledge. As a direct result of our history of slavery, we’ve developed a sort of hostility toward both knowledge, Black people who embrace it, and/or, tend to display an exceptional level intelligence. We tend to equate the pursuit of knowledge with selling out. We also tend to see the active pursuit of knowledge as part of the White man’s domain, so we look upon Black people who have a love of knowledge with disdain, because we see them as "trying to be White."
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KRIS KROSS WEARING THEIR
PANTS BACKWARDS
The reason for that is simple. During slavery the only Black people we knew who spoke anything close to "proper English" were the "house niggas," and many house slaves had a tendency to look down their noses at slaves who worked in the field. As a result of that experience, many Blacks have an hostility toward "proper talkin'" Black people that persist to this day. So many highly intelligent Black people will often try to hide their intelligence, because, ironically, over the years we’ve developed an attitude where many feel that we have a moral obligation to remain ignorant in order to prove that we take pride in being Black. Think about that. Isn't it ironic that many of us embrace ignorance as a sign of Black pride? That's why we can hear many educated young Black people going around saying things like, "What it is?", "What it be like?." and other obvious assaults on the English language. They know it's improper English, but they see it as giving credibility to their pride in being Black. Some young people would put their shoes on backwards if they could just to show how unlike White people they are, and one hip hop group, Kris Kross, actually did wear their pants backwards.
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That attitude among some Blacks was one of the weapons that was used against President Obama by many envious Black intellectuals. They tried to use his "all-American" conventionality against him. They attempted to convince the Black community of the following:
. "I’m cool - see my long, wooly Afro, how cool I act, and how I can quote Lil’ Wayne when I’m on television? I’m one of y’all. I just have enough intelligence to speak the White man’s language, so I’m keeping an eye on him for the people. But that Obama, he’s not like us. He don’t have no Afro, he don’t never quote Lil Wayne, and he’s obviously much too intelligent to be trusted as a genuine Black man. He thinks like the White man."
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So even as Black "intellectuals," many send the message to Black youth that intelligence is the White man's domain, and that being Black and intelligent are incompatible - and ironically, many Black people have become more wedded to that attitude than White people. The message isn't overt, because we claim to be seekers of knowledge, but it can be clearly seen in our daily interactions with one another.
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An example of that is reflected in a joke that I wrote for a comedienne by the name of Frances Nealy. I spoke of a new kid in school who continued to enthusiastically raise his hand to answer all of the teacher's questions. Finally a kid in the back of the class said, "Who IS this dude!!!? He must think he White or somethin'!" What made that a joke was it put it's finger on the underlying attitude of many Black people pointed out above.
WHAT DID THESE PEOPLE DO TO DESERVE BEING CALLED SELL-OUTS?
. JIM CROW
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Another reason that Black people have a tradition of hiding their intelligence is through necessity. During the Jim Crow era many White folks saw a smart Black man as an "uppity nigga," and it could get him lynched, because a smart Black man was a challenge to what bigots wanted to believe - that they were superior. Again, that's why they hate Barack Obama - and I've been surprised to see how deep seated that attitude is today, even among many White people who claim to be liberals. I've noticed over the internet that many White people believe that a Black person should defer to them in a debate, even if they're proven to be dead wrong. A Black person can say the very same thing to them as another White person, but they'll view the Black person as being arrogant - "How dare this spook try to make me look like an idiot!!!?" (Well, because you are).
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When my mother was in nursing school my grandparents virtually raised me - we were connected at the hip. and my mother was more like an older sister that they allowed to play house with me from time to time. But every year my grandparents would go back to Louisiana to visit for a week, and every year they had to keep their pending trip a secret, because the moment I found out about it, it was absolutely ON until the car turned the corner headed for the airport. I wanted to go with them, but my grandfather wouldn't let me.
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I could get them to cave-in on most things, but on this, my grandfather stood absolutely firm. He said, "Eric, I wouldn't take you no farther South than San Diego, because you talk too much, and you could get us killed.You've got to learn to listen to what's on everybody else's mind, and never let anyone know what's on yours, because if you tell the another man everything that's on your mind, he'll then know everything you know, plus what he already knew, and that'll make him smarter than you. So that's why you have to stay home - because we can't afford to let those White folks down South know more about us, than we know about them." That was the thinking of many Jim Crow era Black people, and they also knew something that's true even today - one of the fastest ways in the world to lose a job in America is to let your boss know that you're smarter than he is. So for all of those reasons, Black people have developed a tradition of hiding their intellect.
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But at this point in our history it's time for Black people to come out of the closet and change that strategy, and for the very same reason - survival. We're living in a different world today, a world where you can't survive without using all of the intellect and knowledge at your disposal. So we've got to prepare our children to survive in a world of science, technology, and political manipulation. They can no longer simply demonstrate and shake their fists at the establishment and expect results. All the establishment is going to do is wait a couple of weeks until they cool off, and then it'll be business as usual. We see that strategy currently being played out against the Black Lives Matter movement at this very moment. So our children have got to understand that we can't out-scream the establishment, because they control the media; and we can't out-fight them, because they control the military; thus, the only option left is to out-think them. So we've got to prepare ourselves to assume positions of power and authority, and we've got to learn, as a culture, not to be self-serving, and to recognize the advantages of sticking together in order to jerk the chains of political power most effectively.
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TAYLOR WATTREE-JACKSON
THE BILL CLINTON AWARD FOR SCHOLARSHIP OUTSTANDING STUDENT OF THE YEAR KIWANIS CLUB OF RIALTO
Our children already have the intellectual potential to meet those challenges, but it's up to the parents to convince them of that fact, and to impart the importance of doing so. Life isn't about just being cute, or cool anymore, so they can no longer afford to just sit around, party, and get high like many of us did, because the election of Donald Trump sends a very clear and emphatic message - it's crisis time. So we've got to stop letting our young people be programed regarding who they are by the corporate media, because as long as Black people are better known for dancing than we are thinking, we'll always be under the White man's thumb. That isn't to say we should ban our kids from consuming pop culture, but we should discuss these issues with them, and point out how they're being manipulated.
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These are horrible times for this country, but they present a prime opportunity for the Black community to level the playing field . While the establishment is pulling every lever at its disposal to dumb the rest of America down, we have the opportunity to pull every lever at our disposal in pursuit of knowledge and leveraging our innate intellectual competence. So it's all about thinking, instead of just shaking our fists.
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For that reason, every time our children did anything exceptional, my late wife and I made a big deal of it - like when my daughter, Kai, taught me how to factor when she was in the 6th grade, while university professors couldn't do it. We made a big deal out of that - in fact, it was a big deal, because I was struggling with
TAYLOR WATTREE-JACKSON
PRE-MED
JACKSON STATE UNIVERSITY
that class.
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For some reason my math professor just couldn’t get the concept of factoring across to me, but Kai did it in about 10 minutes by simply drawing a little tree and then hanging numbers on its branches. We praised her to high Heaven. That rewarded her for thinking, instead of just being able to dance. We also had this little game where you had to insert various geometric-shaped blocks into the proper slots before it popped up. Kai and Eric could do it with time to spare, but I never did master that game. They loved it, and it gave them confidence in their abilities, because it clearly demonstrated to them that they were better at some things than their parents were, and that's a big deal to children. So we always went out of our way to let them know that they weren't average, because “average is the best of the worst, and the worst of the best,” and they were better than that. We also always treated them like peers rather than children, and while always respectful, they acted that way.
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Today Kai is a Human Resources Specialist for her college alma mater and the Vice President of the California College Employee’s Association, And Eric is a Special Agent for the United States Department of Justice. Here’s what the Air Force had to say about him:
. 23 April 2002
MEMORANDUM FOR OFFICER TRAINING SCHOOL SELECTION COMMITTEE
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FROM: 92 SFS/SFO
2 E. ARNOLD STREET
FAIRCHILD AFB, WA 99011
SUBJECT: Recommendation for Staff Sergeant Eric L. Wattree
ERIC WATTREE, JR.
1. I wholeheartedly concur with Staff Sergeant Wattree’s request to attend Officer Training School. He represents the enlisted ranks with the highest standard and will bring that dedication and professionalism to the officer corps. 2. Eric continues to lead a stellar military career; his enlisted performance reports speak for themselves. His leadership and experience, especially in contingency environments, remains a vital asset to our unit and wing. As one of my primary Phoenix Raven team leaders, he’s propelled to the forefront of all major deployments throughout the world. He’s repeatedly secured aircraft and crews, supporting a wide variety of missions, in the most austere and terrorist-ridden environments where security is severely inadequate. The diversity of these missions never limited SSgt Wattree’s capacity to adapt to each situation. For this reason, Eric was selected as our 2000 Outstanding Phoenix Raven Member of the Year and the 2001 Air Force Reserve Component Airman of the Year for the 92d Security Forces Squadron.
3. Whether operating under peacetime or contingency operations, Eric easily assumes control and tackles every situation with meticulous tenacity, a quality highly desired in our Air Force officers. Requested by name, Sergeant Wattree, provided security for presidential Banner missions throughout Greece, Peru and Viet Nam. While deployed to Afghanistan, he flew numerous combat missions in our nation’s pursuit to eradicate terrorism through Operation ENDURING FREEDOM. Additionally, he provided round-the-clock force protection for aircraft in other high-threat environments including Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Oman. 4. Sergeant Wattree motivated his personnel during the worst conditions and raised the level of esprit de corps to integrate personnel from other Air Force specialties into a cohesive team. His leadership, integrity and devotion to our Air Force play an integral part in our future leadership. Eric has what it takes to become a commissioned officer and earns my full support to attend Officer Training School.
FRANK HELLSTERN, JR., Captain, USAF
Operations Officer
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When Eric was discharged after his four-year tour, he was contacted by the Air Force and asked to return by “Special Request.” But that didn’t last long, because as an Air Force Raven (Special Forces) he worked in concert with the Secret Service, FBI, CIA, and various other security agencies, so the federal government snatched him up. The agent who did his security clearance came to my home and told me, “Your son could get any security job in the federal government - I’m just glad he doesn’t want mine.”
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I couldn't help but get a little choked up when he told me that, because all I could think of was that timid little boy who used to peek out at the world from behind his older sister, and get into bed with me and Val at night because he was afraid of the dark. And on 4th of July he would get in the car and roll up the windows because he was afraid of the fireworks. He was, literally, the family's pudgy-jawed little baby boy, and frankly, I was concerned about what was going to become of him when his sister grew up and moved on with her life.
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ME AND MY BABY BOY - BEFORE HE EVOLVED
But in high school he sprung up in just one year, and in college he continued to morph, and now the government was here telling me that he's this 6'6", 250 lb. American hero. "Wait a minute! Are you trying to tell me that my timid baby boy is Buck Rogers!!!? Where did that come from?" I couldn't believe it, and neither could my wife. When they arranged for Val and I to be brought out to attend his credentials ceremony at Quantico, they had a congressman there, but they stopped the ceremony just long enough to talk about who Eric was, and his exploits even in training, and my wife asked me, "Are they talking about OUR Eric?" And I said, Yes they are, baby. But I don't think she ever did reconcile the difference between her little boy and the man that he later became. Actually, even after all this time, neither have I. Is this evolution at work? I can't say with any degree of certainty, but what I can say is, it's been a chilling and fascinating thing to watch. Today, when I look into his eyes, there's absolutely nothing left of that timid little boy that I once knew. All I see is a dead serious, no-nonsense manhood, and without a bit of posturing, pretentiousness, or macho swagger. What I now see, is what manhood is suppose to look like.
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BARACK - BEFORE HE EVOLVED
So we don't know what potential lies dormant within our children. Thus, we must begin to instill the pursuit of excellence and the power of knowledge in them at birth, and never let up. We must also become their number one “road dawg,” and not just sit back and expect them to be educated by others, because we ARE what we think. The very purpose of Jim Crow was to keep us from knowing that. So think big, and teach your children to do likewise. Let us make the pursuit of knowledge and intellect the new "soul" within the Black community. We must set a goal where when the world thinks of Black people, they think of brilliance, competence, and accomplishment, not just "soul."
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POPPI'S DREAM
Well, Taylor,
Well, Trey,
You’re on your way,
To add to the Wattree Clan;
It’s my conviction, not hope, you will surely both,
Add a page to the sojourn of man.
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You’ll be loved and nurtured to take your place,
In this world that you now belong;
And when we’re through, we trust both of you,
Will help make our people be strong.
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You’ll be taught that knowledge is the key to life,
And to harvest its essence you’ll strive;
Then combine that knowledge with the wisdom of Solomon,
To help see our people survive.
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Think not of what is politically correct,
Seek to be independent of thought;
For group-think, indeed, is not thought at all,
But that of which fools are wrought.
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Embrace truth over all as your clarion call,
Make integrity your moral code;
And when life’s so tough you think it’s too much,
Allow God to relieve your load.
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Make the God you trust the God of your heart,
And not the God of man;
For the God of man is man himself,
And only just when it suits his plan.
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And look to the note that your poppi once wrote,
A withered vine ignored as benign;
Make my words come true, what I said of you,
And make my legacy whisper through time:
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“Neither scholar nor the head of state,
The most common of men seems to be my fate;
A life blistered with struggle and constant need,
As my legacy to man I present my seed.
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More fertile, more sturdy, they both than I,
This withered old vine left fallow and dry;
The nectar of their roots lie dormant still,
But through their fruit I’ll be revealed.”
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Love,
Poppi
ERIC WATTREE III INVESTMENT/FINANCE
UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII
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The Imafidons, a Nigerian family, is the smartest family in Britain
I’m a lifelong musician who’s been devoted to jazz every since I was a child, and I take great pride in what jazz has contributed to the Black community, America, and the world. I also have a deep devotion to my culture. For both of those reasons I’ve decided to devote much of my waking hours to the promotion of a woman who I’m convinced is highly significant to what Black people represent as a culture, and as an artistic force in the world. Her name is Rita Edmond, and she’s come along at just the right time, because the jazz world really needs someone like her now. But due to America’s current self-serving environment, its elitist media is completely ignoring her, and it’s a slap in the face of jazz. It’s, literally, like ignoring Sarah Vaughan.
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But this situation is not just a result of the White establishment alone. It’s also a result of what many Black people have allowed themselves to become. It’s sad that I even have to make this appeal for an artist of this caliber. In the past, jazz flourished because musicians promoted one another. Back in the day Jimmy Heath would have told a promoter or club owner, “If you like me, you’ll also like a guy by the name John Coltrane. You need to check him out.” Jimmy would do that in the name of jazz, because he recognized that by promoting jazz, he was also promoting himself. Thelonious Monk even went to jail for Bud Powell to prevent Bud from being barred from playing in New York, because Monk knew that Bud was good for jazz. But today the attitude seems to be, “I got mine, so you’re just gonna to have to struggle like I did.” Many even go so far as to HIDE possible connections - and then we wonder why our traditions are disappearing. So the very last thing we should want is for someone like Rita Edmond to be a secret, because she’s not just another singer; she’s without a doubt one of the most significant jazz divas alive in the world today.
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As Black people, we’ve got to start recognizing our priorities. This is our CULTURE we’re talking about here, and the failure to promote it whenever, and however, we can only serves to diminish it. Yet, many Black people fail to support the very best in who we are. Rita has only one stumbling block - when it comes to the Black culture, the American media has conditioned us to fixate on only one thing, the booty-shacking frivolity of entertainment. I’m not criticizing entertainment, but a culture has to be recognized for more than just shaking their booty to gain and maintain the world’s respect. It was the dazzling technical abilities of people like Dizzy, Bird, Monk and Miles that made the world begin to recognize that there was much more to Black people than the slow-minded Stepin Fetchit-like people in which we had previously been portrayed. Thus, it was the seriousness of jazz as an art form that brought the Black culture into the modern world, and musicologists at universities and conservatories all over this planet are still scratching their heads and trying to figure out what Bird was doing over 60 years after his death.
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In that regard, people in nations as far flung as Russia and Thailand have thrown flowers at Rita’s feet, fans have come to Thailand from as far away as Japan just to hear her sing, and when she was leaving Russia people met her at the train station with roses, and a young piano prodigy (whose father brought him to several of Rita’s performances) ran up and hugged her. These people gave her that kind of love because they recognize and appreciate excellence, and they know that Rita is a part of a great tradition. But most importantly, these people haven’t been subjected to the Hillbilly mentality of America’s attitude towards Black culture. So they see this woman for what she is - a world-class talent. Rita Edmond is not just an entertainer . . . she’s an artist - and one of the world’s greatest. Check her out for yourself:
. Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree
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Presenting Ms. Rita Edmond - Meet The Contemporary Face of True Jazz Royalty
Presenting Ms. Rita Edmond - Meet The Contemporary Face of True Jazz Royalty
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If you’re a jazz lover and want to look upon the contemporary face of jazz royalty, take a moment to go check out Ms. Rita Edmond on Youtube. She's the jazz world's best kept secret. She's currently working on her third CD, but even on her first CD, she made it abundantly clear to this writer that she hit the ground fully seasoned as one of the greatest jazz singers alive today. I know, that's a mighty lofty claim to heap onto the shoulders of a relatively new artist, but I'm not given to hyperbole, so I fully intend to back up my assertion with the contents and attachments to this piece.
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Ms. Edmond moves between sultry sophistication, hard driving swing, and childlike innocence without any effort at all. There are many great singers out there , but from the very first bar of anything Rita does, she clearly distinguishes herself as one of those rare individuals who was born to do exactly what she’s doing, and nothing else. She swings with the effortless grace of a Sliver Shadow cruisin' down Pacific Coast Highway, and her ballads are lush with sultry passion, personal depth, and individuality.
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You can't "learn" to sing like Rita Edmond. You either have it, or you don't, and there's only one or two lucky few in a generation who do - but Rita, like Ella and Sarah, is one of those lucky few. But don’t just take my word for it, go check her out for yourself and I’m sure you’ll agree with me that she’s a once in a generation talent, and clearly the heir apparent to some of the greatest divas that jazz has ever known.
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Along with this piece I'm attaching three links to make my point - ‘Here’s to Life,’ ‘Embraceable You' (Live at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art) , and ‘It Might As Well Be Spring’ - and each tune shows a different side of her tremendous, and still growing, musical personality.
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‘Here’s to Life’ is a beautiful ballad that’s been done by some of the greatest singers who’s ever lived, yet Ms. Edmond’s version is as good or better than any version of this tune that’s ever been recorded. The soaring passion that she brings to this tune makes it almost impossible for anyone who’s ever had to struggle through life’s adversities to listen to with a dry eye. Artie Butler - the multi-Grammy Award winning composer (and Barbara Streisand's musical director) - said of Ms. Edmond, "Rita Edmond knows exactly what to do with a song like 'Here's To Life.' She brings the listener into the music as she sings, making you feel she's singing just for you. That's indeed a gift."
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'Embraceable You,' (featuring Harold Land, Jr. on piano) demonstrates the ease in which she can establish the mood of a song and captivate an audience. It also shows an artist who is so comfortable in serenading an audience that it seems like she was born on stage. And after the piano solo, notice the effortless spontaneity in which she throws in a lick that's so exquisite that it sounds like it should have been written into the tune. You won't be able to miss it because the audience places an exclamation point of approval immediately afterward, as she casually, and routinely, moves on to the next phrase, as though it's all in a night's work.
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Rita Edmond and Phil Woods Protégé and International
Jazz Great, Robert Anchipolosky
Finally, she does ‘It Might As Well Be Spring,’ a tried and true jazz standard. Not everyone can do this tune well, because it’s such a jazz staple that it’s hard for a singer to put their personal stamp on it, and whenever they try, they either over sing or under sing the tune. But Rita swings through it effortlessly and makes it her own. King Pleasure himself would smile at her rendition.
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I also wanted to add Ms. Edmond's rendition of ‘This Can’t Be Love’ as an attachment, but unfortunately, it's not available on Youtube. Nevertheless, it deserves a mention. On that tune Ms. Edmond displays yet another part of her musical vocabulary - her growing chops as a scatter and her ability to swing with the best of them. In this case, she scats in unison with yet another powerhouse, tenor sax player Ricky Woodard, and they’re pushed forward by the hard driving rhythms of Albert ‘Tootie’ Heath of the illustrious Heath Brothers on drums - and when it comes to the aristocracy of jazz, they don’t come any more blue-blooded than Tootie. She's also regularly accompanied by Nancy Wilson's keyboard player, Llew Matthews, who has also played with legendary jazz giants such as Jackie McLean and Woody Shaw, and the sweet-struttin' Edwin Livingston on bass. So Rita is regularly being tested by fire, and she literally dances through the flames with blissful abandon.
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Earlier this year Ms. Edmond toured Russia, bringing the house down with the late Phil Woods' protégé, Robert Anchipolosky, and at this writing she's wrapping up a three month gig at the luxurious Oriental Hotel in Bangkok, Thailand, where she's doing her part to show jazz lovers, politicians, and ambassadors from all over the world what we bring to the table. She's also just completed a project with her good friend and fabulous sax player, Dale Fielder, "Resiliance,"on the Clarion Jazz label that's monstrous. While very contemporary in it's concept, the quality of musicianship is a throwback to the way the big boys used to do it.
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Ms. Edmond approaches jazz like she's been here before; it's like she walked on stage fresh from 52nd Street. For that reason, whenever I hear her sing it makes my eyes moist, because I can here Ella and Sarah whispering softly in the background, "Show 'em how it's done, baby girl." And she has a natural musical kinship to Dexter Gordon, whether she's singing a ballad or swinging, and when you're as familiar with Dexter Gordon's music as I am (his family lived two blocks away from my grandparents, and my mother went to Jefferson High School with him), it's a scary thing to watch. Her approach to phrasing and the feeling she evokes is the exactly the same kind of feeling that Dexter had on his tenor. I played Dexter for her doing "You've Changed," and she said, "Hey! He sounds just like me!" I had to laugh. I told her, "No, Rita, You sound like HIM."
Rita with the former Australian Ambassador,
Ireland Ambassador, and the
Portuguese Ambassador
But in spite of her talent, Ms. Edmond is a very innocent sort whose emotions are always very close to the surface - I think that may be the key to the beauty of her musicianship, but in spite of her unassuming manner, when she picks up a mic someone else emerges. Just the touch of a mic seems to transform her. It gives her a tremendous confidence, and a unique sense of individualism that serves to produce a flawless musical delivery - a delivery that seems to say, “There’s a new diva in town,” and I say, it’s about time!
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PS: Something just happened that made my blood run cold. I didn't know whether or not it was appropriate to mention it in the context of this article, but it was such a coincident that I feel that I would be remiss if I didn't say something about it. As I was writing about the kinship of the music of Dexter Gordon and Rita Edmond - before I posted - I received a contact. It was from Dexter's wife, Maxine Gordon (or as Dex would call her, "Lady Gordon"). She sent me a friend request. My last contact with her was over two years ago, so that was one hell of a coincident . . . or was it?
Strive To Become Your Own Hero... Then Let No One Remove Your Cape.
BIO
Eric L. Wattree is a writer, poet, and musician, born in Los Angeles. He’s been a columnist for The Los Angeles Sentinel, Black Star News, The Atlanta Post, and is a member of the Sigma Delta Chi Society of Professional Journalists (http://www.spj.org/). He’s also the author of "A Message From the Hood."
Some of the greatest minds I’ve ever known held court while sitting on empty milk crates in the parking lots of ghetto liquor stores, while some of the weakest minds I’ve ever known roamed the halls of academia in pursuit of credentials over knowledge.
"YOUR BROTHER, IS THE MAN WHO THINKS LIKE YOU" - UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS.
WHAT A MAN THINKS, IS WHO HE IS. THINK LIKE A MARINE - STRONG, RESOLUTE, AND WITH HONOR.
USMC
SEMPER FI
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