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| Katea Stitt, program director for WPFW radio for Pacifica Radio. She is also the daughter of saxophonist Sonny Stitt. |
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Walter E. Fauntleroy, former Congressman, with DC.'s shadow senator,
Eleanor Norton Holmes, powerful activists from DC.
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Rev. Walter Fauntleroy (I probably missed spelled his name, sorry) and Eleanor Holmes Norton, our shadow Senator and advocate for change and empowerment for DC residents. My father, Herbert L. Woods, and the Reverend were prominent and effective in the 1960's in the Civil Rights movement. My father were close in this work. Daddy was the Chairman of C.O.R.E. in Washington DC, in those days. That perspective and relationship, that was one of many that shaped many, and formed within me a strength I work from those days until now... - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories [May 30, 2017]
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| Dick Gregory |
PLIGHT and DEMISE
I have met Dick Gregory in Washington DC a few times and held conversations and twice during a radio interview on Pacifica Radio (www.wpfw.org) I spent time with him listening deeply, as you are supposed to do around the Elders, who know things important to the way Life moves. I read his book, "Nigger" when I was a teenager. Maybe a decade or more ago, I heard him tell an interviewer white people created the word, nigger; they owned it and from that and the rest of the statement made it come to me I should do a seminar with whites only, and give the word back to them. Return ownership is what I would call it.
In private, he has a favorite profane word. I will keep it to myself because I feel that kind of word usage by a man of this calibre in a one on one conversation with the likes of me deserves secrecy, but the content of the conversation deserves analysis, and introspection. How it is shared builds bridges, or divides a person into pieces to make them think and puzzle, or read, study and learn. It also makes sense in the presence of such men to be cautious of how dangerous they are in real time. Unlike people absorbed into and by cyberspace the hard part of learning from the complexity of ancestors, and the intelligentsia of their people there is the tendency to not listen deeply. I do. I do not come from that form of retardation and limited movement between thought, emotion, intelligence and spiritual activity.
Neither does Dick Gregory. It is why he spoke to me after seeing me in the crowded audience of a local play we'd seen two, or three times at the same venue: a church.
There is a central point in all this. Dick Gregory told me a secret he likes to share with minds opened by discovery over long periods, and those who need their minds open to proceed with life on their terms. He told me the number of newspapers he reads everyday without fail. Talking with him I learned how he ties many things together and peered deep into intent and probed into the words of the concepts governing action, policy, thought, ritual and habit. His presence makes thought. His life and legacy will become many conversations by millions of people.
In these times we are in great danger and we have an unfathomable opponent to intellectual depth, diplomacy who is completely void of maturity, respect for others and an historical grasp upon world affairs in the White House. People like him in the segments of American society who are scared to death of becoming the smallest group in the United States. They believe in the supremacy of white people and will not dissuade themselves from this rhetoric. They are committed to this cause and believe in it the way they believe in their version of God!
The purpose of male dominance cast in the guise of the American Way is as ritualistically demonic in its murderous capacity as is its ability to sabotage all relationships to subjugate the sound of what they fear the most: retribution, karma, and responsibility. The highest virtue of people like this is contempt and that is what Donald Trump embodied in his representation to the world during his nine day trip abroad this month in May 2017 about the United States.
We are in the waning years of dominance as a world power, and are unaware of it.
The best way to convey this to people lost in a world obsessed with their phones and minimal contact with the depths of life, who respond to movies more than the resources available to global thinkers is to refer them to movies. The movie, "Blackway" starring Anthony Hopkins is the one to pay attention to and learn the lessons Americans will learn after we fall.
For the more sophisticated the reaction of world leaders when Trump returned to the States after meeting with him holds all the clues, the indicators white supremacists dance around because they cannot see what the world understands, and holds within the check points weaker countries fortify in their relationship with us. We are feared, yes; but we are hunted as well by those we have stepped upon to become the world leader.
Amongst them all Israel has an ominous predictable tone. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has said Israel has "no better friend" than Trump, appeared to hold the president at arm's length on Monday. Speaking to members of his conservative Likud party, Netanyahu warned that a Trump-brokered peace negotiation with the Palestinians "comes at a price." And while he welcomed U.S. support for Israel, he emphasized that "there is no such thing as innocent gifts."
Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories
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Constance Baker Motley was the first Negro woman elected to the New York Senate (1964),
and appointed to a Federal Judgeship (1966). In this capacity she was the first Black woman.
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| Frida Kahlo's art Dancing With Death. |
Seeing Misdirection
With all of the highly developed and intelligent people who were exceptions to the rules of expectation I grew up around, who knew my father, who influenced me by example; it has been very difficult for me to follow simple minded people like Donald Trump without feeling disgust. In fact, I don't follow them. I guide them. You don't follow ineptness, or congratulate undeveloped minds in leadership positions. You guide them subtly without their knowledge. In the case of Donald Trump, he is the presidential equivalent of the best white Americans can do after eight years of a Black president, who excelled in all the complex ways a diplomat needs to do government work at the high level of expectation international circles expect. There is no guide for a fool.
There is a pattern of every concept, a structure for every philosophy to be turned into a symbol, and for every belief there is a path. Racism has an ugly stain without beauty. When people Euro-Americans despise exceed expectations whites turn rabid with rage, outraged by the affront to their assumptions of power; of being better than 'them'. President Trump is the backlash to President Obama. Trump's marriage is the low end representation for the White House. Trump's crudeness is the reaction to the educated and cultured and sophisticated Black Americans who represented the country at the highest level with character above reproach for eight years.
This is an established pattern repeated throughout American history with white people in this country. First Nations people and the grandchildren of ex-slaves know these things and know whites better than whites know themselves. We can, but we cannot guide them because they feel and live out deep terrors we are indifferent to, and don't give a good damn about. Even the aggressor, the alpha predator, has weaknesses, and they catch light from the reflection of light cutting through the shadows of their past, their aggressions, their contempt for what holds Life together.
We, as a nation, are near and on the cusp of falling unless we can heal the white people, but we can't and such a thing will not happen without willing participation in what it takes for a nation to heal. With the center piece of our national agenda the dominance of the world and the transgression of our belief in the supremacy of white people our demise is being set in stone by the actions and words of President Trump.
Following the national narrative the folk stories of Europe are the patterns of the concepts traced into Trump. If you are wise enough those stories will tell the story.
Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories
May 30, 2017
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| Shhhh ... |
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| Lena Horne, a lady, a jazz singer. |
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| Victorian era's illusion about white women was a kind of disdain white men placed upon and within their women, whom they despised despite what they lay claim to. - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories |
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| Klan |
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| African Native American woman in regalia and her Turkey Wing fan. |
