In the wake of the latest horrific case of police on American citizen abuse which led to fatal spinal injuries and the death of Freddie Gray of Baltimore Maryland, compiled with the years of daily videos and stories of police brutality upon predominantly Americans of African decent, especially the two second decision of the Cleveland police officers to shoot 12 year old Tamir Rice and then leave him, a child, without help, concern, or medical attention, to die alone on the ground; the California highway beating of Marlene Pinnock, and the choking death of Eric Garner of New York, are just a few of the abhorrence's of justice and public trust which have been affecting my heart and consciousness deeply.

As an American of European decent, who is merited with special privileges and treatment based only on the low levels of melanin in my skin, my eyes were first really opened to the sufferings of Americans of African decent by two movies I watched in my youth: Roots and A Brother from Another Planet. Both experiences brought forth the first openings within my consciousness to the sufferings of Americans of African decent. My eyes and heart were profoundly opened when I lived in New Orleans in the 7th Ward. My life in New Orleans was informed by the elders in the community who not only welcomed me into their hearts, homes, kitchens, and neighborhoods, these very same elders I met and came to love, also shared with me stories of their pains and sufferings, as well as their parents and grandparents sufferings, under slavery and racism in the American Southern States.

It has only been 150 years of freedom since the peoples from various tribes of Africa were first betrayed by their own people who captured and sold them to the Dutch, English, French, and Americans as slaves; they were then betrayed by people who called themselves followers of Jesus Christ who used them, and condoned the use of the forcibly enslaved African people - human beings - as property and chattel, and enslaved these very same human beings for profit; enriching themselves, their families, friends, and community members for generations to come.

From the horrors of slavery was born lives of unbelievable tribulations, sufferings, and pain for the first Africans brought to America to live. Tribulations, sufferations, and pains which would endure unto each generation to come, to this very moment in time.


Birth of a Legacy: The American Treatment of Americans of African Decent

African Men, Women, Children* - almost every one of them - experienced being torn from each others arms, sold, raped, sexually and physically abused, spoken to with contempt, tortured, beaten, shackled, imprisoned by their 'owners', forced to work from early morning to late night without pay, without merit, without kindness, brutally whipped, beaten, or killed in a moment at their 'owners' whim.




The first African children of American decent, from the moment they were born entered into the nightmare of a lifetime of slavery. These children are never free, they rarely get to be with their mothers, who have many children and never the blessing of a family. Every action and every moment of their days are regimented by people who claim a God given right to 'own' them for profit.

These first Americans of African decent have no choices about any aspect of their lives, how they express themselves, how they choose to dress, how their hair looks, whom to love, when to bear children and who to rear them with. Brutal beatings are administered if any Man, Woman, or Child of African decent living in America dares to stand in dignity for their God given rights. Worse yet, if they choose to run away to experience freedom, they did so in communities which participated on the whole in hunting and returning the escaped Americans of African decent back to their 'owners'. Communities which would later, when the camera was invented, pose together, smiling and laughing as the bodies of Men, Women, and Children swung from the trees above them.

Even men and women who were freed, could be, if a fair skinned American deemed it to be so - enslaved again out of pure hatred, malice, and greed.



The Agony of Separation: Men, Women, and Children:
The American African Family for Profit and Exploitation


No man or woman living in America as slaves were guaranteed their God given right to fall in love, marry, raise their children in love and safety, and be with each other. Their god in the horrors of slavery were their 'owners' who decided who to sell, who to use to 'breed', and who to get rid of when they got too worn or tired out to exploit.

One can only barely imagine the agony of the Mother's who were pregnant, knowing in their hearts that their babies, their children, could and often would, be sold as slaves or abused at the whims of their new 'owners'. Or the agony of the children sold and being taken from their parents at tender ages as slaves.

Can you Dear Readers even begin to perceive the horrors these Mothers endured through their pregnancies knowing they could never protect their children, their beloved babies, the agony of knowing that they were bringing forth new life from their hearts, their wombs, that would be born into a life of enslavement, tribulation and suffering?





In 1865, only 150 years ago…

Americans of African decent are freed from the slavery for profit paradigm. At the same time they are being freed - there is no joy, there are no reparations for years of exploitation, murder, and abuse - instead the now freed Americans of African decent are blamed and treated with contempt (to this day in some areas of the South), for the deaths of those who lost fathers, sons and husbands, in the Civil War, especially in the areas where those who benefited the most from enslaving them, have lost 'free' sources of earning money on which to enrich themselves and their towns. A theme which would play out for generations to come in the for profit judicial and penal system of the United States. A Black Code was legislated on what "Negro's could and could not do and where they could and could not go."

No apologies of any meaningfulness to this day comes forth for the generations of Americans of African decent. Human beings who were grossly mistreated, murdered, exploited, and abused with the greatest national contempt bar the treatment of the aboriginals and native peoples of all lands, and the Jews during the Holocaust in Germany.

For the freed Americans of African decent there was no national celebration of Emancipation Day, especially in the South. There werea no memorials, and little to no help given to the now freed men and women, no welcoming in their communities where they once gave their lives and toiled without compensation for the benefit of everyone but themselves and their families. There are no churches opening their doors to them, no hospitals which will take them in for healing and surgeries, no streets named after those whose blood, sweat and tears built the wealth and capital of the United States of America, (financially as well as the building in Washington D. C.).

No psychological treatment was ever administered for the horrendous generational abuse, torture, sexual abuse, and crimes against their humanity for the 'freed' slaves and their generations to come - only contempt, disdain, and the perceived right by many - not all (especially the Quakers and abolitionists), - fair skinned Americans to insult, harm, and intimidate.

The psychological scars run deep. American women of African decent lived through generations of never being safe from sexual abuse from the 'owner' of the women enslaved, to the plantation boss, law enforcement officers, and American men of European heritage with enough money or clout to force his will upon the powerless to protect herself woman. Americans of African decent, men women and children were illegally murdered and lynched whilst people took photos and laughed. To this day there are Americans of African decent who will never use the word picnic, rather they prefer to use the word BBQ to describe getting together to eat and celebrate? Do you know why? Because pic-nic was code for the KKK and those of their ilk used to describe taking of a black man or woman out to murder - lynch. A code word for pick up a n______ and killing them. Today police vans use a similar tactic and this is called 'nickel rides". This was and continues to be the legacy of life after freedom in America for Americans of African decent.

Freedom for the slaves and their first free born children comes with a new type of imprisonment - community lynchings, KKK terror, by day and night as many officers of the making and enforcing the laws and courts were KKK members. There was little to no redress for raping and murdering Americans of African decent. Even in the northern cities, the KKK were brought in through the guise of helping in policing the 'coloreds' who sought to move away from the South and the sufferings they had endured there.

Jim Crow laws and the Black Code are enacted to separate and discriminate between human beings of high melanin skin content and those of low melanin skin content, Americans of African decent and Americans of European decent. In the American south (1874 - 1975), 'freedom' for the Americans of African decent, became intolerable a literal living hell and for the freed men and women, this new hell would never be the hell of enslavement again. Especially for those generations who chose to stay in the only areas in America they were familiar with, in the South. Those who enslaved them and the communities who supported their enslavement, now sought to legislate and enforce laws to imprison their movements, gestures, and activities.






Separate dances, separate entrances, separated neighborhoods, separated sections in restaurants, buses, trains, theaters, schools, colleges,separate hospitals and wards, different water fountains. Even in the Armed Forces: Civil War, First World War, Second World War, enforced segregation and racism towards the Americans of African decent who were willing to give their lives for the country who abused and exploited them and their families for generations was rampant and condoned.

In the 1950s and 1960s with the advent of the human rights movements and the ability to have a taste of the 'American Dream," NIMN - Not in My Neighborhood" - white flight and a collective disparaging of upwardly mobile Americans of African decent raged through the United States. It affected the entire country and permeated every financial stratosphere, from small towns to the cities, north, south, east and west, the Americans of African decent listened and watched as their neighbors ignored them, burned their houses, moved out in droves, and created deeds stating that no 'colored' person could ever buy their houses or properties, and spoke to them contemptuously.

"Colored" people were only allowed in white neighborhoods to work or with permits. Freedom for Americans of African decent now came with a new form of imprisonment - the loss of the freedom of expression of the self. The fear of never knowing when a man or woman of fair skin color would decide that they 'don't take kindly to you," or found you to be a "uppity n______" if you carried yourself with dignity or made eye contact with them. Fathers, Mothers, Sons, and Daughters, disappeared, were murdered, lynched, beaten and raped - whilst the police and the judicial system turned the other way, or worse yet, participated in the crimes against the peoples.





In the 1970s and 1980s freed from the fear of lynchings** and some of the power of the Jim Crow laws and segregation through the Civil Rights movements - the multi billion dollar money making "War on Drugs" - is enacted and millions of Americans of African decent become prison fodder far too often for minor drug related offenses.

Everyone in the American communities of African decent knew that the 'War on Drugs' was and is, code for the war on black men in America. Black men no longer needed for their free labor in the prison system know as slavery, black men who can no longer be controlled by Jim Crow laws, now become imprisoned in a new manner - in the for profit prison systems - at alarming rates. Fathers are separated from their families, even when they are released, they are unable to get a job for committing a drug related offense which is labeled a life destroying felony. Mothers become again, the single and sole protectors of their babies and children.





A few years later, after the creation of the highly profitable 'War on Drugs', mysteriously, seemingly out of nowhere… crack cocaine shows up in African American communities. Millions, primarily those Americans of African decent, become addicted. Despair in families runs rampant as well as crime, for this drug is not the designer cocaine of the Wall Street fame, this cocaine was designed to make the user insane.







Corporate Welfare and the War on Food and Housing Benefits

In the 1980s the third, fourth, and fifth generations of the freed slaves of African decent became the "welfare queens" in their cadillac's picking up their welfare checks. At the same time this new PR Think Tank catch phrase "welfare queens" was being broadcasted by the corporate owned media who reported as news, the same PR/spin catch phrase again and again on t.v. and radio informing "white" Americans that they were supporting through their hard work and taxes, this mass defrauding of the nation by Americans of African decent. The ironic words "lazy (inferred or said) "n_____," began being collectively bandied about in the media and in communities.

Meanwhile, the true fraudsters and government welfare benefactors - corporations and private companies, were in Washington funding think tanks to write policies and legislation to help to enact laws which encouraged the for-profit rape and destruction of the financial and social structures which had kept America at the forefront of manufacturing and business.

Corporations, bankers, and Wall Street gamblers began buying up, merging, closing and destroying longstanding factories, jobs, living wages, health benefits, pensions and unions. All the while the wealthiest of Americans and Corporations enjoyed tax cuts, special loopholes and benefits in exchange for 'trickling down' some of their huge profits to the rest of the of American citizens throughout the rest of the country. Sending their monies off shore, and hiring highly paid lawyers and accountants to secure assets by finding and taking advantage of loopholes in legislation, the same corporations and individuals avoided paying taxes.

Whilst this destruction of America and the American dream was being enacted, America's eyes and hearts were cleverly being drawn away from the welfare given to the Corporations and individuals with a friendly arm around the Beltway crowd, to look instead through the racist lens of the corporate owned media, who was working diligently to focus hatred and blame onto the men, women, and children of African decent who were accused of abusing their welfare benefits. And yes, there were some cases of abuse, which ended up in the thousands of dollars, not million and billions of dollars of welfare the corporations and private individuals enjoyed. Now, 30 years later, coffers empty - the government legislators and corporations look to the poorest amongst us to make up for lost revenues given to the wealthiest of Americans.





In the 1990s - 2000s as the rapacious war machine and corporate profits grew, Head Start is gutted, food stamps begin to be overloaded with impossible at times restrictions, (the latest being - "even if a cruise ship would accept your food stamps you are not permitted by law to use them on a cruise ship" - Kansas). Food stamp funding is cut with media and community shaming of the poor and those unable to find work after the factories and businesses were merged, sent offshore to China and India or just closed. After the American Citizens bailed out the Banks and Wall Street firms and foreclosed on their homes. Women's health care is cut, AIDS testing is cut, prenatal care facilities closed, and the war on the 'able bodied can work" rhetoric rises as the starving are prevented from being fed by laws banning the feeding of the hungry, the poor, and homeless. The homeless, many who are Americans of African decent are shot, tazered, brutally beaten publicly and privately, harassed and shamed by the very people sworn to protect them.



Prisons for Profit - Slavery for Profit in a Modern Era

The United States, who imprisons the most amount of its people in the world, runs PRISONS FOR CORPORATE PROFIT. (Yes, Dear Readers, I do need to shout this in caps - for the humanity in my heart cannot be silenced to this moral desecration of once again using imprisonment for profit.) As there should never be a MEDICAL for PROFIT industry - so too should there never be the aberration of imprisoning people for profit and hedge fund portfolio expansion. Imprisoning people with a goal of filling beds and quotas in a PRISON FOR PROFIT system is the pinnacle of moral degradation ethical and spiritual corruption.





The Ancestors of the first Africans brought here against their will and forced to work and toil for the profit of a few, now attend schools prison like in their appearance and atmosphere. Teaching for profit becomes not about learning but 'testing' and scores. Men with guns roam the halls of schools, whilst babies are arrested and handcuffed by the police for autistic behaviors, ADHD related behaviors, and even normal pre-teen and teenage emotional outbursts.

The Americans of African decent - man and woman, now 'free' watch as their children and grandchildren are imprisoned, brutalized, murdered, and frisked whilst walking down the street or home from school. Having or owning a car, especially a nice car, the American male of African decent can expect to be pulled over for 'driving while black,' whilst his poorer counterparts are also confronted by squads of police cars waiting at the off ramps as they drive home, their cars illegally searched and violations are given for minor offenses.

The Judicial and Law systems both enacted to serve and provide justice - begins filling its coffers through schemes of the private corporations who collect and pad fines, penalties, fees, imprisoning and keeping in prison, the poor who cannot pay the ever increasing penalties.

Locked into a corrupt for profit system, the poorer Americans of African decent become indebted to a paradigm that charges them 'for profit' for everything related to their imprisonment, including once they are released, through a 'for profit parole system,' for profit tracking bracelets weekly fees and other for profit penalties. Eventually for most Americans of African decent, already living on the financial edge, a minor traffic violation can lead to the loss of their means of earning a living, their car, and their homes due to the unbearable debt and pressure being placed upon the by the for profit law and order system. Most, when they see the police, run or disappear as quickly as possible.



150 Years after being "freed" from slavery...

...the sufferings and pains of Americans of African decent is now filled with the despair of watching their husbands and wives looking for work, often working numerous jobs per day with low salaries and high demands just make ends meet. Small children are kept inside by grandparents as parents are often too busy making money just to feed and clothe their children then to mind them as is really needed.

When opportunities for financial growth do come, even in the midst of a disaster such as Hurricane Katrina, the Americans of African decent in New Orleans and Mississippi are hit with a second financial blow after losing their loved ones, homes, and jobs brought on through the suspension of the Davis-Bacon Act.

The Davis -Bacon Act had set by Federal law a minimum pay scale for workers, especially on Federal contracts, by requiring contractors to pay the prevailing or average pay in the region. By suspending the act, contractors were able like the carpet baggers after the abolition of slavery, to swoop in and profit, paying those in need in the community the lowest wages possible as monies from the Federal contracts and relief funds flooded into the area.

With the suspension of this law, thousands of Spanish speaking immigrants moved into many of the abandoned houses, especially in the 7th ward of New Orleans and took jobs for the lowest wages being offered. These same men, often groups of men without families, took the jobs of the Americans of African decent who needed to rebuild their own houses and support their families, and when the locals complained, they were shamed in the media for being lazy and not accepting the unfair and lowered wages.

These same communities were also shamed on the whole for the few who sought to defraud the Government in the aftermath of the hurricane crisis. Many watched in horror as their homes were stripped of valuables and copper piping plundered by desperate and sometimes greedy neighbors, immigrants looking for quick cash, and people who claimed to be there to help.

Hurricane Katrina also showed us through the police murdering and shooting of the peoples of African decent seeking to escape from the oncoming storm, how deeply the hatred still festers towards them.


150 years since the ending of the 'slavery for profit...

...many of the young descendants of the first Africans to reach these shores enslaved and shackled are often hopeless, targeted by police and gang brutality, predatory lending, high priced food and goods. The youth are marginalized, un-educated by the corporate for profit education system, seduced by the glamour of images, films, and video from both the music and the television industries marketing violence, sexual depravity, and other indignities to them as the path of power in a society where millions secretly hate them for the high melanin contents in their skin.

150 years on, the descendants of the first Africans brought to America as slaves for profit, now kill each other in despair and hopelessness, after generations of ancestral harassment, shaming, brutality, imprisonment, murder, sexual abuse, and experiences of physical and psychological violence most peoples of light skin color will never know or could ever, until now, begin to imagine.

Young Americans of African decent in their despair and hopelessness have found glamour and a sense of glory in killing each other to make a name for themselves - to show that they can 'be' somebody - that they are somebody, that they matter. At the same time, the for profit schools they attend have become a highway and breeding ground to the for profit prison system. The FOR PROFIT PRISONS open they're gaping mouths wide, swallowing whole communities in an effort to fill bed quotas negotiated with the corporations who are willing to build the prisons and take the financial risk.

150 years since the first Americans of African decent were freed, we as a nation, and as a planetary community, are collectively watching and reading of the horrors and indignities as American men and women of African heritage who are being brutally beaten, tazered to death whilst handcuffed and/or shackled, shot, abused, sodomized and murdered by the police. These beatings, these deaths, these abuses, are new and justifiably horrifying to mostly Americans of European decent who cannot imagine such a reality - except of course, on their televisions and in the movies which entertain them.

1:

The shooting death of Walter Scott.jpeg [ 138.75 KiB | Viewed 5389 times ]

For the Americans of African decent, the experiences of police brutality, beatings, horrible deaths which are being filmed it seems almost daily for the planetary population to witness, are far from new. It has been their collective reality for 150 years since their 'freedom was restored' from slavery. Many of us who have a lower melanin content in our skin, may be shocked with a startling clarity when we first open our eyes to the long standing hatred and contempt for the generations of descendants of the first African Men and Women, who never asked and forced to come to America.

Americans of African ethnicity were forced to come here, generations were forced to work for the profit of others and easement and enjoyment of others lives as slaves. They were forced to give birth their children who be sold and traded for profit, they were forced to give up their culture, their drumming, their spiritual beliefs and rituals, they were forced to become Christians and then shamed through tenets of the very same versions of Christianity for being who they are.

What we as 'white' Americans are witnessing and are shocked to see, has been part of the collective reality of hell for millions of 'black' Americans for the last 150 years of their 'freedom' from slavery.

Junteenth-Emancipation Day, for most Americans of African decent in the midst of the escalating police brutality will be another heart wrenching year, of 150 heart wrenching years of 'freedom'.

As a nation built on the values and promises of 'freedom' for all, how my heart yearns for a time when all nations and tribes of the One Creator unite to uphold and stand by our brothers and sisters of African decent. They have been waiting a long time for us most of all, for 'white' people to stand beside them, 'with' them, protecting them if necessary. 150 years and longer, Americans of African decent have been waiting for Americans of European decent to acknowledge their sufferings and pain and to join stand with them against the brutal injustices that they and their children continue to endure in this nation of the free.

1865 - 2015: 150 Years of Freedom and Pain...

Has been written from my heart and from the memories of those who have shared their histories and pain with me.

with love,
Johanna






NOTES

* Their names unknown, and out of respect in honoring all, I have capitalized Men, Women, and Children.
** There is a suspected possible pattern of secret night time lynchings occurring in the southern states of America.
***The (ironically) is my insert.

LINKS WORTH READING:

Sojourner Truth: http://www.biography.com/people/sojourn ... and-legacy

Fredrick Douglas: http://lisawallerrogers.com/category/pe ... -douglass/

Marlene Pinnock
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editoria ... story.html

Walter Scott
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/ ... 9N20150411

Floyd Dent
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/04/detroit ... g-suspect/

Tamir Rice
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2 ... d-boy.html

Eric Garner
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/20 ... ehold.html

Freddie Gray
According to the statement, Gray's spine was "80 percent severed at his neck" when he was in custody. The statement also said that Gray "lapsed into a coma, died, was resuscitated, stayed in a coma and on Monday, underwent extensive surgery at Shock Trauma to save his life."
http://www.theroot.com/articles/news/20 ... rrest.html

Ervin Leon Edwards
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/04/video-c ... ts/#disqus

Douglass, Frederick, 1817?-1895 . My Bondage and My Freedom.
http://web.archive.org/web/201101160904 ... ision=div2

Malcolm X’s Speech at the Founding Rally of the Organization of Afro-American Unity
http://www.blackpast.org/1964-malcolm-x ... ican-unity

Slavery Site
http://www.slaverysite.com/images/images2.htm

Leaked Video Reveals Omissions in Official Account of Police Shooting
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015 ... le-hagans/

color=#408000]Virginia cop uses pepper-spray, Taser on unresisting black man having stroke[/color]
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/05/watch-v ... ts/#disqus

137 shots, no justice: Cleveland protests as another cop goes free
http://www.salon.com/2015/05/24/137_sho ... goes_free/

Unarmed black couple shot 137 times by police after high-speed chase
http://raniakhalek.com/2012/12/07/unarm ... eed-chase/

From Johanna:A car backfires, an ex-Marine police officer with possible PTSD reacts with other police officers by giving chase to a couple in an old vehicle, whose passengers, obviously frightened, hit the gas and run. All of the police officers involved, are not held responsible, shoot at the unarmed couple 137 times. 40 of the shots come from the ex-marine police officer who jumps on the hood and unloads his Glock and then reloads two more times emptying all 3 magazine rounds into the car at the unarmed couple.

I believe we are looking at as a nation, not only are we witnessing the rising and releasing of dark energies associated with racism and Fascism, we are looking at a nation being policed in many cases, but not all, by untreated ex-military with PTSD symptoms who seem to still be fighting the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan in the American streets.


Black Codes in the Former Confederate States
   "...Southern legislators, elected by white voters, passed what came to be called Black Codes. Their very evident purpose was to reduce free blacks to a new kind of legal servitude distinguished by all the disadvantages of slavery and none of its advantages--a state, many argued, that was worse than slavery itself. That the Black Codes were not the result of a brief lapse in judgment on the part of Southern legislatures or the work of extremists but rose, rather, out of the famous grassroots is indicated by an ordinance passed immediately after the war in the small town of Opelousas, Louisiana; it stated that "no negro or freedmen shall be allowed to come within the limits of the town of Opelousas without special permission from his employers. . . . Whoever shall violate this provision shall suffer imprisonment and two days work on the public streets, or pay a fine of five dollars." Any Negro found on the streets of the town after ten o'clock in the evening had to work for five days on the public streets or pay a $5 fine. The ordinance further provided:
       
"No negro or freedman shall be permitted to rent or keep a house within the limits of the town under any circumstances. . . . No negro or freedman shall reside within the limits of the town . . . who is not in the regular service of some white person or former owner. . . . No public meetings or congregations of negroes or freedmen shall be allowed within the limits of the town. . . . No negro or freedman shall be permitted to preach, exhort, or otherwise declaim to congregations of colored people without a special permission from the mayor or president of the board of police.. .. No freedman ... shall be allowed to carry firearms, or any kind of weapons.... No freedman shall sell, barter, or exchange any article of merchandise within the limits of Opelousas without permission in writing from his employer In the parish of St. Landry it was required "that every negro [is] to be in the service of some white person, or former owner. ...
http://civilwarhome.com/blackcodes.html

Slavery In The Civil War Era
http://civilwarhome.com/slavery.htm

Freedmen, The Freed Slaves of the Civil War
http://civilwarhome.com/freedmen.html

Underground Railroad
"At its peak, nearly 1,000 slaves per year escaped from slave-holding states using the Underground Railroad – more than 5,000 court cases for escaped slaves were recorded – many fewer than the natural increase of the enslaved population. The resulting economic impact was minuscule, but the psychological influence on slaveholders was immense."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_Railroad

REPORT: HUNDREDS MORE OF AFRICAN AMERICANS LYNCHED THAN PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT
Warning, these photos of the horrors Americans of African decent endured are deeply tragic and horrifying.
https://face2faceafrica.com/article/lynching-in-america

"According to Walter Hawkins slaves constantly talked about the possibility of escape: 'There arose in some an irrepressible desire for freedom which no danger or power could restrain, no hardship deterred, and no bloodhound could alarm. This desire haunted them night and day; they talked about it to each other in confidence; they knew that the system which bound them was as unjust as it was cruel, and that they ought to strive, as a duty to themselves and their children, to escape from it.'"
http://spartacus-educational.com/USASrunaways.htm

Black Family Faces Jail Time for Cheering Teen at High School Graduation
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/06/black-f ... ts/#disqus

WATCH: Ohio cops use pepper spray on black family during swimming pool fracas
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/06/watch-o ... ol-fracas/








The ongoing influences energies of rage and hatred towards those with more melanin in their skin than those with less, continues to take a toll on the American communities of African decent with the latest hate crime and shooting of innocent people praying in a House of God at a Bible study meeting.

We must ask ourselves as a nation who has fed this 21 year old with his mothers milk still visible in his face and millions of other children and adults alike such hateful views? Who has fed his heart and mind such a rich diet of immoral hate and prejudice?. We must ask ourselves who is nurturing and feeding this ongoing unethical legacy of discrimination and hate?

On the eve of the sacred holy-day of remembrance, Juneteenth - Emancipation Day, (June 19th, 2015) we yet again witness a horrible massacre of the innocents. This time, Emmanuel AME church members at Bible study class who were praying, learning of the ways of peace, love, and goodwill to all men. Dear Readers, we must come to terms with an ongoing legacy of hatred and prejudices coming to the fore of all of our consciousness. As humans, until we purify our hearts and minds, individually and collectively, as a planetary family, we are all carrying the energetic vestiges of prejudice and hate within our hearts.

Again, I plead with the peoples of the nation of America - to reflect and ask themselves, "who is feeding this legacy of hatred and discrimination?" Whilst this young man is fully culpable for the actions he took, his hardened heart and mind not softening even whilst being in the presence of the sacred - we all have the blood of those who were murdered at the Emanuel AME Church on our hands as long as we allow the "free speech of hate" to fill our airwaves, news outlets, and radio talk shows. We need to look at the voices in the media who overtly and covertly encourage the legacies of prejudice and hate as 'free speech.'

Singling out the shooter for special punishment at the local and federal level without recognizing the insidious support system of hatred and prejudices propagated through the media (which children growing up in the home listen and learn from), will bring no healing to the nation - only revenge. We must reflect and ask ourselves individually and collectively, "how do we stop this cycle of abuse, prejudice and hatred?"

Our first step as a nation would be legislation to make June 19th a National Holiday - thereby recognizing and bringing to the fore a national discussion for years to come as to how slavery and greed brought a nation which welcomes all tribes and peoples, was collectively allowed - permitted, AND also open national discussions and reflection on the horrible, horrible, consciousness that 'enslaving others, raping, and murdering peoples of African decent for profit, greed, and self aggrandizement' was or is, somehow a special divine right of one group of humans with less melanin pigmentation in their skins than another with more.

There is no such thing as race dear Readers. There is no DNA marker identifying race. Our bodies are 99.93% identical. 'Race' is established through perception and the eye based on melanin content in the skin. Race is an illusion. There is only one race - the human race, We all came from Mother Africa. All of us on the planet, every human being and every heritage that we recognize today Dear Readers, first originated in Africa. As we spread out and lived in different climate zones our bodies needed less or more melatonin to survive in that particular climate. We must as a planetary family move beyond identification based on the melanin content of our skin to recognizing we all are one planetary family.

A Blessed Emancipation Day - Juneteenth 2015 - to all of my American Brothers and Sisters of African decent. I can't change what has happened in the past. I can acknowledge the immorality of the enslavement and barbaric treatment of Africans brought to these shores and the loss of lives to those who died by the millions on the trip to America in the ships and in the seas. I can advocate that we need to acknowledge and heal (purify) prejudices and biases, and I can speak to the violence, unfair treatment and discriminatory practices of the police, judiciary, legislative branches of the law, corporations, business, as well as the media and individuals who continue to believe that people of brown/black skin colour, (greater degree of melanin pigmentation), do not deserve the same rights, respect, and dignity of privilege as those with less melanin pigmentation in the skin.

I walk in solidarity of this truth with all Americans of African decent on your continuing journey of freedom from the enslavement of all forms of prejudice and hate, even as I cannot walk in your shoes, as too I walk with my American brothers and sisters who practice the Islamic faiths. I only ask all of my brothers and sisters of all nations and tribes, do not allow those who would seek to separate us as a planetary and national family, to do so. There is an insidious and concerted effort Dear Readers to separate us. Together we must stand strong in solidarity with each other. No matter our skin colour, political affiliations, or religious/non-religious ways of identifying who we are with each other.

We are in a time of planetary purification. I warned in a recent posting* ofWaves of planetary rage and despair. These frequency signatures of rage first manifested in Baltimore in the unethical and immoral treatment of Freddie Grey (and with its coming to the consciousness of the nation through reporting, in the hearts of millions who have suffered a similar fates of unchecked abuse and hatred). These energies of rage continue to manifest in the minds and hearts of embodied human beings who choose to act out these energetic frequencies through acts of violence, draconian punishment, and public shaming, seeking to separate us rather than unite.

All lives matter. Most especially, the lives of our American Brothers and Sisters of African decent who have, and continue to live in real-time jeopardy, never knowing when someone will attack them in their churches, homes, at the pool, driving, at the store, 'lawfully' (under the guise of the law), or through the media, hate groups, hate speech, or dated colloquial traditions which in the end, are always based in harden hearts full of prejudice and hatred.

The forces of opposition could not have chosen a more powerful moment to strike the hearts of Americans of African decent then on the eve of a sacred day of remembrance - in the 150th year since the illegal and immoral practice of enslavement was ended - Emancipation Day.

with love,
Johanna







America’s Slave Empire
For-profit corporate imprisonment + 13th Amendment = Profit Driven Slave Labor

“We will not work for free anymore. All the work in prisons, from cleaning to cutting grass to working in the kitchen, is done by inmate labor. [Almost no prisoner] in Alabama is paid. Without us the prisons, which are slave empires, cannot function. Prisons, at the same time, charge us a variety of fees, such as for our identification cards or wrist bracelets, and [impose] numerous fines, especially for possession of contraband. They charge us high phone and commissary prices. Prisons each year are taking larger and larger sums of money from the inmates and their families. The state gets from us millions of dollars in free labor and then imposes fees and fines. You have brothers that work in kitchens 12 to 15 hours a day and have done this for years and have never been paid.”

“We do not believe in the political process,” said Ray, who spoke from the St. Clair Correctional Facility in Springville, Ala., and who is serving life without parole. “We are not looking to politicians to submit reform bills. We aren’t giving more money to lawyers. We don’t believe in the courts. We will rely only on protests inside and outside of prisons and on targeting the corporations that exploit prison labor and finance the school-to-prison pipeline. We have focused our first boycott on McDonald’s. McDonald’s uses prisoners to process beef for patties and package bread, milk, chicken products. We have called for a national Stop Campaign against McDonald’s. We have identified this corporation to expose all the others. There are too many corporations exploiting prison labor to try and take them all on at once.”

“We are not going to call for protests outside of statehouses,” Ray went on. “Legislators are owned by corporations. To go up there with the achy breaky heart is not going to do any good. These politicians are in it for the money. If you are fighting mass incarceration, the people who are incarcerated are not in the statehouse. They are not in the parks. They are in the prisons. If you are going to fight for the people in prison, join them at the prison. The kryptonite to fight the prison system, which is a $500 billion enterprise, is the work strike. And we need people to come to the prisons to let guys on the inside know they have outside support to shut the prison down. Once we take our labor back, prisons will again become places for correction and rehabilitation rather than centers of corporate profit.”

America’s Slave Empire
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/ame ... e_20150621

[b]For-profit corporate imprisonment + 13th Amendment:


40 Reasons Our Jails and Prisons Are Full of Black and Poor People
https://billquigley.wordpress.com/2015/ ... or-people/

23 Cents an Hour? The Perfectly Legal Slavery Happening in Modern-Day America
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties ... ay-america

What’s in a Prison Meal?
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015 ... f=hp-1-111


The Confederate Flag Was Always Racist
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/ ... ml?hp=r1_3

The Whistleblower's Tale
How Jeffrey Sterling Took on the CIA — and Lost Everything
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015 ... verything/

Whitewashing Terrorism
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_ ... orism.html

WATCH: 26 cops kick, beat and Tase subdued, unarmed black man
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/07/watch-2 ... black-man/

The Counted
People killed by police in the US
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i ... s-database

The Hard Truths of Ta-Nehisi Coates
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/20 ... tter_nymag

Why The Media Refuse To Connect Those Church Fires With Race
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/churc ... erreported

S.C. Raised Confederate Flag in '61 to Insult 9 Black Protesters—Now Took It Down to Honor 9 Slain
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politi ... wn-honor-9

The Heartbreaking Sorrows Continue...



#IfIDieInPoliceCustody
https://twitter.com/hashtag/IfIDieInPol ... y?src=hash

The wayshower is one who has met challenges of the past and used these to strengthen the qualities of soul that already are present, and to bring these qualities of soul into outer expression. Thus, one who is a wayshower often has had to experience many difficult times in life in order that the soul qualities become more refined and strengthened, and in order that they then may infuse the outer life expression.









THE WAYSHOWER
http://lightomega.org/Ind/Wayshower.html

UPDATE: I have just been introduced to the concept of Hugelkulture and hope to integrate these principles as time unfolds so my water consumption becomes even less over time.

Here are a few links:

http://www.inspirationgreen.com/hugelkultur.html
http://www.oregonlive.com/hg/index.ssf/ ... rnx02.html
http://www.richsoil.com/hugelkultur/