Fully Present Post 50

I understand that folks are busy with time-consuming and energy-sucking activities like earning a living, getting an education, raising a family, keeping house, and just having some fun here and there. That’s life. And for many years that was my life as well. However, throughout all those years, I still made time to vote. I fully acknowledge that there are more distractions today that make voting more challenging for busy folks. In my early years, a more reliable news media and local election boards made it easier to select candidates and to vote at the polls. Aggressive journalists kept politicians on their toes so that issues were more important than personality. Living in an affluent area, the longest I had to wait in line to cast a ballot was 15 minutes. These days, because California is awesome, I vote by mail for even greater convenience. Other states don’t have it so well. In recent years I started hearing about people standing in line for 9-11 hours in poor urban areas to exercise their right to vote. That’s one way to make it harder to vote. But there are others.

In the pre-Trump era, politicians were far more truthful and less hypocritical because there were scores of journalists ready to expose lies and misdeeds. Candidates or office holders who lied or misbehaved in egregious ways were shamed into apologies or disqualification for office. They either withdrew their candidacy or resigned from office. Most Democrats still do this, but Republicans do not. Since Trump, public shaming no longer works on Republicans. They keep their eyes on the prize that power brings and just wait out any bad press. In addition, they created their own news media outlets to minimize, hide, or simply lie about their misdeeds while actively accusing Democrats of egregious acts. I’ve said repeatedly that Republican accusations of wrongdoing keep turning out to be confessions. But it doesn’t seem to matter. Hypocrisy has become the norm and they use “Christian” forgiveness as a tool to excuse a multitude of their own misbehaviors but deny that same grace when it comes to Democrats. Go figure.

It seems that everyday people are just too busy to care these days. Republican strategists determined that it was advantageous to replace actual journalists with commentators on television and radio and social media to spread misinformation, ignore truth and bad behavior, while stoking unfounded fears and openly enraging their audience against Democrats with baseless claims of stealing an election, communism, open border policies, defunding the police, pedophilia, and child sacrifice in their devil worship. With an older audience groomed to trust the media and people too busy or too ignorant to fact check, they found this to be an effective way to lure people away from Democrats while promoting candidates who will push a White Christian Nationalist agenda that suits the religious values of some, the white supremacist social values of others, and the power and wealth agenda of a few. This is the coalition that was formed to “Make America Great Again” while actually destroying the moral fabric and democratic underpinnings of the Republic.

History has shown that when the majority of people are too busy living their lives to notice a radical political shift against their freedoms, a minority of voters who are hyper-focused, hyper-motivated, and hyper-scared of progressive changes they seize power. The motivated minority are otherwise reasonable people who are fed an overwhelming amount of misinformation, fear mongering, and hateful rhetoric coming from charismatic voices. Those voices have a tyrannical agenda posing as protection from manufactured evils. With the majority busy living their lives, elections swing in a direction that is detrimental to freedom and democracy. The many will suffer at the hand of the few before they realize what has happened.

We’ve already seen the consequences of the 2016 election. We now have a Supreme Court that repeatedly upholds a White Christian Nationalist agenda as the law of the land, overturning Roe v. Wade and poised to overturn Affirmative Action. Next will be gay marriage and transgender rights. White Christian Nationalists are on the ballot in every state, and they are counting on the majority of Americans to be too busy to notice their actual agenda or to even vote. MAGA folks have even taken to voter intimidation in some places. And even the polls can no longer be trusted to accurately predict the outcomes of elections since they screw towards older white Americans who have the time to take them. In 2016 people who were polled were too embarrassed to admit that they were going to vote for Trump and so the polls were misleading. I pray they are again off the mark and that Democrats will be able to win governor races, secretary of state races, and hold both the House and Senate. But without a huge turnout of voters, winning is not certain and I fear what is in store for our nation.

If MAGA Republicans win this election and keep on winning, LGBTQ rights will be rolled back. Not only abortion, but contraceptives will be banned. Social Security and Medicare will be on the chopping block. Clean energy and climate change initiatives will be rolled back. It will be harder to vote for the changes because voting rights will be suppressed. Actual science and history will be subject to religious and ideological changes. Diversity, equity, and inclusion will be replaced by legalized discrimination. Law enforcement will be permanently outgunned by vigilantes and criminals alike. The streets will overflow with the blood of innocent lives. Prisons will explode with dissenters, LGBTQ folks, doctors, and people of color falsely accused and plea-bargained into prison sentences. Americans will die from the lack of clean water and air, increased natural disasters due to climate change, and the inability to afford adequate healthcare. And make no mistake, this country will become a theocracy where vocal professors, musicians, artists, filmmakers, and writers are silenced.

It sounds ridiculous and unbelievable. It sounds too ludicrous to even believe such a society could exist in the U.S., but that is where this nation is headed if the majority of Americans don’t vote in this election and the next. Things will get bad as rights are stripped away by a minority of white religious nationalists who have guns and political power. My greatest fear is that busy people will allow this to happen and then suddenly they won’t be so busy anymore. And then all hell will break loose.

In 1997, psychotherapist Dr. Richard Carlson popularized the phrase, “Don’t sweat the small stuff” and authored a few books on stress management using that phase as the first part of the titles, the most popular concluding with “and it’s all small stuff”. Of course, most issues in our lives are small stuff and he does acknowledge that sometimes there are big issues that we do need to address with our intelligence, energy, and determination. The key is being able to distinguish between issues that are worth fighting over and those that are a waste of time and emotional energy.

Fighting is a big deal. Every fight utilizes vast amounts of time and energy while requiring an investment of mental and emotional effort. These are all limited resources for human beings and should be used wisely. Over the years, I’ve decided what is worth fighting for based on a few values I hold dear.

The first is a devotion to my children’s welfare. As a parent and now a grandparent, I make a silent vow each day to do my best to guard and protect them to the best of my ability. However, the way that devotion is executed changes over time. Now that my children are grown and having their own children, I’m learning what it means to fight for their well-being in age-appropriate ways. For example, I recall making a conscious decision as they became teenagers to only fight about important issues. Among friends I called it, “picking my battles”. I decided that I would fight to ensure their health, safety, ethical development, and education. And I won those battles. They all reached adulthood as healthy, ethical, law-abiding citizens who are college educated and have life skills.

However, I discovered that my devotion to their well-being didn’t end with their adulthood. I find myself still fighting for their well-being. I channeled that care into supportive availability, observations, suggestions, and advice in my communications with them. However, I only fully realized this week that I needed to ensure that they understand that I have fully relinquished parental authority over their decision-making. While I have never used threats of withholding money, relationships, or guilt to bend them to my will or to try to retain parental control that is no longer rightfully mine, I still found myself being called “pushy” this week and my feelings were hurt. We worked it out. They confirmed that they valued my continued input or advice, and I insisted that I only deserved appreciation and consideration, but not necessarily compliance. Getting to this understanding took two full days of concentrated negotiation, but it was worth it because fighting for their welfare is worth it.

The second fight worth having is for the soul of our nation. I’ve spent my career fighting for the acceptance of diversity, inclusion, and equity in a nation built on the exploitation of people and the environment for economic gain. The reality that some Americans want to maintain the status quote that gives opportunity to a few people at the expense of everyone else is a fight worth having on behalf of my children and grandchildren and everyone else’s children. I think conservatives have faith that they can allow industry to destroy the environment through deregulation because eventually human ingenuity will fix the problems before the polluted water and air reaches their neighborhoods. They have shown that they are perfectly content to deny the poor and people of color access to clean air and water. In addition, I’m convinced that they will continue to deny climate change until they see the profits that can be gained by addressing it.

I’ve fought my entire life to insulate myself and my family from the effects of their policies. But the truth is that I’m still affected by the dangerous Republican Party agenda despite the fact that I am a retired, well-educated, financially independent (wealthy), cis-gender heterosexual female who is post-menopausal and Christian. I also live in an upper-middle class white suburban neighborhood with low crime rates, with easy access to voting, well-stocked grocery stores, and I have health insurance. But their policies still put me and my family at risk. We’re black and that means under Republican policy rule we are at greater risk for mistaken identity, police brutality, and continued poorer healthcare outcomes. MY husband and I often lament that if a burglar entered our house, it would be dangerous for us to call the police because they would likely shoot my 6’4″ black husband instead of the burglar. Eliminating the inequities that remain in our nation for many women, poor people, LGBTQ, and people of color is a fight worth having. Discrimination and equity are not small stuff issues, and the fight for diversity, inclusion, and equity is getting fiercer as Republicans are determined to roll back every newly gained civil liberty and to stop protecting the environment.

So, as an individual I use every tool in my toolbox to continue to fight and enlist others to fight alongside me. These days, I write to lawmakers and public officials. I post issues on this blog and on Facebook and Instagram. I respond to political posts on Tic Tok and Facebook. I started my Fully Present Better Human Project to inspire us all to be better and do better. I encourage people to vote. And I vote.

There are things in this life that are worth fighting for. In my life, I have chosen to fight for the well-being of my family and for the soul of our nation.

The last few weeks have exposed the rampant anti-black sentiments from disappointing sources. There was the amusement park character who blatantly refused to greet little black girls during a parade. There was Candice Owens and Kayne West sporting “White Lives Matter” sweatshirts. There was Senator Tommy Tuberville literally labeling African Americans as criminals undeserving of reparations for slavery. In Los Angeles, there was a city council president caught on tape calling the black toddler son of a white council member a monkey in need of a beat down. Even the K-pop world is struggling with accusations of Korean R&B artist, Crush, refusing to high-five black fans in the audience at a music festival.

It’s all too much, but not at all new. Notions of “cultural” superiority among humans has always been a horrible problem with deadly consequences. Humans are tribal and greedy by nature. It is a combination that ensures that the tribe with the best weapons and the greatest propensity towards violence always wins. Today, the aggressor is Putin. In our past, Columbus and European settlers after him annihilated the Indians across the Americas for their land. Throughout human history, all across the world, the spoils of war included the exploitation of labor by forced slavery of the conquered. However, no one mischaracterized the humanity of the conquered and enslaved peoples until white slave owners in the United States realized the economic necessity of perpetual enslavement of an entire race of people.

This country was built on the slave labor of black people and enforced by unheard of legalized brutality. But in order to overcome the inevitable guilt that perpetual exploitation by violence causes the human psyche because we are also empathic by nature, white people had to create a narrative that relieved their guilt and silenced the need for empathy. White Christians decided that blacks were the cursed descendants of Noah’s son Canaan. In the Bible story Noah says of his son, “Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants he shall be to his brethren.” (Genesis 9:25). They convinced themselves that enslaving millions of Africans wasn’t wrong because they were introducing these heathens to a salvation that would save their souls. But their actions ruined the lives of African slaves and perverted their mindset into thinking they were superior in every way to these Africans. Their might literally made right until a mightier North (with the help of the enslaved) beat them in a bloody Civil War.

But the warped thinking persisted. It didn’t take long for white supremacists to use violence and threats of violence to oppress black people. And then came eugenics, a debunked pseudo-science that ranked all humanity by race. Eugenics placed white people at the top and black people squarely at the bottom to justify legal discrimination and oppression. Hitler used this pseudo-science to claim a superior race and justify his murderous actions. The entire world was infected by these debunked beliefs. To this day, white supremacy has led people across the world to bleach their skin and straighten their hair. Many Asians get eye surgery to look more European. However, the stigma attached to blackness cannot be resolved by any amount of bleach, surgery, and hair products to straighten curly hair.

These are the false notions about black people that have inflected the minds of people around the entire world: 1) they are inherently less intelligent; 2) they are less rational; 3) they are overly emotional and sexual; 4) they are prone to violence; 5) they are stronger and more athletic; 6) they are musically inclined; 7) they experience less physical pain; 8) they lack morality; and 9) they are less attractive.

Every man, woman and child living on this planet today has been subjected to images, behaviors, and rhetoric that reinforce these falsehoods. When I was a child, my mother who was light skinned constantly kept me from playing out in the sun. She would say, “You’ll get dark” as though that was a bad thing. In her experience, it was. So, as a loving mother who only wanted the best for her child in a world where the reality was summed up in the saying, “If you’re white, you’re alright. If you’re brown, stick around. If you’re black, get back.” I know first-hand that anti-black sentiments reside in everyone, including within us as black people. However, it can be rooted out with intentionality when we understand how it gets into our heads.

The feelings of inferiority creep into our psyche without our even realizing it through subtle actions, inferences, and images. For example, I’m reminded of the time when as a child, I heard my grandfather prove a point by saying that a white person had agreed with him. That ended the discussion because the legitimacy of a white voice outranked our own. I watched how my mother had to present “state identified gifted” papers to school officials at an all-white school to convince them that I was capable of taking honors college preparatory classes.

For so long, the only positive images of black people presented to the world were athletes, ministers, and entertainers. The depiction of blackness in movies, with very few exceptions, were of thugs, drug addicts, unwed mothers, or imbeciles. Our many contributions to the intellectual fabric of this country were hidden from view as much as possible. Sometimes, entire families and communities of prosperous blacks were destroyed by violent white people. Even that history has been hidden until recently. I’m beyond thankful for the movie makers who are finally telling our stories for the world to see.

Keeping the false narrative alive is a way to preserve a crumbling sense of white self-esteem that was built on debunked science. I know that in my professional life, my contributions were often hidden from public view. I recall feeling frustrated over numerous missed opportunities to inspire black college students and younger black colleagues with my contributions had white people in charge not allowed for these “oversights” to occur. Some would call these “oversights” a form of microaggression. But I think there was an unconscious inability or unwillingness to acknowledge the accomplishments of a black person. The instinct of fragile whiteness is to hide the outstanding deeds of black people and to highlight the misdeeds as an unconscientious means to reinforce their pre-established mindset.

So, it should not surprise anyone that the bias born of these stereotypes plays out on a daily basis in police brutality, inadequate classroom teaching and discipline, overly harsh judicial decisions, substandard medical care, and public policy decisions that harm black people. The public rhetoric of leaders and news media coverage are huge factors in how we see ourselves and how others see us. The fact that black and white children continue to view white dolls as good and black dolls as dumb, ugly and morally bad some 80 years after those first experiments tells us that we still have a lot of work to do to dismantle anti-blackness.

It starts with acknowledging that we have a problem. And the entire world has a problem, including us as black people. And as the Doll Test demonstrates we have a big problem with ourselves. We don’t like ourselves. I know we don’t like ourselves because too many of our black sons don’t value our lives and callously murder each other. I know we don’t like ourselves because too many of our daughters are over-compensating for their need to be attractive by exposing more of their beautiful bodies than is decent. I know we don’t like ourselves because we are too easily offended by each other and sever relationships too quickly. I know we don’t like ourselves because we silently endorse a system of tokenism. I know we don’t like ourselves because we let poverty problems become character problems. I know we don’t like ourselves when we side with white supremacists who want to roll back our rights and we vote for them anyway.

It is time for us to look in the mirror and to see ourselves for the beautiful and worthy creation we are. We are no less intelligent, moral, beautiful, or sexual than any other human beings. However, because we have had to fight so hard for our right to exist, we may have gained a few heightened survival attributes like determination, tenacity, creativity, flexibility, assertiveness, and sensitivity. Let’s bring these qualities into our work, our art, and our childrearing. Let’s ensure excellent educations for our children while boosting their self-esteem and self-image with the new positive images we can access. And let’s create more! Let’s launch our own public relations campaign to reclaim our identity and our history as fully capable, fully worthy, and fully human people deserving of dignity and respect. Let’s demand lawmakers and school boards who respect us and act in our best interest. Am I in favor of reparations? Hell yes, because damage has been done and we are in desperate need of repair.

When we fully value ourselves, others will value us, too, and our children and grandchildren will finally have the opportunity to live up to their full potential with their self-esteem in tack.

There is a segment of our citizenry who are afraid of losing the privileged status they have enjoyed since the founding of the nation. When confronted by the notion that they ever had such a status that provided them exclusive access to opportunities, capital, law-making and criminal justice leniency they will vehemently deny it. The fact that whole segments of society were legally and socially denied access to these same tools for social mobility and in fact were also subjected to their violence and exploitation is a fact they ignore in order to preserve their self-esteem. Look at it this way: A runner who wins a race would like to believe that he won his race because he was faster than his opponents and not because there were shackles around his opponent’s feet while he had to dodge arrows. As long as those shackles and flying arrows remain hidden from the runner, he will continue to win all his races and falsely assume superiority.

That is America in a nutshell. White males have been winning the economic and social status race in this country since its inception because they were willing to use violence to steal land and then create laws to discriminate, exclude, oppress, and exploit women and people of color. Their rhetoric today demonizes black and brown people as criminals while shielding their own wrongdoers from criminal prosecution. In short, they ran unimpeded while everyone else had invisible shackles around their feet and arrows being shot at them. An example of this kind of mindset came directly from Senator Tommy Tuberville yesterday. If you don’t want to use the link to watch it, here’s an excerpt from that speech:

“They want crime because they want to take over what you’ve got. They want to control what you have. They want reparation because they think the people who do the crime are owed that. Bullshit! They’re not owed that. We have to understand what’s going on. Folks, what’s going on is a takeover from underneath our country from the people behind the scenes to create such havoc on our streets that we’re afraid to go outside that they can control us. They could stop it today. They don’t want to do it.”

What’s frustrating is that they continue to build on a false narrative that was created to explain their substantial gains in power and success. They supported and promoted eugenics, a debunked pseudo-science that injected the poisonous notion into the minds of the entire western world that white peoples’ success is due to their superior in intelligence and morality (not violence and political maneuvering). That mindset of white superiority remains deeply engrained in the western conscientiousness even though it is objectively and scientifically proven to be untrue. It continues to be used to promote whiteness and as a weapon of oppression and discrimination.

But as we are seeing around the world, oppressed people will eventually rise up and demand liberty and justice. As intelligent, courageous, and creative beings because we are humans, individual acts of civil disobedience eventually become people banning together to demand access to resources and civil liberties. That happened here in the U.S. when individuals defied slavery and birthed the abolitionist movement that eventually led to the Civil War to finally free the slaves. Then it took the Women’s Suffrage Movement for women to gain the right to vote. And then we had a Civil Rights Movement to eliminate legal discrimination against women and people of color. However, we haven’t yet arrived. Social discrimination continues to this day because it is deeply ingrained in the psyche of many Americans. Even worse, white supremacists are threatened by the progress, and we are experiencing their calculated effort to turn back the clock.

I think the election of Barack Obama was a blow to the unconscientious white superiority many white people and people of color still held. For many whites and people of color, it was liberating to see the indisputable success, intelligence, grace, and morality of a black man and his wife as they occupied the White House for eight years. But for other white people, Barack and Michelle were a threat to their self-esteem and their deeply ingrained belief in white hegemony. Among those threatened was Donald Trump and his ban of white supremacists who launched a birther movement and a demand to see Obama’s academic grades to try to discredit him and hang on to their claim to supremacy.

No one should be surprised that Donald Trump became president despite his obvious character flaws, his failures as a businessman, his ignorance, and his lack of grace and morality. He was running against a highly accomplished, intelligent and strongminded feminist who represented the progress they fear the most. The only thing Trump had going for him was the shared insecurity of enough Americans. Trump convinced insecure white people that through him they could reclaim their place at the top of the economic and social food chain. His slogan, “Make America great again” spoke only to those white heterosexual people who felt threatened by the overwhelming and visible progress of women, gays, and people of color.

And then he appealed to religious and conservative white men and women, sympathetic to male domination, a gender binary, and heterosexual relationships as the true social order. They embraced his leadership when he promised them Supreme Court judges who would do their bidding. Trump fed into their collective belief that non-white, non-Christian immigrants from “shit-hole” countries were bringing crime, diseases, and degradation to “their” country. His promise to close the borders gave comfort to the xenophobia he introduced.

It is no surprise to me that it took another white male to replace him in the White House. I’m convinced that black leaders backed Biden because they, too, understood this. Personally, I think the same will be true in 2024. The Democratic candidate will need to be a white heterosexual cis gender male because we must continue to fight the unconscious bias of too many Americans. Progress is slow and we must be steady and persistent.

So, this is where we stand today. We have a segment of our country who call themselves White Christian Nationalists. That is a nice way of saying they are religious zealots who believe that God made white people superior to everyone else and that this country belongs to them and that everyone else should live by their rules or get out. Their rules include:

1. Arm white people to maintain the social order and support police who kill armed (or unarmed) people of color.
2. Maintain white political rule even if it means suppressing or invalidating the votes of people of color.
3. Legalize discrimination against LGBTQ people.
4. Close the border to non-Christians and people of color.
5. Prevent white women from having access to birth control and having abortions by making it illegal for everyone. They want more white people.
6. Keep people of color from gaining access to adequate healthcare so they and their babies die young.
7. Expand prisons and policing to incarcerate people of color.
8. Limit access to higher education for people of color with disadvantaged k-12 education so we have a continued flow of cheap labor without political aspirations.
9. Keep appointing judges to the federal and supreme court to codify their discriminatory laws.
10. Take over state and local governments to secure elections, enact favorable laws, control the school curriculum and legally discriminate and oppress LGBTQ, women, and people of color.

Of course, they don’t say these things out loud except when their passions take over or when they think they are alone. However, when you dig deep into their policies, these are the desired outcomes. The election this November is critical to stopping these White Christian Nationalists from taking us back to the days when civil disobedience and a civil rights movement is again necessary. Vote like our country and our liberties depend on it, because they really do.

This past week we watched hurricanes kill people, destroy the homes, businesses, and families of Americans living in Puerto Rico and Florida. Living in earthquake and fire prone California, I know a little about the wisdom and luck of surviving these natural disasters. However, I also know that all we can do is plan, heed warnings, and pray for the best. The reality is that the sun shines equally on good and evil people in this world and so even the very best people among us could lose everything. The question is what comes next, especially when we know that climate change will increase the frequency and ferocity of some of these disasters.

I’m a long-time resident of Southern California and I experienced my first significant earthquake while living in Los Angeles on February 9, 1971, at around six o’clock in the morning. The 6.9 earthquake startled me out of my deep adolescent sleep before my alarm went off. I remained in bed and grabbed both sides of my twin bed, naively thinking that if I crashed through the window at the head of my bed, I would safely sail to the ground below from the second floor. Of course, that was foolish thinking, but survival was definitely on my mind. My mother’s voice from the other room to stay put was a welcome reminder that I wasn’t alone, and I took her words as the advice I needed to stay alive. I learned later that this was her first earthquake, too.

The damage to our home was minimal, but the damage to places closer to the epicenter in Sylmar was extensive. Soon thereafter, my mother became an earthquake preparedness expert and taught community courses for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. Her children were her first students. To this day I heed her lessons and have added a few additional preparations since technology changed.

My mother’s lesson on earthquake preparedness is the reason that we bolt bookcases to the wall, why I don’t sleep naked, why I keep shoes beside my bed and a flashlight and more recently an extra cell phone battery pack in my nightstand. She is the reason that I pay attention to the placement of items around the house and why I keep updated earthquake preparedness kits in both my car and in my most secure closet. She is the reason I keep an additional pantry of extra cans goods and bottled water in my garage pantry. She is the reason I know how to turn the gas off and why we keep a fire extinguisher.

Over the years, buildings in California have become much more earthquake resistant and although I’ve experienced earthquakes much stronger than that 6.9, our homes have not experienced any major damage. I’ve learned not to stand under doorways with swinging doors. I’ve learned not to immediately run outdoors. I’ve learned that if I’m in bed, to cover my head with a pillow. I’ve learned to crawl under a strong table or desk. Earthquakes are scary but fully expected in California. They are not the result of man-made climate change and so they have not become more frequent. Unfortunately, the same is not true when it comes to our problem with wildfires.

In my mid-teens, while living in the San Fernando Valley, there was a huge wildfire. We were living against the foothills of the Angeles National Forrest. In fact, that forest was in our backyard. I was always on guard for rattle snakes and coyotes, but I hadn’t ever thought about the danger of forest fires since they were rare in those days. But then one night, my mother rushed throughout out house waking us up and telling us to get dressed. When I was finally awake enough, I could hear a man’s voice on a bullhorn outside saying we must evaluate. I quickly dressed and looked around my room. And that’s when I saw this bright red glow outside my window, just above the hill in the backyard. Empty-handed, I quickly ran outside and looked back at the house. I could feel the heat that accompanied that bright red glow and was immediately filled with terror. We piled into the car and drove to my mother’s sister home in Los Angeles. I’ll never forget the fear nor the gratitude I felt towards those firemen lining our street that night, ready to do battle to protect our neighborhood.

Thankfully, the firefighters were able to save our home and the neighborhood that day. But I learned a few important life lessons. First, I learned to never purchase a home in a fire zone. In California, many homes are built in or against hills and forest areas. If the fire doesn’t destroy your home, a mud slide might. I learned to heed the order to evacuate immediately when the authorities give the order. Trying to stay only adds an additional burden to the already challenging job of first responders and no property is more important than my life and that of my loved ones.

Over the years, we’ve considered moving to escape what has become a frequent and year- round wildfire problem. While our personal property is not in danger, we are negatively affected by the smoky air, road and business closures. We’ve had so many fires in our area that we’ve purchased multiple air purifiers. I stay inside the house and sometimes I’m limited to one particular room with the air purifiers running to minimize the smoke. If I must go outside, I have to wear a mask to guard against the particles.

But where would we move? Natural disasters seem to be everywhere. In some places, they have tornados. In others, they have floods. In others, they have hurricanes. With climate change, we can expect to experience these disasters more frequently. My guess is that eventually we can also expect greater migration as people seek safer places to live. Some places are going to become uninhabitable or ultimately too expensive to rebuild every year.

When this last hurricane hit Puerto Rico, I asked my husband why people are still living on that island after the last one and whether he thought we should continue to invest tax- payer dollars to rebuild a place where we know the next hurricane will destroy everything all over again. Some people did move, but others stayed and said they stayed because they love their home and their community and believe it is worth trying to save. However, as insurance companies pull out of disaster zones, the financial burden shifts to all of us through tax funded FEMA and donations to the Red Cross. My question is whether climate change, fiscal responsibility and charity will even allow for the option to rebuild in the near future.

For now, we are staying put in California. However, with continued draught and wildfires, increasing water shortages, and the looming “big one” (earthquake) we might one day find ourselves packed up and moving to safer ground as well. The migration of people may not just be at our border, but within the United States itself. Of course, crossed off the list of possible destinations are Florida and Puerto Rico.

May God have mercy on the weary souls who have lost loved ones and everything else. And may God grant us the wisdom and the will to do what we can to stop climate change.

I spent 25 years of my career in higher education helping international students navigate a complicated, contradictory, slow, and broken immigration system. I’ve worked with students who simply earn their degree and return home and many more who wanted to remain in the U.S. after getting their education and completing the work experience provided by their student visa. I worked with undocumented students, students who were seeking asylum, students who married an American, students who found a work sponsor and eventually became citizens, and students who broke laws and faced dire consequences. Through it all, I’ve interacted with all branches of our immigration system from Custom and Border Patrol, ICE, Embassies, regulatory experts, status adjudicators, judges, and immigration attorneys. And what I’ve gleaned from this experience is that Congress is responsible for failing to fix the many things that are broken.

The current crisis at our border is caused by our ridiculous laws. First, asylum seekers can only apply for asylum within the U.S. or at our border and we are required by our laws to grant them entry and a day in court. The second ridiculous law is the extremely low and arbitrary number of guest worker visas available to employers who have difficulty filling jobs that Americans don’t want to do. The third is Congress’ failure to pass the Dream Act, granting permanent status to children brought here by their parents and educated on our dime. And finally, the failure of Congress to fund adequate numbers of people to quickly adjudicate immigration status claims, leaving us with processing lines that can literally take years to process and approve. These are laws that Congress can and should address. Their continued failure to do so is a blatant invitation for people to overstay their visas, enter the country illegally to join family members or look for jobs, or show up at our border seeking asylum. We have created this crisis at our borders, and we have turned otherwise decent people into criminals.

Contrary to political talking points, the president lacks the power to change these laws. Remember, the executive branch is charged with enforcing the law, not making them. So, each president can only place a band aide on the problems or make life a living hell for migrants trying to follow our current laws. It was by executive order that President Obama famously gave temporary legal status to the Dreamers though the DACA Program. He was essentially saying that he wasn’t going to deport them and was going to allow them to live and work in the U.S. if they adhered to strict guidelines and renewal applications. Let us not forget that Obama was also nicknamed the “Deporter in Chief” because of the unpresented numbers of people he deported. To this day, the Senate has failed to pass the Dream Act because it would require at least 10 Republican votes. Getting those votes from a xenophobic white nationalist party is nearly impossible since the Dreamers in question are typically people of color.

Donald Trump, being the white nationalist he is, used the executive branch to take an even harsher approach to the immigration. Remember his Muslim ban? He also reduced the number of green cards available. He tried and failed to deport 98% of asylum seekers, those here under protected status who fled political and natural disasters. He tried to dismantle the Obama DACA Program for Dreamers. He made it more difficult to obtain visas. He wanted to build a wall to keep migrants out. Of course, he promised that Mexico was going to pay for it, but Mexico refused and so did Congress because walls have never been effective. However, Donald Trump had another evil trick up his sleeve to keep people out. He initiated the unthinkable act of separating children from their parents and then failed to keep track of them. He drastically increased the fees associated with all immigration related applications. His policy to make asylum seekers wait outside the U.S. was found to be illegal. In many cases, the court stood between Trump and the policies he tried to enact to curtail legal as well as illegal immigration. He said the truth out loud when he claimed that he wanted more people from countries like Norway and Sweden to come and not from those, “shit-hole” countries.

Obama, Trump and Biden cannot unilaterally fix the current immigration crisis at the border and all three have pointed to Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform. The problem is that Democrats want reforms that balance human compassion with the country’s actual economic needs while Republicans want to limit the increase of people of color and religious diversity under the false narrative of protecting jobs and “American values”. What Republicans fear most is the replacement of white majority rule. They are afraid that new legal immigrants who become citizens will vote them out of office permanently. However, what Americans see is the human crisis at our border and they wonder how to resolve it.

This week, I wrote to my Congresswoman, both my Senators, the House and Senate Majority leaders and the President (twice). I suggested that they need to act now to address and to make proposals to mitigate the problems. I made the following suggestions:

First, I asked them to end the requirement that asylum seekers be present in the U.S. or present themselves at our border. This law simply invites the border crisis. I suggested that they allow asylum seekers to apply for asylum from anywhere in the world and that we hire enough adjudicators to review the cases quickly before granting admission to the U.S. for those outside. In addition, I suggested that they work out an agreement with other countries to be part of a destination lottery for asylum seekers.

Second, I suggested that they increase the number of temporary worker visas to better match the employer demand for workers in industries like farming, food processing, restaurant, hospitality, healthcare, and other industries struggling with worker shortages. I asked the president to consider granting employer sponsored temporary work visas to those already here working illegally but otherwise obeying the law. The undocumented worker situation was a problem of our own making by failing to meet the needs of employers for workers. Our failure turned both employers and undocumented workers into lawbreakers. I see them as victims of a broken system. Let’s rectify that and moving forward strictly enforce the law.

Third, I suggested that they hire an adequate number of adjudicators so that the processing and approval of immigration applications doesn’t take years to process. Long processing times are invitations for people to overstay their visas or cross the border illegally to reunite with family members or to find jobs.

And finally, I asked them to pass the Dream Act to grant permanent status to young people with diplomas, jobs, businesses, military service, and no criminal record. These are people whom we have invested in and who are contributing members of our society. Granting them legal status would relieve a burden on our immigration system.

Doing these few things will eliminate much of the human trafficking, the travel perils of migrants, the mean-spirited political stunts of Trumpian governors, and we would free up border patrol officers to crack down on drug traffickers.

The crisis at our border is solvable. In fact, many of the problems within our broken immigration system are easily solvable. We just need a Congress that is willing to solve them. In particular, we need at least 60 U.S. senators to vote in favor of our economy and compassion and a Democratic House. So, lets vote for people who will fix this broken and ineffective system in keeping with our values. We are a nation of immigrants so let’s have an immigration system that actually works.

I wonder if I am the only one to notice the expansion and frequency of acts of cruelty in the U.S. since Donald Trump was in office. And sadly, I’ve seen that much of the nastiness is among professed Christians, represented by a political party that claims to be all about “family values”. But when did family values ever condone separating children from their parents to deter immigration? What part of the family values mindset refuses lunches to school-age children living in poverty or debt relief to struggling citizens while allowing business debts to be forgiven uncontested? What thinking in family values disregards the emotional and physical health of women with ill-conceived or malfunctioning pregnancies? What family values mentality denies children the right to learn about history, science, and the actual diversity of the human race? And when did family values ever include denying access to clean drinking water for entire communities of color?

The Republican Party and their white Christian nationalist have made it clear that certain lives and families do not matter. However, since Trump, they are taking their disregard and distain for others to a whole new level: unabashed cruelty. There is a Bible proverb that reads, “The merciful man does good for his own soul. But he who is cruel troubles his own flesh” (Proverbs 11:17). Mercy is an act of compassion shown towards people to whom you own nothing. It is undeserved favor. It is kindness extended to someone who needs it. Cruelty on the other hand is pouring salt into someone’s wound. It is the ruthless and inconsiderate infliction of pain and suffering onto others.

This past week, Governor Ron DeSantis flew fifty migrants, not illegal aliens, but legal asylum-seeking people, across the country to the island vacation town of Martha’s Vineyard without notice to anyone on the island of their arrival. What’s worse is that he lured these vulnerable people onto the plane with false promises of housing and jobs while also providing them with inaccurate information about how to maintain their tenuous immigration status. The information given would have disqualified them from pursuing legal residence in United States. In addition, some of those sent on the plane had hearings scheduled in other states as early as Monday morning. It bothers me that the news only depicts his actions as a political stunt to gain attention, when in fact his actions show a blatant and cruel disregard for the lives of the people he dumped in Martha’s Vineyard under false pretenses. Thankfully, his ploy to frighten, stun, or anger the residents of Martha’s Vineyard failed as they united to choose mercy. They clothed, provided food and shelter, and secured free legal advice to the newcomers. I’m sure that their souls are feeling good about now. I trust in the Lord to avenge the cruelty of Ron DeSantis. And I hope the voters are taking note. But there are others who are delving into that same bowl of cruelty.

As Disney and other media companies finally make attempts to be inclusive of a wide range of skin colors in their story characters, racist white people are losing their minds. I noticed the dark-skinned people in the new “Lord of the Rings” prequel and jokingly remarked to my husband that they must have undergone a mass extinction because they were absent in the earlier movies. But their reaction was pure vitriol. Of course, these changes on screen are an attempt on the part of the producers to right a past wrong. I found it interesting that the amount of anger from the racists about “Lord of the Rings” was over-shadowed by the protests over Halle Bailey, a highly talented, black-skinned actress cast as Ariel in “The Little Mermaid”. In both cases, we are talking about fictional characters who do not exist in reality nor in actual history and the racists are up in arms over the inclusion of darker skinned humans. The joy we witnessed among young black girls who see themselves in Ariel must warm the hearts of those producers who had the power to show this little bit of mercy. The haters can keep losing sleep as their blood boils and they spew hatred from their mouths and their keyboards.

I’ve already written about the backlash I’ve received on my Facebook posts about being a better human. And many of these from professed Christian people. There is a scripture I recite to myself, and I hope others take it to heart as well. It says, “Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21). That verse is a nice compliment to the Proverb I’ve highlighted for today.

As much of the world mourns the death of Queen Elizabeth, many are reminded of the past cruelty of the British Empire throughout the world. Many feel only bitterness and regret that Queen Elizabeth passed on the opportunity to issue formal apologies during her reign for the financial harm and for the many lives loss or ruined at the hand of her Empire. While she herself was not a cruel person and much of the harm preceded her reign, she failed in her lifetime to extend the mercy needed to acknowledge and help heal the festering wounds caused by those acts of human cruelty. I’m left wondering why she didn’t.

It’s a fact that humans have always had a cruel side. Acts of human cruelty are an everyday reality, and they seem to be expanding and becoming more frequent. However, humans are also capable of empathy and compassion which begats mercy. I’m going to be like those people on Martha’s Vineyard and those producers that are trying to be more inclusive. Each day, faced with the choice, I will choose mercy. I will not ignore cruelty because that is in fact a brand of cruelty itself. Each time I choose mercy, my soul becomes glad, and the world becomes a little bit better for someone else.

We don’t get to choose our family members, but we do get to choose our friends. And I have very few actual friends outside of family members, some of whom are both family and friends. It may be unusual, but my mother was my very best friend before her passing and I haven’t experienced that depth of friendship since her passing in 1994. It’s likely because of my personality. I’ve said many times that I am an introvert. At times I think I also have reclusive tendencies. If my mother worried about the many hours I spent as a child tucked away behind the big orange chair in her bedroom just thinking or the days I spent playing alone in my bedroom or in my grandparent’s attic, she never mentioned it to me. As I got older, I often shopped alone, visited museums alone, and even went to the movies alone because I wanted to. After her death, I’ve become my own best friend by choice.

However, I do like people. But the truth is that I can only enjoy people in small doses. Because of this, the quality of my rare interactions makes a huge difference to me. I hate drama, bickering, jealously, competition, and gossip. There was a short time in my life when I’d decided that boys made better friends than girls because there was less of this nonsense, and they didn’t appear to be so needy or clingy. Boys didn’t need constant affirmation about their looks and feelings. They weren’t constantly worried about who said or did whatever. But boys had other issues like their attraction to violence and that rubbed me the wrong way. They weren’t inclined toward meaningful conversations either, so that preference was short-lived.

Eventually, the few female friends I made in high school were athletes and academically inclined students like me and they didn’t gossip nor traffic in drama. They didn’t insist that I go shopping with them nor talk to them on the phone. Our interactions were not riddled in competition and insecurities. That positive experience lured me into believing that I could make and maintain positive female friendships so long as we had common goals. So, in college, I joined my two closest dorm friends and pledged Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. I soon learned that I loved the community service projects, but I dreaded the parties and the return to female drama.

I was never a shy person and I never lacked friendly human interactions. From the outside looking in, it probably seemed like I had lots of friends because I was well known and well liked. I am approachable because I smile and acknowledged everyone from a genuine place of welcome. To my surprise, I was actually voted “most outgoing” by my senior class. How that happened is a mystery to me because I never once attended a party in high school. I had a lot of “associates” and was I kind and friendly to everyone, but I only hung out with that small circle of friends, whom I saw at school and at youth group.

During my career, I was often told that I give off a warm and welcoming aura that attracts people to me. I genuinely do like most people, and I am welcoming because I feel deeply that most people are deserving of kindness, dignity and respect. However, I’ve always been really picky about people I become actual friends with. I am friendly with a lot of people, but friends with only a few. I realize that some people mistake my willingness to have genuine interactions with them as friendship when it is not.

I can name the few people whom I have called “friends” over the years. These people proved themselves to be incredible human beings whom I admired for their wisdom, empathy, loyalty, and generosity. They are my “go to” people and the people I will be there for in every situation. They are the only people in the world who can keep me on the telephone for more than five minutes.

There were times in my life when I mistakenly thought someone was friendship material. I’m a sucker for intelligence, confidence, and humor. But each time I’ve embarked on a friendship based on these attributes alone, I’ve been burned. I had to learn the hard way that not every smile is truly friendly and not every person who shows an interest in me has my best interest in mind. And then there was the time I joined my sorority after being taken in by the organizational goals and the intelligence, talents, and energy of the sorority members. After being initiated, I soon discovered that the community service at the college level was less important than parties and female drama. It proved way too much for me and I had to extricate myself. It took years for me to return to active membership and that was only because I finally learned how to preserve my sanity in the midst of a dynamic female environment.

There is a Bible Proverb that reads, “He who walks with wise men will be wise, but the companion of fools will be destroyed.” It’s taken me years to finally understand that wisdom is the application of knowledge. It’s emotional intelligence. I want to be an emotionally intelligent person, so I must choose emotionally intelligent people as my companions.

Today, I have many associates but very few friends. But the friends I do have can discern between the truth and lies, are loyal and keep confidences, do not gossip about others, are genuinely supportive me and my family, are empathetic, kindhearted, and are not overly demanding of my presence because they too require time alone. They may not be the funniest people on the planet, but they definitely contribute to my own wise walk and not my ultimate destruction.

I feel blessed and satisfied to observe the respectful and productive lives of my adult children. I raised them with intention, sensitivity, patience, and sacrificial investment while having full faith in Proverbs 22:6 that reads, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

There is a special joy that comes from hearing and watching my adult children put into practice the life lessons and values I instilled in them regarding hard work, integrity, diligence, determination, and respect for others. It wasn’t always easy. In fact, at times when they were growing up, it was really hard, especially during those adolescent years. I had to remind myself that being a teenager isn’t the “old” that verse was talking about. Those teenage years were really tough and sometimes very scary as they took risks and did things that were contrary to the values and common sense that I was trying to instill in them. I found that the key to those teenage years was persistence, insistence, and vigilance.

Proverbs 19:18 reads, “Chasten your son while there is hope, and do not set your heart on his destruction.” I believe that is talking about those teenage years when they are hell bent on testing the waters, your patience, and the boundaries. Contrary to some, I believe those are the years when our hearts, ears, and eyes need to be the most open. During those years they need constant reassurance, the greatest display of unconditional love, the assurance that failure is an opportunity to learn, the sting of consequences for their actions, and an understanding that supervision is different from surveillance. Navigating those teenage years was difficult but understanding that their brains were not fully developed and that they were still being shaped and influenced by my example, approval, disapproval, and guidance, helped me be the parent they each needed.

And each of them needed something different from me. I took to heart that part in the verse that said, “in the way he should go” to mean that each child had a specific path that was right for him or her. They each had different personalities, different interests, and different needs and challenges. I believed it was my job to observe my children to discover and help them realize and accept their individual talents, their passions, and the personal challenges that emerged. I never adopted a “one size fits all” or everyone gets the same thing as a principle of fairness. To the contrary, I saw fairness as providing each child with what he or she needed to succeed. One child required greater financial investments while another required more disciplinary creativity and another a greater investment of time.

When it came to discipline and correction, I was far more inclined to use positive reinforcement, recognizing the innate human need for attention and approval. In my mind, the rod of correction talked was not only a belt or paddle, but rather the time I spent explaining why certain behaviors deserved praise when others did not. I was not a parent who relied on the “because I said so” explanation because I saw that as tyranny over the will of a rational human being. A person can’t self-parent later having only heard, “because I said so” as a reason for avoiding certain behaviors. However, I did have a paddle. It was there for those very rare occasions when the incentive to do wrong outweighed rationality. I believe I used it twice when they were growing up and only after a lengthy explanation regarding the continued and intentional wrongdoing that would lead them towards a living hell.

As an educator, I never left the education of my children to the schools. Reading was a requirement in our home because it expands knowledge, experience, possibility, and creativity. We took trips to the library, I read to them, and they got to follow their own reading interests. We did homework at the table together when they were younger, and I provided educational toys, educational field trips to museums, zoos, factories, farms, and amusement parks. We played in parks, went camping, fishing, and hiking. I gave them cooking lessons and together we operated a candy store from our garage. Our family vacations included historical sites as well as family visits and reunions. We did crafts and they had chores. Each got to choose a musical instrument to learn and one or two athletic endeavors. All played team sports for as long as they were interested. I’m thankful for church activities, youth groups and scouting that further supported their growth and development.

As they matured, they were always busy going in different directions and at times I was exhausted. I’m thankful that I had an incredible mother who provided loving and competent childcare whenever I needed a break and she also provided financial support when opportunities seemed beyond our budget. It is because of her example and how much our family benefited from her generosity that I’ve been determined to return that favor to my children as a grandparent.

I haven’t provided a lot of specifics about each child because I want to protect their privacy. But I will say that all that time and attention I invested in training my children in the way they should go definitely paid off because now that they are old (in their late thirties and forties) they have not departed from it, and I am so proud of each one of them for the successful, respectable and productive adults they have become. They continue to seek advice and I am quick to provide it with a gentle reminder that they no longer need my approval. They always reply that they know that and for that I am even more grateful.