Y’all know I love a good tv series, and The Handmaids Tale is one of my faves… TO WATCH yo! I had no idea when I started this show that in a short time America would start to look a lot like Gilead in so many ways. Just a few short years ago, Black people were wearing their natural hair in droves, there was a Black President, the first in this country’s history, and people of color were experiencing unprecedented wins. BHM was lit every year, and we were joining together with allies to protest our inability to do basic shit… drive, walk, talk live, breathe while Black. Black girls were being celebrated for our magic and our skin care routines. We were winning awards we earned and they (they know who they are) were finally saying Tupac instead of Two-pack.

What a time to be alive.

Today, we live in but a shadow of that world. Let’s see, where do I start… we have a President who brags about assaulting women, uses social media as his own bathroom stall wall, won’t release his taxes, and is guilty of all sorts of crimes against the republic. We have federal courts stacked high with young, white, ultra conservative men who are against abortion, public education, and personal choice and for big business and white supremacist ideals. Just last week Alabama passed, through both houses of their legislature, a ban on abortion with no exception for even rape or incest. Check that out…a man can violently violate a woman’s body, impregnate her, and this woman will be forced to carry a pregnancy to term or face jail. WHAT?!?!? We are going to further abuse a victim legally?

What a bad time to be a woman or minority… or any person who cares about justice, fairness, and humanity.

****

Let’s play a game. I got 11 and a possible.

In 1773, residents of the American colonies protested British taxation on tea by dumping tea into the Boston River. In 2009, American conservative politicians formed The Tea Party during the Obama presidency to protest what they called big government. Interestingly enough these were conservative white politicians and it wasn’t BIG government but BLACK government they were against. They feared the Black guy would gratuitously give positions to women and minorities like they had been doing for one another since they columbused the land we call America. And with this started the fleecing of the middle class minority.

“Hey Blacks, the Democrats have failed you. These programs have kept so many of your people poor, BUT YOU… you have pulled yourself up. To continue to climb you need to demand the poor among you get it together. Oh and Obama will fail you, but your white savior will rise and fix it all…”

So we reject the message publicly, but alone in our circles we debated some of its points. Obama didn’t personally deliver our mule and 40 acres. We been hoodwinked. We considered that perhaps our President didn’t paint the White House Black, he only invited Beyonce and Stevie Wonder and had a few soul food nights. Bamboozled. He was perhaps, just as bad as they said he was. Led astray. Then as we saw the now President gain momentum in the 2016 election, the same way we doubted Obama, we doubted a woman. We latched on to her past mistakes, while Trump was fondling women and grabbing their privacy in real time. They got foreign hackers to continue their fleece… and it worked. We were run amok.

They sipped tea…

We got boiled.

But we burned ourselves. Yep… I blame you. If you said anything about your vote not counting, voted third party, sat your ass at home, or did any other thing BUT voted for your interests… this is your fault. All of it.

As a result of our personal dracarys, they are gutting public education. There is an Uncle Tom brain surgeon running the department over HOUSING and Urban Development. The very nigga who has tried his best to disassociate from all that is urban. Immigrant children are being held in gated cells and separated from their parents. The President is being allowed to withhold his taxes despite being accused of having multiple illegal financial dealings with foreign governments. He and his team worked hand in hand with foreign government to influence the outcome of the 2016 election. He has elected and seated several conservative judges with a history of racial and sexual abuses. They want to push us back to a time when there was no means for the non-working to have health insurance, and undo Obama’s historic health care reform. Formerly minority populated cities are being gentrified to push out residents (Black and Brown folks) who helped build the city after white flight… and costs raised well above what area residents can afford. But lemme tell you what we really cannot afford… not to vote.

In 1964, three men were shot and buried by police and the KKK for registering Black voters in Mississippi… the tragic Mississippi Burning case. Even though the 14th Amendment granted Black men the right to vote in 1870, Black women weren’t allowed to vote until 1920… and these amendments were not enforced until the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965. Gerrymandering has created a system where state legislators determine how to “draw” congressional districts to get their desired effect by allowing politicians to pick their voters. Lies about voting laws are printed in newspapers and blasted on television, leading to voter suppression. Every vote we withheld by sitting at home, could have gotten us a decent human being in office. Obama won Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. About 75,000 voters who sat their asses at home won those states for Trump, many of us with 313 area codes and 482xx zip codes in my beloved Detroit … out of the 136 million votes cast. But your vote doesn’t count Beloved?!?

Our ancestors died to vote. We owe it to their sacrifice to show up. Our Black ancestors and our female ancestors were beaten and killed in the name of the vote. Yes, voting is not an exact science. But if we use our votes collectively to elect state legislators who make state rules that benefit us in federal elections, and then elect federal legislators who share our interests and not just names we know and are used to, we can change the game. Congressional districts and electoral votes and any other confusing shot won’t matter if we show up at polls. In fact, we can influence those confusing rules in those same polls. If we show up, we bust their districts up like dynamite and get people into these roles that will represent us, not big business and their whites only policies. It is simple shit.

If we vote EACH and EVERY time, we get to…

…in Boston, Detroit, Philly, New York, Houston, wherever. It’s a necessity at this point, as we see America turning back the hands of time. We have never been post-racism or post-sexism but in 2019 to have women potentially facing jail time for taking control of their bodies and Black men, women, and children slain while unarmed means we are definitely in a time warp. Those of us who regularly vote need to push for same day registration, and support those who don’t vote in understanding their power. We need to show up in record numbers in 2020, get our game faces on, bid our hand,

…and run a Boston on these fools!

Catch that tea!