Election 2020 Rant - time to delete friends off Facebook

It's Election Year 2020...woohoo!! ...and you know what that means. Yep...time to delete more Facebook Friends, Family and Acquaintances. I've already begun the process earlier this week. How do you qualify to get DELETED? Easy, all you have to do is...

- believe that Climate Change is a hoax, support politicians who have said climate change is a hoax and share posts praising people who put down climate change ideas. DELETED! 

- believe that LGBTQ rights shouldn't exist. DELETED! Bye! 

- believe in and support the locking up of immigrant children and families in cages and that there is a threat to you by immigrants who speak another language and often have darker skin than yours in order to deny them an opportunity at the American dream that you enjoy. DELETED! See ya! 

- post that All Lives Matter or Blue Lives Matter or anything to purposely take away from the fact that Black Lives Matter! ...meaning you stand in solidarity with white people and cops when it is the Black community that really needed your support to help them do away with decades of systematic racism that lead to the death of people of color at the hands of police officers. Oh well. DELETED! See ya! 

- post anything that does not show Trump as an incompetent, narcissistic, lying, racist, impeached, anti-semitic, insensitive, egotistical, corrupt, womanizing, fake who cares nothing about the rule of law, the American Constitution unless it benefits him and his own business interests. DELETED! 

- support any politicians that think that Mexicans are rapists and criminals or Muslims are and support terrorists. DELETED! 

- depend on Fox News and the NY Post as your source for facts and share right-wing conservative republican conspiracy theories to twist yours and others' perception of reality. DELETED! 

- believe that "defund the police" actually means the police won't have any money anymore to combat crime in disadvantaged neighborhoods or your nice white or middle class neighborhood or to come to your help when you call them on the phone as Eric Trump and Fox News say, or that there will be total anarchy and chaos in the streets that will reach your nice white neighborhood as they would have you believe. If you don't understand what it means, then don't use this platform to criticize it. And if you believe in MILITARIZING the police? Well... DELETED! 

- don't believe in helping police to understand the communities they police and are expected to serve and think they shouldn't be bothered with training to treat the community and those who live in it with the same respect and decency they show other communities ...and don't believe they should understand the history of systemic racism that they are a part of that allows police officers to choke, shoot, put their knee on their neck until they can no longer breathe, fire without cause, abuse, brutalize and kill people of color without ANY accountability or punishment, unless there is a major outcry and protest and civil unrest. DELETED! Peace! 

- share/post right-wing supported lies and half truths, newspaper articles and memes about Democratic Mayors and Governors, particularly those of New York who helped bring the Coronavirus down to remarkable levels in this state and city unlike the clueless republican governors and mayors who believed Trump and ignored science and now have out-of-control infections and rising death tolls. DELETED! 

- share posts of you or white supremacist gun rights advocates holding giant assault rifles as a way to show American pride in our constitutional amendments or to purposely shove into the face of those fighting for sensible gun control in their communities and schools. DELETED! 

- claim to be pro-the Jewish State of Israel as I do, yet turn the other way when the Israeli government commits crimes against Palestinians and then you share anti-Cuomo and anti-DiBlasio right wing conservative propaganda that also support Neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic and white supremacist platforms that result in hate crimes and shootings at synagogues, malls, mosques, and black churches. You’re full of yourself! DELETED! 

- purposely support the buying of Goya food products because you know how insensitive it is at this time to Latinx population who have been insulted and humiliated by Trump and his supporters. DELETED! 

- are one of those silent Bernie supporting anti-democrats who are still grumbling over the primaries and Bernie's loss and therefore are planning on not voting for Biden in November and therefore giving your vote to the pathetic orange man. DELETED! See ya! Glad I won't be ya! 

- don't believe Biden will at least try to unite this country and lead with actual compassion and empathy and surround himself with the best minds and qualified people for the job to get our country out of this economic turmoil we face while facing the pandemic head on with true leadership, restoring honor and respect to both the white house and to America, in the eyes of the rest of the world. DELETED! 

- don't believe Biden, if elected, will actually really drain the swamp this time and this "stain" in the white house of the corrupt billionaire cronies, felons, liars, racists and embarrassingly incompetent fools that currently work for Trump in his administration. DELETED! 

- support your man Donny while he plays golf, runs a four year election campaign against his possible rivals instead of governing, listen to Chuck Woolery rather than scientists, hides his taxes and financial records that probably show dozens of illegal business with foreign countries (Russia and China are you listening?), and denies anything that shows his incompetence, even the seriousness of a deadly pandemic and its consequences. 

- show photos of yourself on your profile surrounded by Black people and your favorite Black music artists yet haven't said or posted a thing denouncing racism and/or the systemic racism your life benefited greatly from and theirs and their family's likely suffered from. Guess what? DELETED! 

- think that Republicans in the Senate who stood by silently as Trump and his fixer Barr bent our constitution and the rule of law to work for him and conceal his crimes for which he was impeached by the House for, while they allowed him to play too closely in the sandbox with dictators in Russia and North Korea and should not be voted out when their turn comes. DELETED! 

- you share everything from everywhere on your feed, constantly, becoming a perfect vehicle to be hacked by Russian right-wing hackers. DELETED! 

Keeping the conversation going...

I am 54 years old and have lived through much in my lifetime; a mostly privileged life for the color of my skin - yet I have seen and experienced enough to understand the pain and hurt many are feeling right now. I grew up in an all black neighborhood and attended an all black middle school. All my white friends from elementary school were supposed to attend that middle school with me but their racist parents pulled them out at the last minute. My mother wasn't like that and sent me fearlessly anyway. In the early 70s, I watched as real estate salesmen would knock on our door in Brooklyn where I grew up trying to convince my parents to sell and move because "black people" were moving in to our neighborhood. My mom would slam the door in their faces. Called "blockbusting", it was successful however in changing my mostly Irish, Italian, Jewish neighborhood into predominantly African-American and Caribbean-American. I've taught in disadvantage communities my whole 30 year teaching career, including east new york brooklyn in the early 90s where my students would tell me they had to literally dodge bullets from drug dealers and gangs just to come to school and make it to my class. I have seen physical police brutality against people of color (I remember an elderly black man being beaten by police on a deserted street by police as I drove by) and been a victim of police harassment for once having my hat backwards on my head (as the officer explained when he finally let me go) and for being in the car once with a friend who is black and suspected of selling drugs by police who had pulled us over when we were just coming back from making a recording in the studio in the middle of the day. My friend was made to get out of the car and sing for the officer to prove he was a singer while I was allowed to wait inside my vehicle before he let us go with a warning. In the 1970s, in the 8th grade, I was clubbed/beaten badly on the bus on the way home from school by black kids and called racist names for being the only white kid on the bus and sent running home for my life bleeding from my head. Just a year earlier, on that same bus on the way home from school, the bus driver saved everyone on the bus' life by not stopping at the stop where a mob of white kids were waiting to attack with chains and bats, pounding on the windows from outside the bus and shouting "we're gonna kill you n*****s!". I was pushed to the ground and hit repeatedly by neighborhood catholic school boys one day who exclaimed that I had something to do with killing Jesus when they discovered the prayer books I was carrying and that was on my way to Hebrew School at age 12. A few years later on my way home from high school on a bus traveling through an Italian neighborhood, a couple of innocent Irish kids on the back of my bus on the way home from school were ambushed by Italian kids and beaten with blood everywhere for "traveling through their turf and neighborhood". In college on Spring Break in Florida, my friends and I were invited to one of their cousins' house. I watched uncomfortably as a white father told his 7 year old son what to do with those rifles and hand grenades they had in a dining room display if a n***er ever came walking down their street. I have always loved history and took it upon myself, having seen bad people from all walks of life, colors and creeds, to learn more about the history of systemic racial prejudice in America and try to understand the world we live in from other perspectives. What is happening lately is therefore no surprise to me and doesn't even compare to what some people I have known have seen and been through in years past. I remain cautiously optimistic that there will be real change, especially when this divide and pain runs deep in this country's history, culture and systems. I hope through knowledge, lending a good ear, sharing my own experiences perhaps, I can help my current students to deal with understanding what is happening in the world around them, make sense of it, and perhaps do something to bring about change if they choose to.

Letter to the Office of the Mayor NYC

Hi Mayor De Blasio, 

Please know that we all thank you so much for the incredible hard work you and your office are doing for NYers, from those on the front line to those affected by this pandemic in so many ways. I know I dont stand alone in letting you know how much we appreciate all that you are doing around the clock to help NYC get through this. Thank you. 

Many of the victims of the pandemic as you know are thankfully healthy but have lost their livelihood. Some of these NYers are musicians and performers who were entertaining patrons and listeners with their incredible talents only to have that livelihood completely disappear recently. Years before the pandemic (in 2014 I believe) I had wanted to see NYC become a mecca (as it rightfully should be as all the greats started here at some of the greatest music venues in the world) where businesses like restaurants and bars for instance would be given incentives to bring live music back to their establishments, where artists could be paid a fair amount by the venue (whether or not they prepaid for their tickets or were able to get a sizeable audience to attend on a Tuesday night), where NYC could once again be the music capital of the world like it once was (which cities like Nashville and Austin have stolen from us because of their incredible support of the Arts community) and so I wrote your office and you responded favorably but needed me to get the support first of local politicians. The task was too difficult back then as life would get in the way for me.

Now more than ever Mayor, we need both INCENTIVES for businesses when we reopen, to include Live Music as well as LEGISLATION to protect those music artists and the music community as a whole (from the buskers and coffehouse singer/songwriter to the nightclub performers and talented rock and jazz bands) from being taken advantage of by the venue owners and promoters of the places they play. Cultivating NYCs creative community is cultivating the SOUL of NYC. I am a music educator with the NYC school system for 30 years now as well as an Artist and Talent Manager for a number of music artists I represent who need your help to know what their future and the future of the music community of NYC will look like. Will you help the Arts and live music once again thrive in NYC (post-pandemic)? 

Thank you for your time and consideration on this important matter.

Memories of Mom...

Memories of Mom: Boy was I mad. I couldn’t watch my cartoons for weeks as a mere lad of just 9 years old (when all we had at home as kids was the tv). I still remember whining about it and my Mom reassuring me calmly that I’ll live without them for a little while longer. She tuned in every day to those Nixon impeachment hearings while cracking open her poached egg on a little egg holder cup and sipping her coffee she made after her whistling pot of boiling water was ready for pouring. After all, she was sacrificing her “Days of Our Lives” soap operas so I’m sure I could make the sacrifice too. Right? She also reassured me, in subtle ways, that what I was watching on that television in 1973 was something important - something of historical significance - something that we should all understand - as if it would be relevant to us again one day. I could not have possibly understood what she was implying at that age but I “felt”, in my gut, that she was right and I needed to sit through some of it and watch the Watergate hearings with her. Looking back, watching those hearings with my mother, I realize how much it shaped me and my interests. In the years that would follow, I would be fascinated with politics, current events and non-fiction documentaries and readings; and of course PBS. She and I would have had a lot to talk about had she been around to watch the current impeachment hearings with me this past week. Just as then, I would have had a lot of questions for her and as always, she would answer them and tell me all about it. Everything my Mom did was for a purpose; slowly showing me the way to understanding the world around me and my place in it. So I guess the moral of the story is, if you have children 8+, don’t worry if you think they’ll be bored and uninterested in watching history unfortunately unfold again. Show you’re interested and subtly introduce it to them and answer their questions the best you can. They’ll thank you too one day in a Facebook post, and maybe even in person, many years later with gratitude for exposing them to how governments, the law and the world really works. Thanks Mom. 💕🙏 

Everyone’s talking about it...

Everyone’s talking about it. The coward tweeting it and his silent Party just hoping for it to go away so they don’t have to denounce it. Some are even talking about it yet haven’t even lived it - and pretend that we should all of a sudden do something about it when they’ve been benefiting from it their whole life. Pff. Man. Do they even know Racism? Can they put a picture in their mind to it? What does it look like? My bus was attacked by a mob of White men and White teenagers with BATS, CHAINS and ROCKS while I was coming home from school one day in the late ‘70s shouting out the “N” word “get out of our neighborhood...” at a crowded bus I was on of mostly young Black students from the nearby junior high school I attended in Brooklyn. Scary times... To this day I say a prayer of thanks for that bus driver who answered the cries of the kids on that bus and refused to stop at that bus stop; for if he did stop, I don’t know if I’d still be here to talk about it. The following year I was attacked by a group of Black teenagers punching me and beating me repeatedly with sticks, calling me “white boy” and throwing me to the floor of the bus for being the only white kid on that very same bus. So I did what every kid who went through these traumatic situations would do, right?.. I asked A LOT of questions about the society I lived in. I asked my mother why real estate agents would repeatedly knock on our door to ask if we wanted to sell our house and “move out” because “Blacks were moving in” and why we shouldn’t stay (which infuriated my mother as she slammed the door in their faces). I asked my White friends from elementary school why most of them didn’t come with me to my junior high school when they were zoned for it. I asked myself on my first job (with the Police Athletic League) why only a 10 minute drive away from my middle class neighborhood and home, were kids of color who were walking around with holes in their sneakers and t-shirts in the summer. I asked this guy who’s house I was visiting in Florida in the late 1980s as he pointed to his rifle collection and hand grenades in his dining room glass case why he was telling his 6 year old, “if you see a n**** walking down the street, you know what to do right?... I asked friends on my block as I was growing up to immerse me in Black culture, especially in the Arts, and to teach me how to play music with soul and feeling. By college I began to ask my White friends if they felt privileged living in a society that systematically kept people of color down and kept certain neighborhoods of color infested with drugs and poverty and why the schools they went to were so much better equipped to give them a great educational and social experience. Are we REALLY ready to “right the wrongs” of the past 3 centuries in America and truly make some of our darkest memories for those who lived it, and are currently living it, a thing of the past? Or are they trying to make us relive it and divide us further? Or maybe we’re just still...“talking about it”.  :) 

A Mother’s Day Tribute (Miss You Forever)

Mom. As you ascend to heaven, know this...From now on, every day will be Mother’s Day as your memory will live on in my thoughts of you while my heart will continue to reach out to you when I need your comfort and guidance.

But most of all, thank you for inspiring me to be who I am today and for your constant and unconditional love and support. Life was not always easy for you or our family but you proved to be more than a mother. You were my best friend and someone I could always talk to when I had a bad day and needed your guidance and wisdom. Here’s what I’m thankful for: Thanks for proving that being an only child to a physically challenged father struck with polio was absolutely nothing to be ashamed of and for showing all the boys on your block that you could play stickball and other sports better than them and even win trophies as an adult on the national stage in bowling. Thanks for being a beloved elementary school teacher who’s students adored you and in turn instilled in me a love for inspiring my students in the classroom. Thanks for being involved in my education, in the PTA, and helping me to study for every exam and working with me on every project for school; taking me to the library with you and teaching me research skills all the way through to college. Thank you for identifying my lack of self-confidence early on and working on that with me by enrolling me in camp and music lessons and little league baseball. Thank you for always saying how much you loved clothes-shopping for me and dressing your “handsome prince” because you said I looked good in everything you got me and making me feel good about myself. Thank you for planning an educational family trip across the nation every summer so my sister and I could visit places that made our text books literally come alive!  Mom, thanks for coming to every freakin’ concert and recital I was ever in from elementary school all the way to college so I could look out on the audience and see you and never feel nervous or alone. Thank you for encouraging me to finish college and to pursue my talents and dreams in the music industry. Thank you for being proud of everything I ever did. 

Even when you could no longer walk, thank you for calling me and caring about me from your bed when I was sick and making sure I went to the doctor and reminding me daily to get my flu shot. Thank you for those long talks and texts about The Mets, J.R.R. Tolkien movies, Joseph Campbell, what was going on in politics, and for telling me to turn on PBS for a fascinating program you knew I would really like and that we could talk about afterwards for hours (Ken Burns and Nova especially). Thanks for teaching me how to collect stamps, coins, different types of rocks and jazz albums. Thanks for teaching me about acceptance and tolerance and how to be colorblind. Thanks for showing me how important culture, history, and the Arts were and exposing me to museums, concerts and the ballet (the Nutcracker every year) and taking me to my first jazz concert as a teenager with 2 of my saxophone heroes battling it out on stage (Grover Washington Jr. and Sonny Rollins at Town Hall). Thank you for making every Hannukah and Passover the best and even when you didn’t have much money, you always managed to buy me something that would make my childhood fun and enriching. Thanks for those long talks about our family tree and sharing all your memories of your childhood with me (like going to Sweet 16 parties as a teenager and how funny it was that the same little known entertainer at the time was always hired, Tony Bennett). Thanks for supporting me through my divorce - immediately and unconditionally, when I needed your love and understanding the most, and for being so accepting of my new love and beautiful wife. Thanks for giving me a glimpse of what it must have been like for me as a kid by showing these past few years how proud of my nephew Angel and my stepson Lawrence you were and how happy it made you to learn of their successes and accomplishments. Thank you for being my best friend, my strength, my rock, and quite possibly being the best damn Mom ever! 

I love you and miss you. - Your loving son. 💕 

Bring Live Music Back to NYC

Council Member,  

My name is Laurence and I live in the Gramercy/Union Square area and I am a Music Educator (high school music teacher in the Bronx) and I also own my own Talent Management company developing, managing, encouraging, supporting and helping NYC talented music artists find new opportunities to further their career in the music industry. To name a few, some of the artists I currently work with are singer-songwriters, a Motown and Doowop Soul act, a Classic Rock band and yes, an 11 piece Salsa Band. 

As you know, our beloved NYC is getting harder for everyone to survive as each year passes. Even harder for musicians, who are typically at the bottom of the economic ladder risking everything to “make it here”. 

It saddens me that so many of the music artists I have worked with in the past simply couldn’t handle the demands of this big city with increasing rent and fewer and fewer places to create and perform music and moved on to smaller towns and/or major music hubs like Nashville and Austin. I find it difficult to even encourage my music students to follow their dreams of becoming a musician here as our culture just doesn’t seem to support it anymore. 

When Mayor DiBlasio first became mayor, I brought this to his attention in a letter I wrote him, similar to this one, with some ideas of mine about this issue of what NYC can do to support the live music scene again, and was surprised when I received a call a few months later from his team telling me I have the Mayor loved the letter that I have his Honor’s full support, but would need to get some grass roots initiative going with “local” politicians first. I never followed with getting some grass roots support back then as I got married and worked hard with the demands of a NYC public school teacher. 

I am 52 years young now and have always regarded NYC as the “musical capital of the world”. That’s why so many use to come here to make it. But sadly, not many anymore. It’s too expensive here and there are fewer jobs for live musicians than ever before. 

My favorite live music venues (that used to be everywhere in NYC) have become Sports Bars or simply closed down all together due to high rents and a city that seems to promote the culture that the arts are ONLY for the wealthy (and well-connected and funded Arts organizations). 

Look at how cities like Nashville, Austin, Memphis, and others have used live music to bring in tourism and create a city and culture friendly to the Arts. Yet, NYC is the city that has the greatest music halls ever built (Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, The Apollo Theatre, The Kings Theater) and greatest music venues (The Blue Note, Village Vanguard, The Iridium) that every young and old musician dreams of playing one day. And who can forget Broadway (which you can spend half your month’s rent on Hamilton tickets if you want). 

Solution: 
We can bring NYC back to the day when it was revered as the “musical capital of the world” by offering “tax incentives” and other incentives to restaurants and bars who will hire and feature live local music again. We can look into if old cabaret laws from the 1920s might still be restricting some businesses from having the license to allow live music to be performed at their venue or business as well. We can enact laws that make every neighborhood have to support live music with live music venues or restaurants that feature live music with something else like food or wine. We can also partner with Grammy’s Music Cares and Grammy’s Music Advocacy programs to ask for help on all levels to make these creative people’s lives better. As Bob Dylan sang and wrote in our own Greenwich Village (before the places he sang went out of business thanks to the high rents there), “the answer my friend, is blowing in the wind, the answer is blowing in the wind.” I believe all it takes is us WANTING to bring back accessible Arts to NYers and it’s performers and creators. And who wouldn’t want that? 

Our restrictions on music artists finding a way to make a living here has made sad conditions for these talented people even worse. 

Sure, the majority of NYers can easily “stream” music from their smartphones these days but I’m sure you’ll agree that there is no substitute for a live music performance and what a city can do to support such a culture that encourages the Arts and makes it more accessible for those who appreciate the Arts as well as those who participate in its creation. 

Thank you for your time. Feel free to discuss this with your colleagues. I look forward to hearing your ideas on how we as a city and community can once again support a culture of making live music more accessible in every neighborhood in our great cultural mecca and supporting the music creators and performers who are having a hard time finding outlets to make music and make a living at being entertainers. 

In the meantime, I look forward to another school year of teaching where I will sadly have to discourage my talented students from pursuing their dreams and talents further in NYC as the climate here is simply and sadly too oppressive for music creators and performers to make a living for too many.