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.