" You are Americans, so your power lies in each other!"- Dave Chappelle

I would like to start a conversation about this. It is important what the entire population of human beings who were registered voters in the 2020 elections have to say about this. On Tuesday November 3 2020, 71 million Anerican citizens voted for TRUMP/ PENCE. I did not vote for that ticket. In my lived experience, there was nothing that America had done that had led me to believe America needed to be made great again.

After a series of unplanned and unfortunate events, I and millions across the nation had been asked to quarantine in our living spaces. Some of us, considering ourselves fortunate, we're getting a paid vacation. I chose to use it to make a deep dive into three uniquely American musical genres - Sacred spiritual music ( Black spirituals, anthems), jazz, and folk music ( Country and Western ). The idea was to build a New transition cohort ( ages 18-22 year old medically fragile students in a self contained classroom) curriculum.

What happened as I walked out my choice, there were collateral benefits. Some dear friends that assisted me in recording a lesson encouraged me that the curriculum could really teach some important marketable skills. Equally important, I would be teaching students who had learned how to stay alive BEFORE everything else their peers ever had to learn just to live. The majority of their lives so far centered around the business of a team of essential services frontline workers using their knowledge to serve my students inside and outside of the classroom. Now my new students would hopefully learn teamwork and collaboration skills and I would give them marketable skills.

Final post:
" You are Americans, so your power lies in each other!"- Dave Chappelle.

I would like to start a conversation about this. It is important what the entire population of human beings who were registered voters in the 2020 elections have to say about this. On Tuesday November 3 2020, 71 million Anerican citizens voted for TRUMP/ PENCE. I did not vote for that ticket. In my lived experience, there was nothing that America had done that had led me to believe America needed to be made great again.

During the lockdown, I decided to go back through John Dewey's book, On Education. I wanted to see how well or poorly this 1959 publication had aged. Specifically, I wanted to see what history had to say to us in 2021 about teaching children.The work would build upon what was already being done with virtual choirs across the country. At a minimum, I would first be able to discover my students' baseline skills and their favorite pieces of music in each genre. The lyrics would be used to learn about constructing first person short stories. Students would also learn how to work in teams at home to produce and deliver a 5 minute presentation that told the story of some event in their young histories.

Meanwhile, on 1.6.2021, hundreds ( to my observation) of the 71 million who claimed to have voted for POTUS 45 to become POTUS 46 were told to march to the US Capitol to demand that Trump be declared the new President INSTEAD OF certifying the victory of Senator Joseph Biden and Senator Kamela Harris. Several Capitol Police staff received critical and life threatening injuries. Ultimately, all the persons who had assaulted the Capitol to gain entree to congressional halls and office suites and vandalize offices while attempting to stop the business of the entire Legislative Branch were allowed to return to their respective homes.

Between 1.7.21 and 1.21.21, we would be treated to many holding press conferences to convey how they had planned and executed their assault. Others joined a growing flushed red with anger "chorus" of persons self-described as "patriots". This spectacle was augmented with racist, xenophobic, sexist, and fascist narrative. No doubt that taxpayers would be funding the investigation, arrest, arraignment and prosecution of the participants who had returned safely to their communities and resumed their lives. This was the same way KuKluxKlan "cells" had donned hoods and other costumes for terroristic " night rides" of shooting, lynching, and other expressions of human and property assault/ home invasion -- and change into business and street-attire the next day-- as if nothing had happened.

Many of us who had successfully worked in conditions that we strongly suspected had been made more challenging by systemic and intentional acts of racism, transphobia, xenophobia, now knew who many of the " bad actors" were - and we knew from their own admission that they were friends, neighbors and associates -- not just nutjobs on the news and social media. WE KNEW " THEM!" "THEY!" we're "LEGIONS!"

Trust was permanently shattered: other insane and capricious co-workers, supervisors, sherriffs and other public and corporate businesses had planned and organized and finally executed revenge for what was alleged to be pain and suffering of the descendants of slave owners, overseers, Confederate soldiers and their allies since Reconstruction, Jim Crow segregation and passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.

Many of us who were consistently compliant with pandemic protocols now had time and access published books, plays, films, and tons of digitized and archival records. This Quality Content reminded us what we had lost while we had been intoxicated in the process of making and striving to achieve aspirational goals to create wealth and access power over others and or over the means of production. Shock, rage, shame, guilt, confusion, fear and grief at the ongoing and rising COVID 19 casualties relentlessly demanded our daily attention. Meanwhile, the rich-and-famous pre-COVID grew their generational wealth and demanded we pay attention to their petty squabbles and insane rants- comedic and or dramatic. In the organized and AI- scheduled televised chaos that ensued, sexual exhibitionists with Harvard pedigrees were restored to their former high-profile media broadcast journalism careers. All of the culture wars, police shootings, mass shootings, rape, domestic violence and random gun violence rolled back on stage-- with deadly precision. This activity so far has consumed the time, energy, and wealth of an entire political party, the G.O.P. of Republicans.

As of tonight, Monday, June 21, 2021:
1.) Who has blood lust?
2.) Who has a newly empowered blood thirst for revenge?
3.) Who has the "most ready" deadly force weaponry and ammunition?
4.) Who is celebrating " re-opening"?
5.) Who is worse off financially than pre-lockdown?
6.) Who is better off post- lockdown?
7.) Whose lives went on with NO significant harm or negative impact as COVID19 collateral damage?
8. ) Whose lives stayed exactly the same before during and after vaccines?
( My answers: 1.Not me, 2.not me, 3.not me, 4.not me, 5.me, 6. not me, 7.not me, 8.not me; thankfully)

PS: While I am taking inventory: It appears some people completely have forgotten how to behave with self-control and using anger management techniques. I am concerned about this as airline incidents, shootings, and other mischief making continues.

Also, I have noticed that all this nonsense about devils and demons is only on TV and other entertainment media and not as a way of distracting attention from real people making horrible behavior choices and doing real harm. This is as it always should have been -calling out the real harmful people behind the misnomers of "devil" "demon" "widow maker", etc.

Share your poll results, what say you tribes?❤🧡💛💚💙🖤💜🌈🖖🏾👍

If Dave Chapelle is correct, we are exhausted! Our energy is at dangerously LOW levels. Now what?