System Built on Quicksand

    Everyday I watch the news or open my phone and there is another video of an unarmed person of color be shot beaten, and/or killed by police officers in this country. Young black males are 21times more likely to be killed by police then their white counterparts.Time and time again there is no punishment for the accused. Just another dead child left to bury and mourn. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings-2017/
   
Officers are held in high regard, but have no regard for human life. So, I have come to believe that the system is not broken it is working just the way it was intended. Walter Scott was murdered by police while running away. The officer shot him multiple times in the back, and planted a gun on his dead body. The only reason that this case was investigated was someone just so happened to catch this on a camera phone.
     In August of this year Anthony Antonio Ford was shot and killed by police there was no gun or weapon found belonging to Ford even though that was the excuse used by authorities. According to recent data by the Washington Post 874 people have been shot and killed by police in 2017 alone, and mental health played a part in at least a quarter of those fatalities. Now the question is what are we lacking in our justice system? Could it be a lack of empathy and concern, or could it be that the system is not lacking a thing? Maybe the problem is that we think that there is an issue when in reality there is none.What if the D.O.J is not broken? What if the same issues we are protesting about are fully functioning machines that are working at the highest level possible, and we just do not know it? Brian Easley(Lance Corporal) in the United States military was killed by police in July. Even though he was clearly suffering from mental health issues, and he did not pose a threat. Easley carried no weapons, and ever witness at the scene vouched on his behalf, but he is not living to tell the story.
https://www.propublica.org/article/deadly-force-in-black-and-white

Sex Culture and the Unheard

      
       In 2012, the International Labor Organization estimated that there are 20.9 million human trafficking victims worldwide. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, sexual exploitation is the most commonly identified form ahead of forced labor. Numbers released by the National Human Trafficking Resource Center suggest that also holds true in the U.S., where more than 4,000 cases of sex trafficking were reported. And as a whole human trafficking is a lucrative industry that around the globe rakes in $150 billion. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/02/how-sex-trafficking-goes-unnoticed-in-america/470166/
    
      Cyntoia Brown is just one story out of this multi-billion dollar business that at the age of 16 she was tried as an adult, and sentenced to life in prison for killing her 43 year old rapist. Brown's pimp was nicknamed Cutthroat during her trial in 2004, Brown testified that she was choked, beaten and raped frequently in her home and threatened at gunpoint. Brown has now spent 13 years behind bars because the justice system never saw her as a victim. She was never seen as a child being held captive by a pimp. Brown was treated as a murdering prostitute, and was tried as such. How can you be the victim of sex trafficking, and end up in a prison filled with adults, and hardened criminals? It was not until after Brown's trial, and a documentary was made did Tennessee law change regarding children being charged as adults.
 http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/celebrities-justice-sex-trafficking-victim-cyntoia-brown-article-1.3649079

     Brown's trial also speaks to color status, and privilege in this country. For example, in Cleveland when Amanda Berry was found after 10 years. The majority of the world cannot remember that there were also two other women held captive with her let alone know their names. Gina Dejesus and Michelle Knight were almost invisible next to Berry. Dejesus a person of color, and Knight a poor white girl that no one seemed to miss. Even though all three girls were held against their wills beaten tortured, and raped daily by a psycho; only one girl seemed to grab America's attention more, and that was Amanda Berry.

   "People who are having sex with children are not johns and tricks.They are child rapists, and pedophiles so we should call them what they are." -Jada Pinkett Smith

     It is up to us to change the narrative and stop criminalizing the victim. Our children are suffering because sex culture, and money speaks louder than the cries of children being held in sex slavery.
Cyntoia Brown's case has recently caught attention through social media, and certain celebrities like Rhianna and Kim Khardashian. They and others are asking for the release of Brown immediately. There is also a petition with the hashtag #FreeCyntoiaBrown that was started and it has already garnered more than 200,000 signatures.
   

   

     

Crack vs. Opioids

      As I write this I am beyond intrigued at how this nation is acknowledging drug addiction with such gusto and fervency. Drug use and addiction has now become a bipartisan issue mainly because 80 percent of opioid overdoses are white. Even the president is calling it a crisis, and public health emergency. But, the issue is that white America only calls something a problem when they think it is affecting them. Crack hit black communities like a nuclear bomb in the 80's and 90's. The governments response was not rehab, or lighter sentencing, and it definitely wasn't justice reform. The government's response to the crack epidemic was to double-down on the "War on Drugs" first declared by Richard Nixon in 1971. In 1986, Congress passed the infamous 100-to-1 sentencing law, which treated the possession of 1 gram of crack — not the sale, mind you — as the equivalent of possessing 100 grams of powder cocaine. This was on top of a five-year mandatory minimum sentence for first-time possession of crack.https://health.howstuffworks.com/mental-health/opioids-versus-crack-politics-race-and-addiction.htm

   What makes opioid addiction such a sensitive topic of understanding, but crack become a criminalized act? The answer is simply color and victimization. For centuries African American people were looked at as animals, property, economic wealth, and treated as such. White masters would rape African slaves because they were property of the land. Others saw the slave woman as a sexual being meant to be taken advantage of. Black men were used as baby makers to increase the money of said owner. Between slave codes, Jim Crow, Segregation etc.. There was never a time when the African American man/woman was ever free. So when rape, addiction, or abuse occurs, no one bats an eye. You cannot be deemed a victim if you are not viewed as human. For example, one reason that most opioid addicts are white could be because they are more likely to be prescribed pain medication. One study showed that doctors are less likely to prescribe pain medication for their black patients, believing (falsely) they had a higher pain threshold.



 
    

Who is Important?

    



The frustration of being in a society that so easily dismisses those around us is at times overwhelming. During the last few weeks our country has dealt with the effects of Hurricane Harvey, and battling the fires in Oregon Wyoming, and California. The uncertainty of these situations have kept first responders, and residents in a panic state of emergency, and concern. America then praised the citizens of Texas for helping each other through such a trying time. The nation was patting itself on the back for looking past color gender, and economics to lend a hand, or so they thought. Meanwhile your president has rescinded the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

(DACA) is a kind of administrative relief from deportation. The purpose of DACA is to protect eligible immigrant youth who came to the United States when they were children from deportation. DACA gives young undocumented immigrants: 1) Protection from deportation, and 2) A work permit. The program expires after two years, subject for renewal. (University of California at Berkley)

How do we go from working together, and helping one another to throwing away an entire group of people? Our number one job in this world should be to never do those around us harm, but to always lend our hands to those in need. Regardless of what political party you serve we should all agree that children have no control over where their parents take them. We should never punish a child for the actions of the parents. If a mother is prostitute should we lock up the nine year old in the parents care? This question might sound insane to some, but this is the same logic through which this action was taken.

I wonder what would have been the outcome if only the native people of this land had the same mindset when Europeans invaded this land illegally, and claimed it as their own?
  

The Introduction of Me!!!

                           WELCOME TO T'S HOUSE 

                                (Where all things are welcomed except lies)

      First, let me say thank you for coming to my blog and checking me out. Since for as long as I can remember I have been involved with the community as it pertains to social justice and acceptance. I  thought about making my blog about something possibly pertaining school parenting, or even cooking. But, none of these things speak to my heart in the way activism and equality have. Do not get me wrong I am a mother cook student, and friend. What I have found is that I could not do any of these things in the way I do if I was a for self individual.

     My blog I hope, will make you think more when it comes to those of us in our country who are under served looked over, and down upon. Our country has a blind eye, or better yet a willful ignorance when it comes to those that do not fit into the superior group that is sometimes white supremacy, and superiority. Whether it comes through religion geographical location, sexuality, gender, or simply color. We all strive for the same things. The problem is there are some that refuse to acknowledge that fact.

http://blacklivesmatter.com/event/untouchable-video-protest/