HOW OUR BODIES MATTER
By Olumide Ted Wilson
In 2012 President Obama said rather wryly
“If Trayvon Martin was my son
he’d look like me.”
If Trayvon Martin was my son
he would look like Ramarly Graham
Sean Bell, Amadou Diallo
Patrick Dorismond, right back
to Emmett Till and a host of others
back beyond him.
If Trayvon Martin was a female
he/she would look like Jasmine Thiara
and she would look like Michelle Obama
or perhaps Oprah Winfrey.
If Trayvon and Ramarly and Jasmine and
more recently Michael Brown were your
son and or your daughter and
Eric Garner along with others
were yours and all of ours
he/she would look like me and you.
You and all of us who have a tint of melanin.
-1-
For many fathers they see these dastardly acts as the end of a line or their name, if they only have one child. It is an egotistical way of looking at the world, but it has been handed down that way. In a civilized society we cannot dismiss or lose sight of the anguish felt by the woman/mother who has carried the egg fertilized by the seed. This mother who carries and nurtures the egg with her spiritual energy filled with love and develops this egg into a healthy fetus/baby. As this child/being enters the world she continues to nurture this little being with the milk that flows from a healthy diet for months and months until this child develops under this mother’s guidance and affection. There is no doubt this egg could not grow without the fertilization of the seed but without the desire of this mother it could not be carried to term in a normal sense.
-2-
Recently I lost my oldest daughter. She was my first born from a planned birth. She was developed and nurtured by her mother and myself. She was a person we grew prouder of year by year. At eight years old she took ill and was hospitalized for several months.
After many tests and guesses her illness was linked to what the medical system considered hereditary. My mom, her grand-mom, suffered from Lupus for many years from the time I was a pre-teen. She became hospitalized after suffering from what she thought was arthritis and unbeknownst to me and my siblings she was diagnosed with Lupus. Finally, after several medications and diagnostic testing, her father, my grand-father, worked on her by juicing vegetables of all types. He used everything he thought would cleanse the poisonous medications from her blood and cells and rebuild her organs. It worked. She lived until she was ninety- nine years and six months old with no signs of lupus. My grandfather was one of the earliest alternative healers that I knew.
I guess one might ask what this has to do with Ayesha, my daughter. After being in and out of the hospital up through her teenage years fighting to keep her grades up in some upper level and parochial schools, she did well enough to be accepted into Syracuse University. She battled with this illness, taking the prescribed medications at lesser doses. I constantly monitored her and took her to an alternative healer. From her second year in college until finish she changed her diet. She took herbal protocols and other naturopathic healing elements.
Upon entering law school at NYU she began to get flare-ups at the end of each semester during exam time. This happened for three semesters. Unbeknownst to me she had reversed her diet and she had one foot in the alternative approach and one foot in the allopathic, also known as conventional medicine. It did not work. She did not know or understand that chemicals kill nature, i.e. food and what comes out of God’s green earth.
From the time Ayesha was in high school I always wondered how she could afford to go into one of New York’s premiere hospitals at will. Her mother and I were separated, and our insurances together could not afford such an institution. I put it together in my head and my ex-wife confirmed that in exchange for these services she allowed our daughter to be a guinea pig. I call this medical apartheid.
-3-
Each time I see or hear of one of these heinous crimes (murder of our children) my heart feels the pain as if he or she was my child. Based on Trayvon Martin and some of the murders, each time I see or hear of one of these genocidal castrations, the plunge of a dagger goes deep into my heart at the thought of the mother’s evacuation. I always said there can be no devastation greater than a mother’s loss. Emotionally and mentally it is a feeling of wasted energy for all she has given to bring her child to a place where she can dream of her/his worthy future. I salute these women/mothers as sergeants and commissioned officers and generals who create and train those who serve and protect even with a hint of melanin that brings about their abrupt departure. How many more of our children will become landfill for western development that demonstrates the power of evil? How many more mothers will become part of that landfill as a result of their grief?
When these fetuses become children with a future to dream and wish for, will these parents want their children to have skin and features that are not a curse? How many deep down really want too soon for the bag to burst? How many will be sacrificed to the dope man because there is no hope man? How many rivers will flow from the time of conception because mothers witness death before a reception or graduation? It is time for us to eradicate the damage so the question of how many, will be about the move and groove to a higher level reaching down and pulling forward. When? When? When will we lift ourselves to a level of mental and spiritual liberation? When will we be the top of the shoe instead of the sole and heel that swallows the concrete, sand, dirt, polluted water and disease, that threaten the possibilities of development for the body? The body with the foot wearing the shoe we designed and created? When do we stop being the guinea pigs and stop turning our offspring into a maybe, possibility, or failed experiment, and maybe next time?
“The problem of the twentieth century was the color line”, so spoke the great Dr. Dubois. This is the twenty-first century. When do we see our skin as a blessing instead of a curse? When do we start living as humans and stop surviving as animals? When does the seed housed in the loins of male semen represent strength and wholeness that comes with caring and responsibility for the egg fertilized, and the offspring created? When do we see past the corner, block, neighborhood we fight for and kill for, that we do not even own? When do we create a village and stop occupying a hood? Where are the royal dads that tell their daughters they are beautiful princesses like I told my daughter, with stately moms to teach them to walk with dignity like her mother did? Where oh where is the man/woman love that is a model for their sons to aim for, something higher than the top of the backboard to show our young females how manly they are? How many more girls/moms will spread their hearts to see their men/boys and women/girls laid out on a morgue table? How many boy/dads will stop trying to get all the jelly from every dunkin’ donut? When the clock strikes midnight will we be asleep, knowing our families are safe in our village? At five a.m. will we rise to continue to make the village larger, stronger and impenetrable to all who would try to harm us?
Every night I lay down to sleep the words from the song by a blues singer comes into my head, “The days are long, the nights are madness torment and despair, they refuse to pass me by cause A Man Ain’t Suppose To Cry."
In order for us to have reparations we must struggle to heal ourselves and our community.
*The word reparations come from the Latin repare; to repair one’s self, or self-repair.
Remember! Internal reparations is serious and necessary for progress.*
By Olumide Ted Wilson
In 2012 President Obama said rather wryly
“If Trayvon Martin was my son
he’d look like me.”
If Trayvon Martin was my son
he would look like Ramarly Graham
Sean Bell, Amadou Diallo
Patrick Dorismond, right back
to Emmett Till and a host of others
back beyond him.
If Trayvon Martin was a female
he/she would look like Jasmine Thiara
and she would look like Michelle Obama
or perhaps Oprah Winfrey.
If Trayvon and Ramarly and Jasmine and
more recently Michael Brown were your
son and or your daughter and
Eric Garner along with others
were yours and all of ours
he/she would look like me and you.
You and all of us who have a tint of melanin.
-1-
For many fathers they see these dastardly acts as the end of a line or their name, if they only have one child. It is an egotistical way of looking at the world, but it has been handed down that way. In a civilized society we cannot dismiss or lose sight of the anguish felt by the woman/mother who has carried the egg fertilized by the seed. This mother who carries and nurtures the egg with her spiritual energy filled with love and develops this egg into a healthy fetus/baby. As this child/being enters the world she continues to nurture this little being with the milk that flows from a healthy diet for months and months until this child develops under this mother’s guidance and affection. There is no doubt this egg could not grow without the fertilization of the seed but without the desire of this mother it could not be carried to term in a normal sense.
-2-
Recently I lost my oldest daughter. She was my first born from a planned birth. She was developed and nurtured by her mother and myself. She was a person we grew prouder of year by year. At eight years old she took ill and was hospitalized for several months.
After many tests and guesses her illness was linked to what the medical system considered hereditary. My mom, her grand-mom, suffered from Lupus for many years from the time I was a pre-teen. She became hospitalized after suffering from what she thought was arthritis and unbeknownst to me and my siblings she was diagnosed with Lupus. Finally, after several medications and diagnostic testing, her father, my grand-father, worked on her by juicing vegetables of all types. He used everything he thought would cleanse the poisonous medications from her blood and cells and rebuild her organs. It worked. She lived until she was ninety- nine years and six months old with no signs of lupus. My grandfather was one of the earliest alternative healers that I knew.
I guess one might ask what this has to do with Ayesha, my daughter. After being in and out of the hospital up through her teenage years fighting to keep her grades up in some upper level and parochial schools, she did well enough to be accepted into Syracuse University. She battled with this illness, taking the prescribed medications at lesser doses. I constantly monitored her and took her to an alternative healer. From her second year in college until finish she changed her diet. She took herbal protocols and other naturopathic healing elements.
Upon entering law school at NYU she began to get flare-ups at the end of each semester during exam time. This happened for three semesters. Unbeknownst to me she had reversed her diet and she had one foot in the alternative approach and one foot in the allopathic, also known as conventional medicine. It did not work. She did not know or understand that chemicals kill nature, i.e. food and what comes out of God’s green earth.
From the time Ayesha was in high school I always wondered how she could afford to go into one of New York’s premiere hospitals at will. Her mother and I were separated, and our insurances together could not afford such an institution. I put it together in my head and my ex-wife confirmed that in exchange for these services she allowed our daughter to be a guinea pig. I call this medical apartheid.
-3-
Each time I see or hear of one of these heinous crimes (murder of our children) my heart feels the pain as if he or she was my child. Based on Trayvon Martin and some of the murders, each time I see or hear of one of these genocidal castrations, the plunge of a dagger goes deep into my heart at the thought of the mother’s evacuation. I always said there can be no devastation greater than a mother’s loss. Emotionally and mentally it is a feeling of wasted energy for all she has given to bring her child to a place where she can dream of her/his worthy future. I salute these women/mothers as sergeants and commissioned officers and generals who create and train those who serve and protect even with a hint of melanin that brings about their abrupt departure. How many more of our children will become landfill for western development that demonstrates the power of evil? How many more mothers will become part of that landfill as a result of their grief?
When these fetuses become children with a future to dream and wish for, will these parents want their children to have skin and features that are not a curse? How many deep down really want too soon for the bag to burst? How many will be sacrificed to the dope man because there is no hope man? How many rivers will flow from the time of conception because mothers witness death before a reception or graduation? It is time for us to eradicate the damage so the question of how many, will be about the move and groove to a higher level reaching down and pulling forward. When? When? When will we lift ourselves to a level of mental and spiritual liberation? When will we be the top of the shoe instead of the sole and heel that swallows the concrete, sand, dirt, polluted water and disease, that threaten the possibilities of development for the body? The body with the foot wearing the shoe we designed and created? When do we stop being the guinea pigs and stop turning our offspring into a maybe, possibility, or failed experiment, and maybe next time?
“The problem of the twentieth century was the color line”, so spoke the great Dr. Dubois. This is the twenty-first century. When do we see our skin as a blessing instead of a curse? When do we start living as humans and stop surviving as animals? When does the seed housed in the loins of male semen represent strength and wholeness that comes with caring and responsibility for the egg fertilized, and the offspring created? When do we see past the corner, block, neighborhood we fight for and kill for, that we do not even own? When do we create a village and stop occupying a hood? Where are the royal dads that tell their daughters they are beautiful princesses like I told my daughter, with stately moms to teach them to walk with dignity like her mother did? Where oh where is the man/woman love that is a model for their sons to aim for, something higher than the top of the backboard to show our young females how manly they are? How many more girls/moms will spread their hearts to see their men/boys and women/girls laid out on a morgue table? How many boy/dads will stop trying to get all the jelly from every dunkin’ donut? When the clock strikes midnight will we be asleep, knowing our families are safe in our village? At five a.m. will we rise to continue to make the village larger, stronger and impenetrable to all who would try to harm us?
Every night I lay down to sleep the words from the song by a blues singer comes into my head, “The days are long, the nights are madness torment and despair, they refuse to pass me by cause A Man Ain’t Suppose To Cry."
In order for us to have reparations we must struggle to heal ourselves and our community.
*The word reparations come from the Latin repare; to repair one’s self, or self-repair.
Remember! Internal reparations is serious and necessary for progress.*
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