Hat tip to The Field Negro:

Lazette Cherry, Jamar Jr.’s mother, said she wanted to get her 15-year-old son help when he came to her and said he had acted inappropriately with his 3-year-old half-sister.

There wasn’t a rape, Cherry said her son told her. But he confessed to his mother that he knew lying on top of the baby was wrong, she said.

So she called her son’s father and told him what she believed happened in his home on Newport on Detroit’s east side.

“I called and told his father this isn’t something you sweep under the rug,” the devastated mother said today.

His father showed up at the house Monday afternoon with a gun, she said.

“He started beating him right here,” Cherry said from her living room. “I said, ‘No, please stop!’ ”

But the father marched Jamar Jr., a sophomore at Martin Luther King High School, outside.

“He got on his knees and begged, ‘No, Daddy! No!’ and he pulled the trigger,” she said. “There wasn’t nothing that my son wouldn’t do for his father. He loved his father so much.”

The Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office charged Pinkney Sr. with first-degree murder, punishable by up to life in prison. He’s also been charged with three counts of felonious assault for pointing the gun at Cherry and two other people at her home before the shooting.

Follow up story click here.

There are hardly any words to say. The boy did not deserve this. At least, he admitted to what he did. A talking to, yes. That’s what he needed. But not this. He needed to be talked to about what was right and wrong about sex. That you don’t use your younger sister to experiment with. Instead, the father tore the boy’s clothes off, drove him out of the house onto the front lawn before witnesses, and shot him in the head.

The mother cannot blamed if this is what she actually told the father. Now she is a bereaved mother. Her son is gone. She has to take up a collection to bury him. All she wanted was the father to be responsible for his son’s conduct, that this kind of behavior was not okay and could have ramifications for his sister’s mental as well as physical health.

Our children need help, but not this kind of help.

A black secretary--ahem!--administrative assistant. It was hard to find a photo or a drawing that has black clerical workers, or wasn't sexy or part of a joke (Courtesy: About.com)

It starts tomorrow. It’s a temporary clerical job that goes through the holidays and ends in mid-January. This is the first job I’ve gotten since being laid off in February. Let’s say that I’m saved. The WI UI people could provide me no guarantees that I would have a second extension, and I certainly didn’t want to wait until the first week of December to find that I was shut out for benefits.

Well, I celebrated; I shared a bottle of wine with a resident here at the Y, and then I thought about it some more. I just wish I had a job that I liked and would be happy with, duties, salary, benefits and all. Forget my mother’s admonition that all work had value. Yeah, but if a ditchdigger longs to write, what does s/he do? I have learned that work is full of unhappy people who would rather be doing something else, but are stuck where they are because they don’t have the education, the courage or don’t have a choice. Or they inflict their unhappiness or other fears on others in what is called “office politics.”

I love writing; writing makes me happy. But I am not at the point where I could show my writing to others and get paid regularly from freelancing.

Teaching to me these days is like assuming a mask and hoping that the slings and arrows don’t hurt you. I have also thought about teaching online English composition classes.

But most of all, I’m thinking where is my mind and my heart about getting a job? Many people don’t have a job at this moment, and during the holidays, it would be particularly depressing to have no money–or even food for that matter, since hunger is now a problem among our new Recession-touched poor. The poor have always dealt with hunger and want.

I’ve seen that empty cupboard and that empty refrigerator several times in my life. And I’ve been homeless a few times. Not that kind of homelessness where my stuff is out on the street or I’m pushing a cart. But I don’t like going from one temporary abode to another; relying on others, trying to make a sofa stretch out to fit my feet.

I can only think that I have survived once more. By my toenails. Lucky? Perhaps so. I chant nam-myoho-renge-kyo. But a lot of people pray and get no answers yet, or not at all. Work is something that I must do for myself to pay for what is needed. A roof over my head, this Internet connection, going to counseling. Moving that novel a page forward. That’s all. I have to wait again until I can find that position, that job or career that would make me fairly run to the bus stop or walk straight for the study every day, every morning, and feel that anticipation that I am on a great adventure or doing some good in the world.

Well, perhaps every other week, I suppose.

Somehow, somewhere I have to make that happen.

And how will I continue online with This Black Sista’s Page? You’ll probably hear from me in the evenings or on weekends, or even during the day if they allow me to bring my laptop to the office to tap out a story around lunch time. So starting Monday, I’m half-time here until further notice.

Yall take care out there, and hope your job searches are proving fruitful. Don’t ever give up.

UPDATE: This is not the first burial from violent death in Bradley Lockhart’s immediate family. Eleven years ago, his then-wife of seven years, Vickie Sue Lockhart, 28, was bound, gagged and shot, along with her sister and a friend in a home robbery homicide. The friend, 24-year-old David Lee Epps, had a brother, Joe Epps Staton, who had come into a $20,000 settlement a year ago, and the killers believed that Staton had the money stashed in the house. Staton was absent from the house when the incident occurred; his mother Sheila believed that he had bragged about the money in public, but of course, it was in the bank, not in the house. The perps were sentenced to life in prison. Lockhart had three children with Vickie Sue, but they are being raised by their maternal grandparents.

Do you know what this means? Bradley Lockhart hasn’t had a real hand in raising his children since the death of his wife. Cheyenne Lockhart, 17, was raised by his black neighbors. Lockhart has been married at least twice.

Some guys indeed are just sperm donors.

Why does lightning have to strike twice?

—-

Well, looks as though I am going to have to take back my generous words about Bradley Lockhart. He may have loved his daughter, but it appears that he didn’t know how or wanted to raise her either. Check this new video and an article that’s come out from My NC, Wake County.

Several people who were close to 5-year-old Shaniya Davis and her father Brad Lockhart say they tried to intervene in the child’s life because they felt the little girl was at risk.

A close friend of Brad’s, and his ex-father-in-law both say they offered to take in Shaniya rather than let her live with her mother, because they say when the child was in the custody of her mother, bad things happened to her.

“My wife says she saw cigarette burns on Shaniya’s arms,” said Brad’s friend Tim Allen, who says he is very angry over what happened.

Byron Coleman, Brad’s ex-father-in-law, said Shaniya “had burns on her legs, arms and things” after visits with her mother.

“She had a cigarette burn on the corner of her eye, which she claimed her grandma did when she went over there,” added Shaniya’s half sister Cheyenne Lockhart.

The three all claimed that the 5-year-old suffered physical abuse while in the custody of her mother.

“When you wanted sex that’s where you went,” Coleman said. “You knew what the girl was doing. You knew what she associated with, so why place your daughter in that situation?”

Because of that, Coleman blames Lockhart for Shaniya’s death.

“To me Shaniya would be alive today if she wasn’t placed in that situation,” Coleman claims.

Coleman says he offered to give Shaniya a home, but says Brad declined his offer.

Allen tells a similar story.

“He had an alternative, I gave him a way out,” Allen explained; however Lockhart would not let Allen take care of Shaniya.

“I’m fighting mad. All this could have been avoided,” Allen said.

Why was Bradley Lockhart so insistent that Shaniya be returned to her mother’s home and raised by her when there was evidence that she was abusive and neglectful? Because it looks as though he was dumping Shaniya off no matter what the circumstances were at her mother’s.

Allen had already taken in Shaniya’s half sister Cheyenne, because she said her dad wouldn’t take care of her.

And Cheyenne says Brad did not provide for Shaniya.

“He didn’t take care of her, his girlfriends took care of her,” she said. “He loved her, but she was raised by other people. He hasn’t been in her life.”

Meanwhile, the Cumberland County Department of Social Services said it can not comment on what it was doing in regard to Shaniya because those comments might compromise the on-going criminal investigation.

All those histrionics after Shaniya was found…what an act if this is all true.

Shaniya was alone. All alone.

Her funeral is set for tomorrow at 3 p.m. at Manna Church, 5117 Cliffdale Road, Fayetteville.

I’ve always hated that Donald Trump appropriated “For the Love of Money” for his show, The Apprentice. Written by Kenny Gamble, Leon Huff, and Anthony Jackson, the song is a rebuke, with lyrics derived straight from the bible, against the evils of greed and materialism. Trump used it as a celebration and an affirmation of the love and worship of money. Ugh… Reminds me of how right-wingers flocked to Bruce Springsteen and his “Born in the USA” for all the wrong reasons.

I hope the right people still own that song…

If you wanna know who was the genius behind that opening bass guitar riff throughout this song, it is this guy, Anthony Jackson, now 57, based in New York City. Here’s what Wikipedia had to say about how that sound actually came about.

Jazz bassist Anthony Jackson performing bathed in blue light; it is his bass riff that sounds throughout the iconic O'Jays' song, "For the Love of Money" (Courtesy: Epifani.com)

Anthony Jackson played bass guitar on the song. One day during fall 1973 (when Jackson was 21), producer/keyboardist Leon Huff was leading the members of the MFSB rhythm section and Jackson through a rehearsal. Sigma Sound Studios owner/engineer Joe Tarsia noticed that Jackson had a wah-wah pedal attached to his Fender Precision bass. Tarsia decided to run Jackson’s bassline through a phaser, giving it a swishing sound and later mixed in echo. During the final mixing of the track, Kenny Gamble impulsively reached over to the echo button and added echo to Jackson’s opening riffs.

Even though “For The Love of Money” is over seven minutes long, it was given heavy airplay in the early Seventies, both long and short versions, on black soul as well as white stations. It peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard R&B list and at No. 9 on the Billboard Singles chart in 1974. It is included in the O’Jays’ Ship Ahoy theme album, which charted No. 11 that year on the Billboard 200.

[...] The second single, “For The Love of Money,” is a protest against materialism with a groove that Rolling Stone described as “downright orgiastic”. The song was written around a bass line composed by Anthony Jackson, which in 2005 Bass Player Magazine described as “landmark.” Bass Player went on to note that the song has “become one of the most recycled singles ever, sampled continually by rappers, and appearing on over 75 compilation CDs, numerous movie soundtracks…

In other words, Anthony Jackson’s bass line for “For The Love of Money” ranks with that of Motown Funk Brother Robert White’s easily recognizable bass track for “My Girl.”

Jackson continues to perform singly and variously with other jazz musicians. He started out on the piano and worked his way to the bass guitar. He plays bass and his own invention, the six-string, or contrabass guitar. His influences are Motown mainstay James Jamerson whose performances made him pick up the bass; Oliver Messaien, the French composer, and Jack Casady of the Jefferson Airplane. Of Casady, Jackson said to Bass Player Magazine, “Casady, whom I’d first heard on Jefferson Airplane’s Surrealistic Pillow album in late 1966, had a big, rich, metallic sound with a full bottom and a curious, guitaristic way of playing that I was immediately drawn to. When I saw him perform live, I was struck by his dignity and serious mien.”

Hmmm. Those psychedelic types do have presence, I guess.

The O’Jays are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame–almost all of them: Walter Williams, Bobby Massey, William Powell and Eddie Levert. Unfortunately, their induction wasn’t all that appreciated by the surviving members of the group–I believe they were introduced by Justin Timberlake, of all people. In addition, one of the original members, Bill Isles, was not inducted at the same time, but the replacement for the deceased William Powell, Sammy Strain, was. Very strange. Very, very strange. Some people may not be getting things right.

They are a trio now: Eddie Levert, Walter Williams, and Eric Grant. They still perform live; their last album, Imagination , was produced in 2004.

Enjoy…

Grant’s family is counting this as a victory against the defendant’s attorney, who wanted the trial sent to a jury from a more conservative area like San Diego County, and not from an area like Los Angeles County with a jury pool that includes more moderates and liberals, and more working and middle-class people of color and blacks.

“I really wanted to jump for joy,” said Cephus Johnson, the uncle of Oscar Grant III, the 22-year-old Hayward man whom Mehserle fatally shot early Jan. 1 on the platform at BART’s Fruitvale station in Oakland. “The family is ecstatic.”

More from the San Francisco Chronicle:

Grant family attorney John Burris called the ruling “the most important decision that will be made in this case other than the verdict.” If the case had been sent to San Diego County, Burris said, “Mehserle would have walked.”

From the East Bay Express:

Judge Morris Jacobson appeared to select Los Angeles, which is more closely allied demographically to Alameda County, because it would be cheaper. Although San Diego County officials said they could be ready for a trial sooner, they said they would need extra funds from Alameda County to pay for extra security and they needed an East Bay judge to come to San Diego to try the case. Los Angeles officials said they don’t have those problems, although they said they won’t be ready for trial until later next year.

Johannes Mehserle’s attorney, Michael Rains, objected that a year’s wait for a trial in Los Angeles would severely impact his client who is undergoing financial hardships and is having difficulty even finding a job while free on bail.

“A fellow facing murder charges doesn’t just go out and find a job,” Rains said. “This is an enormous hardship on my client.”

Rains also argued that having the case tried in Los Angeles could hurt his client because of the past incidents there involving police brutality.

[...]

“We will be going back to the boiling cauldron,” Rains said. “It is possible that this case ignites that boiling cauldron.”

Yeah, but it wouldn’t be L.A. catching fire but Oaktown. And that would only happen if the DAs blew the case. Of course, Mehserle should have thought about those things before he pulled the trigger on a prostrate Oscar Grant. I don’t think even six months more would be enough time for Mehserle to get a new job. If he’s thinking of getting a position in law enforcement, I think that he is fresh out of luck in that area. Even if he tried to get a desk job, he’s notorious.

Compared to someone like Sgt. Mark Todd, who brought down Major Hasan earlier this month, and who had only discharged his weapon for the first time that day in 25 years of law enforcement, Mehserle seems immature to be using weapons at all.

I was hoping that it would be L.A., too for the family’s and for the city’s sake. There is still a possibility that justice will be served in Oscar Grant’s case.

She wasn’t just known for singing the theme song to Goldfinger. Shirley Bassey is just about the only singer to have been asked to sing a theme song for three James Bond movies. I liked this particularly for the last stanza, when she sings, Diamonds are forever, forever, forever. Chills. I do mean chills. I used to turn my radio up when she would come on the wavelength, the days when pop music was still played on AM radio. This girl still has a powerful voice at the age of 72.

Born in Cardiff, Wales from an interracial marriage between an Efik Nigerian seaman and a Yorkshire-born white woman, Bassey identifies as Welsh, the same nationality as Tom Jones. So she was lumped together with the other Brits when they stormed onto the shores of the United States in 1963–The British Invasion, so to speak. She’s been active for over 50 years as a singer. Bassey has been married twice, but the fathers of her two daughters remain unknown. She and her second husband also adopted a grand-nephew. Several years back, though, the body of her youngest daughter Samantha was found in the Avon River, an apparent suicide. Bassey steadfastly refuses to believe that Samantha’s death was self-inflicted.

Shirley Bassey was created a Dame Commander of the British Empire in December 1999. Last week, she released a new album called The Performance. The guest performers include Gary Barlow, K.T. Tunstall, Manic Street Preachers, Pet Shop Boys, John Barry, Kaiser Chiefs, and Don Black.

Enjoy!

I figured this was what Mario Andrette McNeill did with Shaniya Davis. He choked her to death and tried to hide the evidence of his crimes under bags of deer carcasses. No wonder he had that flicker of a smile on his face as he was being photographed and videoed. He was famous, even notorious now. No wonder he and her mother, Antoinette Davis, are separated from the jail population for their own protection. That there is honor even among thieves, so to speak, says a lot about how heinous a crime that has been committed.

I am going to say this: black people did not resist slavery in order to visit this kind of thing on our people. We saw so much and were probably reeling from so much even after slavery officially ended. And in some cases, it got worse for us. That’s exactly why our ancestors didn’t talk too much about their memories of slavery, of the days during and after Reconstruction, and of second-class wage slavery and American apartheid to their children and grandchildren; it was too painful on which to linger.

That even as a child of 10, 11 or 12, you could fall prey to a master, a master’s son or other relative, a white manager or worker. Or, to a master’s archaic ideas about multiplying his “herd” or “flock” by putting a ‘tween black girl with a fully-adult black male like horses or mules.

A girl’s feelings about who they are aren’t that well-developed, no matter how people may argue that the current culture has sexualized and desensitized children into thinking that they are mature. Now imagine a girl child of five being forcibly, wrenchingly introduced into that adult world of carnality. She’s not able to process mentally, much less physically, what in the world is happening to her. Shaniya could have sustained massive internal injuries during the rape. Had Shaniya had survived, she may not have been able to bear children. This isn’t anything new either. We have the testimonies of black women like Billie Holiday and Maya Angelou–Holiday and Angelou through autobiographies and memoirs–who were raped as baby girls. It’s just that simple–and horrifying to explain. Those stories were also meant as warnings, not just protest literature. It happened to us; it was not our fault.

Somehow, though, by not teaching and talking about this legacy–making it real beyond simply a school assignment–and by not repeating the poison of self-abnegation, we’ve got some generations who know no limits to dealing despair and cruelty to each other. So slavery too is back with a vengeance. Some 100,000 children of every color between 10-14 years old are sex slaves, some being pimped by their parents, the majority selling themselves on the street as runaways or being pimped by other adults. And there is indeed a market. We know there is, but it could be as distant from our minds like the modern slave trade in Africa. We need to agitate here so we can have some understanding of what is going on over there. A mother, who looks like a denizen from a bad dream, to sell her own daughter for some coke rocks? I thought that I had seen the last of this kind of thing in the Eighties and Nineties.

Even wearing McNeill and Davis wearing their hair in dreadlocks gives a bad name to the hair style. I don’t think Marley meant for his Rasta dreads to be imitative of dope fiends, but of released-from-mental-and-spiritual-bondage, proud-of-who-they are and lionized black people. But there they are on these two wastes of blood and semen. This too is how a legacy is obscured and misused. When I admired a brother’s dreads in New York at a subway station, he cautioned me about touching them because he considered them as nothing less than a sacrament. I had heard about people like this, but when confronted with it, I had to respect him. My curiosity could go no farther. I could not lay hands on him, or anything on his person, without his permission for whatever reason. There are limits about treating things and people that you don’t understand with disrespect, or robbing them of life.

But people like McNeill and Davis feel nothing. They look like they don’t give a flying you know what. All they feel is the rock talking through them. Antoinette in particular seems zombified. And so now, because of their own dreadful choices, they don’t even have their own lives any more because they have robbed this child of life. Did Antoinette feel nothing about the child while she was in her womb at all? What did she feel when she gave the girl to McNeill? Did she really think that she could have sanitized the girl’s absence with her father? All this because of Antoinette’s drug habit. Like I said, the bust in the summer could have been the reason why. Because the cops got his stash while McNeill was living with her sister, Antoinette must have owed him. Did he use a gun or just his physical strength against the mother in order to get “paid”?

Shaniya reminds me of my brother’s girls, my biracial nieces Tasha and her sister when they were little babies and toddlers. I can only look at their photographs as they were when they were five, and shake my head.

This episode just goes to show how much we are on our own as it comes to our own bodies: how we perceive them and how we heal them.

Women all over the country must have uttered, arrrrgggghhhh! yesterday, on hearing about the new guidelines for getting a mammogram, basically that women should begin screenings at age 50, not age 40 and get them every two years, not every year. Frankly, though, each individual woman is different.

“That is, the likelihood of having a false positive test with all the attendant anxiety, the additional imaging tests, perhaps even leading to biopsy that may have been unnecessary,” said Dr. Diana Petitti of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.

Major medical groups still recommend mammograms under 50 and worry this new advice may confuse patients.

“The worst outcome for this study would be for women to throw up their arms and say, ‘well, I’m not going to get screened at all,’” said the American Cancer Society’s Len Lichtenfeld.

They argue the government puts more emphasis on computer models than real patients.

“We’re not satisfied at this point that the approach that they used is sufficient and adequate to discard a proven way of saving lives from breast cancer,” Lichtenfeld said.

Sabrina Singletary’s 41 and says she’ll still get a mammogram every year.

But with the government now recommending against it it’s unclear if insurance will pay.

I didn’t panic. I have paternal aunts who are being treated for breast cancer. Which means that I am already alerted to the danger. I’m the next one on the fast track to have breast cancer. Then again, I may not, but I am not taking any chances. I self-examine myself every other month. I know what a lump feels like. One evening, someone came to see us at the women’s residence hall I once lived in during the Nineties to talk about breast cancer. She passed to us nearly accurate plastic representations of breasts that included abnormalities. The “cancerous” lump felt crinkly, hard…and scary. That’s what I look for every other month.

Here in Wisconsin, they finally offered Badger Care Plus to single individuals between the ages of 18-64. When I finally get my card, I will get my first mammogram in four years, and my first full physical work-up in several years that will include a gynecological exam. It will mean the end of rationing my own blood pressure and cholesterol medication that I sometimes cannot afford while on unemployment insurance. I’ll be able to get a better examination of my arms and head for the fall that I suffered this summer, when I nearly blacked out.

I do, however, take Vitamin D, which has been proven to be helpful for breast health and perhaps even warding off the onset of breast cancer. I am also thinking of taking niacin as well as getting back on policosanol, and pumpkin oil. Cutting down on fatty foods, drinking water instead of pop, drinking red wine once a week, eating more fruits and veggies and eating less in portions also helps. The heavier you are, the more cholesterol in your body, the more possibility of tumors. Keeping up with the prescriptions will be easier; but for continued use of the supplements and better food, employment stability is best.

Working, however, whether in academe or in business makes you do things–or exercise–as well as sit down at a computer. Like running for a bus, walking back and forth to the work place, climbing stairs, standing, bending, pushing. I have to do that job hunting online, and I’ve only gotten one interview for the first time in months today. I try to stay active and even walk around the Capitol Square some days, but it’s not easy.

The thing is, I have a feeling when my body is not as cooperative, and it has less to do with being heavy or older. It’s just that I get stressed because things are yet out of my control, when I have to delay making an appointment or reschedule it. When I was working and had a health plan, I was cognizant of yearly exams, dental exams, and so forth. There was a framework. If something went wrong between those times, I went to the doctor until I found out what it was. It’s been harder to get medical care because I haven’t had a medical or dental plan since 2005, and nothing before that time since 2000.

A back tooth has broken; masticating is harder without some pain. When I fell this summer, I told the emergency room doctors that I had hit my head. The paramedics had loudly announced to them that I had not been drinking. The doctors gave me nothing for it, except to suggest that I get over-the-counter Tylenol. When I felt the dried blood matting my hair a day later I was angry–more angry at myself than at the doctors, because I could not help and protect this body, this house where I reside. You cannot even demand the minimum of respect from doctors and nurses. My concerns and needs were not unreasonable. They don’t give, even of themselves, unless there’s money crossing their palms, and then perhaps, maybe they will take care of you. It’s like they’re gypsies, not health professionals. The stereotype about gypsies is that they tell fortunes, they don’t give you facts. They robbed you blind if you didn’t watch it. Sometimes I think that is exactly what health care is like. Bedside manner–and not just the bottom line–could save lives.

Which is one of the reasons why I am not upset over the new guidelines, which some argue are the same as the ones in Canada. After the anger and recriminations over the connections between hormone replacement therapy and cancer, I left it to myself to judge what to do, and not just leave it the people on high. Sure, I listen to them, but I also read up on alternative medicine experts and women’s health proponents, particularly those advocates who treat black women. And I listen to my own body, and sometimes I take notes.

And yet, 33.8′% of black women are more likely to develop and die from breast cancer, most probably because many of them do not have access to quality health care that includes mammograms. I may know when something is wrong and I may be kept financially from correcting a problem, but many other black women don’t know much about their own bodies and how they work, even sexually. They don’t even know what a mammogram is and why in hell they have to have it. Sometimes, they don’t even know how to examine themselves for lumps. To tell black women that they don’t need to have procedures that might save their lives, whether it’s poor or middle-class black women, sounds like a recipe for genocide. They are far too many black women dying at 25 and 42 from breast cancer.

Some tend to feel that the radiation risk for mammograms should rule the procedure out completely. However, the dose of radiation is very small. The older a woman is, though, the less of a risk. The fear of radiation exposure is for younger women who have also had extensive chest x-ray tests or radiation treatment for other maladies.

I find it interesting that these new guidelines should also pop up during the current debate over health care reform. Some more radical voices say that this is how the health care industry will eventually ration certain procedures after reform. Possibly, but I would say that every woman, including every black woman and woman of color, should follow her own counsel. If you feel that having a mammogram or a breast MRI would be effective because you have a family history of breast cancer, or that you are a black woman of 42 or 46 who wants to see what’s up, then you should have one. Period. If it’s only to set your mind to rest, you should ask your doctor for one. If you two should come to a disagreement about its feasibility in your case, then get that second opinion or even a third.

(Frankly, some doctors and consumers are upset about this development; they are not going to all submit to these guidelines just yet. There is something to be said about false positives and false negatives in mammograms, but there is also the fact that women in their forties–and even their thirties and twenties–have been accurately diagnosed with breast cancer.)

Be your own advocate in this and any other situations. Read. Keep a diary of your medical problems , what they feel like, and how you feel about them and discuss them with your doctor, specialist or nurse-practitioner. Get a group of girlfriends together and compare notes and educate yourselves. Even get together to watch The Doctors or Dr. Oz and talk about what this or that means, not just about breast health.

When it comes down to the final analysis, you have to become your own best friend and work on your own behalf, because they won’t. Not any more. Many medical schools got rid of the Hippocratic Oath in the 1970s. The doctors may not really be for you at all but for themselves and even the hospital model or rules. Nine times out of ten, you may know or sense more than they do, without the student loans, the expertise, the chi-chi car, and the McHouse or apartment.

Keep doing what you are already doing right, yet do no harm. Okay?

I’m watching this PBS investigative documentary on Neda Agha-Soltan and the Twitter Revolt in Iran in Madison, and I thought I would like to share this information with those who visited my blog this spring at the height of the unrest after the disputed election.

PBS, for those of you who don’t know, stands for Public Broadcasting System. It is the educational and cultural network in the United States.

Here is the link, people. It is called A Death in Tehran. It’s telling the story of Neda for the benefit of concerned Americans who want to understand what happened, and to learn more about what is still happening in Iran. Please do see it, talk about it, and share this with your friends worldwide, and let us know what the documentary didn’t get right or didn’t talk about here or at the Frontline site.

For Neda.

I got this news via Feministe from TowleRoad. It is not, repeat is NOT being covered by the cable/network news organizations at all. Why? Because (1) it’s a hate crime, reminiscent of the Black Dahlia sex murder in Los Angeles in the Forties (which by its nature WAS a hate crime against women); and (2) it occurred in Puerto Rico, a territory, a “commonwealth” if you will, that could also be called a colony of the United States. Christopher Pagan who is reporting on this case is updating the situation as it occurs at the link below.

From CNN’s iReport by Christopher Pagan (CHRISPAGANSJPR@GMAIL.COM):

[...]On November 14 the body of a gay 19 year old was found a few miles away from the town in which he was residing in called Caguas. He was a very well known person in the gay community of Puerto Rico, and very loved. He was found on the site of an isolated road in the city of Cayey, he was partially burned, decapitated, and dismembered, both arms, both legs, and the torso.

This is has caused a huge reaction from the gay community here, but it’s a difficult situation. Never in the history of Puerto Rico has a murder been classified as a hate crime. Even though we have to follow federal mandates and laws, many of the laws in which are passed in the USA such as Obama’s new bill, do not always directly get practiced in Puerto Rico. The police agent that is handling this case said on a public televised statement that “people who lead this type of lifestyle need to be aware that this will happen”. As If the boy murdered Jorge Steven Lopez was asking to get killed. (Emphasis mine.)

We have a gay rights activist in Puerto Rico, Pedro Julio Serrano, who does his best to defend these hateful acts, but the international attention is needed for this local government to wake up and give us the needed rights and proper justice to such hateful crimes. You are the biggest beacon of hope in such horrific events to be made known.

The murder victim was Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado, 19. The suspect, accompanied by his father, is 26-year-old Jose Bermudez. Here is what is said to have occurred to precipitate the murder.

Officials indicated how Jose Bermudez the accused explained that he went into the center of town in Caguas and then after making a few attempts to pick up a prostitute allegedly Jorge went to him dressed as a woman, and Jose invited him into his vehicle thinking he picked up a female prostitute.

He said that he did not know that it was really a man and they went to his apartment in Cidra, where Steven allegedly told him to have anal sex with him, which provoked anger in him and caused him to murder him. He also said that Steven tried to stab him, and that he armed himself with a kitchen knife and under a fit of rage he injured him, dismembered him, decapitated him and then later took his remains to Guavate where he was left.

Other allegations of the killer is that in 2003 he was arrested for domestic abuse and that in his youth he was molested and that is why he hates homosexuals. The authorities said that this case has been advanced and successful due to the cooperation of the local GLBT community. The agent Angel Rodriguez said that he is being interrogated and will be charged with first degree murder. He also indicated that he will submit another request to the federal judge to have this treated as a hate crime.

Later, Bermudez was arrested at around 11:30 p.m. last night, and accompanied to the police station by his father. He may be arraigned on a murder charge by the close of today. An investigation of the suspect’s home turned up a wig, a burned mattress, a burned PVC water pipe, and a knife in the backyard. Blood was splattered on the rear wall of the house. Two vehicles were also impounded. The FBI is also involved in the case.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the father is also involved as an accessory to dispose of the body parts, because it would take two people to do this kind of grisly work.

I’m going to say it: all murder is a hate crime, from that poor dear Shaniya Davis, to Derreon Albert, to Matthew Shepard, to this brave young man who had the nerve to be himself. In the U.S., the homosexual fear/self-defense angle Jose Bermudez is clinging to would be given short shrift. I would not be surprised if he is taller and heavier than Lopez. If Jose Bermudez was indeed raped as a boy by a child molester, then he was acculturated–erroneously–to hate gays. However, it’s still isn’t a viable reason to kill Steven Lopez. And Bermudez probably didn’t know or didn’t want to know who he was. The rage and confusion must have been as corrosive as Drano.

Bermudez doesn’t strike me as some kind of simpleton though. In most cities and towns all over the world, he must have known that there would be either women, transsexuals, or queens to be found at certain locations in town. That’s just street–and male–hearsay and knowledge. When Lopez offered him anal sex instead, Bermudez was furious. If he was genuinely tricked, he could have thrown the boy out. Instead, he probably started beating up the young man, because bringing Steven home, if not the act might make him “gay,” and that this information might get around and ruin his macho reputation. If Steven Lopez ever whipped out a knife, it was for self-defense and to get out of the house with his life. He had a lot of nerve for that, but not enough luck. That’s why I think Bermudez murdered this boy–because he had the nerve to defend himself and to be himself.

Okay, this is a better video than the earlier one from the Associated Press that I posted. Apparently, the Associated Press took this from the local channels and chopped it up for its purposes. I know this is the biggest thing for these news outlets in a long while. This also includes footage of Shaniya’s half-sister, who was interviewed by Nancy Grace last night.

Bradley Lockhart, shown off his head and supported by friends, family, and members of his church at this vigil attended by dozens of grieving parents, grandparents, strangers and volunteers who searched for the child, apparently has been in both the black and white communities in this part of North Carolina. On Nancy Grace last night, Lockhart’s older, teen daughter looked biracial as well and her voice had the cadences of Southern black language. He’s what one might call a white brother or an honorary brother. He admires black people; he admires black women. Openly.

Being hurt to the heart by the death of his little daughter doesn’t make him a weak man. Not by halves.

Despite my misgivings: that he gave Shaniya back to her mom without checking up and finding that drug bust three months ago at the mobile home, he deserves our respect for loving and keeping his children, and in particular, his little daughter Shaniya. And our prayers for him and his family.

It doesn’t mean that he, for being white, is better than most black men. Let’s say that he was better than most men in his small part of Fayetteville, NC. And better than most white men in the country.

Shaniya Davis could have been someone special in her own way, all by herself. Instead, she's fodder for Nancy Grace (Courtesy: CNN)

UPDATES

The little girl was found about 100 feet from Highway 87.  In other words, she was dumped along the road like trash, half buried in a shallow grave.

Her mother will be charged with sex trafficking today. Meanwhile, ABC News throws open a window on what this evil practice is in the United States. There are estimates that upwards to 100,000 children are being pimped to adults, many by their own parents. While the majority are between 12-14 years old when they are initially offered up, it is rare to find children under the age of ten prostituted.

To me, the discovery of Shaniya’s favorite blanket, covered in feces and found in a neighbor’s garbage can, takes on a greater significance as to what she suffered.

The police are awaiting confirmation from the FBI before they charge Mario Andrette McNeill with murder. Naturally, the child will have to be autopsied. The jurisdiction no longer remains with Fayetteville, which lies in another county. The body was found in Lee County.

I have no pity for either McNeill or the mother, Antoinette Davis. They are going to have to be isolated from the general population of their respective jails/prisons if they want to stay alive. Child molesters are the lowest of the low, and as I said before, women’s institutions are full of mothers or would-be mommies who would jump Davis and beat the hell out of her before she could say hello.

Why couldn’t she have left the little girl with Bradley Lockhart? I guess that was too good a fate for a child of hers.

—–

It was just announced seven minutes ago.

More information coming beyond this:

SANFORD, NC (WTVD) — Fayetteville police said Monday they have found the body of missing 5-year-old Shaniya Davis.

The child’s remains were located in an area bordered by Highway 87 south and Walker Road – just south of Sanford – during a second day of searching.

There ARE no words. Please pray for little Shaniya, and for her other missing and abused “brothers and sisters” who have been disappeared.

Scores of volunteers are combing the area with police. Poor baby:

The Endangered/Missing poster for Shaniya Davis, put out by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (Courtesy: Examiner.com)

Police searching for 5-year-old Shaniya Davis in a wooded area off N.C. 87 near Sanford say they are looking for a body.

Based on “reliable information,” they believe her body may have been dumped off Walker Road near its intersection with the highway, said police spokeswoman Theresa Chance.

About 250 people and two helicopters are searching both sides of Walker Road near where it intersects with N.C. 87. They include police and sheriff’s deputies from Fayetteville, Sanford and Lee County, fire department personnel and civilians who live in the area and who know the woods.

At a press briefing at 10:30 a.m., Chance said people have been turning out in droves to offer help but no more volunteer searchers are currently needed. She said civilians who want to help can call the police at 433-1820 to volunteer.

Meantime, the State Highway Patrol issued a ‘be on the lookout for’ advisory this morning, saying that they’re looking for a man who had been spotted with Davis. The man is believed to be about 60 years old and driving a blue Toyota, according to an official with the Highway Patrol. He may be in the vicinity of Raeford Road or Cliffdale Road.

Chance said police are following up any and all tips but are still concentrating their search for Shaniya on Walker Road.

At a press conference at the search site at 9 a.m. today, Chance said police had received some tips.

She said Mario Andrette McNeill, who has admitted to kidnapping Shaniya and is in custody, has been “extremely uncooperative” but has given some information to police.

Chance said McNeill is known to frequent Sanford. He was arrested Thursday after being identified as being with Shaniya Tuesday morning at the Comfort Suites hotel in Sanford. The two were seen on a surveillance tape at 6:11 a.m. Chance said police know McNeill left the motel with Shaniya at about 7:30 a.m. but they don’t know what condition Shaniya was in at that point.

Events like this makes one want lose all hope in people.

From Channel 3, WISC-TV:

On Friday, Public Health Madison and Dane County said there will be two vaccination clinics next week, each targeting a different group of people.

Dr. Thomas Schlenker, director of Public Health Madison and Dane County, said that each day they’ll be giving out approximately 5,000 vaccines. Both clinics will be held at the Alliant Energy Center.

“The gates will open a half hour before the clinic starts,” Schlenker said. “There will be no camping out overnight or lining up — the gates will open a half hour before they start.”

The first clinic is set for Tuesday, Nov. 17, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. That clinic will be for: pregnant women; children 6 months to 23 months old; and children 5 to 18 years old, with underlying health conditions.

The second clinic will be held on Wednesday, Nov. 18, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. The Wednesday clinic will be for: children 24 to 59 months old; people who live with children less than 6 months old; and child care providers who care for children less than 6 months old.

These clinics are the first since public health officials stopped the school-based clinics because of lack of vaccine supply.

People will be definitely turned away if they do not fit the criteria of either groups, or if they live in other counties.

Most of the flu-struck were originally from Milwaukee, and were schoolchildren. However, that situation quickly changed as the summer merged into fall. Last week, a Dane County resident who was in her mid-sixties and had an underlying condition–lupus–died of H1N1. To date, 22 million Americans have been stricken, but 4,000 have died from H1N1, and of these, 540 have been children.

I’ve added a widget at the top of this page that will lead readers to updated information regarding the flu pandemic in Wisconsin. Take advantage of it, and of this mass inoculation coming up. Here is a link about what to expect at the Alliant Center, and how to download consent forms in English, Spanish, and Hmong ahead of time.

Barack Obama tried hard not to fall prey to the system and syndrome of graft in his adopted state of Illinois. He had a lot of temptations–and opportunities to feed at the public trough–but he managed to shy away from the most egregious. I think Obama is relatively clean–but not squeeky clean–for a politician. More to the point, he’s hasn’t allowed his ego to take advantage of his life (like the greasy embarrassment Rod Blagojevich) or his aims. However, as a result, Illinois is in arrears by several billion dollars because of the culture of graft in that state, practiced by both Democrats and Republicans. This has added to the financial woes of the state during what is being called the Great Recession.

That being said, there are several big name black politicians who are currently being investigated for questionable practices and ethics violations, lawmakers like Maxine Waters, Charlie Rangel, and Carolyn Kilpatrick. (Jesse Jackson, Jr. barely missed being named as an eighth offender.) Some feel that they are being unfairly singled out because of racism, because of double standards, and because of the state of their relationship(s) with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is considered no friend to black congresspeople. They are quick to point out that Pelosi’s ethics committee hasn’t fingered any white congresspeople like Jane Harman or John Murtha, who have “enough money to defend” themselves.

Far be it for me to support Pelosi’s shenanigans; I haven’t liked her since she was a bottom-feeding protegée of Willie Brown and the Burton brothers in the San Francisco of the Seventies and Eighties.   But I still believe that some of the seven ought to have known better.  Like I said, their egos got in the way of their lives or aims. One great, but overweening example of ego was the late Adam Clayton Powell of Harlem. Sometimes that ego was warranted as when he integrated the congressional lunch room, or made lawmakers stop saying the n-word on the floor, but at other times, like the incident that sealed Powell’s Waterloo, it paid to take oneself down a peg, and apologize.

And I had the feeling that unless something changed tomorrow, black people in politics–as with everything else–would always be judged by a different standard.  Which meant that they could not insist on the same kinds of breaks–or hypocrisies–that whites may have enjoyed.  (Frankly, is that really going to liberate them or us?) Somehow the law of averages was bound to catch up with them, no matter how rich, powerful or important they have become or whatever good they have done or achieved for their constituents, or who was Speaker of the House.

I think that it caught up last week with former Louisiana Rep. William “Dollar Bill” Jefferson,  62, who received thirteen years for bribery in “a conspiracy so immense” of corruption that  U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III lamented that, “There must be some sort of greed virus that attacks those in power.”   Huh.  It certainly is a fall from a great height achieved when in 1991, Jefferson became the first African American congressman since Reconstruction from his district.

Jefferson, who famously squirreled away $90,000 in his freezer, earning him the new nickname “Cold Cash,” was convicted of receiving $500,000 and would have received millions more for whetting his business deals in Cameroon, Ghana and Nigeria.  Prosecutors originally wanted Jefferson to serve 27 years, a stint that might have lasted the rest of his life. It’s not that Jefferson killed anybody, but perhaps his actions might have killed delayed and killed hopes, which is almost the same.

Jefferson was allowed to remain free until a hearing next week. Prosecutors want him to begin serving his sentence immediately, while the defense wants Jefferson to remain free while he appeals his conviction.

Jefferson was also ordered to forfeit roughly $470,000 in bribery proceeds — the government expects to seize Jefferson’s retirement savings and other assets to enforce the judgment. Jefferson, meanwhile, has filed for bankruptcy protection and his wife is claiming rights to some of those assets.

Jefferson was convicted in August of 11 counts, including bribery and racketeering, and acquitted on five others, including the one most closely associated with the money in his freezer.

The investigation started in March 2005. In August of that year, FBI agents searched Jefferson’s Washington home and found the cash. Prosecutors said he had planned to use the money to pay a bribe to the then-vice president of Nigeria to secure a multimillion-dollar telecommunications deal there, an accusation Jefferson denied.

The money ended up in the freezer when a disgruntled businesswoman, Lori Mody, agreed to wear a wire after telling the FBI she had been cheated out of $3.5 million in deals brokered by Jefferson. The jury saw videotape of Mody handing over a suitcase filled with $100,000 cash outside an Arlington hotel. Most of that money was recovered from the freezer.

So he’s ruined, his wife is scrambling for whatever crumbs he has left after the bankruptcy and the Feds get through with him, and in any case, he’s still appealing what would be the longest jail term handed to a former congressperson.  What can be learned from all this?  A former constituent, Songy Turner of Marrero, LA had an answer.  “I’m really hoping that the newer politicians, the younger politicians, really consider being honest, really take their job seriously and make an effort to make Louisiana honest.”  Easier said than done? Many people like Turner felt as if New Orleans’ and Louisiana’s recovery from the ravages of Katrina was hampered by the Jefferson case.  Jefferson was succeeded in office by maverick Republican Anh Joseph Cao, who appears to really represent the interests of black people as well as other people of color in the district, despite pressure from his fellow Republicans.

In other words, don’t ever think that as a politician, you aren’t expendable, “too big to fail,” or bulletproof.  Your job is not simply for yourself, but for the people who voted for you. It always is. It always will be.