Planet Earth has been savaged and ravaged by mankind and the signs are clear that our future life on this planet will be affected adversely by multiple generations to come. It won’t matter much how governments are maintained if the inhabitants of those nations cannot live in a sense of harmony due the the issues created by mankind’s environmental degradation. I see people still feeling unconcerned about the damage mankind has done to this planet.

The Bible says God gave man dominion over all living things. However the Bible doesn’t address what will happen when mankind’s control over living things has failed. You cannot pray your way out of the dramatic changes that are affecting our planet this very moment. Rising sea levels, catastrophic storms, massive floods and flooding, uncontrollable fires all over the planet, melting polar ice caps, extinction events that are erasing living things off the planet and still we have mankind’s ignorance of the environment. Marvin Gaye sung a song, Oh Mercy, Mercy Me and we memorized the words but ignored his message in music.

That song was sung 50 years ago. Now those 50 years has passed and if mankind doesn’t act within the next 30 or so years. It maybe too late to save what God gave man dominion over. It’s already far too late for millions of living creatures who once lived on land and sea. Soon man himself will Be threatened with its very survival and the prayers we pray we simply go unanswered because of the carelessness of man to the environment. You see the youth taking a different tack and beginning to develop a keen interest in the survival of the planet. However, the ecological movement must be fought in ever town, village, city and molehill across this nation and the world. Prayers won’t help if you are trying to say them as you are drowning in the decay of the planet.

How long will our nation’s leaders continue to close its eyes to the ecological devastation that is facing the earth globally. The earth will simply become inhabitable to millions of people and untold thousands of living things. I won’t be alive when the price of this planet damage is due but the price tag is increasing everyday.

The earth is demanding action to reverse the effects of climate change. It no longer can be ignored. The planet is demanding reparations and the price mankind will have to pay will be in the hundreds of trillions of dollars. No longer will individual wealth be the striving goal of future generations. It will be how individuals create solutions to stem the tide of ecological devastation. Oh Mercy, Mercy Me Things Ain’t What They Use To Be

#theblackblogger

Historical Flashblack:
December 26, 1966

53 Years Ago Today, The Morgan State College Bears made college football history in Orlando, Florida when they went head to head in college football game against a white college football team, West Chester State College in the deep south, travel with me as I look back on some sports history Morgan

This game was televised in the Baltimore Metropolitan area I can vividly remember seeing the game and being so proud that Morgan State was on television. Being from Baltimore and 12 years old it was all about seeing someone like me doing something that we all were doing on our fall and summer days. We played football and would mimic the players of the National Football League. However, this game was about that college which was about 6 miles from home in Northeast Baltimore. Each Tuesday I would read the Afro-American Newspaper and Sam Lacy's column about the goings-on in black sports. In addition, the Afro American is where I was introduced to the exploits of the Morgan State College Bears. They were always demolishing schools by scores of a whole lot to a little bit. I mean I remember thinking did any team ever score on Morgan’s defense ? In my mind Morgan State was the supreme college football team in the entire state of Maryland.

Also, it never dawned on me at the time the thought that one day I would be a proud alum of Morgan State University. My oldest brother Butch had just turned 18 and was attending the University of Maryland, College Park he was only 1 of the 20 or so blacks who attended that school. I marveled at the size of College Park campus when I went to visit him on occasions when we went to visit him. He was the first person in my immediate family to attend college. Because my oldest sister was injured at birth and had brain damage and permanently mentally retarded. So, in my mind, I was certainly going to follow in my older brother's footsteps. It wasn't until I visited Morgan State College one day in my early years and saw all these lovely women of color that I felt differently about the school. You see I never saw all these women of color at the University my brother attended. As matter of fact, I felt conflicted when one day my brother who I thought was the most militant black person in the world one day brought home his lily white girlfriend but that's another story for another day.

This story is about the team that broke the line in Orlando, Florida against West Chester State College. Also, the fact that I would personally meet many of those brothers who cracked the color barrier in Orlando, Florida that day. It inspired me as kid hopefully reading this posting to your little ones will get them to fully comprehend and understand the significance of this simple football game. It was an absolutely proud day on gridiron field when men of both colors broke that invisible line that had been separated for hundreds of years in this southern city, Orlando, which would eventually house the land of Mickey, Donald, and Minnie Mouse in a place named Disney World. This was long before those characters landed in Orlando, Florida. On this day at the Tangerine Bowl, Morgan State College made American history. Now I live only about 81 miles from Orlando and this historic game. Morgan State beat West Chester State that day on the football field. They cracked the barrier of race that had confronted black players for so long. It spelled the end of HBCU dominance in recruiting players of color because now every white university in the country started to flock where only black colleges once went.

Finally, as I conclude this posting I would like to let you know that few of those players who were victorious on the field that day were members of my fraternity Iota Phi Theta. So later in my life, I pledged in 1974 I was to become their fraternal brothers which made me so damn proud.

So as I raise a toast to our Morgan Grizzlies and say I am so proud I went to Morgan State.

“Some whites were willing if not exactly eager to push for civil rights and integration. However, just like the end of the Civil War and Black Reconstruction, white Americans in the mid to late 1960’s were thinking that black people had gotten enough already. The black communities across America had been given a Civil Rights and Voting Rights In 1964 and 1965. So just as happened after a decade of Black Reconstruction after the Civil War and passage of the Civil War Constitutional Amendments national fatigue over racial militancy in the 1960s’ was settling in. The Saturday Evening Post, published in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the magazine which was as Americana as a magazine could be typified that feeling. Understand this feeling wasn’t coming from Philadelphia, Mississippi, it was coming from the supposedly liberal Northeastern region it typified the half-heartedness, hypocrisy, and bad faith of white America:

We are all, let us face it, Mississippians. We all fervently wish that the Negro problem did not exist, or that, if it must exist, it could be ignored. Confronted with the howling need for decent schools, jobs, housing, and all the other minimum rights of the American system, we will do our best, in a half-hearted way, to correct old wrongs. The hand may be extended grudgingly and patronizingly, but anyone who rejects that hand rejects his own best interests. For minimum rights are the only one we are willing to guarantee, and above these minimum rights there is and will continue to be a vast area of discrimination and inequity and unfairness, the area in which we claim the most basic right of all—the right to be stupid and prejudiced, the right to make mistakes, the right to be less and worse than we pretend, the right to be”

"1966" could this be "2020”you had better believe it. This nation refuses to recognize just how racism continues to bear the fruits of divisiveness. Until we can meet face to face with the ills caused by the color line and those on the wrong side of it we will never erase the virus that racism has caused. Way too many liberal white are complacent and ignore these issues. That’s why blacks are always agitated because complacency leads to contempt. In 2020 why can’t one candidate stand out whether he/she be black or white running for the highest office in the land and simply say enough already. We will address the National and International issue of reparations through a commission dedicated finally to solving this virus that has affected this nation for over 400 years.

The true power of the Presidency in the wrong hands is that President's ability with the support of the United States Senate to turn back the clock on justice reform, civil rights gained by toil and blood, and the right of a woman to control their bodies. Now that Donald Trump is seemingly comfortable in knowing that current United States Senate will never convict him of any impeachable acts as proposed and passed by the House of Representative in the two Articles of Impeachment. It now becomes imperative that the only way to remove Donald Trump from office will be done by the votes not of the current majority republican senate but by the majority of votes in the ballot boxes in November 2020.

It won't be the large democratic states like California, New York, or Illinois that are going to turn this upcoming election. It will be those states that were surprise wins for Trump in 2016. States like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio take away those 64 electoral college votes and no matter if Donald Trump wins every southern state which I don't think he will because Virginia is now leaning strongly democratic. Trump cannot be reelected because the electoral map doesn't match up well for Trump. However, it isn't a certainty because the Democrats have failed to identify a strong enough candidate yet who can challenge Trump in those key battleground states. The primary elections are just around the corner. Iowa has it's caucus within 9 weeks, and New Hampshire and South Carolina are soon to follow with Super Tuesday less than 10 weeks away. Why is this election so critical? Well for one thing take a look a the federal judiciary appointments that Donald Trump has made and well make should he be reelected. The Federal Court of Appeals, Federal Judges in District Courts and the all important Supreme Court appointments. If we allow Donald Trump to select 2 replacements on the highest court in the land within the next 4 years it could have disastrous results related to turning back the clock.

Should Donald Trump and a Mitch McConnell Senate be given the opportunity to replace Justice Ginsburg would was born in 1933 and will be 87 years old in 2020, or Justice Breyer who was born in 1938 and will be 82 years old in 2020, both justices were democratic appointees. Then the Supreme Court will certainly impacted for coming generations with Donald Trump's influence with 4 appointees. If that isn't a coming of the age of turning back the clock well I just don't know what it could be. In 2016, Donald Trump MAGA Hats trumped the slogan make America great again. In many ways those who joined in the mantra wanted the days of old to return. Those days included racial injustice, economic disparity and white supremacy. If those voters in those critical battleground states don't come out for a change in the presidency in 2020. The clocks will roll back and the courts once the only institution that embattled groups could depend on. Will no longer be that safe haven for equality and justice. It will become a rubber-stamp for injustice and inequality.