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NBC Still a Slave to CIA Re: JFK Murder

23 Monday Oct 2017

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Jim Garrison1

-by Bill Watkins 10/23/2017

Louisiana district Attorney Jim Garrison called them out first, but after the weekend’s “reporting” it’s clear that NBC news is “sticking to the official story on JFK no matter what.”

With ties to RCA and the U.S. Military, it is no surprise that NBC News is taking the “easy” way to continue its complicity in CIA murder and collusion.

Defending Lee Harvey Oswald through the only means allowed him, New York defense attorney Mark Lane destroyed the FBI/Dallas Police/CIA prosecution.  In fact, Lane exposed the post-death slander of Oswald as unconstitutional with both of his two visits to the sham political dance disguised as an “investigation” called the “Warren Commission.”

https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh2/html/WC_Vol2_0020b.htm

https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh5/html/WC_Vol5_0278b.htm

Damning to the “official report” that patsy Lee Oswald killed JFK with a deficient Italian rifle from a deficient vantage point above and behind the fateful November 22nd, 1963 presidential parade route in Dallas:

1. The first weapon found on the sixth floor of the supposed firing hole, the Texas Book Depository—was a German Mauser, NOT OSWALD’S MAGAZINE-BOUGHT Italian Carcano, a rifle known in Italy as the “gun that lost World War II.”

The weapon was identified as a Mauser by Dallas Police Officer Seymour Weitzman, a gun shop owner knowledgeable enough to along with Officer Roger Craig notice the clear markings “7.65 Mauser” on the gun itself.

Weitzman signed an FBI affidavit to his findings.

FINDINGS THAT WERE DISCARDED WHEN THE FBI DISCOVERED THAT OSWALD OWNED AN ITALIAN CARCANO, NOT A GERMAN MAUSER.

2. Obvious signs from the Zapruder video and witness testimony that gunshots came from in front of the presidential limousine.

Plumes of smoke seen, noise and activity from behind the infamous “grassy knoll:” in front of the motorcade.

Kennedy’s head jerking back to react to frontal shots.

Grabbing the front of his throat to react to another frontal shot.

3. ALLEN DULLES, CIA spymaster FIRED BY KENNEDY after the Bay of Pigs fiasco—

WAS PLACED ON THE WARREN COMMISSION TO INVESTIGATE AND REPORT ON KENNEDY’S MURDER.

Pure bias and inappropriate, an obvious conspiracy FACT that a cover-up was in play.

Prospective jurors are thrown off cases for a lot less than being FIRED by the subject of the case at hand…

4. Warren Commission findings are not credible.

Lone gunman with a Magic “Single-bullet” theory, totally debunked by logic and people like Mark Lane smart enough to expose the sham.

5. Oswald lacked MOTIVE.

To this day, there is no credible motive ascribed to Oswald in relation to a Kennedy murder.

Oswald admired the president, had a hazy past of intelligence involvement, communist leanings suspect in light of his Marine training—which included lessons in the Russian language.

6. Marita Lorenz Testimony:

With no motive to lie (unless she wanted to be placed on a CIA/mafia hitlist for kicks), ex-Castro lover Marita Lorenz moves us finally away from Oswald to…

THE CIA.

Howard Hunt, Frank Fiorini (AKA Sturges) and the Operation 40 Anti-Castro Miami hit team killed John F. Kennedy, not the patsy Oswald.

Lorenz lays out the Hunt payments, the two-car caravan heading out of Miami and into Dallas, Texas on November 21, the day before the disgusting, cowardly hit.

Lorenz saw Hunt at their motel, doling out the dollars.

She saw a man she later recognized from a TV shot as Jack Ruby—Oswald’s eventual killer—also stopping by the killers’ motel.

Lorenz asked to leave the party when she realized what they were planning, but not before she saw enough to peg Hunt and CIA on the scene.

Testimony Mark Lane used to convince a Miami jury in 1985 that Liberty Lobby’s Spotlight magazine published the truth when their Victor Marchetti, ex-CIA writer, wrote of Hunt and CIA’s involvement in the assassination of the peace-striving president of the United States in 1963.

http://www.libertylobby.org/articles/2000/20000207cia.html

A libel case CIA and major news outlets like NBC never wanted folks to worry about too much.

CIA has been running this country politically since 1963.

Samuel’s curse, the result of a military coup seen so often in old Europe, that they never believed in garbage spewed out by Hoover’s FBI, the corrupted Dallas Police Department, nor the always diabolical UN/World Peace-thwarting covert CIA.

http://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/jfk/NARA-July2017/JFK-July_2017_Release-Formerly_released_in_part/DOCID-32105956.PDF

God said having human kings would bite his people on the butt, and this is the type of thing He or She could have meant.

If NBC and other news outlets would claim to be independent of the ruling U.S. military, they would join this independent poet to denounce CIA as traitors.  Murderers.  The villains that killed JFK en route to millions in Southeast Asia, Kennedy just casualty number one of fifty some-odd thousand American deaths in the conflict.

Yes… with “motive…”  To perpetrate Vietnam, get revenge for Kennedy not providing air support to the Bay of Pigs concoction to overthrow communist Castro—restore a capitalist Cuba for CIA, U.S. interests including Mafia-connected hotel/casino owners.

Get control.  Show that n-lover Kennedy who’s boss in the South.

To not allow Kennedy to break up the CIA, as he had publicly promised to do.

For firing Allen Dulles as CIA director—a man in foreign service since before the whipper snapper Avant Garde American president—youngest in history, was even born.

Kennedy also fired the mayor of Dallas’ brother, something that could motivate someone to change a parade route at the last second, inspire a police department to become part of a dark, horrible moment in U.S. history—painted a rainbow by CIA spinsters for years.

And regarding “spinsters,” no one was worse than America’s “James Bond,” Howard E. Hunt—who forged a document after Kennedy’s death that blamed the murdered president for the assassination of a Vietnamese leader.

Mark Lane’s Plausible Denial (Thunder Mouth, 1991) is full of such sins, including a breakdown of Hunt’s failure in the Miami court to explain his whereabouts when Kennedy was killed in Dallas.

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CIA Killed JFK

26 Wednesday Apr 2017

Posted by in Blogs, CIA, History, JFK, Politics

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How I Became Convinced

-by Bill Watkins 4/26/2017

JFK Flag

I spoke with a national security reporter today on the phone about the John F. Kennedy assassination.

Over fifty-three years have passed since the murder, and here we are.

To me, the facts are there.  The testimony, the evidence.  All pointing away from the “official” Oswald story.

And when taken as a whole, held to the light, Facts and Evidence point to the Central Intelligence Agency as the likely killers of our country’s 35th president.

I could dive in here with all I have, or I could back up, recall how I got here.

The latter course seems wise, as the treacherous forest of November 22, 1963 is best navigated without emotion, when inspecting for legal guilt or innocence.

***

I grew up on the military right wing.

My father was Navy.  His brothers were Navy.  One of them was Chief of Naval Operations from 1982-5, then went on to serve as George H.W. Bush’s Secretary of Energy.

That is right wing.  That is as right as you get.

On that extreme right wing you will find sympathy for war, covert operations, secrets and anything thought to contribute to “National Security.”

When Iraq invaded Kuwait, and Bush put American soldiers there to fight, I cried “Gung Ho!!” and “Go get’em, boys!!!”

And if the JFK assassination ever came up in conversation or thought, I saw two sides to the issue, one blaring—one a distant murmur.

The blaring “truth” to me at the time was that Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy, because it was in my textbook, and my family never disputed this claim.

I had not studied, nor had little use or care regarding the Law, Constitutional or otherwise that might frown upon condemning a man as guilty of a crime without a trial.

I mentioned a “distant murmur,” and that was this wacky conspiracy theory group of “kooks,” always worried about stuff, never accepting what the government told them.

Those weirdos didn’t want to go to and win wars like Trump, were communists or close to it, and nothing they said really mattered.

***

Then I got sober in March of 2002.  Before that, I had a spiritual awakening in 1995, so had begun to adore Truth.

Some twelve years into my sobriety, Oliver Stone’s JFK was playing repeatedly on HBO.  And of course I repeatedly passed it up, knowing Stone to be one of “those conspiracy kooks.”

The CIA had me, I later understood.  All their propaganda, the pains they take to infiltrate media, something they prided themselves in abroad and at home—from influencing Latin American elections to blaming Kennedy for the murder of a Vietnamese head of state.

I was locked into the hype and hoopla of American exceptionalism;  that we were the greatest country on earth.  It must be true, my government and military told me so…

But when that dang JFK movie aired for the fourth time in four days on my television, my spiritual recovery told me to open my mind and watch it.

On October 24, 2014 I had a Political Awakening while watching Oliver Stone’s JFK.

I was not yet Convinced of the facts around the JFK murder;  I was now just interested, shocked by the plausible story I was watching that painted the U.S. Government in a shady light.

The Oswald story began to look like the terd that it is, and I started to investigate.

The Road to “Convinced:”

There are two major primers to apply, if you wanted to follow my personal path to becoming convinced of Oswald’s innocence and CIA’s guilt for the murder of JFK:

1.  Watch JFK by Oliver Stone.  Good overview, and an entertaining way to start.

2.  Read On the Trail of the Assassins by Jim Garrison, and browse A Farewell to Justice by Joan Mellon.

You might not be convinced yet, if you do those primer steps.  But you will be ready for…

Mark Lane:

Read Rush to Judgment, and you will become convinced before you are half-way through, that CIA killed Kennedy.

I wrote this piece, after I had finished Rush to Judgment:

https://travelingpoet.net/2017/03/28/the-coup-of-1963/

It’s very hard to become more convinced than “convinced,” but of course one keeps studying, investigating and verifying.

I moved on to Mark Lane’s second book, A Citizen’s Dissent;  it was while reading it that I first considered writing a movie screenplay about Mark, his defense of Oswald, and indicting CIA.

Before writing anything, though, I started reading Mark Lane’s third book, Plausible Denial.  It was by reading this book that I could feel more confident publishing against CIA and on behalf of the framed Lee Harvey Oswald.

Plausible Denial was damning to CIA and Howard Hunt.  The trial that it depicted was Hunt v. Liberty Lobby (1985 in Miami, Florida)—in which a jury sided with Lane that CIA/Hunt were involved in the JFK murder.

http://www.libertylobby.org/articles/2000/20000207cia.html

You may not know about Hunt v. Liberty Lobby, because that is how the CIA likes it.

In that case, the testimony of Marita Lorenz was introduced.  Marita had nothing materially to gain by putting herself on a hit list, but offered the truth out of her conscience to right past wrongs.

Though I was already convinced before reading her deposition, her placement of CIA’s Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis and Anti-Castro Cuban CIA shooters in Dallas on November 21, 1963—Hunt the bagman…

Was the nail in the CIA coffin for this “job.”

The half-sick, half-patriotic organization that began half a ruse on the White House steps in 1947, with their cloak and dagger ceremony, had finally been hurt and scared enough to off the president of the United States, their supposed boss.

Kennedy had threatened to dismantle the CIA after the Bay of Pigs failure, had fired superspy Allen Dulles, the godfather of American espionage.

Kennedy was talking “peace” everywhere he went, closing the divide between black and white, Soviet red and our red, white and blue.

He was not even going to allow CIA their Vietnam.

He had to “go,” Hunt and others diabolically decided.

So some Anti-Castro Cubans and CIA killers shot and killed JFK, cowardly from behind some bushes, covered with police and Secret Service uniforms;  and of course aided by the complicit Dallas Police Department, whose mayor was the Kennedy-fired Deputy CIA Head Charles Cabell’s brother, Earle.

Oswald’s affiliation with FBI kept Hoover in line, CIA mapping out a cover-up, putting Allen Dulles in the middle of Johnson’s Warren Commission to protect the agency from any close scrutiny.

Obfuscating, hiding, destroying and “classifying” documents.

CIA omerta and promises of “national security.” Every criminal organization has to have a legitimate front and plausible deniability, so there you go…

***

This article should not have convinced you that CIA killed John F. Kennedy, but I hope there is a map laid out for those who seek to find.

And CIA:  God bless you to better.

Dear “CIA:”

30 Thursday Mar 2017

Posted by in Blogs, CIA

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In quotes, because a person, or series of human beings are reading this letter, not an organization.

Organizations don’t read, countries don’t hack computers. People do.

I use a similar argument when dealing with “gang” crime in Los Angeles. The gang didn’t commit the crime, young man. You did.

Our organizations have “codes” but overriding them all in this country are national, state and local laws.

No one is above them.

***

Covert, secret ops not known to the people of the United States is, over time: illegal in a “democracy.”

Democracy appears in quotes because that government system is misnamed. “People-rule” is impossible. We can never rule this planet, our land or the universe alone. We are not that powerful. No person is in charge during an earthquake or tsunami; we have to take the losses—

Why “God” and Higher Power are still great entities, concepts, and targets for prayer and supplication. (acts of the humble)

Humility itself is a Good thing. I learned of the word deeply in the process of rooting alcohol-as-drink out of my life, starting in 1995, my last drink of the toxic liquid in 2002.

To us AA’s and in some dictionaries, you will find “humility” defined as knowing your place in the world. A realistic view, that finds you in true perspective: That there is a great Power in the universe. That You are NOT IT.

You can win a battle or two over the Power, feel control by judging or killing others. By playing war games, and treating human beings as cattle, their murders as means to some diabolical end.

And in stepping into rifle position, a war control room, buttons at disposal to decide someone or a group’s “life or death,” their physical fate: there is for some a rush that comes from control/manipulation, a feeling of “superiority” through defeating another in competitive battle.

***

The problem is: if winning or losing is the aim, LOSS is always chosen when murder, death and war is chosen.

From the Tao Te Ching:

31
Weapons are the tools of violence;
all decent men detest them.

Weapons are the tools of fear;
a decent man will avoid them
except in the direst necessity
and, if compelled, will use them
only with the utmost restraint.
Peace is his highest value.
If the peace has been shattered,
how can he be content?
His enemies are not demons,
but human beings like himself.
He doesn’t wish them personal harm.
Nor does he rejoice in victory.
How could he rejoice in victory
and delight in the slaughter of men?

He enters a battle gravely,
with sorrow and with great compassion,
as if he were attending a funeral.

That wisdom from 600 B.C. is lost on an angry militant in love with guns, murder, war and death from a young age.

To that group, Jesus of Nazareth would only warn that “to live by the gun” results in “dying by the gun.”

And God bless them!! A tough road to see so darkly into themselves and their worth—that murder and killing of other people “makes sense.”

My poem on CIA, Crime, and Murder:

Belly of the Beast

We should have nothing to do
with conquest.
–Thomas Jefferson

America’s number one crime family
is CIA, the conquest instinct
alive and kicking as the Devil
rocks excited, kicking up dust manifest
towards suffocating destiny.

I love you, don’t get me wrong:

the sinner in me not far from
my steps, I was a drunk high on
alcoholic beverages, C2H5OH
ethyl not Lucy—flammable and
volatile, a first fuel for
rockets…

Down the hatch, no way to catch—
you had to ask God, Something big
and powerful in prayer.

(But it was so much easier to join
a gang. For me it was almost the
Pasadena Bloods, wearing red putting
hands up against the night. Red
clothes, red SUV—tinted and pretty.
Instant Family!!!)

That’s how the CIA does it as well,
Mafioso-like recruitment in your
lonely hour needing friends.

A “purpose…”

Even if that purpose is evil, it justifies
itself in group therapy and togetherness,
we’re all together in this mess!!!

Raise your glass to lack of tenderness;
it’s “National Security” that will veil
our silliness.

Grown men and women tip-toeing
around spreading lies, propaganda and
reasons foreign leaders must die, so
we can get paid “killing” them, even if
ideas and spirit never die.

The mob and gang mentality is similar
in our highest criminal courts, who
accept at times the misnamed
“cui bono” (who benefits) AS IF FROM
A MURDER OF ANOTHER HUMAN BEING
ANYONE, ANYTIME…

BENEFITS.

No one wins with murder. Murder is just
murder. A lost spirit. A lost potential.

A lost set of ideas and actions, that perhaps
you do not like now; they oppose you
or your plans to own, or financially gain
or win some short term prize.

But TO MURDER. To Murder a foreign
“leader,” a man or woman from man and
woman like you, a fellow trudger on this
earth, a brother or sister who played in
a sandbox like you did.

Maybe they lacked that opportunity.

We can love, seek to understand over
always being understood; we can open
up and learn another point of view.

Bend or break! The killer, conquering
instinct from Satan not God, no matter
what you call it, from a “business move”
to “national security.”

Evil is evil, killing killing, and killing is never
national or self-defense.

***

That may be my last American poem.

I plan to move east soon into Crow land, get a job while my writing tries to succeed.

Then to England, if they’ll have me.  Where my forefathers were born, those three Welsh Watkins brothers hauling over on the “Jamestown” expedition in 1606/7.

I put a lot of quotes on things, I know.  The last set for “Jamestown,” for when you think about it: what a vain and sick thing to do, to come into another people’s land and start naming it after your home king.

More about Native America and other poems of mine at http://www.travelingpoet.net.

I’ll sign off with a pledge of service to CIA as a humble writer who could help you find humility on Twitter and in your Mission Statement.

Humility should be a goal, as America waits for the 3000+ JFK docs in October.

You are on Earth already.  Might as well admit it, come down to it, and become an upstanding information service, drop the cloaks/daggers, shake hands with the world at UN and be a part of that 1945 charter for World Peace.  (At Last)

Good luck transitioning to Peace.  As a sober drunk, I have become a master of sober peaceful days starting with a God-directed daily schedule.  I write “Sleep” at the end of every schedule.

That is humility.

Love and Peace…

—Bill Watkins
Nephew of Admiral James D. Watkins

Uncle James2

It’s Time to Re-Open JFK

29 Wednesday Mar 2017

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AND INDICT CIA

-by Bill Watkins 3/29/2017

CIA Garbage1

***

All credible evidence and testimony point somewhere.

Regarding the murder of John F. Kennedy on November 22nd, 1963:  all credible evidence and testimony point toward CIA.

Toward Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis, hitmen Gerry Patrick Hemming, the Novis Brothers and pilot Pedro Diaz Lanz.

Bitter, scared covert CIA and anti-Castro “professionals” hell-bent on saving the CIA against Kennedy review and change.

A group committed to revenge for the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and Kennedy’s lack of air support to that CIA failed mission.

Killing JFK to them also seemed the only chance for escalation in Vietnam, continuance of a kill Castro program, a possible calming down of liberal de-segregation policies and peaceful globalism.

Finally, war of course meant money to CIA and military personnel they controlled.

That control was a creeping death, unleashed by Truman in 1947, two years after a beautiful peace document was signed by the United Nations in San Francisco to hopefully avoid all wars.

From the CIA site:

FIt. Admr. William D. Leahy:

January 24, 1946: “At lunch today in the White House, with only members of the Staff present, RAdm. Sidney Souers and I were presented [by President Truman] with black cloaks, black hats, and wooden daggers, and the President read an amusing directive to us outlining some of our duties in the Central Intelligence Agency [sic], Cloak and Dagger Group of Snoopers.”

Nobody laughed in Guatemala when Howard Hunt and other CIA spooks perpetrated a covert propaganda campaign to influence the 1954 election.

Hunt’s “psychological warfare” helped lead a “near bloodless” revolt and coup to install the CIA’s favorite dictator du jour, to be replaced later by a “democratic election.” (Hunt v. Liberty Lobby, 1985)

Sound familiar?

Wherever there was communism, socialism or any “ism” uncomfortable to CIA and American capitalist expansion, there was the CIA operating with their apparent blank check covert cloaks and daggers.

El Salvador and Vietnam would be future targets of CIA manipulation, BUT NOT UNTIL KENNEDY WAS KILLED.  Kennedy was a fly in their poison, so they geared up Operation 40’s “kill Castro” objective to turn on JFK.

According to credible, life-risking Marita Lorenz testimony, a CIA murder caravan left Miami for Dallas before November 21, 1963.

Arrived.  Were paid by Hunt, visited by Oswald’s eventual killer, Jack Ruby.

Guns in cars, disguises, cover as policemen and secret service officers, trained to kill Castro.  How hard would Kennedy be to snuff out in ex-Deputy CIA director Charles Cabell’s neck of the woods?  His brother Earle was the Dallas mayor at the time.

Cabell was “ex”-Deputy CIA director because Kennedy fired him after the Bay of Pigs disaster.

Motive abound, the CIA—at least a part of it, moved in on JFK, who had expressed his desire to dismantle the covert cloak and dagger boys, saying “I will splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the wind” a month before his death.

Murder. 11-22-63.

Then a bogus LBJ-instigated Warren Commission began to “investigate,” led by Allen Dulles, the CIA Director fired by Kennedy after Bay of Pigs.

Cover-up.  Propaganda.  CIA specialties went into effect.  Still are.

“Oswald did it.”  “Kennedy was a bad guy.”  “He was a womanizer.”

Gossip, innuendo, without fact.

“As long as they get distracted or forget.”

“Look at Trump!!!”

“Look at Russia!!!”

Yes.  Yes.

First, let’s look at CIA.  Then go back to slavery.  Then go back to Native America.

Redemption requires Truth.

—Bill Watkins, Alcoholic

Summing Up JFK — Halftime…

22 Monday Dec 2014

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Conspiracy Fact

The Devil wants everybody dead,
instilled the fear to kill first in
many, and revels in your secret
society, the darker—the more robes
and chanting, the better.

Give the Devil, fear, an inch and
he’ll take ten miles, let that
cat of its bag—watch it run amuck
all over this planet, Truman named
it the CIA.

God bless information, and defending
borders—I always said our borders
are like a front door. “Knock, knock”
then “Who is it?” And if they be friend
open up, let them pass, God bless them
and you for the welcome mat.

If you sense evil or violence at your
door, who do you call?

The temptation is for fighting fire
with fire, pre-emptive strikes—use force.

But I’ve seen more done with prayer,
ministry and love, than fear’s hate,
“hatred leads to suffering,” Yoda reminded,

So the game is still “good” and “evil,” still
the same deal; growing up you just realize
the fallibility of every human being—

And every human gathering, social group,
political organization, government!!

All fallible, all faulty, all capable of good
and bad.

I used to think such a large group of people
in space called the United States of America
and its government must be right!!

Um… not so much. We are like any
other nation.

The wisest nation realizes this, and looks
to Higher Power still, for guidance and
direction.

The Ten Commandments STILL are good;
Killing and bearing false witness against
thy neighbor STILL bad!!!

Crimes are punished not principally
and most importantly by us, but by
God, conscience, karma, dharma,

And if you step back as Lao Tsu suggests,
you will enjoy this world more—

Knowing we cannot change it.

This was supposed to be about
John F. Kennedy and his murder—
those who committed it still “running”
our country.

I am running after them, not to
murder back, but to minister, to shine
a light, fall in love again with truth,
and take them with me to Betty Ford
and beyond where I’ve been lucky enough
to go.

To share my spiritual awakening with fear
itself: Skull and Bones not knowing it’s
evil, just waiting for a better idea.

Truman’s covert getting caught, and Cuba
being freed, I love my right wing southern
white drawlers, who grew up shooting guns
and fighting because that’s what Daddy did.

He also went to church, Dad did, and good
fought with evil—faith with fear—in him as well.

I don’t know if he won or lost there, but
you could win by putting your gun down,
and if the fighting continues you’ll have to
take one on the cheek as Jesus taught, then
give your other cheek.

Watch the fear run for the hills, when you
embrace pain as part of all things, a path to
joy.

Lies abound, and that’s a conspiracy fact,
so many lies supporting the business of government
that it seems impossible to go back and mend
our broken fences, like JFK.

So the Justice Department keeps lying, supporting
the Coup of 1963, for the truth is too scary,
could “mean my job;” I’m just hanging on here
to life, isn’t that enough?

God wants our truth, you do too, and your awakening
awaits the moment you let the guard down,
let them enter your house (say a prayer first),
recall something good in your life, like youth.

Perhaps you missed it, I have drank it away,
but it’s never too late.

Dallas Police, Justice Department, FBI, CIA,
Johnson, Nixon, and the Bush family God
Bless You…

Tell the truth, and be set free.

Yale’s youth, bewitched in dark roomed
cliques, God bless you…

Tell the truth, and be set free.

U.S. Armed Forces stand down, and
wait for commands from New York;
there’s a World Peace outlet at work
there.

Jesus

MLK Movie Script

About MLK — The Movie

Current Length: 207 Pages
Movie Length Projection: 3 hours, 27 minutes (including intermission)

Genre/Status:  Biography, Drama/3rd Draft, intended as a Gift to the King Center in Atlanta, for them to find producers for a film should they hopefully choose…

Potential Audience:  All who love movies, biographies, Civil Rights, beautiful oratory, folk/protest/spiritual songs, history; who care about the great Martin Luther King, his legacy, Coretta Scott King and the next generation of Kings, Dreams, and Freedom…

Potential Budget:  High (must be done with the best and highest in film quality/music/art. The writer’s opinion is that anachronistic music should be avoided in favor of wonderful period work from pre-April 8, 1968 epoch—although prior to end credits a 2017 image is called for which could invite a new song)

Locations:  Atlanta/Albany—Georgia, Birmingham/Montgomery—Alabama, Ghana, India, New York, Watts/Los Angeles—California, courtroom interiors/exteriors, Church interiors/exteriors, Parsonages/Homes, Washington D.C. mall, Lincoln/Washington Memorials, MLK Memorial, St. Augustine/Florida, Mississippi, Department store interiors/exteriors, bus interiors, airplane

Main Characters:  1. Martin Luther King Jr. (20s/30s), 5’7” African American, handsome, amazing southern speaking voice/preacher’s voice range low to high; 2. Coretta Scott King (20s/30s), 5’7” African American woman, pretty, singer, soprano voice, elegant; 3. Ralph Abernathy (20s/30s), African American, sense of humor, is Martin’s right-hand man; 4. “Freedom Songs” would be the fourth main character, carefully curated

Other Players: Fred Shuttlesworth (30s), Andy Young (30s), the King children, Daddy and Mrs. King (Martin’s parents), JFK, RFK, lots of white cops and officials, lots of black protesters of all ages, white protesters of all ages, church-goers, civil rights activists/martyrs and their families

Motive for Writing the Work:
I wanted to fill the hole in my DVD collection.  We have the great Gandhi (1982, Attenborough) but no such epic for Martin, and I aimed to help change that.

Logline:
A gifted black minister from Atlanta, Georgia leads the Civil Rights movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s with his education, voice, determination and willingness to apply Christian and Gandhian methods on nonviolent protest.

Possible Tagline:
The lie must die for the Dream of Freedom to reign…

****

Synopsis and Notes:

The script starts with an excerpt from a poem by Margaret Walker, “For My People”—words superimposed over a Mississippi River sunrise.

Published in 1942, the excerpt lays out Martin’s challenge: to break free, rise up, to garner courage and change the “Negro” plight.

The action in the story starts with a flashback to 1935, when a five-year old Martin Luther King Jr follows his father (“Daddy King”/MLK Sr) around town.

Jim Crow Atlanta bears its racist teeth, Martin’s dad is discriminated against roughly, and Martin Jr takes his mental notes.

***

We jump next to September 1, 1955: Montgomery, Alabama and the optimistic-but-wary-of-Jim-Crow-South move-in by Martin and his wife Coretta Scott King.

They express concern at their move back to the South after successful educational jaunts to the North, but dance and pray their way to optimism.

So begins the first part of the script, one that follows Martin’s Stride Toward Freedom—in some spots verbatim.

I invented some transitions, and many interactions between Martin and Coretta.  I tried to let go and feel it, tried to write scenes and dialogue using everything I know about this great couple.

The moment family, friends or insiders need to correct a scene, I will yield.  The hardest part in writing family scenes was to guess which in-laws would be home, who would be where, saying what… But I go with my best flow, with what I know, and with what makes the story go!!

***

The first half of the film is Montgomery.  This could have always been its own full length GREAT movie.  But I did not want that, so kept pressing on in part two—after an “intermission…” (I wanted my epic!)

***

Part Two goes hard, is action-action-action and never stops until the Dream defeats the evil of murder—Coretta, the kids, Harry Belafonte and Reverend Abernathy leading the charge in Memphis just days after the devil thought he had a win by stifling the physical presence of civil rights’ greatest hero.

Martin’s autobiography, edited by the magnificent Dr. Clayborne Carson, shines as a beacon, as I go scene by scene through the guts of the civil rights struggle.

Martin at the helm, a trip to Africa, the publishing of a great book—and a horrible near death experience at Blumstein’s Department Store in Harlem one day in 1958.

We pause there, as we should. I cast a little suspicion at the FBI, as we should.  The woman who tried to kill Martin was in line, lock and step, with the FBI’s hatred of the big civil rights duo: MLK and the NAACP.

***

But Martin survives, and with a new lease—heads off to India!!  (A trip put off a long time, as Martin reflects on being invited by Indian Prime Minister Nehru years prior.)

There in India many things happen, but my Favorite, and what seemed to me (forgive me) an OSCAR moment:

I place Coretta and Martin on that glorious Indian coast just as Martin describes it, right at sunset, as the moon replaces the fiery golden ball dropping into the west’s eager waves.

They hang out in that golden mist, share a Song, one of Martin’s favorites…

***

Then, back to the fray, and fully recovered from that book-signing insanity…

I depict integrating Little Rock, the dawn of the sit-in movement from Greensboro to Nashville to all over the South.

The freedom rides, one ending in flames and abuse.

Arrests in Atlanta, interaction with John F. Kennedy, and off to struggle for Albany, Georgia.

All, it seems in some ways, practice for the great climactic struggle in Birmingham.

***

The glory to me, as we see events we all know dramatized on screen will be:

MY USE OF MARTIN LUTHER KING VOICE-OVER/narration.  (The actor chosen for Martin must have a great voice, a singer’s voice, a preacher’s voice.)

It is my opinion that I myself can do Martin.  Try me sometime.  If I can do Martin, someone else can do him; the voice must be perfect.

Coretta gets in some narration herself, her two books very helpful to fill in some of the wife/mother’s perspective.

Ralph Abernathy’s book was helpful in spots, but I do not condone his looseness with regard to social life; seemed gossipy and not my bag.

But he was there when Martin was immorally murdered by what seems to me a typically diabolical CIA covert operation.

Four peace-loving American leaders were killed for opposing Vietnam: JFK, MLK, RFK and John Lennon in 1980.

And what was Vietnam?

Vietnam was CIA’s little pet project.  I will not judge those people, those who engage in war, and kill those who oppose war.  But I hope anyone reading this, my script, or endeavoring to produce my script into a glorious epic movie will pause now to pray for those who turn to weapons of war, murder—then call it all “national defense.”  Those are the strays in the flock, and we must love them, even as they err.

We must love the devil out of them.

***

I have a couple “signatures” in this movie script; one of them is to spend time with Martin’s beautiful eulogy of John F. Kennedy.

Being a Kennedy assassination buff, and someone totally offended by the CIA takeover of our government in 1963: it was really hard to press on with my script after Kennedy is killed.

And Martin helped me through it.  I needed his words to go on, as did much of the country when that surreal tragedy happened.

During that eulogy, narrated by Martin himself, I write-in images of the evil that killed JFK.

Of course I depict the CIA emblem at Langley, Virginia.

There is a producer and/or director who might have a problem with such an image, and pointing so obviously at CIA, but I wrote it anyway.

Which is to say I stand up against Covert Action, the CIA covert branch, and any national “secrets.”  Discretion is fine, but secrets are sick. And un-democratic.

There are other moments I risked placing a signature on the piece, but the CIA reference is the most obvious one.

***

Before Kennedy is killed, though, Martin shares his dream.

The fun as a screenwriter here, is how to surprise the audience, when they think they know what’s going to happen next.

So instead of just having Martin do the speech, I take it away at the moment of the give. I had saved a piece of history and unleashed it right at the moment of the Dream speech:

Governor Wallace in that University of Alabama administration office building doorway.

I write-in a montage of integrating the University of Alabama and other past abuses right as Martin is about to speak, then go in with “full-throttle Martin” once his scripted speech is dropped in favor of the “I Have a Dream” riff.

Please read that section and enjoy!!  (starting on page 154)

***

Then the young girls are horribly bombed in Birmingham.  Kennedy is killed.  And I almost stopped writing, so sad and uncertain if Martin could bring us through all that.

But he does.

He marches from grief back to the civil rights trail: Florida, Mississippi, the White House.

Mississippi still has ghosts; stories of so many fallen in a dark second civil war taking its horrible casualties en route to Freedom’s taunting light.

Medgar Evers is remembered. Emmett Till is remembered.  Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner.  So many nameless; the violence senseless.  The illness of racism in full effect in a state infested with the old white guard in charge of all political decisions.

Martin, the SCLC and other groups infiltrate this corruption, turn heads at the Atlantic City DNC in 1964.

***

A civil rights bill is signed, and Martin at the age of thirty-five wins the Nobel Prize for Peace.

His speech is a prize in and of itself for the audience, one of eloquence, beauty and truth—as he re-commits to the cause of civil rights not won with any award, but re-focused.

Coretta tells her own story of the award and what it meant to she and Martin.

***

Selma, Selma, Selma! We go there next, hit fine points, an excerpt of another great MLK speech, and offer another Coretta perspective, as she recounts the Langston Hughes poem she gave the marching crowd one night.

***

Next: Watts/Los Angeles gets hit, and Martin comes out west to talk non-violence.

***

And then finally we begin the long build-up that ends in tragedy.

We see Martin at home with the children; a rare thing at times, but I use Coretta’s accounts of some truly sweet games played between father and children.

This contrasts to what is ahead:

Martin’s super-strong and informed rejection of all war, and of the American CIA-conceived Vietnam conflict in specific.

The day he fully attacked the American government’s position in Southeast Asia in 1967, Martin became not just a target of violence to the racist South, but to the covert operators of the CIA, the FBI already tailing and taping MLK from 1963 until his tragic murder in 1968.

***

More family, more love, more humanity brings Martin to games at home and strikes for justice in American cities.

Memphis is plagued by violence one day in March of ‘68, so Martin regroups with Coretta and his core at home; heads back for protest and a mass meeting on April 3rd, 1968, issues his now-famous and obviously prophetic “I’ve Been to the Mountain Top” speech in front of a grateful, raucous crowd ready for non-violent protest and its usual hard-fought success.

Then tragedy.  As told by friend and confidant, Reverend Ralph Abernathy:

Martin is shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.  By a certainly confused, unseen militant probably at the orders of a conspiracy to continue the criminal Vietnam lie.

***

What follows is a series of flashbacks while Martin lies mortally wounded, Ralph attending along with other friends of the movement and the man:

Jesse Jackson, Bernard Lee, Andy Young…

***

Mixed against that horrible present moment are tender pieces of Martin’s past passing before his thirty-nine year old eyes, so handsome, vibrant, talented and driven:

At five his mom gives him the talk all black children of the south seemed to get by parents that cared, who tell their children that “you are as good as anyone.”

Flashing back and forward between Martin’s past and his tragic physical present, Martin wins the Georgia Oratory Contest prize in 1944, at fifteen showing the speaking skills of a genius.

Riding home on the bus from Dublin to Atlanta, he is asked to give up his seat for a white passenger. Anger drives him to further study, to college, to meeting the beautiful, talented, interesting music student, Coretta Scott.

They meet, and Coretta tells us what it was like.

Then back to Ralph struggling to comfort and be there for his dying friend.

Martin takes a photo of his future wife while courting her in Boston.

Flash.

Martin’s body is replaced with the glorious spirit that soars in his loved ones and fans.

He did what God wanted him to do, and let us sing his song in eternal gratitude for the greatest speaking voice that has ever been recorded by man.

“I have a Dream!” echoes now and forever, rips through the theater rows as Coretta leads her children, Harry Belafonte, John Lewis and thousands of other believers in change down the Memphis boulevard to Freedom just days after tragic loss.

Bernice, Martin’s youngest—not there in Memphis marching that day (only five years old), is sure there to connect tenderly with her father’s memory at the MLK Memorial in Washington D.C. just months ago (8-28-2017) to mark the fifty-fourth anniversary of the “I Have a Dream” speech.

And the Dream continues…

—Bill Watkins
Writer
323-573-0460
http://www.travelingpoet.net

MLK -- March on Washington

MLK Tease

Prayer for Donald Trump

26 Tuesday Jun 2018

Posted by in God, Great Spirit, Love, Poetic Blog, Prayer

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God,

Love Donald Trump and all
his supporters more now than
ever!

Grant us all peace.

Especially the deceived, the lost;
the hateful and the spiteful.

Help all to know that fear
and weakness is at the core of hate
and violence.

Grant Love in the place of fear.

Help us to conquer self-will, to
replace it with your perfect design!

God bless Donald Trump.  Replace
the coldness with warmth, the
indifference with care, the golf
balls with real testicles, real feeling

and loyalty not among men and
women but to You and the teachings
of your Son, the native Great Spirit.

Forgive Trump his sins.

Forgive his supporters and their
neglect of traits like humility and
brotherly love needed to gain Heaven
at the end of this earthly walk.

Infuse Trump with your godly love
and spirit, one day at a time, so
that he may transmit that love to the
forty percent of Americans, ninety
percent of Republicans, who would
seem to follow sickness into the jaws
of death, a Klan rally, the pit of hate
we had thought demolished with
V-day 1945, and the founding of
the United Nations, soon after its
statement on human rights, Eleanor
Roosevelt a believer in peace, JFK
until his death, a final thought for
CIA who killed him.

Amen

History Knows

15 Friday Jun 2018

Posted by in African, History, JFK, Native, Poem, Poems, Poetic Blog, Poetry

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We’re obsessed with now.

We’re so sure of our reports, that
this or that thing caused this, and
it all happened this week.

The shiny balls bounce, “Trump
is tweeting again,” but history knows
why he is.

What is a Trump “president of the
United States?”

First, the States are not united,
all of them pulled together and
over the years have bullied
minorities, starting with the
American Indian, then of course
the African slave, then the
freed slaves, to name a few.

“United States of America” declares
itself so, historically, as a bastion of
hope and freedom for white males.

European people.

Next, we fought some wars, replaced
the sixth commandment with the
second amendment, made killing
“good.”

We killed and killed some more, got
good at it, and prided ourselves in
winning wars, winning territory, often
overlooking original sins against black,
brown and other people—

the “country” had an official line,
ones drawn by…

White males.

****

So we fought World War I, jumped
into Europe, played hero and “won.”

Instead of being humble in victory,
and mourning all the dead on all
sides, we raised our hands and did the
flapper dance for the next decade—

most of it all over the German people,
who we made pay for starting that dang
war.

We could have graciously helped them
to their feet and forgiven them, but
we drove the stake in hard—

enough to create Hitler and a backlash
good enough to start another war,
and the Jewish holocaust.

The United Nations formed after
World War II, and unlike the Kellogg-
Briand Pact of the 1920’s, this world
peace gig seemed like it could really
work until the American government
ratified its CIA, who along with other
nations kept waging covert wars
behind peace talks.

Shaking hands with the right, stealing
and killing with the left, hiding
documents and lying in the name
of “National Security.”

“Everybody’s doing it” was surely
put forth as they gathered on the
White House lawn in cloaks and
dagger outfits, a ruse of not-so-
funny don’ts and do’s in front
of Truman, Eisenhower then
Kennedy until they killed him
in 1963.

CIA kept its rule of the USA until…

the present day, but the leash is
very long, you might not notice them
unless you loved the Kennedy hope
of the ‘60’s, miss it, and miss truth.

JFK wasn’t perfect, but by ’63 had
grown into a man of peace, amends,
just a little naive on the power of
covert ops and the growing target
on his back.

“They wouldn’t do it, would they?”

They did it.

Cowards from behind a bush, covered
it up just as in Latin America they would.

A pattern attack, this time in our
own land, Julius Caesar by Brutus,

JFK by CIA, Howard Hunt and all those
ticked off Cubans killed or captured
or wounded when Kennedy balked
at helping take the Pigs’ Bay.

But did all that make Donald Trump?

Not yet.

***

Look at Cold War, from Kennedy’s murder
to Vietnam, the CIA’s baby, the path
clear with LBJ, then Nixon to execute
this impossible but profitable fight.

(At least our families are eating?)  Wide
that path to destruction, and boom!

The “American army” blowing a darn
good path through Southeast Asia!!

***

But we “won” the Cold War!!!

Right?

The wall came down in 1989…

Right?

A good day.  A great day?!?!

Make American Great Again?  Reagan
says, “Yes, We Can!?”

Or was that Obama?  Definitely this:
Clinton and the Americans rubbed the
victory in Russia’s nose, and like in
1930’s Germany, we had created
another villain.

This one, named Putin, rose and rose,
and rose some more and again, until
he rose to a place that he could
get his sweet revenge.

Put Trump in the White House; put down
Hillary Clinton and the U.S. dance
with Global Authority, democracy and
another frickin’ flapper dance across
a fallen enemy!

***

History knows, even if the news does
not, why the news is crazy, sad or
weird today.

It’s none of those things, but is a perfect
growth of history’s seed.

We planted everything that is reaped
on TV today.

Mothers and babies separated at the border,
the UN reprimanding the USA!

Puerto Rico shunned and neglected
by a racist regime in the USA!

Putin smiles, a short-lived win,
revenge is sweet, the games may
begin—

Politics and history lost in the eyes
of a child, God’s will charging on—
the aware forging a narrow path,
Wyatt Earps, Bob Muellers, Truth
and Comey with your morning coffee—

John Adams against the Hamilton
frenzy, Lao Tzu and Jesus himself
offering truth against all this hoopla
walking around the White House
dangling pardons and tax scams.

God is good, Trump is not, but seek
history before you judge him or
the present moment too harshly,
for history’s to blame and they are not.

Yes, Animals

20 Sunday May 2018

Posted by in Nature, Poem, Poems, Poetry

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What is man without the beasts?
If all the beasts were gone, men would
die from great loneliness of spirit, for
whatever happens to the beasts also
happens to man.  All things are connected.
Whatever befalls the earth befalls the
children of the earth.
—Chief Seattle

I need to dumb down to reach
God and the masses, animals all of us.

Donald Trump uses the word “Animal”
as a curse or put down, which to me
puts himself down, as of course we are
all animals.

Donald Trump has no idea what this
poem is about, would bluster “he
doesn’t care,” but the truth is that
he deeply cares, and is ashamed at
how low his education is.

He cares, and is ashamed at how much
debt he is in, his sexual habits caught
on tape, money paid out to quiet
ex-lovers.

I love Donald, and so did his mom
and dad.

It IS PARTIALLY OUR FAULT—
ALL OF OUR FAULT!!!!—for letting someone
like Donald Trump be “president,”
for letting someone with NO
PUBLIC SERVICE EXPERIENCE even run
for president of the United States of
America.

(By “United” I refer to what rich
representatives in a Continental
Congress claimed this country was
in 1776, ignoring Slavery and native
people, who were not considered,
nor counted.  Women left out,
children discriminated against a few
years later in a Constitution that
sets “age” limits four times: to
run for Congress, Senate, President,
and to vote.  To judge a big group
of people on an arbitrary quality
like gender, race or AGE—and to
restrict that group
based on that quality from having
rights or access to something is called
discrimination.)

So, Donald’s campaign sought outside
help from foreign nations, Russian
money, and others who own FIFA
and where it plays its soccer games.

Bribe and play, pay to play, go
to work one day, and there you
are in the White House because you
sold enough racist followers that
“brown people will not replace us,
Nor will Hillary, or Obama and his
blacktivists!”—and they voted for
you to…

Lead or tweet?

Campaign for 2020 or lead?

Troll people online, watch Fox News
and play golf on the government’s dime?

Geez, you wanna change things,
Donald and Devin—you wanna root
out the deep state?

Stand up to CIA and its covert
mission of violence and secrets!!  Put
the spotlight on JFK.  The real
president of this Country IS
CIA!!!!

Since November of 1963, we are under
their covert thumb, the leash long
enough to feel free—

and although God is truly in charge
of all, we pretend down here that
we have power.

We do not, no matter how many Samuels
go up the mountain and ask God
for a king.

My March with Humanity

14 Saturday Apr 2018

Posted by in Blog, Civil Rights

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March Collage3

-by Bill Watkins 4/13/2018

***

Learn to Labor and to Wait
—H.W. Longfellow

The last shall be chosen first.
—Jesus of Nazareth

Many are okay with the basic premise and founding of the current American government.  Even strong activists for change often come short of asking for full-scale revolution in order to create something pleasing to God between the oceans we call Atlantic and Pacific.

God’s will could be determined in the old spiritual maxim: It’s what happens. God’s will is “that which is,” is all things, includes all the bad things that happen, for without bad things there would be no good things.  The Tao Te Ching from China, “yin and yang” corroborate the obvious: the world and universe abound with opposites and contradictions, and as Ecclesiastes sings: “To every thing there is a season.”

This land we now call “America” against protests from north, central and south American nations was created by an unknown process some call God, others evolution.  People populated it after time, most say from Asian migration, and soon “nations” were developed by what we now call Native Americans, or American Indians.  They were care-takers of the land, lived off the land, protected and fought for life, with and against the elements, rival tribes—all the components you see in modern world politics without the concrete, asphalt and helicopters.

Animals prospered in a near-noiseless paradise.  There was no bible, no white man, just the native people, their Great Spirit and beliefs, customs, occasional wars for territory and honor—no guns, no widespread disease, short life-spans but in an eternally accepted cycle of eternal life and dance with the ancestors, a story not written in books but on the wind, on rocks, and passed down to generations through spoken narrative.

Then the white people came.  Brought their bible, armor, guns, forts, and a desire to either escape their old world across the sea, to make a mark on a new world, to bring riches back to their king or queen, even to become famous.  The white person’s love of land was limited and had seemingly reached its end, so a jaunt across a grand ocean to discover and inhabit new land was attractive.

The United States was and is an immigrant haven, a human hodge-podge begun in false starts and failures from Roanoke, Virginia to Jamestown—a colony saved by a Native American tribe’s hospitality and trade.  Native people knew how to live here, had the keys buried in love of land.  That was the real gold missed by white people:  Native American wisdom and love for land.  White people sought the yellow rock instead of ideas that would have allowed them to better appreciate a rock called England, rocks in Europe that marked the burials of their fathers.

The native chiefs struggled to understand why white people would leave their ancestors’ burial grounds to come across an ocean and steal theirs.

We know that the white man does not understand our ways.  One portion of land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs.  The earth is not his brother, but his enemy—and when he has conquered it, he moves on.  He leaves his father’ graves, and his children’s birthrights are forgotten.     —Chief Seattle

I think that wherever the Great Spirit places his people, they ought to be satisfied to remain, and thankful for what He has given them, and not drive others from the country He has given them because it happens to be better than theirs!   —Black Hawk

A man who would not love his father’s grave is worse than a wild animal.
—Chief Joseph

***

Disease of More

Oswald’s 6th and CIA Omerta
seem lesser concepts when compared
to native plight, the
White man coming, conquering
and killing in the night.

The mob our government has locked
inside, from Ivy League schools
or wherever nice but lonely
rich kids can be recruited to be
in a family of brotherhood and togetherness.

To gather around crime is tempting
and even easy.

We group together, then justify wrong
acts because our brothers are doing them too.

The mob speaks of omerta, taking
secrets to the grave, and the CIA
is of the same mold.

God bless us all to proud truth of
who and what we are;

No matter how sick, perverse or wrong—

There is always a way out and back
to love and goodness.

The gospels are there for us when
we ask, we receive.

Or the Tao Te Ching.

Or the native river, writings of thanks
written on the wind, the leaves
changing so why not us?

Give them their land back, and let’s go
back to ours.

***

Gold, Riches.  Indian Wisdom?

We sought many things.

The thing we should have taken back to England
was Indian Wisdom:

To love your land,
stay loyal to it, give to it,
and thank God for it every day.

“Have No gods Before Me,” God hollered
down to Moses and the people.

“Not even alcohol?” was proposed back
by a wide path called ignorance.

On “Ownership” of Land:

Some of our chiefs make the claim that the land
belongs to us. It is not what the Great Spirit told me.
He told me that the lands belong to Him, that no
people owns the land.
—Kanekuk

Why Should Indians be First, Not Last?

This is their country, not ours.

“Aspire for Less”

More and more, every day.

“Be As Children”

More and more, every day.

“Growing Down”

Become more as a child,
and prepare for heaven.

White People Must Leave.

Follow me.

***

Well, we didn’t leave, but have stayed.  Did we improve this land?  When I walk our littered streets and sidewalks, hear our helicopters roar in metal and burned earth, plug my ears against sirens, and watch wildlife hide and die, I say “Not Yet.”

Bad L.A.1

Not Yet

Was this merging good?

Not yet.

Was it a good thing, to cross the sea,
invade a land inhabited by nations
of darker peoples, and take their land?

Not yet.

What makes it good and right?

Welcome native people back to the table, look back on broken treaties, amend our relations, do right by them, God and nature, reduce pollution, reconsider our decisions, pray about our origins and the graves we left behind, repent, and…

Make available immediately spots on city councils, state legislatures and Congress for Native people to serve, spots not voted on by the greater population but by the pre-white people themselves.

***

Humanity.  We find it within ourselves to respect our place in this world, honor our parents, walk a fine path without stepping on our fellows’ toes.

Humanity.  Something Martin Luther King marched to secure, something that recently brought folks together in Atlanta, Georgia as we remembered the preacher’s legacy fifty years after his tragic murder.  Martin would have said, as he did when JFK was killed, that it was not as important “who” killed him than “what” killed him.

Racism.  Evil.  War and those who had sold their souls to wage it.  Greed, and those who felt they needed war to feed their families.  Deception and “covert action,” dishonesty and ruses perpetrated and manifest in back rooms, lonely cults and clubs of collusion called “Central Intelligence” and “National Security.”

The pious fraud that ends justify means, that “Martin must die to assure our war on communism wins.”  The racism that pervaded FBI and J. Edgar Hoover’s cold heart.

Can you march all that away?

Slaves brought against their will, packed worse than sardines against themselves, reduced to lower animals, whipped like miscreant cattle, their souls neglected by soulless, sad white people, who had lost humanity the moment they believed the lie that a darker person was not as human as a lighter-skinned one.

National poverty racial breakdown: (federalsafetynet.com)

Poverty Stats

A lie that still walks over trash-littered communities, homeless people and hard times—inner cities full of people, a high percentage black and descendant from the sin of slavery.  And our community, city, state and national leaders keep wearing their suits, driving nice cars, making six figure salaries, perpetuating a second great American evil after the native expulsion.

40 Acres and a Mule

***

They keep moving the goalposts
when the promise is inconvenient.

General Sherman in 1865 promised
a lie, just as U.S. presidents and generals
would go back on every treaty with
Native Americans from the beginning.

Just like Samuel asking for a king,
kicking God out of the post—

We all lose!!!!!

And so I’m waiting for my mule.  My
forty acres of land to work, its cash
equivalent.

Perhaps I’d like to be able to apply
for a grant to study my background;
how I got to America.

My guess is through my forefathers
whipped in chains, forced here against
their will—

I’d like to know that story better, visit
West Africa, grieve a few things.

Perhaps after the government of the
United States pays off its twenty trillion
dollars in debt, its land debt to natives—

Perhaps it can pay some of us African
Americans for our suffering from the
sin of Slavery.

***

We promised 40 Acres and a Mule after the Civil War.  Black people made physically free, but when promises were forgotten, Jim Crow rising, there was a funny race being run around a large oval of life here, one in which white people had a 200 yard head start in a 400 yard dash.  Could a black person in America make up that stagger without help?  Do white people owe black people for the sin of slavery?  Have we paid enough?

No.

***

I took a Greyhound bus from Los Angeles to Atlanta last week, a fifty-five hour trip into the dark and light of this country’s southern section, along Interstate 10, for the lofty purpose of joining the Martin Luther King family in mourning their father fifty years after his death, and Marching for Humanity.

March for Humanity

I was a Phi Beta Kappa high honors drunk from UC Santa Barbara, always a fan of learning, not always so bright in life but a great manipulator of a faulty education system that does not seek to know and help its students on an individualized basis.  I was graduated from two high-rated educational institutions a full-blown alcoholic, the educators without a clue as to who I was, or worse yet: they knew and did nothing to help me.

It was not until I went to a recovery center in Palm Springs, California to support a loved one who had checked herself in for treatment, that a black man named Lee Harris, PhD, squared me up, talked with me, and spurred on truth from me that led to my spiritual awakening.  That was on February 7th, 1995.

February 7th, 1995

The scales lifted, the eyes clear.

Honesty, finally the truth at
twenty-two given with a tear.

“I’ve never had a girlfriend”
coaxed when the moment was right,
I let down my guards to finally
see the light.

You can’t be helped ‘til you ask
for it.  You can’t ask ‘til safe,
I looked left and right before I
truth supplied and saw that it was all
right—I came out!!!

I was unhappy, even though I had
friends after friends coming to my
bar-b-que party.

I was empty even though the trophies
and plaques on walls increased
and filled—attempted to fill, this would
have to be enough!

Spiritual Awakening—LORD, have me!
Done hiding it was safe to bloom,
and now, no more garden parties,

I separate the happy with the gloom
and see the world in poems—

I did not ask for permission and leave
another world behind: self-doubt, beer,
hollering around death, we put up
our hands at fear.

Trapped no more at Betty Ford
the 7th of February a.d. ‘95
ready to turn the boat around…

Trapped no more you want more
and more so ditch tomorrow for today.

They criticize you and analyze you
as you smile and accept today

***

Greyhound reflects our country as it stands: the pollution, the lack of care, running on fumes, burning fuel and making noise on roads that cut across fine land, wildlife and us trying to breathe and hold onto life despite the temptations and actions to take, buy, use, sell at will.  Thank God for thoughts toward preservation, Teddy Roosevelt, John Muir, white people with a will to think of tomorrow and saving beauty against Trump-like corruption and greed.

The drivers and Greyhound staff were fifty percent angry, eighty percent surly, the passengers (especially in the back) prone to cursing and filling lungs with cigarette smoke at every little break in travel.  Littered butts in cracks unsure and unaware why they were so anxious and addicted to smoke.  The native American student in me, the spirit in me manifest in my adopted native name “Naked Horse” knew that this was the wide path to destruction spoken of by that rebellious rabbi Jesus Christ.  Many are on it.

All I could do at some point in my trip was to find a makeshift ash tray, promote and help these people to rethink cursing and smoking—certainly littering our mother.

Honor Your Mother

***

It’s not just the woman who bore
you, folks—it’s the Earth that moves you.

The Mother who spins on axis, swirling
around the sun and stars on time

So we can wake up and live and try at life.

So how on Earth can you litter?

Throw your cigarette butt, already littering
your lungs and heart on her?

What devil inhaled you, when you
decided to inhale smoke, killing yourself
slowly over many years?

God bless us to honor our mother.

To live a long time in this land, we
must honor her, and fight to keep her
beautiful.

Honor your mother, man.

Honor your mother, woman.  Honor that
which gave us life, and never

throw trash on her, no matter how low
we go; turn around, it’s better to go
back to pre-civilization, pre-religion,
living naked with the natives than to
roll around in this human-made muck,
helicopters and sirens calling out a warning
shot to the Father god that we don’t care.

Send Samuel back, and ask God to be
king again.

Shhh!  Listen.  Close your eyes.

See yourself caring.  Loving.  God bless us
to honor our Mother and care.

***

If I had to grade Greyhound they’d get a “D,” so I guess they passed, despite yelling at passengers, forgetting that customers are first, and that dirty and broken is no way to present a service to any people, let alone this striving young mix trying to find itself still called “American,” anything but united.

***

Ahh, the many sins and shadows of this America!

Killing Kennedy, Martin, another Kennedy, Lennon—great voices for peace, anti-war all, the CIA lurking, supporting the murderers of Oscar Romero in El Salvador as well, locking up “classified” documents to preserve violent and/or embarrassing secrets in the supposed interest of “national security.”  Nearly fifty-five years since they took over our government, the Langley spooks still finding it hard to disclose, admit and tell the truth about our pious, national security securing murders.

I marched against this.  I mourned with the King family on April 9th, from the King Center in Atlanta to the front of the Georgia state capitol building, Martin enshrined in statue there, a confederate general named Gordon in back.

Georgia State Capitol Collage

I arrived in Atlanta after my fifty-five hour Greyhound sentence a better man made better by good conversations and challenges, one by an Atlanta native named Jarvis, who seemed to dabble in civil rights, philosophy, history, politics and comedy when not working hard in the produce trade.

He warned me that besides the King activities in Atlanta that weekend, there was a Neo-Nazi rally outside of town.  Lo and behold, in my second full hour of being in Atlanta, walking down Peachtree Street, I spotted and heard three masked skinheads revving loud dirt motorcycles through downtown, looking around menacingly and angry.

A young black teen, who I later learned was an actor on a Showtime series about Chicago, was taping the confused racists with his cellphone.  I promptly approached him, and put my arm around him in solidarity.  We talked about Martin Luther King’s approach of loving our lost, sick white brothers—an approach born from Christian and Gandhian study and application.  I waved as the loud, hating white bigots motored by, I hope not with sarcasm but with invitation to openness and love, and they were gone.

A glimmer of hate returned before we Marched on that Monday, as a dreadlocked black man called all who spoke at Ebenezer Baptist church that morning to re-enact and commemorate the MLK funeral procession of April 9, 1968… “crackers.”  He called every speaker “corny,” looked me off when I looked at him, called me a “cracker” too, as I stood watching a live-stream of the Ebenezer events, holding flowers for Dr. Bernice King (Martin’s youngest), and an American flag bearing Martin’s face with a quote I had purchased online months ago in preparation for the march.

MLK flag

Was he there for himself?  Was he paid to hate?  Did he just feel jealous?

Whatever the motive, I believe a show of hate at a memorial or funeral is empirically off-base, insensitive, inhumane, and frankly: insane.  God bless that man wherever he is, and God bless the skinhead revvers, who do not want to be unhappy, but have bound together with a gang of hate to feel loved, protected and a part of a community—albeit a bigoted, violent one.

I myself almost jumped in with a gang in Pasadena, California once, tempted by an end to loneliness.  By an illusion of family and friendship…

****

So there I was, after the bus test, a tough journey but without bricks thrown or fires set, murders committed—as happened during the Freedom Rides of the 1960’s, Freedom Summer in Mississippi, a time of war to seek the fulfillment of Jefferson’s ironic promise of equality for all American citizens.  Native people were not included in “All men are created equal.”  Women not in the statement, children, nor of course Black people. Jefferson, in his Declaration of Independence, would have been more honest to write: All white men are created equal, but that he did not perhaps was a clever road map that future activists could follow.

Native people still live, breathe and fight.  African Americans still march, as evidenced last Monday, for Humanity, justice and equality—caring white people like me locking arms in the struggle not just for one people, but one to recognize all God’s children as worthy—a universal good that makes my own peace of mind rise, every Christian needing others to thrive for him or her to make a path to heaven.

Success is a peace of mind, knowing you did the best you could to be the best you were capable of becoming.   —John Wooden

Could the word “success” in John Wooden’s quote be replaced with the word “heaven?” Where is this all going?  Another march?  The beginning of a program to distribute needed blankets to Atlanta’s homeless?  The end of private campaign spending, which corrupts this land?  The beginning of a new welcome mat to native Americans into our political process?  Guaranteed seats for natives at our decision-making tables?  Restitution for the sins of slavery?  For murdering our own president in 1963 and covering up the evidence, failing to admit our sins?  For continuing to support a CIA, who’s secondary mission of secret-keeping and covert action is undemocratic and unaccountable to the People?  Their Twitter bio blurb talking about “going where others cannot go, accomplishing what other cannot accomplish?”  I’m American.  Are the CIA?  Can I not have the same rights as they?  “A right to murder?”  No thanks.  “A right to keep secrets?”  No thanks.

God bless us to a truthful America.  To one that looks back when necessary and makes amends for past sins.  To one that pays all its debts, financial and moral.  As an alcoholic with sixteen years of sobriety I know the value of glancing back to amend, the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous actually written in the past tense:

12 Steps of A.A.

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understood God.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

***

Is America alcoholic?  Is it a place with people on it, prone to doing good an evil like any other place, perhaps a wide path going bad, a narrow path heading in a focused way toward peace of mind?

All we can do sometimes is just to march.  And pray.  Put in good work and hope for the best.  Saint Paul’s work and faith; Longfellow’s laboring and waiting.  Lao Tzu telling us we “cannot change the world,” while Wyatt Earp reminds us it’s okay to try, that rebellious rabbi saying “stay the course” in that staggered race, because if in the back for whatever reason:

You are spiritually winning, heading toward God and heaven, the path of the rich a much harder one unless you know where to find a very small camel and/or a very large needle!

March collage1

March collage2