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When Billie Holiday sang Strange Fruit, a song recorded in 1939 and written by Abel Meeropol, people were shocked and brought to a hush as she sang her lyrics of protest. We are all feeling the same shock and we are all standing in a hushed bewilderment as injustice runs rampant in our daily lives.
The fruits of our American trees are either over ripened or under watered. We need to find some balance of support in either the giving or the lack of giving of the sustenance, the life giving water we need to feed our society in order for it to maintain a strong living tree of bountiful life. There is a need for us to pay attention to who is watering the tree and who seems to be hanging from the metaphorical poplar tree.
Sexism and racism is flowing abundant in our nation right now. We need to clean the river so we can feed the fish. Some of our water supply is polluted, like our President has said, “We need to drain the swamp.” Also, the ecological problems we are creating by ravishing the fruits of this earth, things like air, land, oil and minerals and polluting the waters of this planet are having a devastating effect on our modern earth population.
People’s minds and hearts should come to a hush in order to be able to hear and listen to the soft voice of compassion and reason. We are all human beings with the same red blood within each and every one of us. We all share this planet, its air, water, land and sea. We share the sun and the moon and all its cycles. We share the tree of life with all it roots and its leaves. We should be aware who is hanging and sharing the limbs of our modern poplar trees.
In the area of Racism, we need to cut down the modern human bodies hanging from the poplar trees, the black and brown bodies swaying in the wind. Institutionalized racism has replaced age old lynching. Our prisons, our housing practices that create ghettos and rock hard beds of poor education and personal isolation, bodies and minds living in unequal conditions where people of color, men and women are plagued with injustices of their constitutional rights of passage as they attempt to go about their daily lives. Walking while Black. Driving while Black or Brown. Speaking in Protest while being people of color.
The news is full of stories of people and institutions attacking NFL players for attempting to bring attention to institutionalized racism in our streets and prisons by protesting in a kneeling, prayer position is turning a deaf ear to an American problem of racism. We would rather talk about the possibility of lost of revenue of the commercial sponsors of the game or the possible disrespect of the American flag, rather than speaking of the state of inequality experienced by the modern bodies hanging from the poplar trees.
There is a hesitation of universal support, Our world feels entitled to entertainment and the bodies on the television screen need to dance, fetch, catch and carry or there will be some heads that will have to roll in displays of modern bodies hanging from a poplar tree.
We also need to join together to support and love ourselves as a united people and stop the selfish acts of Sexism. As long as we treat our women, our mothers, daughters, sisters and wives and companions, with disrespect the balance of power stays in a position of superior and inferior. Equality is the needed compassionate state of being of existence for all of us as human beings. We would not be here as a human race, if there was no such thing as women. Women are the futile ground of our human race. If we are treating them with disrespect, it is like pissing in our own garden of life, instead of watering the garden with the purity of clear, empowering water of life.
We would rather look under the dresses of the women hanging from the poplar trees rather than cutting them down and walking them to freedom. Instead what has been created is an atmosphere of fear and a backlash of protests causing a downfall of power in multiple industries in our society. There have been too many seasons of crops that are bearing strange fruit with blood at the roots.
Because of personal fear of the power of women and the intent to marginalize them, men like Matt Lauer have abused their power of leadership which has caused them to have step down. It has become an echo of change affecting other men in power and leadership positions such as Russell Simmons, Harvey Weinstein and Bill O Reilly. All four men from industries ranging from movies, news and music who used their power to control and demean women, instead of honoring them. The men were maintaining the Boys Club with a prison plan to keep the prisoners in their place. The women’s individual characters and stories were left hanging like bruised fruit on a limb for all to see. It almost seemed they enjoyed watching the women bleed as they allowed their fruit to rot.
This is a season of change, a changing of the wind as the bodies are being blown and the voices moaning to the rhythm of the breeze. It is the season of releasing the tools that have a history to choke, rip and tear. We must be more loving in our touching, more holding back of our fear and rage or we will continue to create a strange and bitter crop. We must take care of our people and leave one behind, leave no one hanging from the limbs, along with the crying leaves of our poplar tree.
The trees and its leaves give us our clean breaths and the fresh air that passed through our lungs gives us the life we live daily. Our earth is here to support itself and our life force. Our life force is dependant on the qualities of our ecological world and the balancing of the relationships of animal, human, and earth.
We are involved and should be committed to the cause of eliminating our Ecological Crises of this earth. We have been given the job of caretaker because of our divine intelligence, so we have an obligation to use our intelligence to care for the plants, the soil of this planet, the rivers, lakes and oceans and the people of this planet. Denying we are the caretakers of this planet is living a lie of greed and intentional neglect.
We would rather cut down the tree we may need for shade than water it and nurture it for a better future. It would be a better plan to nurture rather than destroy, elevate rather than negate. A simple plan of living would require each individual to respect and not neglect, so we can water the roots of our modern poplar tree. No more cruel and bitter crops should be left to rot in the noonday sun.
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