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Tag Archives: The 99 Percent

“Going Out of Business” by American Poet Minnie Bruce Pratt

18 Sunday Oct 2020

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Poetry, United States

≈ 47 Comments

Tags

Inside the Money Machine by Minnie Bruce Pratt, Lesbian-feminist American Poet, The 99 Percent, Working-class life under capitalism

Lesbian-feminist American Poet Minnie Bruce Pratt with Family Photos
Photo Credit: Official Website (Photo by Ellen M Blalock)

My Poetry Corner October 2020 features the poem “Going Out of Business” from the poetry collection Inside the Money Machine (2011) by Minnie Bruce Pratt, a lesbian-feminist award-winning poet, educator, and activist. The following excerpts of poems are all sourced from this collection. Born in 1946 in Selma, Alabama, Pratt grew up in Centreville. She earned her bachelor’s degree at the University of Alabama in 1968, where she met her ex-husband. In 1979, she took her Ph.D. in English Literature at the University of North Carolina.

After her ten-year-old marriage, Pratt divorced her husband in 1975 to live as a lesbian, upending her life as a privileged white heterosexual woman. Living in Fayetteville, North Carolina, at the time, she lost custody of her two sons under the state’s “Crime Against Nature” law. Her loss and grief shaped her morality and led her to a life of activism for women’s rights and specifically lesbian rights. When she shared her emotional journey through shame and anger in her poetry collection, Crime Against Nature, published in 1990, her sons were too old for their father or the law to prevent them from being a part of her life.

After thirty years of adjunct teaching, punctuated by several stints of standing in unemployment lines, Pratt joined the faculty of New York’s Syracuse University in 2005 where she played a key role in launching their LGBT Studies Program. She retired in February 2015.

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Guyana Elections 2015: Outgoing President Refused to Concede Defeat

17 Sunday May 2015

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Guyana

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Guyana Elections 2015, Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), Guyana Executive President David Arthur Granger, Guyana Politics, Guyana Prime Minister Elect Moses Nagamootoo, The 99 Percent

Executive President David Arthur Granger and Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo - Guyana Elections 2015

Executive President David Granger and Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo
Guyana Elections 2015
Photo Credit: Guyana Graphic

On Monday, 11 May 2015, the people of Guyana went to the polls to elect a new president and government. The following days were tense and frustrating for me as the ruling party refused to release the preliminary results, claiming irregularities in the electoral process – which, by the way, was conducted under their control – and demanded a full recount of the ballots.

With the nation in limbo awaiting results, Heads of Mission of the American, British, and Canadian diplomatic community in Guyana, joined by Guyana’s Private Sector Commission, issued a public declaration asserting that the alleged irregularities were unfounded and calling the elections “free and fair.”

On Friday, two days later, the Head of the European Union Delegation in Guyana supported the position of the ABC Heads of Mission and called on all political parties involved to address “any possible grievance through the channels established by the law.”

Finally, on Saturday, I could breathe again. The Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) released the elections results: The multi-ethnic six-party coalition has won the elections with a narrow margin of 4,506 votes, giving them 33 seats of the 65 seats in the National Assembly. Retired Brigadier General David Arthur Granger is now Guyana’s eighth Executive President; Moses Nagamootoo is the Prime Minister Elect.

I should be jubilant. Together with 50.55 percent of the electorate, young Guyanese turned out to vote for an end to racial politics and work towards national unity and equality for all. But, in power since 1992, the incumbent party’s refusal to concede defeat has left me uneasy. Is this due to arrogance, entitlement, delusion, or power drunkenness?

Their refusal to concede defeat intimates to their majority East Indian supporters that the newly-elected government is illegitimate and will not have their interests at heart.

How will their stance affect the work of the newly-elected government in forging national unity and ending inequality among Guyanese of all ethnicities?

The road ahead for the people of Guyana will not be easy. Much needs to be done to bring about real change. Victory at the polls must be fought for each and every day going forward.

I cried with joy the day America elected its first black president. Today, over six years later, the struggle for real change for the 99 Percent continues.

No rest for the weary.

Racial Equality: The Impossible Dream

30 Sunday Nov 2014

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Human Behavior, Social Injustice, United States

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Ferguson/Missouri, Globalized capitalist economic system, Income and wealth inequality, Racial inequality, The 99 Percent, The Impossible Dream, The One Percent, White oppression

Outrage In Missouri Town After Police Shooting Of 18-Yr-Old ManHands Up Don’t Shoot – Justice for Mike Brown
Ferguson – Missouri – USA – November 2014
Photo Credit: Scott Olson / Getty Images

 

For millennia, humankind has been plagued with some form of inequality among its populations. As our societies grew, increased in complexity, and became globalized, so did the nature and degree of inequality.

Like a living human organism, inequality has a gender, race, ethnicity, and class that determine income and wealth disparities. To make matters worse, inequality dictates our access to a home, education, healthcare, and protection under our justice system.

Faced with racial inequality, the majority African-American community of Ferguson, Missouri, has received no justice for Mike Brown, an eighteen-year-old black male killed by a white policeman in August 2014. Continue reading →

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