

This image is of Peggy (R), then a 19 year-old SNCC member, next to future civil rights icon, Dr. Dorothy Cotton (L), after a 1962 church burning in Georgia—the state that Peggy's great-great grandparents, William & Ellen Craft, famously escaped from slavery nearly 115 years earlier...
MY
WEEKLY
WORD
10.17.20
The chaos continues with Trump's backfired NBC town hall (still lost in ratings) and his super-spreader rallies (may God have mercy on any attendee who may contract COVID), but I hope everyone is motivated to register to vote and/or voting early, if possible. And as a reminder, the photo that is the backdrop for this page is me with Dr. Dorothy Cotton, after yet another burning of a church, where we as SNCC volunteers were teaching local citizens about exercising their right to vote. I have absolutely no interest in turning back the clock on this issue. VOTE. As has been so eloquently said by others—if your vote didn't matter, why are they constantly trying so hard to take it away, and keep us in a sandbox of "lies and illusions"—as I poetically rant in my latest piece below, The Sandbox...
Dr. Dorothy Cotton
Peggy Trotter Dammond Preacely
T H E S A N D B O X
by Peggy Trotter Dammond Preacely
It remains to be seen
How he slipped by us
Joking and honking
Orange with greed
Into the fabric of our nation.
How could we allow such a one
To charade the people into
Thinking there was even a hint of competence or care?
Flitting from screen to screen
Forcing himself into our homes,
A mouth so foul with such misogynous rhetoric
That our ears could not shut down in time
To reject, delete, erase.
This is NOT a dress rehearsal for an existential threat.
It is real
Not just some temporary reality
Show seen through virtual goggles,
Which if worn correctly
Would not prevent us from stumbling
Backwards or falling forever off a cliff.
Dilettante(s) that he...they...are,
How dare they toy
With the notion of our democracy
As if it were their private playground
Unaware
That the grownups,
Are watching, attentive and horrified,
From the edges of their sandbox
Filled with lies and illusions,
Where a real and present danger
Lurks now
Barely visible,
just below the surface.
© 2020 Peggy Trotter Dammond Preacely. All rights reserved.