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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 Georgiathe 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.

© 2016 - 2023 by Peggy Trotter Dammond Preacely

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