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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

W E E K L Y 

W O R D

1.2.21

Peggy Trotter Dammond Preacely

Dr. Dorothy Cotton

N O   F I N A L   C U R T A I N  |  2 0 2 0

by Peggy Trotter Dammond Preacely

There is no final curtain at this year’s end.

Perhaps It has been just an intermission...

an interlude...

an illusion?...

An aberration that has enraged our senses

our labors

our endeavors

our travails

And has so distracted us

Divided us.

But let us not be scattered now.

Instead let us seek new partnerships

hold fast to new and spirit-filled alliances,

Celebrate those who build

and forge justice and make repair.

Let us choose liberation and kindness

over destruction and despair.

If we move on fiercely

we can sustain and create anew...

Mold community from chaos...

Make imperative the healing of our wounded hearts.

Perhaps in this year’s final hours we will decide to be more vigilant

To consciously mend the brokenness,

liberate our children’s dreams

And recognize that our deliverance

is

our one true imperative.

LET. US. FREE!

It is our cry from division, hatred, and greed.

Let us be boldly

re-imagined,

re-constructed,

And so communally resurrected,

that we perform in our real-life theatre of hope, justice, wokeness and emancipation...

that our words,

and our deeds,

become the script, the production, and the performance

…that will truly liberate us all.

© 2020 Peggy Trotter Dammond Preacely. All rights reserved.

We begin this New Year with the country on "fire" about a few things:  this Tuesday's two hotly contested run-off U.S. Senate elections in Georgia (the home state of my great-great grandparents Ellen  & William Craft and location of my first SNCC assignment); this Wednesday's pro forma electoral college certification of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris duly elected as POTUS and VPOTUS, being made a hot mess by the GOP in both the House and Senate; and of course, the COVID hot zone that this country has become.  My New Year's wish is that sooner than later the healing begins, which is why I wrote, "No Final Curtain" as an ode to 2020 and a blueprint for 2021...
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