and this is one great wat for christians to show it

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Jamie Scott’s son, 18, fights to free the Scott Sisters in Mississippi

Free Jamie and Gladys Scott to return to their children and grandchildren!

“Talk about injustice. How do you wind up in prison serving two life terms for a robbery that netted 11 dollars? That question has haunted first time offenders Gladys and Jamie Scott for the past 15 years,” wrote Anthony Papa in the Huffington Post. And it haunts Jamie’s son too, who was only 2 when his mother and auntie were snatched away from him.
Now 18, Terrance Scott tells Minister of Information JR in this gripping interview: “Seeing what they did to my mother, it put a rage inside me like, if you have anything to do with law enforcement, I don’t want to talk to you. … Sometimes I just look up at the stars at night and I just wonder what this world done become. Any time someone can lock you up for a double life sentence for nothing, what else can they do? What else can the crooked court system and the crooked justice system do?”
The interview was broadcast Aug. 4 on Flashpoints, flagship investigative news magazine of the Pacifica network, heard at 5 p.m. weekdays on KPFA in Northern California and on dozens of stations around the country. This Block Report Radio interview begins 45 minutes into the show.

Flashpoints – August 4, 2009 at 5:00pm

Click to listen (or download)

Show your support for freeing the Scott Sisters by signing the petition at http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/Free-Jamie-Gladys/index.html. Another petition is at www.change.org/acwip/actions.
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Make a loud noise on behalf of the Scott Sisters

Mrs. Evelyn Rasco, mother of the Scott Sisters, is calling for URGENT SUPPORT for Jamie Scott, #19197, and Gladys Scott, #19142, who are both suffering renewed harassment by prison guards because of the continuous exposure that this case has received. Jamie Scott was even thrown in the “hole” for 23 days for the first time in 14 years!
Jamie is now very depressed and on medication which is not a good sign at all. Our personal feelings are that she was set up by guards, lied on and thrown in the “hole” because of her continuous strength and determination to fight for freedom. In addition, Jamie’s privileges to attend school, work and conduct research in the law library have been stripped away.
Please assist us in contacting the following persons; let them know that the public is watching this case and ask for a thorough investigation into the lies which have caused the renewed harassment of both women and particularly why Jamie Scott was stripped of privileges and thrown into the “hole.”
Please call and email the Superintendent of Prisons, the Commissioner of Prisons and the Assistant Commissioner, and please also cc Mrs. Rasco (rqueenbee2222@yahoo.com) so that there are records of your contacts.
Please act NOW on behalf of these young women and support Mrs. Rasco’s pleas for action. Thank you for acting and helping to spread the word!
Contact the following officials:

• Margaret Bingham, Superintendent of Central Mississippi Corrections Facility, (601) 932-9077, mbingham@mdoc.state.ms.us, fax (601) 932-9077, P.O. Box 88550, Pearl, Mississippi 39208
• Christopher Epps, Commissioner of Prisons for the State of Mississippi, (601) 359-5600, CEPPS@mdoc.state.ms.us, 723 North President St., Jackson, MS 39202
• Emmitt Sparkman, Deputy Commissioner, (601) 359-5610, esparkman@mdoc.state.ms.us
• Gov. Haley Barbour, (877) 405-0733 or (601) 359-3150

aza did the cutest thing last night.

2 hours into bedtime when i was frustrated with her to no end, i said ” aza go to sleep”

and she said “no aza working”

keeping up with the gospel reading.

had a few more thoughts about why i have wanted to go back to this and what i’m looking for tonight.

in a sense i didn’t choose the bible or christianity.  i inherited them was born with them. in another i have chosen them over and over, and often forcfully in a number of different forms. i continue to choose them i guess, though now as a part of what i have inherited and who i have been. like ooking back at old pictures or reading an old journal. there are things that excite and comfort me, that embarrass me, that i deeply regret, and yet they are all a part of me and i choose to move forward whole with all of it. not uncritically, not saying that i’m not terribly happy that some of it is past, but also not pretending that it isn’t in me.

started to read the daily gospels again yesterday

i used to do it all the time, and i miss it, but don’t really know what i am looking for.

there was a time when i thought all the answers were there.

i found the evil bits more embarassing then because i felt like i had to defend them. now i just don’t know why i would subject myself to them. i’m not trying to redeem the bible anymore or prove the evil it has done is a “bad interpretation”

i remember reading with the fear of what would come next, because i believed that i had to accept it whatever it was. got good at mental gymnastics to make things ok, and compartmentalizing to keep some things out of consciousness until someone would ask do you really believe that? and i would feel sick to my stomach as i said yes

Gloria Anzaldua

Octavia Butler

Toni Morrison

wow. that’s all. habibi got new books as resources for her writing and is kind enough to share. i am in awe and so blessed to be with someone who has expanded my cannon dramatically in a good way

via shuck and jive

Non Credo by Lucy Reid

I want to say No.
I want to stand up and proclaim
as boldly
as any believer
the creed of my unbelief.

I do not believe
in God as an Almighty Father,
the King of kings, and Lord of lords.

I do not trust in that God of power and might
for there is too much blood
on his hands.

He is the god of genocide,
the god of savage crusades
and holy wars.

He is the god who commands
perfect obedience.
Punishment, death and hell
Are his weapons.

He is the Godfather God,
watching us from a distance
and judging all our deeds.

He allows immeasurable pain,
permits undeserved suffering
for reasons beyond our knowing.

His ways are inscrutable
as far beyond us as heaven
from earth.

We are not worthy
to gather up the crumbs
under his table.

But I do not want those crumbs.
I decline the invitation to that table.
I do not believe in that God
so I have to say No.

I will shout it and sing it.
I will weep it and pray it.
I will paint it on my walls
and wear it on my clothing.

And after a thousand years of saying No to him,

I will be ready

to say Yes

to you.

it’s mother’s day and my baby is blessed to have the mama she does.

it’s not just that she got mama’s good looks, or her dance moves, or artistic spirit (she can sometimes lay down and draw for an hour on her own), or intelligence ( she is counting and learning her second language

aza’s mama always finds attention to give, and dosn’t bother to mention that she has a half dozen or more deadlines in the air. she has done every bit of research humanly possible about how to best look after babies health, which of course means that she is always doing more. she is up all hours of the night to play and dance when baby has nightmares, she clues in the clueless papa to what he is missing and puts up with his sulkiness at not knowing it all, and her hugs and kisses are not only the best they are endless.

more than all though she has a mama who is teaching her every day to respect herself and be herself. already at two she gets asked her opinion all the time (not one of those hippy mama’s who dosn’t believe in saying no, but one who respects baby’s “nos”), and her mama is planning out a life that makes her a partner and looking at her writing and art through the lense of accountability to her and to her perception as she grows up..she is commited to taking care of herself so that she will be there for baby and to being herself so that baby will grow with that same freedom. and she constantly opens the space around her for others to do the same, becuse she believes that our spiritual discipline is radical love.

baby is blessed to have the mama she does

so i was halfway done with this letter and the browser crashed on me. you turned two today baby, and i wanted to write something. i know it is just as likely that these internetz and blogs will have gone away by the time you are really reading as that any scrap of paper that i write on will fail to survive our adventures, but maybe?

you probably know that we really belive that you chose us twice. concieved in the same moon tweo years in a row. thank you, of course choosing mama was just plain smart.

i love living and traveling with you. it’s amazing all the things yopu have changed, and the things you haven’t that everyone was sure you would. we didn’t settle down and settle in, you made travelling better. we didn’t get respectable and stable, we got a little pirate to adventure with.

and i am amused and pissed when folks tell me in the street that you can’t be my kid because you look egyptian, and i was amused and pissed in mexico when they stopped me to tell me that you were not mine because you were mexican. yes, you pass well in those cursed/ blessed places that are the crossraods and mixing grounds of humanity, because you are from one. you are the kid of a waspy northerner and a southern black woman from the us. and we love each other through the bullshit that our histories carry, and the beauty. and we love each other through our own strengths and weeknesses. and we love you more.

so when you stop every kid yopu pass in the street to start a dance party i beem, and your mama is no end of proud when you sit and write letters to her while you sing your abc’s and then deliver them to her half asleep in the morning.

i worry sometimes about the faith i am passing to you. in my earlier daydreams my kid would be baptized by now and instead i wonder at times if i should claim my baptism, but i’ll support you as you find your way. i will be thrilled if you found the beauty and power in christianity to live as fully you fully looving and struggling. and i will be thrilled if you pass it by to find your own way to strength and connection. in the meantime we will wander churches and light candles together, but duck out before the preaching. i will keep teaching you to call mary in all her incarnations mama, and you will keep pointing to the icons of jesus in her lap and calling him aza. why not you come from bethlehem too and are chosen of god/dess.

it’s scary that i have regrets already as a papa. the times i have been too wrapped in my own head to be as tuned in as i should are not a few, and at least one of them hurt you bad. all praise tht your leg healed well and that contrary to the church-lady curses you don’t walk with a limp.

mostly baby, figure out you, and mama and i have your back. and if something about who we tell you you are dosn’t fit, tell us and we’ll knock it off and tell the world that you are who you say you are.

in the morning when you wake up and crawl into bed asking for juice and deciding what highlighter tattoos you will sport for the day, i will be my cranky morning self, and so glad that you are the one bringing that craziness into my world.

two years down and still kickin’ ass. aza