Literacy Crisis, Part II

Posted on April 20, 2025 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

Back in November of 2024, I wrote a blog titled The USA Literacy Crisis & This Election where I bemoaned the fact that only 25 percent of American adults were currently reading above the 6th grade level. Don’t flatline, but that’s a fact we must face if we want to fight Felon 47.

I have also posted frequent videos of The Library Dads, founded in Atlanta, where young Black fathers take their small children to the library to read and to have a playtime session on a weekly and/or monthly basis. It is one of the most encouraging sights to see all these young Dads headed to the library for the sake of their children’s literacy and to spend time bonding with their kids and each other.

People who read always think deeper than people who rarely read. Critical thinking skills are virtually non-existent in people who do not read. Stimulating thought and critical thinking is essential to fighting Felon 47.

I looked at the percentages of voting eligible Americans, tabulated by the Cook Political Report Popular Vote Tracker in the University of Florida’s Election Lab General Election Turnout data, and saw that 36.70 percent of voters did not bother to vote at all. I don’t have any evidence, but I bet these non-voters don’t read much.

Our political system was flawed even before Felon 47 won the Whitehouse a second time. Yet, thinking people, including some racists and sexists, know that going to vote is essential to the maintenance of our democracy. When over a third of voters stayed home, it spoke to a lack of depth and a lack of civic responsibility that is not easy to fix.

So let me share this. I taught college History courses for 7 years. I would have to say that I enjoyed all of my students, except for a couple of them. One day in class a young white male student complained that he had to take History and English to fulfill the general requirements to earn a Bachelor’s degree. He was a Math Major so he felt like subjects like History and English were of no use to him. I let him talk and then reminded him that subjects like History and English inspire ideas, and would cause him to think more. “You will be a better mathematician,” I said.

The following week my class had a discussion about police brutality. This same student stated that he was unlikely to be the victim of police brutality simply because he was white. All of his classmates that represented all colors, races, and ethnicities looked at him like he was crazy. Two days later he was jaywalking. A police officer stopped him and this student decided to mouth off at the police officer who then promptly hauled him to jail.

When this student returned to class, his classmates were ready to poke fun at him. I stopped them, but I reminded this student that what he did not know could, would, and did hurt him. I reminded him that making assumptions without any proof or knowledge could cripple him. He then decided that maybe reading was essential. He turned out to be a pretty good student.

So, if you have a friend, a kid, a relative, or a neighbor that never reads, take them to the library yourself. Encourage them to read. Give them book suggestions because whatever fight we put up against Felon 47 will require the most erudite fighters among us. We won’t win if we cannot outthink the enemies of democracy and fairplay.

©️Leslye Joy Allen

I am an Independent Historian, Oral Historian and Dramaturge. Please consider supporting my work with a few bucks for Coffee and Eggs via my CashApp.

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The 13th Amendment and El Salvador

Posted on April 17, 2025 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

by ©️Leslye Joy Allen

The first time I taught a US History class, I had my students study the wording of the 13th Amendment of the US Constitution and debate whether or not slavery had actually been abolished or had it simply been reconstructed:

“Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

By the time master filmmaker Ava DuVernay finished her documentary 13th, I was salivating with anticipation. She did not and never does disappoint. She traced the origins of that loophole in the 13th Amendment that allowed for servitude to be imposed for crimes well into the 21st century.

Slavery had/has gone away in some form. Yet, one of my favorite Black judges, the late New York Supreme Court Judge Bruce M. Wright noted the awful way Black and Brown defendants were treated. Wright earned the nickname “Turn ‘Em Loose Bruce” because he had witnessed one too many Black men and women end up in court because they stole something trying to feed their families only to be sentenced to anywhere from 10 to 20 years in prison. So, Wright gave them some minimal punishment, but he often turned them loose.

I remember his description of a case where a Black man had an extremely sick wife. Neither he nor his wife could afford her medicine. So, in desperation, the man stole a television set from the hotel where he worked. He pawned the television to purchase his wife’s medications. This man had never committed a crime before in his life, but he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Now here’s the next rub. For people old enough to remember, the only thing we knew for sure about prisoners when we were growing up was that prisoners pressed license plates. Well, folks that isn’t true anymore. Now American prisoners make…Clothing, Computers, Electronics, Furniture, and all that discounted stuff you find at Walmart and Target. US prisons generate anywhere from 2 to 5 billion a year in profit while prisoners who do the work never earn the standard minimum wage.

So, as you rightly fight for and ponder the fate of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an American citizen who sits unlawfully in a jail in El Salvador, think about Felon 47 and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele giving each other a high-five and talking about not returning individuals who are wrongfully detained while they also discuss building more prisons in El Salvador. I’m going to leave it right there.

©️Leslye Joy Allen

I am an Independent Historian, Oral Historian and Dramaturge. Please consider supporting my work with a few bucks for Coffee and Eggs via my CashApp.

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Normalizing Evil

Posted on April 15, 2025 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

by ©️Leslye Joy Allen

In the past week or two there have been doctors saying how healthy Felon 47 is, along with Fund Managers openly wondering if he is insane. I have another hypothesis.

I don’t really think Felon 47 is insane, I think he is evil and crazy (there is a difference). I still remember when the late Dr. Frances Cress Welsing wrote that we have never scientifically studied “Evil.” She noted that at the Nuremberg Trials of Nazis where they were tried for “Crimes Against Humanity,” where they exterminated millions of Jews, Gypsies, Afro-Germans, LGBTQIA, and the Disabled, those Nazis were ruled to be perfectly sane by the world’s leading psychologists.

Now, I don’t want to make light of anyone’s mental health or this nation’s severe mental health crisis. Yet, every time some man does something horrible, particularly if he’s a white man, people speculate about his mental health instead of calling him the evil son-of-a-bitch that he is. I feel the same way about these school shooters who are overwhelmingly white and male who try to kill everybody they can, all because they can’t get a girlfriend.

Felon 47 is trying his best to get rid of every brown skinned person who migrated to the USA without giving any of them due process as he shreds all the basic tenets of our Constitution. He’s sending a majority of people who are not criminals off to other countries while his sycophants explain these actions as a part of keeping America safe. Short of putting them all into ovens to get rid of them the way Nazis would, he has ordered them all to an uncertain fate somewhere else in the world.

Everything Felon 47 is doing to immigrants and legal citizens, who happen to not be white, is going to make this nation a hundred times less safe. Go piss off the world and you will find out that the world is not majority white; it never has been.

People who voted for Felon 47 are also crazy and evil too—and dumb. Did this previous italicized sentence upset you a bit? Did it sound like I was unfairly vilifying an entire segment of the US population without giving them an opportunity to explain their choices or even redeem themselves? Well, I don’t give a damn because that is exactly what Felon 47 and his supporters are doing to immigrants, women, Black folks, Latinos, LGBTQIA, and the Disabled.

Felon 47 supporters voted for this; and even if some of them can prove they didn’t think Felon 47 would do all of this harm, no self-respecting Black or Brown person with half a brain is going to try to weed out who might be on their side from those who would kill or harm us. We have never had that kind of time to deal with anyone or anything that normalizes evil.

©️Leslye Joy Allen

I am an Independent Historian, Oral Historian and Dramaturge. Please consider supporting my work with a few bucks for Coffee and Eggs via my CashApp.

What Democrats Miss All the Time

Posted on March 7, 2025 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

by ©️Leslye Joy Allen

I listened to several pundits who criticized Texas Representative Al Green’s outburst at Felon 47’s State of the Union address. They can argue all day long that Green’s behavior went against decorum. They can talk all day long about his behavior being a distraction from more pressing issues. Yet, Democrats miss one salient point which means they are not paying attention to their constituents.

Rep. Al Green did one thing that Democrats don’t seem to grasp—He took the spotlight off of Felon 47. Felon 47 and Republicans dominate news cycles and stick to a script that the Democrats have yet to master or counter.

All damned day long my cellphone is inundated with text messages containing Democratic surveys that all end with them begging for money. Who in their right mind is going to donate to a party that doesn’t seem to have too many members with spines? And who is going to donate money to a party that worries about decorum in the House chamber more than they worry about Americans losing their jobs, and struggling to pay for groceries?

What Representative Green did was shake up the room to the point where the press had no choice but to listen to what Green had to say. Few Democrats, save Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jasmine Crockett, can grab a headline. And it is imperative that Democrats shift the narrative.

So here’s a suggestion. Call your representatives and tell them point blank that you cannot donate anything for two reasons: the cost of living has skyrocketed and your political party is failing the people it is supposed to represent.

Money talks; and bull shit walks.

I am an Independent Historian, Oral Historian and Dramaturge. Please consider supporting my work with a few bucks for Coffee and Eggs via my CashApp.

The Reckoning

Posted on March 6, 2025 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

I remember back when Arthur Herman Bremer shot former Alabama Governor and presidential candidate George Wallace in 1972. Wallace ended up in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. He had been an avowed segregationist for most of his life.

He became a humanitarian after he was shot and paralyzed from the waist down. To his credit, he did assist Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm with passing legislation that aided workers and farmers. Their alliance, brought on by his tragedy, was unique in the annals of American political history.

Wallace assumed he was invincible. Yet, no matter how much power you have or think you have, you cannot hold that power forever.

No matter how many times you kiss the ring of those in power, and swallow your pride and principles for the approval of those in power, you too will eventually be sacrificed with neither your dignity nor principles to hold your legacy together.

The Muskrat and Felon 47 will die, just like all of us will. History will record them as monsters because that is exactly what they are. The politicians who shy away from questioning the rationale of their policies will be recorded as the cowards they are.

Shutterstock photo of depressed man/New Africa

As activist Audre Lorde said, “Your silence will not protect you.” In the end when the folks upon whose altar you have sacrificed all of your principles are done with you, you will be no more than the rest of us. All you will ever be is mortal.

Power does not transfer to the grave. Your progeny will live long enough after your death to be vilified and hated while struggling to figure out what it is that they have done. History will answer them the same way it has answered all others in perpetuity, “Your crime is your having been born unto monsters.”

I am an Independent Historian, Oral Historian and Dramaturge. Please consider supporting my work with a few bucks for Coffee and Eggs via my CashApp.

Leslye Joy Allen

Social Commentary, History, Theatre, Jazz, and the Environment

Category Archives: Fascism