Threading Grandma’s Needles, and Kamala Harris

Posted on March 18, 2025 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

When I was a small girl around the age of 4 or 5, my maternal grandmother would often ask me to thread her needle. I was a late born baby to my parents and Grandma was well into her seventies when I was born.

Grandma was a scholar who read a couple of books a week. I knew instinctively that the reason why she asked me to thread her needle was because the eye of a sewing needle is narrow and often hard to see. The best pair of eyes could have trouble getting that thread through that tiny eye. By the time I was around 4 or 5, Grandma was in her eighties, and I enjoyed doing what I could for my Grandma.

(Stock photo of an elderly woman’s hands threading a needle, Alamy)

Grandma’s eyes were not as steady as they once were; and neither were her hands. But once that needle was threaded, she could sew up a storm. As I have now passed the age of 60, it now takes me damned near 15 minutes to thread a needle. But you do what you can and what you have to do. This brings me to another observation.

For several months this year, after I rolled my herbie-curbie (that’s the name for our garbage cans on wheels in Atlanta) to the curb of my driveway, I arrived back home and instead of my herbie-curbie being left at the curb of my driveway as is customary, someone had rolled it all the way up to the gate to my backyard so I wouldn’t have to retrieve it.

Last week, I was home when the sanitation workers were out. Before I exited my door to retrieve my herbie-curbie, I saw my 20-something neighbor who is autistic grab its handle and roll it up to my gate. He went from house-to-house doing the same thing—saving his older neighbors the trip to the end of the curb.

I bring this up because when I finally saw who was doing this favor on his own, it dawned on me that he was doing what he could do to assist his neighbors.

Then I thought about all of these folks barking about where is Kamala Harris? During the first wave of complaints, she was actually in fire-ravaged California assessing damage, talking with the mayor and governor and firefighters, and assisting her neighbors who had lost their homes.

The second wave of complaints came recently. Now, I have already said that Harris is a private citizen and has done her duty while so many others fail to do so much as contact their representatives and complain.

What is most annoying is the manner in which folks have complained. I watched Harris lose weight on the campaign trail after being given a near-impossible task of organizing a campaign in just over 100 days after a stubborn Joe Biden took his sweet time stepping aside when so many of his colleagues begged him to do so.

I have also been around white women who felt like I was their property and who felt like I was obligated to do whatever they requested, and were insulted when I said “No” even when my work or school schedule and obligations would not permit me to accommodate them.

I have been around men (black and white) who treated me the same way. That is an unfortunate experience that Black women have endured ever since we have been here in this country. We are not supposed to have own lives, but we are supposed to stand ready to salvage somebody else’s. Wedged between battling racism and sexism and misogynoir simultaneously, we are often left hanging when we are having problems.

Instead of these complainers interrogating the majority of white women and men who voted for Felon 47, they want Harris out there speaking for them. And if she did, you know good and damned well Felon 47 and his minions, along with his bought-and-paid-for news rooms would paint her as a “Sore Loser” while his dumb-as-cat-shit voters nodded in agreement while he continued to pick their pockets and threaten their livelihoods. Unlike my sweet autistic neighbor, they do not do what they can but they expect someone else to do it.

Instead of bothering to contact Kamala Harris’ office or website or her page on IG to ask her a question, they went on a rampage of demands. They don’t even know what she might be doing behind the scenes.

So, let me share this bit of my history. I represent only the third generation of my families not born into slavery. I will leave you with what my paternal Great Grandmother said to her mistress who just couldn’t believe Great Grandma would want to leave her mistress and be free. With a nap sack on her shoulder, and right before she went searching for her other siblings who had been sold to other slave owners, she said the following:

“You can do your own work and you can pick your own cotton.”

©️ 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 Hungry Constituents

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

by ©️Leslye Joy Allen

If you blow up the photo below you will see a letter written to me from the late Congressman John Lewis from 2008. If you look in the lower right corner of this photo you will see a photo insert of a red file folder about an inch thick. These are all the letters I have received from my representatives over about 4 decades. This was when you received their responses via snail mail.

Letter from Congressman John Lewis and File folder of letters

These days, your representatives respond to you by email. I urge you to call them, contact them, and then print their email responses.

I miss my phone and letter debates with the late John Lewis. I still remember one of our debates that descended into a full fledged argument in a grocery store parking lot in our town of Atlanta. That’s the beauty of being in Atlanta. Many of your elected officials live and shop where you do. So, you can give them your opinion while you check out your groceries.

I bring this scenario up because there is something very different when you receive a physical letter as opposed to an email. The letter has a real signature. Each one of these letters are a personal piece of history. Politics today is quite impersonal—and it is messing everyone up.

We are now confronted with politics as only spectacle—the pithy quote on social media, the doctored video that creates a sense of urgency when there is no need for urgency, or the edited video that creates a fictional persona instead of showing the real person behind the title.

I’m glad Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez are hitting the road and going on tour to talk to people all across the United States to find out what real people are thinking.

Communication from a distance is fine. Technology has made it possible for us to share an idea with thousands of strangers. Yet…

No matter how easy posting on social media, text messaging and sending emails are, there is no replacement for speaking to someone face-to-face or listening to a live voice or reading a real letter with a real signature. That personal touch is sorely lacking in both the Democratic and Republican Parties, and it is destroying democracy with almost the same degree of swiftness as Felon 47’s cruel policies.

It is one thing to put your finger up in the wind and assume what you need to do to be re-elected. It is quite another to look a constituent in the eye and answer a tough question or admit you don’t have the answers. Democratic voters are starving for that attention; and I pray our elected officials figure this out before it is too late.

©️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.

The Reckoning

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

by ©️Leslye Joy Allen

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.”

©️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.

Not As Good As Judas

Posted on January 19, 2025 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

by ©️Leslye Joy Allen

Over 30 years ago I worked for the FDIC in the Division of Liquidation. It was a depressing job as my department sold off the assets of failed banks while we fielded questions from many depositors who were often financially left in in the lurch.

I ended up “Agent for the Class” in a class action lawsuit brought on by the fact that the Atlanta office had hundreds of Black employees, but only three whose federal pay grade was higher than Job Grade-4. I remember that day one of my co-workers came by my cubicle to give me some new information.

She told me that there were two women in our office that had been late for work every day for months. Both women had been caught lying about being sick when they took off sick days. One woman was white; the other one was Black. The white woman was placed on probation. The Black woman was fired.

My co-worker said, “This isn’t fair. Both of them should have been put on probation.”

“Wrong,” I said, “Both of them should have been fired.”

When my co-worker suggested that we add the circumstances of the terminated Black woman to our list of grievances in our lawsuit, I refused to do so.

Now, before all my activist friends jump on my ass for seeming to ignore the inherent inequality in this scenario, let me stress this.

I see the inequality. The punishment of these two terrible employees should have been identical. Yet, back then and now in 2025, we have no energy to waste on folks who keep doing the wrong thing nor the energy to waste on folks that may not be salvageable.

I say this because I have watched Black rappers jump on Felon 47’s bandwagon. Years ago it was Ice Cube, Lil Wayne, Kanye West, Chief Keef, Sexy Redd, Kodak Black, among others. Now, Snoop Dogg, Nelly and Rick Ross, among others are all on board.

I am not at all surprised. All of them are Niggahs of the highest order. Yes, I wrote “Niggah/s.” I have been called a Niggah enough, so I will say it, and write it any damn time I feel like it—particularly when that slur fits the occasion. Snoop Dogg, with an estimated net worth of $160 million dollars, is the high priest of all Niggahdom. Just last year he was screaming about Felon 47 being a racist.

All of these rappers are the same money-grubbing misogynists and sexists and gangsters (with a few females in collusion) that Felon 47 is, was, and always will be. They all hold their noses so that they do not smell the stench of Felon 47’s racism in order to earn their few pieces of silver just like the biblical Judas.

Judas was paid to squeal on and identify the radical Yeshu’a so that Yeshu’a (Jesus’ actual name) would be delivered to Roman authorities who charged him with sedition right after church authorities charged him with heresy. Judas could not handle the guilt and shame of being a traitor who ultimately cost an innocent man his life, so he hung himself not long after he betrayed Yeshu’a.

Unlike Judas, these rappers have neither the decency nor moral fiber to be ashamed of what they have done. Their God/Goddess is money. Like Felon 47, they would sell a loaded gun to a person with a history of suicide attempts if the price is right.

Sidebar: Swallow all that pseudo-intellectual bullshit where you try to excuse their behavior and decisions based on their poor upbringing or their childhood poverty. When you make these excuses, you villainize the poor when you know that most poor folks are not thieves nor people without any sense of right and wrong.

By the time these clowns realize they have been used and conned—if they ever realize it—they will come up with every excuse in the book to rationalize why it was necessary to betray their own people.

These rappers will continue to perform their modern-day minstrel shows while they gleefully wear the imprint of Felon 47’s ass on their faces. So, do yourself and all of us a favor. If you see any of them on a sinking ship without lifeboats, let that boat sink.

Men, Women, Amnesia and Jimmy Carter

Posted on January 1, 2025 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

My last few blogs have largely been laments about illiteracy, sexism, and an assortment of problems we are facing with the incoming administration of Felon 47.

This particular blog is not really about men and women who have amnesia, but rather about those among us who conveniently try to forget uncomfortable truths. I am thinking about the now late Jimmy Carter as I write this. He was one of the few American men to write boldly about sexism and misogyny as a worldwide crisis.

So, let’s consider this. Felon 47 is not a new phenomenon in American history. I hear all this bluster from people about his abuse of women, his racism, his rape charges, and etcetera, but…

Back in the late 1700s Thomas Jefferson was having illicit sex (rape) with his 14-year-old slave Sally Hemmings. You notice how folks never bring up her age? Jefferson also knew that little Sally Hemmings was his wife’s half sister because his father-in-law was—like many slaveholders—taking advantage of their “white male privileges” to do whatever the hell they wanted to do to women, particularly Black women.

Now, before any of my Black brothers and sisters get too comfortable, let’s acknowledge that Elijah Muhammad who founded the Nation of Islam did damned near the same thing when he was screwing around with and impregnating his teenage secretaries.

Whenever I hear someone say that Malcolm X left the Nation of Islam, I want to scream because Malcolm X did not leave. He, along with Wallace Muhammad, was put out of the Nation for daring to raise questions about Elijah Muhammad’s behavior.

In spite of some of the sheer depravity we all have heard about in recent months, you would have known so much more IF most people actually listened to women in general, and Black women in particular.

The same Black women that most men and too many women never pay any attention to could have told you that there is not a nickel’s worth of difference between Harvey Weinstein, R. Kelly, Sean “P. Diddy” Combs, Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. All of these men had different illicit methods of making money and illicit methods of chasing underage tail.

For the next 4 years every American will learn that the very high price of sexism and misogyny exacts far more than most are willing to pay. And the very high price of not fighting against these ills will ultimately cost you your soul.

Goddess Bless Jimmy Carter for not blinking, for owning his missteps and for speaking out when others were too cowardly to do so.

Leslye Joy Allen

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

Tag Archives: politics