Racism - Bettina Network's Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Racism’

The Arrogance 0f Bigotry

Friday, April 28th, 2023

Where do you live? Who lives around you? What are the racial/minority/woman ethics in your neighborhood? Is bigotry against those considered “less than” in this society tolerated in your neighborhood? Do you put your head in the sand and do nothing about it? Do you know what it means on a daily basis to live in a neighborhood and house which is ‘redlined’? Do you know what “redlined” means” Do you use a bank which practices such? Do you know if your bank practices such? Or other kinds of bigotry? Do you care? We will expose it all – at Chase Bank, for example! But that is for another day!

We know and are working with several people in redlined neighborhoods and houses and their lives are horrendous. Most just quietly go about their lives suppressing the horribleness of what happens on a daily basis. We pledge ourselves to expose such on a daily basis.

Lets look at one of our favorite houses in the Harvard Square/Brattle Street neighborhood.

There are many signs around that neighborhood which proclaim “Black Lives Matter.” We have yet to see the people doing something about helping to take some of the stress off the one or two African Americans who live in that neighborhood. The police went to the home of one such person in an effort to arrest him for “breaking and entering” his own home. They didn’t take him to the police station, but they were successful in pushing him out of that neighborhood, along with the help of a few realtors and the quiet acquiescence of many.

Another family is closely a part of Bettina Network, inc. and the police came and hauled the husband out of his house to push him into the psych ward of a hospital for no reason, changing their lives drastically and destroying their business. His family was charged $195,000.00 in hospital bills when he was forced into the hospital and not for medical reasons. He was not released until his family discovered MGH’s Facebook Page and wrote the story of what happened to him. They could not get him released until that appeared and the top levels of management in that hospital were made aware in a very public way of what was happening within their institution. They knew prior to that Facebook article appearing, however, that knowing did not result in any investigation or action. Why did MGH irnore this false imprisonment? We have given you $195,000 reasons as to why they kept a healthy, perfectly sane person tied to a bed, in the small part of a very large room, at 87 years of ago trying to incapacitate him. Against the demands of his family and his Health Care Advocate and others they put through an insurance charge that should never have happened. They came for him from Mount Auburn Hospital – where he had no experience and had never been except to see patients who requested he visit. They – the police – pushed him into MGH instead of Mount Auburn Hospital because of his wife having a “hissy fit about the whole thing, but that was the only change the family could accomplish. They were pretty helpless against 8 white policemen, five EMT’s, two ambulances, and more. The family was exposed to death by police, which is frequently what happens in such cases.

What did the neighbors do? One neighbor got involved by going to the house to see if they could help. An exceptional action and more of that is desperately needed.

One neighbor continued what they had been doing for quite some time – using that family’s beautiful garden as a dog toilet. Pushing the dog into the garden where it could drop its shit, leaving the feces in the garden and going his way. That still happens – years before and now years after that false imprisonment.

Since that family is always pro-active about what happens to them and others, they have confronted that neighbor many times, but it still doesn’t stop. The latest was a confrontation that doing such a thing constitutes criminal trespass and they were going to call the police. – that did nothing because that neighbor has a very racist and defiant history. He used to scratch up the car of a Jewish neighbor, who was also pro-active in his response. It did not get that very bigoted neighbor to stop the destruction and no one else intervened.

Since that Jewish neighbor is no longer living in that area, the neighbor violating the rights of minorities close to his house turned his attention to the African American family. His dog has been so well trained he refuses to “do his business” anyplace except in the garden of the African Americans. Scratching and uprooting their flowers and more. Two irises the African Americans planted have been dug up so the dog has a straight line into the garden to “crap.”

Another neighbor trying to push the African Americans out of the neighborhood into which this neighbor newly arrived and hadn’t quite recovered from the shock of having an African American family living on their block in their newly purchased home brought his dog to use that one family’s garden as a dog toilet. When confronted by the wife in that house he moved threateningly close to her face and stomped on her toes. When her husband, seeing all of this, left the house and went to defend his wife, the new neighbor turned and ran.

What is happening today? One neighbor has engaged his friends to bring their dogs to “do their business” in the garden and make a mess of what the African Americans have been developing into a beautiful garden for over 30 years.

We forget and some of us have never known what it is like to be so harassed on a daily basis because that harassment does not happen to whites in that neighborhood – only the one lone Black family standing its ground.

We passed by and saw how horribly the side of the garden next to the driveway looks after so many people have launched their attacks in as passive and unobtrusive a way as possible. Some have dropped their leaves in the garden, in the front entryway and in the driveway. Last year that family cleaned up some 65 bags of leaves and it looks as though this time that number will be increased.

Take down those “Black Lives Matter” signs people. They mean nothing to you and have no affect on your lives as you go about ignoring the mean spiritedness of the racists, sexists, homophobic, anti-semitics with whom you share a community and against whom you do nothing except ignore what is easy to see. Have you reached the point of blaming the minorities yet?

Tags: Racism, Sexism
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on The Arrogance 0f Bigotry

Who the X%#&XD^ do you think you are!!!!

Tuesday, November 22nd, 2022

Everytime we read about what is happening with the shootings, destructive behavior against other human beings, racism, sexism, homophobia, etc., those are the words that come to mind.

Much of this is done in the name of Christianity! That is the most amazing of all!

BETTER THAN! is who you think you are to be able to walk into a nightclub, school, home, church, temple, synagogue and start shooting, killing, destroying everything. AND WHAT DO YOU ACHIEVE?

When Moses came down from the Mount with his tablets of God’s commandments – one of the first was THOU SHALT NOT KILL!!

So again, lets ask the question – who do you think you are and what happens to you after!

Maybe the law will get you and to jail you go. However, what strikes us is that it isn’t the law you need to fear. When you have broken such a strong commandment – our theology and religion teaches – to the hottest parts of hell you go.

We do’t believe there is any religion which would accept such killings. We have to say religion because clearly there are many societies which accept killings if they are done in the name of the ascendancy of that society.

Most societies also have television and the largest number of programs on television are about killings. (What a tutoring tool!) The killer is always caught and put in jail, but nevertheless the storyline is about one human being killing another or several others. That is not the only story lines on television and in the movies – others are about how someone did something which made them rise against others – higher than – and what their lives are like now! Or how much better their homes are, etc. The arrogance pervading television is almost unbearable.

We keep thinking, “this has to stop,” “this has to change,” “we have to very soon recognize our shared humanity.” But nothing – silence – loud gun shots – screams from those being stabbed to death and more. And, in many places we mete out a punishment to the killers which reflects exactly what they did – and then we kill them as they have killed others.

White people are killing! Black, brown, red, orange, yellow, purple, pink, chartreuse people are killing. And to what end? Those who kill will either suffer on earth for their sins or they will experience eternal hell fires and whatever else we claim through our various theologies that hell looks like, feels like, is like!

And we continue letting our need to feel better than; our arrogance to think that we are better than; our desperation at our own faults and lives because we can’t get it straight without those better than feelings and off we go!

Dear God – bless this mess! Help us to move way above everything and look back to see clearly with a stark unembellished reality who we really are. Help us to accept and move beyond those ugly times when we move to that “better than” place because we can’t do anything else and feel good about ourselves. They say you created us and everything in this universe. Tell us all clearly and loudly why you left such character flaws in all of us that we can’t stand to be “equal to” and instead when those “equal to” feelings approach we will do any and everything possible to move above them to that “better than” place where we feel – well – better than in that place we have dubbed normal, human and the way things should be. In Jesus’ name – ahhh, you were writing so well, actually it is in Mohammed’s name – nahhhh, all of you are the same – in Krishna’s name. Oh my God can’t we say or do anything without all of this following us around? (Shhh – you forgot a few, I won’t tell)! AMEN!

Tags: breakfast table talk, Racism, Sexism
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Who the X%#&XD^ do you think you are!!!!

What a Trial the Donaldson/Bennett’s have endured. Did we tell you about the attack on them by Massachusetts Dept. of Revenue? Which is still going on?

Saturday, July 9th, 2022

All timed to make sure huge dumps on them happened at the same time. It is the same kind of “dump” which happens to many of the elderly when their assets are being targeted by those who want to lock them up and have access to those assets before the next generation is helped by such.

The Donaldson/Bennetts’ have filed joint tax returns from the first year of their marriage until now. I think that is over 30 years.

Several things happened with their tax returns when Rev. Dr. Bennett was being hauled out of his home by the Cambridge police and the attempt to take over his life happened by the Cambridge Elder and Protective Services for no reason except maybe greed?

A tax return was filed by someone within the Massachusetts Dept. of Revenue in the name of Robert Bennett. It was an individual tax return about which he knew nothing and which was a total disgrace. It is still sitting within the Massachusetts Dept. of Revenue and they are still trying to collect taxes not due. In fact, more than one years tax return was so filed and that happened even after both Dr. Bennett and Marceline Donaldson contacted the Massachusetts Dept. of Revenue to say this is some kind of mistake. So, there are two tax returns filed for the same year with identical social security numbers – one the joint return filed by Dr. Bennett with his wife; the other this individual tax return which the Massachusetts Dept. of Revenue is still trying to collect even though they know it is fake. They know about the joint tax returns. In fact, even the joint tax return which is the same year as the fake returns had massive inaccuracies. Those inaccuracies happened after the returns were filed and were within the Massachusetts Dept. of Revenue system. One was corrected when they contacted the taxpayer advocate and when an investigation happened it was discovered that someone working for the Massachusetts Dept. of Revenue entered a loss as a gain and a gain as a loss – by mistake.

Some other time the “mistake” might ring true. When all of this is happening at the same time we do not believe this was a “mistake.” The good news is it was corrected. Other “mistakes” remain and apparently there is no intention to correct them, just ruin the Donaldson/Bennett’s credit to help prevent them from being able to obtain a mortgage on their home.

Taxes are one way used to attempt to destroy an African American family living in a “redlined’ area. The goal when they are buying is to keep them out. The goal when they are selling is to keep the price as low as possible to give the white family moving in a “steal.”

That story is for another blog – with pictures.

Tags: Massachusetts Dept. of Revenue, Racism, Sexism
Posted in #BlackLives Matter, #Womens Lives Matter, bigotry, IRS, Massachusetts Dept. of Revenue | Comments Off on What a Trial the Donaldson/Bennett’s have endured. Did we tell you about the attack on them by Massachusetts Dept. of Revenue? Which is still going on?

What does Emmett Till, Uvalde, Buffalo all the way to the beginning of the massacres of children have in common?

Sunday, June 5th, 2022

by: Marceline Donaldson

I remember when Emmett Till was murdered. The horror of what happened to him didn’t strike me until I saw him in his open casket. Once you saw the reality of the brutal way he was murdered; once you saw his face which was unrecognizable; once you came close to the reality of the side of human nature which could do such a thing to another human there was no turning back.

I was very young at the time and good and evil were concepts I learned about in Church. They were not real for me although I mouthed the words, until I saw Emmett Till in his casket.

Image is the stuff on which this society is built. Emmett Till’s mother ignored maintaining her son’s image and opted to have him on display in an open casket. Much talk circulated about that decision – mostly negative about Emmett Till’s mother with the comments basically asking “hasn’t he suffered enoough” – “do we have to put his body through such a public display” “why can’t she grieve in private and keep those images away from the rest of us, it is enough to have to deal with what happened to him”.

Once the wake and funeral started there was little to no disagreement about her decision because the affect of seeing just what a few humans did to one child was overwhelming. To see Emmett Till’s open casket brought up such pain and agony in those who looked at him – for me it brought up the reality of who we really are as human beings and what evil we can wrought. Her decision brought about major change.

It is time for the world to see the evil, wrought by guns in the hands of people who are sometimes good and sometimes evil. It is time to see what human beings can do to their children. It is time for the world to see the physical evil done to the children of Uvalde Texas. It is time for the world to feel what anger, rage, jealousy, bigotry, hatred can do when it is supported by guns of war. Once you have seen that there is no turning back. You will see those images repeatedly for quite some time and the world needs to see with their eyes what guns in the hands of evil has done and will do again.

The pictures of the children and their teachers need to be made public for all to see. Their caskets need to be open when the time for viewing arrives so all of us will bear some of the guilt of their death. All of us need to share the pain that parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins and friends have been carrying since that massacre happened. We all need to see what the guns used will do and has done to hundreds of children and their human body. We all need to be aware that there are humans amongst us who can do such and walk away. To talk about how awful that can be; to discuss what happened to hundreds of children will not have the deterrent affect that actually seeing the children dead – shot to death with guns that make them so unrecognizable tests have to be taken to identify your own child.

O God, do you also bear the pain of the children, their parents, their friends, those who barely know them but who have suffered much because they have and live within a human spirit capable of such horror. You show us daily the good and the bad of which we are capable. If we can stick spears into the side of Jesus. If we can give him vinegar to drink when he calls out in thirst. If we can torture and kill in the most horrible way the son of God, how much more can we do to each other. Eons of time pass and we show just how much terror we can inflict on one another. Eons of time pass and we show just how little love and caring we have for one another. We can see another human being living on the street in minus 20 degree weather and mumble ugly words denigrating that human as we pass by with no feelings about that person and the situation in which they find themselves. How long, O God, will we be in such a place living with such a spirit as inhabits us all.

When we have to debate whether or not the pictures of the recent massacre of children should be shown to the public; when we have to decide what would be too much for others to see; when we protect those who need to be given a look at who they could become, what are we doing? Protecting others from the rawness, the pain, the horribleness of those acts or are we protecting ourselves and setting others up for another time when some one with our human spirit gets wrapped in the evil of which we are all capable and acts out the destruction of life in a most egregious way.

Open the doors, open the windows, open the caskets, publish the pictures, let the world see who we could all be if set down in the right circumstances for such to develop.

Tags: Racism, Sexism
Posted in Emmett Till, evil, Gun Control, gun massacre, Inhumanity, open casket, Uvalde Texas | Comments Off on What does Emmett Till, Uvalde, Buffalo all the way to the beginning of the massacres of children have in common?

Chris Rock’s Sexism on High Display – it is time to end this kind of comedic bigotry.

Monday, May 16th, 2022

Now, Chris Rock is intervening in the Amber Heard/Johnny Depp law suit with his “comedic” comments. Apparently, the notoriety and exposure he received after pushing Will Smith over the line by insulting his wife for comedic effect emboldened him to go further. He is now “joking” at the expense of Amber Heard.

Demean and embarrass women and minorities has a long history in this society – remember Amos and Andy? How is Chris Rock any different? How are other ‘comedians’ any different when their content is meant to demean, oppress, embarrass women and/or minorities? Why do you laugh at such ‘jokes’ and not call the presenter into question and ask for his removal?

It is time for this to stop and for others to raise their voices. Comedians make sexist comments constantly and we all laugh. Well, it is time for the laughter to die out and genuinely funny comedians to come to the forefront, not those trained and steeped in this society’s sexism and other -isms. Chris Rock clearly is one of those who needs to be retrained. The easy way to get audience response is to appeal to their baser instincts – well, Rock does that beautifully with women and the audience responds.

Where are the voices raised in objection to this? Where are the hiring venues who will cancel or refuse to hire and promote Chris Rock and others like him? Jokes have been made and “enjoyed” by those who benefit from the negativity and extreme bigotry laced into many comedians’ jokes.

Chris Rock heads our list of fowl, unwanted comedians. We will not attend any of his appearances nor promote him nor let his appearances go without raising up the mud and slime out of which he and others like him comes.

A talented comedian does not need to oppress minorities; to insult women; to make a subtle slap at someone using bigotry to get the audience to side with a friend for very sexist reasons. Talent will out and clearly Chris Rock needs this kind of ‘comedic bigotry’ in his appearances.

Let your voices be heard.

Don’t let this slide.

Wherever and whenever you can, make known that you do not want to hear, see or smell Chris Rock.

Because he is African American does not give him the right to practice sexism against women or any other kind of bigotry against others because he lacks the talent to stand on the stage as a comedian without this prop.

Comedy is an art for to be respected, not to be used in one’s fight for superiority over others because you are so insecure and so lacking in talent that you have to use the bigotry, as a comedian, to get others to laugh.

Tags: Amber Heard, Chris Rock, Comedians, Racism, Sexism
Posted in #Womens Lives Matter, Bettina Network Blog, Bettina's Box of Shame, Bettina's Hall of Shame, bigotry, Chris Rock, Comedians | Comments Off on Chris Rock’s Sexism on High Display – it is time to end this kind of comedic bigotry.

………An Elegant Historical House for Sale!

Saturday, April 2nd, 2022

Every corner of this home bespeaks elegance, history, beauty and invites you to stay awhile. Across the street is a park; two door down on the same side of the street is another park and look out the windows, you will see the Charles River!

49 Hawthorn Street – Cambridge, MA. 02138 – $5,800,000.

What follows, under “House for Sale” describes a house which we would like to bring to your attention. We hope you will consider buying the house – either for yourself, your family or for one of your favorite institutions and/or charities.

**A kitchen for those who actually cook with room for everything – your utensils, pots, spices and so much more. Many fantastic meals have come out of this kitchen.**

The house we are describing was designed and built by an MIT graduate in 1900. She was one of MIT’s first female architectural students.. Her papers are in the MIT Library. She is Lois Lily Howe with her own architectural firm and all the architects working with her were women. Such a history in today’s climate makes quite a statement.

This particular house – at 49 Hawthorn Street – is the only Howe designed house in this area in which the interior has not been stripped and re-built taking away all of the historical design. The only room that needs to be brought back to its original design is the kitchen. It is wonderful as it is, however, to bring it back to Ms. Howe’s design would be special.

A fantastic welcome as the front door is opened to you and/or your guests. It speaks of the elegance which shows up all around the house – from French to Spanish to English to African to South American touches making it an escapee from Old New Orleans.

Marceline and Robert have lived in this house for 40 years and love every corner. Being people who love history (Near Eastern History was the subject of Robert’s Harvard Doctoral thesis) and with Marceline’s educational background in the School of Architecture under Ralph Rapson, they have totally enjoyed living in this house and discovered much in the process. Selling it under duress they want to know it is in the hands of people who would continue in that design preservation route. The area has a penchant for taking beautiful culturally diverse homes and turning them all into a Northern European Scandinavian aesthetic. They look as though they were all designed in the Ikea Showrooms. So sad! There is nothing wrong with the Ikea Designs, however, what is wrong is making them the ultimate, cultural, design touch stone. This house escaped that “remodel”.

Ms. Howe built the house for William Augustus Maynadier – a Harvard Professor who taught “Arthurian Legend.”- the story of King Arthur and the Round Table. It was a required course for all Harvard men. There were no Harvard women in those days.

Being very strong feminists, the Donaldson/Bennetts found that Harvard/MIT combination quite special. While “feminist” was not a term in her day, Ms. Howe clearly was a feminist as we know the term today, stepping out into the world of Architecture the way she did. Prof. Maynadier would be known as an extreme sexist today. He was teaching a class which laid the ground work for the very horrible sexism which most 20th century women have had to deal. And yet, he hired Ms. Lois Lily Howe to build his house.

Arthurian Legend – King Arthur and the Round Table – was a way of teaching men how to treat women in that “on the pedestal and out of the equality” area. The necessity of opening doors and standing on the side as she entered the room and etc. for this weaker sex is what was being taught, although not so specifically – it was wrapped in the Arthurian Legend. All the things women have fought to have removed for decades so they could be treated as equals is what Prof. Maynadier’s class was about. It was totally accepted at the time. Most people don’t know that this originated at Harvard. It was in the general world population at the time, but not to the extent that it became entrenched with Prof. Maynadier at 49 Hawthorn Street.

It was interesting to us that Prof. Maynadier chose Ms. Howe to design and build his home. – which he used to live in and invite paying guests to stay with him. The house has had that use throughout its 100 plus years of existence. It hosted seminars, class sessions, teas and many famous and not so famous people, still while serving as a very private home.

One of four bathrooms in this home – designed with jacuzzi, steam/shower room and separate enclosed toilet. The plumber calls it a “no bad smells” bathroom.

The Donaldson-Bennetts used their home to have what today are called bed & breakfast guests and to build the first network of such private homes working their way across the country and turning a national and an international network of bed and breakfast homes into a commonly known and accepted concept. This house was the beacon. Besides this house, they had homes also in Thailand, England, France and more.

The guys who founded Airbnb stayed with them before those three even thought of such a company. They were sent by Venture Capitalists – particularly the Capital Network in Cambridge – who wanted to fund such a venture, but not one designed, created and being grown by African Americans. So they helped themselves to the Bettina Network, Inc’s business plan and everything else they could find to help them get the same kind of venture off the ground. They sent people to offer their homes to join the Bettina Network, inc. but were really only interested in the process of how that was done – just as they hacked into and used Craig’s List to get their initial clients. The Donaldsons’ believe that when their web site was stolen, locked and offered back to them for enormous sums of money – it had to do with the genesis of Airbnb, although that was not known at the time as Airbnb was just forming.

While the Donaldson/Bennett’s lived and are living in the Lois Lily Howe house, Harvard sent many guests to stay with them, as did MIT, Tufts, Boston University, Boston College and more. Several admin people called regularly to make reservations for guests visiting Harvard and other Universities in the area as well as private corporations calling for guests to whom they wanted to give privacy.. Everyone who stayed loved their time in the house and totally were taken by its history stories and general feeling.

Many institutions and corporations used the house when guests were visiting who they wanted to have privacy without being worried that their guests would be stalked in the lobby of the hotels to pick up information that could be used for media articles. They also liked the fact that guests wouldn’t need so many levels of security when they came to Boston. Guests included such as Ambassador Victor Israelian, the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, top management from the State Department, many of the USA’s top families, many scientists – mostly physicists – who loved the quiet and privacy of the house where they could enjoy the patio where squirrels and birds would visit them as they worked on the back porch.

If you have questions, please don’t hesitate to call. If you or someone you recommend would like to see the house, we are available at their or your convenience.

Call Marceline Donaldson – 617 497 9166 or email bettinanetwork@comcast.net putting 49 Hawthorn St in the subject line.

What follows is a fuller description of the house as it appears in different publications.

HOUSE FOR SALE – Cambridge, MA. 02138

“Marceline and Robert are selling their home. If you don’t want to buy it, please pass this along to those you know who might be interested and/or know someone who would love to step into their shoes. As a private home or as a home with a bit of income so you can live there and do other things. Income can be in the neighborhood of $1,080.00/night, not including income from events, etc..

Marceline and Robert did a wonderful job and are now moving to New Orleans – which is where Marceline grew up. They have not been able to survive the onslaught against them of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the way they treat minority elderly in what was and is an apparent attempt of a group within the state to relieve Jews, African Americans, Latinx and others of any wealth that could be passed on to the next generation. This is the new racism/bigotry that is replacing the separatism that followed slavery.

The house has been newly painted with, among other improvements, a new 75 gallon commercial water heater with a 20 year rating and lots of other elegant restorations which keep the historical design of the house as much as possible..

It is one of the few homes in Cambridge, which gives you views of the Charles River from many of the bedroom windows and it overlooks the Riverbend Park on one side with no other building blocking your view. There is also a second park (the historical Longfellow Park) just two houses down on the same block and the same side of the street as Marceline and Robert’s house. Fantastic and very unusually elegant to have so many parks within the same block the home in which one lives. One of the only homes in the area with such and with a spectacular view.

You would have 9,000 square feet of living space in this house over five floors. 5,400 (apx.) finished into three floors of elegant historical living and 3,500 square feet (apx) of attic and basement which can be finished into fantastic living space.

For a possible future use of the basement take a look at the basement of Harvard University’s Memorial Chapel’s basement.

The attic could be refinished into an exquisite ballroom for entertaining with its 16 foot height (apx) at its apex with no beams going across to obstruct the wonderful height of this room. The architect – Lois Lily Howe, in 1900 was one of the first, (she is credited with being the first), to be able to build such an attic. Most attics are so clogged with structures to keep the roof from falling in on itself you do not have the breathtaking space one finds here. This attic is a full floor. Its footprint is that of the entire length and width of the house. Just think of the elegant entertaining you could do in that attic.

Historically, guests came to events in such houses and went to the second floor living room to leave their coats, etc. and freshen up and then went up another floor or two to the tea, dinner, dance or etc. on the upper floors. Today, we don’t have attics large enough for such events, especially not one replicating the footprint of the other floors of the house.

Lois Lily Howe was the architect. Designed and built in approximately 1900, she was one of MIT’s first female graduates. She established her own architectural firm and the architects she hired were women.

In the process of designing and building this home, Ms. Howe scrounged the area for homes being torn down which had historical touches and she brought that actual history into this house. The mouldings are exquisite and are some 100 years older than the house.

The history of this house includes a psychiatric history – Dr. Lydia Dawes, a well known psychiatrist of yore, was an owner for some 40 plus years before the Donaldson-Bennetts arrived and the house frequently embraced many of her friends who were also famous guests. Sigmund Freud’s daughter stayed often and worked with Dr. Dawes. Together they produced one of the first psychiatric journals in the area from this house. Many local psychiatrists remember a part of their training that happened on the couch by the living room window overlooking the magnolia tree. So much history goes with this house both within its structure and with the people who have passed through.

Marceline and Robert have spent decades trying to preserve and create a garden worthy of Lois Lily Howe who ended her career and life as a landscape architect.

You may have heard of the many outstanding and famous people who stayed under the Donaldson-Bennett’s roof during their time in the house because you were probably one of them. You can now own this magnificent property so beautifully located.

Want more information – call Marceline – 617 497 9166 or email us bettinanetwork@comcast.net

Tags: bed & breakfast, breakfast table talk, House for Sale in Cambridge, Racism, Sexism
Posted in #AirBnB, #BlackLives Matter, #CorporateBusinesses, #Racism.in.Greater.Boston, #Rev.Dr.Robert.Bennett, advertising, African American history, African American Oppression, American Corporate Businesses, Cambridge, MA. House for Sale, Feminism, Marceline Donaldson, venture capitalists | Comments Off on ………An Elegant Historical House for Sale!

RUSSIA – UKRAINE – USA

Friday, February 25th, 2022

Donald Trump has been responsible for a lot of evil and ugly which has crept and is still creeping into this world.

Fueled by dreams of a Trump-Moscow hotel complex, Trump had his minions and himself traveling to Russia begging with their hat in their hands because Putin was holding out a ‘bait and switch’ offer they could not refuse. They did not see the switch coming.

We remember Trump’s public response, as he chose, on the world stage, between Putin and the USA. Trump made this choice after a talk with Putin alone when Trump was the newly minted president of the United States. We believe a part of that public and private meeting has caused this attack on Ukraine by Putin.

Some of the white men in Russia, led by their own greed and reach for power, showed us how they have given their lives over to evil for a very parse return. These were recently on television and showed clearly their choice of subservience to evil instead of dedicating their lives to good. They will die soon without the ability to take one dime with them. They sacrificed their lives for pure unadulterated evil instead of for what could have been working towards a better, more just, more equitable society. May God forgive! The story of Judas and his 30 pieces of silver is alive to be told in this generation.

We think what is happening in Ukraine and what could possibly happen in other parts of the world soon, is Putin carrying out Hitler’s vision of the world with himself – Putin – in charge as the great god and emperor.

Hitler was effective for a very short period of time and over a very limited geographical area. We think Putin sees himself as the perfection of Hitler’s dream and able to carry it out world wide, without making Hitler’s mistakes. That becomes clearer as Putin projects himself and his goals onto others. Calling others Nazi’s and calling for the de-Nazification of leaders he opposes.

This is what happens when a human being, living in a society with other human beings has accumulated over $200 billions of dollars as his own personal wealth. Boundaries are gone and the only restraints left for him are the set of ethics by which he has lived his life. As more material wealth is accumulated, larger parts of whatever good and caring ethics remained are ditched.

Clearly, as we have watched Putin over the years, his ethics are in the toilet. That is now clearly showing and will become even clearer as time goes on.

No one has ever explained why Trump had that strange, shocked look on his face when he came out of the meeting with Putin and announced to the world that he was going to put his future in the pot with Putin’s. Trump had been elected by the American people, with the help of Putin who changed, added, subtracted, but basically had Trump’s back and added what Trump needed to become elected president. Trump’s ethics have, since that time on, paralleled Putin’s. Whatever the cost to his reputation no longer mattered – he was now one of the Putin Puppets Sowing Evil.

We think what Trump learned in that meeting was the future according to Putin. That future was taking over the world; denigrating and destroying the wealth and the world of minorities, making them subservient to white northern european males and taking over the countries of the world in ways which have perfected that path walked by Hitler -and – with Trump’s help, the United States was already being primed to meet this fate.

The January 6th insurrection was its opening public salvo. We believe this was planned for sometime prior to January 6th and was that on which Putin built his dreams of the future. The Charlottesville re-enactment of Hitler’s “Crystal Nacht” and so much more

When Trump lost the election and even with massive aid he could not recoup except to get himself more and more into the weeds facing jail and worse, Putin – we believe – decided to go it alone without that feather in his cap and so he is starting with Ukraine and moving from there to the rest of the world. He has waited long enough to see how Trump would fare. Clearly, both Trump and Putin can see that Trump is not the one to lay the United States at the feet of Putin.

We wondered why Ukraine was so prominent in the campaign for U. S. president and why it was so necessary for Ukraine to come out against Biden. We now know.

Putin’s dream of world dominance includes a world where the White Nationalism in Russia is built upon and put down in the rest of the world, reviving it in Germany, and with Trump’s, help pushing it forward in the United States.

How one man could collect some $200 billion dollars in assets is obscene. How much must others have suffered for him to be able to do such a thing.

It is time for all of us to look at wealth accumulation, raising serious questions and putting down limits so someone going down that path does not have viable options in this life.

Robert and I had an experience which opened our eyes to what is happening in this world with wealth accumulation in ways we could not have imagined nor dreamt. The attempt at taking over Robert’s life and destroying the end of his life was simply to get control of and spend any assets he might have. What became clearer in that not only were Robert’s assets at stake, but they also were going after my assets to take them for their own use. That was especially clear towards the end of the campaign waged against us when the last Court hearing scheduled was supposed to be to declare Robert “incapacitated” and his wife guilty of Medical Abuse against her husband with the State of Massachusetts claiming he had no one else to take care of him and in that hearing was to be made a ward of the state – under the guardianship laws – with the state agencies having control of everything we owned, had worked for over a lifetime, etc.

I had already been told to find a small room someplace because I would not be left penniless, they were not that mean, but I would also not be able to live an extravagant life. A small room would be paid for so I could continue on. I will never forget that conversaton.

The charge against me of “medical abuse” supposedly against Robert was totally without merit, especially when you look at the record and you see Robert had been to a doctor twice in the week before they started this campaign against us, before they made those charges and before “they” sent the police to force Robert into a police ward at MGH for no reason with the doors to the ward locked and guarded by armed guards and police with guns.

Given what happened and the way it was legally handled, it is past the time for Probate Court in Massachusetts to go through a complete evaluation and overhaul.

Whenever anything even close to that happens in the world we feel a kinship to the people so attacked.

That Court hearing was cancelled because at that point it was clear this was a criminal conspiracy against us and not real. I wondered what would have happened if we had not spent so many years in civil rights activities and did not have that small ability to navigate this kind of world of evil. It is amazing how many people step back to wait to see if you are going to still be their friend – depending on the outcome of what is happening to you.

If you look back at our history you will see Bettina Network Blog wrote and circulated some tough and honest blogs about Donald Trump, his history and more.

As we look back, we see these things happen to us and others when “they” can pick you up somehow and take control.

What happened to us? Robert fell down the back stairs in our home when the front stairs were being stained, new carpet applied. I took Robert to the hospital after the fall and there we were “picked up” by those waiting for such instances. Others have experienced such falls and worse without what followed with us involving forced incarcerations and more.

Mostly, the people who experience this kind of thing are Jews, Blacks and other minorities. The record is replete with such and it is also replete with the huge amounts of money siphoned off from such families in this process. That kind of thing now even has a name – “The destruction of generational wealth.” The goal is to limit how far the next generation of minorities can go without the gift of the life work of their family. Take away their ancestor’s wealth and distribute it to white male northern european types.

We fought them successfully – but not so successfully when you think we were stripped of some $200,000.00 in assets which went directly to Massachusetts General Hospital where many games had been played to make sure such a pay day was in the offing.

And how did Robert get out of MGH? I put the story out on their Facebook Page and two days later came the order from the top to “get that man out of this hospital.”

This is a small example. This is, however, what leads to the billionaires who have neither worked for nor should have the kind of wealth they have accumulated.

Putin is an extreme example, but he is an example of what happens when such ‘over the top” wealth falls into the hands of one man. That kind of money is also over the top power and with that kind of accumulation he can call the shots which have caused the death and destruction of hundreds over just the past few years.

Take a closer look at Putin. Take a closer look at those with the hundreds of billions of dollars at their disposal. They do call the shots in this world and this world is not the better for it. The rest of us suffer because of their dominance, their abuse of power and their use of money that has been stolen. It is not just African slavery of the past several hundreds of years we need to be talking about, it is what African slavery has evolved into that we all need to be concerned about and involved in making sure this world stops the evil which has had it in its thrall.

Tags: Anti-Semitism, Billionaires, Donald Trump, Guardianship Lws, Hitler, Insurrection, January 6th, Judas, Mass General Hospital, Massachusetts Probate Court, Moscow, Putin, Racism, Sexism, Ukraine
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on RUSSIA – UKRAINE – USA

A History of Segregated Housing – sort of!

Monday, January 3rd, 2022

by: Marceline Donaldson

and Rev. Dr. Robert A. Bennett

Segregated housing exists in these United States because the laws of the U. S. were very strong in insisting that blacks not be allowed to live in “white” neighborhoods. These are and were laws that were strongly and effectively enforced even into the 1960’s, 1970’s and beyond.

Today, we cover the fact that we have totally segregated neighborhoods by telling the lie over and over again that it is because blacks and other minorities are not able to afford to live in neighborhoods which are dubbed as white. That is as big a lie as has been told. It is one way structural racism is explained away so it can continue unabated. First comes the law and then as those laws are challenged and removed the structure remains in place because it is supported by universal fictions to maintain the separation of the races. In fact, neighborhoods are more segregated today than they were generations ago.

Structural/institutional racism is entrenched in these United States and shows no signs of giving way to a more equitable system. The legal structure put in place to keep slaves separate from their former masters has simply morphed into a culturally and societally and politically accepted set of rules which are, in actuality stronger than the laws. There were three white families living on my block as I grew up. What changed that was Eisenhower’s highway system which created ghettoes with all blacks living within and blacks not allowed to purchase homes without.

In New Orleans, one of those deep south cities with its share of black millionaires (unlike the more liberal north where there were none), an area known as “Sugar Hill” where blacks lived in beautiful homes was ripped through by Eisenhower’s genius idea, which had at its heart the maintenance of structural racism which was beginning to break in several areas. Ripped through by condemning some of the homes on “Sugar Hill” which were then torn down to make way for the new highway system.

North Claiborne Avenue had black and white owned businesses up and down the street. That also changed with this highway system into an all black area or white-absentee-owned businesses catering to blacks which are bars and funeral homes and little else with abandoned, junked cars where a boulevard of trees once stood.

All the creators of wealth in this country make sure blacks are not able to access those areas which create wealth and housing is at the top of the list.

A house in Roxbury, MA would appraise at more than ten times less than the identical house in the Back Bay, Beacon Hill or Harvard Square. If that is in the Brattle Street neighborhood of Harvard Square – where you will find only one or two blacks – it is more than 10 times less than and that in the shadow of Harvard University.

Proof of these laws and restrictions against blacks and other minorities living in certain areas of our American cities can be found all over the place – including in law courts. Legal documents had clauses in the deeds which said specifically that this home could not be sold to African Americans. Besides deeds having such restrictions, some areas – neighborhoods had legal restrictions against homes in those white neighborhoods being sold to blacks and other minorities.

Of the many ways blacks were oppressed with very limited abilities to accumulate wealth this is and was one of the largest and most widely used. The laws which maintained this limit on black wealth were sometimes viciously enforced.

Even into the 1960’s and beyond, if you lived in a white neighborhood and you were black you had to move into a black neighborhood. How did it happen that you were able to buy into a white neighborhood? You passed for white – you had white friends stand in for you so no one would know the house was being sold to blacks – and on and on the story goes.

We used to think realtors were responsible for this incredible separatism and segregation. Upon much research we discovered that was not true. It was the law.

As the segregation laws weakened, Blacks and other minorities began to be consigned more rigidly to particular areas and kept out of areas designated – albeit not in law or otherwise in writing – for whites only. Developers began to build homes in areas for blacks only – supposedly to form cohesive black communities which were and are considered ‘healthier’ places to raise children.

Those areas so designated as “white” are areas in which wealth via property ownership was very profitable. Homes purchased in those areas could increase in value dramatically and over a very short period of time. An African American family struggling to purchase a home in the areas informally designated as for blacks only generally struggled to pay off the mortgage and would have less equity at the end of paying off the mortgage than they had when they purchased the home. And this is not limited to the past. That structural racism still exists today in these United States.

As lawyers went to Court to knock down these laws, the cultural, societal and political change began to come to maintain the same structural racism formerly and formally protected by those laws. As the laws dropped, white society converted this legal separation into one maintained by lies.

Today, we have Donald Trump and his people promulgating many lies which shock us when we hear such blatancy. What we do not admit to or hold up to learn from is that we have a historical structure from which this group has patterned itself probably because the lies of the past and into the present which are told to maintain a racist structure worked and work and have prolonged the life of that system by many decades. The lies told as our American Society changed over from being structured as a racist society by laws into one maintaining the structural racism set down by laws into one set in stone by lies.

Lies maintained and promulgated by the entire society without connecting the history which would have turned a bright light onto those lies showing the truth and what those lies were intended to and did create.

A very prevalent lie still told is that Blacks lived and live in “less than” neighborhoods because they could not afford to buy homes in white neighborhoods. Banks cooperated by red-lining and using other means, such as charging blacks exorbitant interest rates or forcing blacks and other minorities to get mortgages from institutions which preyed on them and waited for them to realize they were not getting anything better from the standard, acceptable banking institutions. This is one way blacks and other minorities were told they could not afford those neighborhoods deemed for whites only. In actual fact, blacks could not afford to live in those neighborhoods because generally they had to pay several hundreds and, in some cases, thousands of dollars monthly above that paid by whites for the same mortgage. Structural Racism. What they also were not told is that their credit worthiness had and has to be way above that expected from whites to whom larger mortgages and other credit instruments would be given.

The “for whites only” signs are no longer written into the deeds and maintained by the laws. They are far more effectively maintained. The institutions having to do with real estate – banks, insurance companies, real estate sales companies keep the lines of demarcation. They keep the structurally racist neighborhood configurations which also maintain racist schools; grocery stores; beauty salons; and so much more by lies structured into and accepted by this society. Ordinary services which whites have routinely and affordably have access to in white only neighborhoods were and are not available in black neighborhoods. The reasons for the lack of such in black neighborhoods were and are laid at the feet of the black victims in those neighborhoods who were and are scammed out of a decent living for which they worked hard. The lies so told very effectively structured into the system a “better than” education for whites in the white only neighborhoods and inferior to negative educational opportunities for the blacks and other minorities who were paying for the white only educational opportunities through their taxes. Diminished vocational opportunities were and are done through closing jobs to blacks and other minorities which were and are then only available to less qualified whites. Not having control of the way their taxes were and are used they had no control over the way their taxes are still used to subsidize such white only opportunities which permeates throughout this society and was justified by the lies describing blacks and other minorities as “less than” therefore not qualified for such higher levels of accomplishment and not worthy of monies being spent attempting to better their lot because their laziness and inability to further their lives and families does not justify the expenditure.

It is no secret that even labor unions were and some still are closed to blacks and other minorities and many jobs are available only to those with union membership. The examples are infinite.

When it was determined that the family living in a white neighborhood in Los Angeles were really black and only “passing” they – the whites in the family as well as the passæ blanc’s had to pack up and move. In many such cases either you moved or the police came along with court papers and they moved you not taking much care as to how your belongings were treated. The more upscale the neighborhood the more likely you would be immediately and quietly removed – for breaking the law. Since most didn’t want to face jail, they moved, eliminating the need for further legal interference.

Today, that can’t be done by law, however, it still exists. The kind of problems blacks and other minorities face living in white only neighborhoods are only limited by the imagination and resources of the whites who are threatened by the black and other minorities living in “their” neighborhoods.

Today, we try to make the case that the banks are responsible because of their horrible racist real estate lending practices which decree you will have a difficult to impossible time trying to get a mortgage in these white only areas. Banks, however, are only re-enforcing what has existed from the beginning. That does not justify their current practices – which are put in place because it is illegal to write into deeds the elimination of African Americans from being able to buy certain houses. In these cases it is not the law decreeing separate and unequal, it is the society re-enforcing and making possible the same results that would have come from those laws. Today’s institutional practices enforce such law through lies.

Cities – like the City of Cambridge – get involved by the way they handle real estate taxes and other issues around African Americans to insure in very polite under-the-radar ways their city remains strongly segregated and they have succeeded.

We cite Cambridge because some claim it is only those “unintelligent” blue collar and other such people without a Harvard, MIT, etc. education who do this. Some of the most racist real estate acts have happened in the shadow of these schools.

We, the Donaldson-Bennett’s, are an example of such. Living in an area for 39 years, not one African American family has purchased a home in that area since we moved in. Many people thought our home was owned by Harvard. it is the only way they could accept our living in this neighborhood. When we put our home up for sale because we were just tired of what we had been experiencing for some 38 plus years, we had visits from neighbors who questioned our right to sell a house they claimed we did not own – that Harvard owned. We live in a home appraising at approximately $5 million on which we owe not even a tenth of that. To get the mortgage we now hold, we had to pay some 6% interest in an era when 2 and 3% interest was normal.

This is a study in extreme racism. We have all of the current requirements for success – a Harvard doctorate (PhD), Harvard Business School, Boston University Masters, etc. etc. etc. But we lack the whiteness required by this neighborhood and those who hold up living in this neighborhood as proof of their superiority. It has been quite a ride.

The last time we put our house up for sale, the Wall Street Journal published some unbelievable letters describing the house we were selling. Those letters are republished in this article.

We think it was no coincidence that the problems we had with the police coming to our home trying to shove Robert into a psych ward for no reason and when that didn’t work trying to accuse Marceline of abusing the man she has been successfully married to for 37 years – also with no proof – and moving on to the Probate Court system blatantly denying us of any and all legal rights, winding up with MGH draining our insurance of almost $200,000 with no medical reasons for having done so and with MGH knowing they had no medical reason for such and knowingly allowing physicians to force Robert to take medicines he did not want such as anti-psychotics which is something that violates the laws of Massachusetts plus so much more – we believe what happened to us is criminal. Our choice is to spend the last years of our lives in court fighting this or to let it go. We haven’t yet decided which road to take, especially since the attorney we hired was more interested in her political future than the case she took and did nothing about except concentrate on how to sell us out, but told us all the stories of what she was doing and going to do working along with Attorney Sullivan who never materialized, but is working hard for Weinstein – an accused abuser and assaulter of women. It is viciously bizarre. But then also bizarre is an African American couple having gained wealth into seven figures through the purchase of their home in an all white ‘closed’ neighborhood. The harassment visited on us for all of the years we have lived in this home defies belief.

In California, adjacent to areas selling into the millions which were selling in the hundreds of thousands just 20 years ago, African Americans are finding their beautiful suburban area homes newly built some 20 years ago and sold to mostly professional blacks and adjacent to those homes for whites only with their substantial increase in value, are now selling for half of their purchase price. What makes that difference? The quality of the homes are the same. The neighborhoods are still beautiful. What caused that difference where blacks who sell today have to take a 50% drop in their wealth while whites in the same general neighborhood and over the same time frame have seen a 150% and more jump in their wealth? Structural Racism.

What do we conclude?

Generational wealth needs to be put front and center because as blacks and other minorities gain in financial strength and are super concerned about leaving wealth to their children for their benefit, that generational wealth is being taken by others to make sure that potential increase of strength amongst blacks and other minorities is destroyed before it can work its magic. Millions have been lost and more about to be put through the shredder.

The minority elderly are being abused to take away their wealth making sure it does not move on to the next generation for which it was intended. Structures are being put into place swiftly to aid and abet that and we are all ignorant to that fact. We are blinded by what we do not want to see or acknowledge as true.

On the bones of that racist real estate structure deep seated in these United States rests the segregated educational system; the jobs structure; the social structure leading to the cultural foundation which rests on and will continue as a white northern European Racist Christian culture kept in place through the lies that have been told and accepted across generations.

As blacks and other minorities achieve, lies develop to block that achievement and postpone any possibility of equality surfacing in this society for many more years to come. AND did anyone think the achievements of the last Civil Rights Movement would be challenged and turned back?

And where do you stand? White? Are you activist or do you see your future in acceptance and quiet help to promote the lies so you and yours will have an easier time in this life raping others for your own advantage. Blacks and other minorities? Acceptance because something is better than nothing and you were raised on “go along to get along” and life will be easier. Not worrying about what has been taken away from you, but living on what others have torn away from white society which you can sit quietly by expecting whites to appear to tear such away from them to give to you as the exceptional minority who they can control who will help them promote and spread the lies? Today’s version of Step-in’ Fletcher?

Tags: California, Donald Trump, Eisenhower, Generational Wealth, New Orleans, politics, Probate Court, Racism, Sexism
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on A History of Segregated Housing – sort of!

Jessye Norman – A Christmas Story!

Tuesday, December 14th, 2021

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/sep/30/jessye-normans-family-sue-over-treatment-that-allegedly-left-her-paralysed

Ms. Norman lost her life – this is what we lost! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lS4Pbeq7zEY

What happens to African American women? You say it is “accidental” – we say it is institutional racism, so embedded in this society we accept and don’t even know what has happened to most of our best and greatest talents. We just go on with our lives as though this had nothing to do with us. Us who? Us white, blacks, latina’s, LGBTQ, trans, Asians, American Indians and the list goes on of those who have been destroyed.

She went to the hospital in England following this concert in an attempt to control the pain she was in. She never walked or sang again. This is the last time we heard her voice and who lost? She spent the last four years of her life in misery – not able to enjoy her own home, but had to live in an apartment in New York because of this surgery.

So much goes on in this world which we accept and move on. Mostly, we live in ignorance. It is time for that to stop and constant action against such needs to be the way of the world. It is the only way we will find peace and live in a world full of God’s love. She and her talent were a true gift of God to this world. The loss of that gift, her talent, and her right to a better end to her life was done by man’s inhumanity to man, by greed and so much more negativity which we accept and justify when the denials come with fortunes spent to justify the denial and continue their right to practice bigotry, inflict pain, the ugliness, destroy beauty and continue on.

There was no attempt to make Jessye Norman whole – the effort, money, time was spent in the denial – self-justification and so much more creating a painful end to her life and the continuation of attempting to attain justice for Jessie by her family.

What a different ending this could have been. Reach out to make whole the person or persons or group you attempted to use as a stepping stone to your own better fortune. That has not happened here and almost never happens in our society which is busy creating billionaires who use their billions to destroy the life, love, happiness, wholesome lifestyle of the many.

God forgive!

Tags: Beauty, Christmas Music, Injustice, Jessye Norman, Racism, Sexism
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Jessye Norman – A Christmas Story!

Generational Wealth, Minorities and Criminal Conspiracies!

Tuesday, August 17th, 2021

It is amazing what is happening in the United States around “generational wealth.” An area to reduce the number of minorities achievements and especially to help to put a cap on how high they can go. A few will slip through, but other blockages are going up for them. This one is for those who could move quite far with the wealth acquired and put aside for them by their parents and other relatives in their parents generation. How it is being taken and repurposed so it will benefit white male northern european ancestry people in these United States.

What happened to Robert and Marceline was about the attempt to strip them of whatever they had so it would benefit white northern european ancestry people and their families. Well, until recently, when we became aware of minorities gathering around to do the same thing to other minorities. Are we such a country so full of greed that this is how we treat one another?

What happened and continues to happen to Robert is a well established pattern with the same people involved, basically stripping the elderly of their wealth with the help of the state and the Court. We are appalled, but no longer in disbelief. It is too clear for denials.

We believe this is a criminal conspiracy.

The pattern:

An attorney comes along with a client to make the claim in Court that the target is “indigent”. The opposite of what they know, but what is needed to get the Court to relax its standards and help these poor minority elderly almost destitute folks.

2. The attorney asks – on behalf of their client that the person involved not be notified of motions, etc. That the hearings be held without their knowledge. After all, this is an “indigent”, elderly person who we can’t afford to allow to have any rights. The goal is to strip every right the person has to make it easier to strip their earthly goods.

3. Usually the tact taken is to claim the person has some kind of mental illness, shove them into the psych ward of a cooperating hospital – or at the least a hospital where there are people working who are cooperating or who can be bamboozled.

4. Have the Court appoint an attorney to represent this person – stripping away the persons right to choose their own attorney. And again, without notifying the person for whom an attorney is being appointed. The attorney will be paid by the state – but not named in the hearing. The naming of the attorney who will fill this role will be done by the attorney who first brought the action representing, most probably, a state agency.

5. All of the above and more done within hours on the same day. No notice to the target and move quickly before anyone realizes what is happening.

6. Have the named attorney file the basic case without the knowledge, consent or involvement of the target on any level. Mental illness comes first in the line. Indigent comes second with the person filing a motion with the Court that they are indigent and the state needs to pay the attorney. Usually that is enough to move along to hiring a psychiatrist, paid for by the state, to declare the target “incapacitated” and make sure Mass Health (in Massachusetts, some other group in other states) is either already in place or has been applied for because nursing homes don’t take patients who don’t have Mass Health or its equivalent.

7. Shove the person into a nursing home after their stay in the psych ward of a hospital which has declared them “incapacitated” after a substantial bout on drugs that have incapacitated them and the patient then takes their “incapacitated” status with them.

8. The attorneys then show up again and motion for a “temporary guardian” declaring the person without family or anyone else capable of being the “temporary guardian” without the control of assets, but shortly there after for full guardianship with control of the persons assets.

9. The attorneys know every detail of the targets assets, where and how to reach them and whatever else they need to know – told to them by Mass Health which gives the attorneys a well documented map to all of the targets assets. You don’t need to have been accepted for Mass Health. This is mostly for those who don’t qualify – too many assets and income – but even the application gives the attorneys that much needed asset map. The goal? To know where to place liens, etc. to gain ownership of the assets of this person who is now in a nursing home, under restraint, alone because family and friends are not allowed to visit and declared without “executive functioning” to be able to live alone. When you do the research, however, you find many of these folks have family and close friends who have been driven away by the attorneys and their ‘helpers’ and the state agency and, of course, the requisite home health care people who are key to this entire thing being successful.

10. The target, at this point, has been pumped full of an incredible array of drugs usually including anti-psychotics which becomes legal because of the court’s going along with the program with very little to no oversight and the group – usually a guardianship corporation which the attorney oversees – in charge of this elderly soon to be destitute person starts the process of drawing down the elderly persons’ assets.

11. The end of that persons life is made horrendous because others want to strip them of whatever they have managed to accumulate over a lifetime. Usually they end up in a state of shock in constraints in a nursing home – preferably one where COVId-19 is raging or some other kind of illness awaits to help shorten their life to run on a parallel track with the drawing down of their assets. Death when the assets run out is a particularly good outcome.

Insurance is a major part of the stripping and drawing down – it can provide in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to institutions involved.

Tags: #GenerationalWeath, #Rev.Dr.Robert.Bennett, Destroying Generational Wealth, Generation Wealth, politics, Racism, Sexism, Using the Court to oppress
Posted in #BlackLives Matter, Criminal Enterprise, Forced Medical Treatment | Comments Off on Generational Wealth, Minorities and Criminal Conspiracies!

To Wear a Mask or go Maskless says what about you?

Monday, January 25th, 2021

by: Marceline Donaldson

I am old enough to remember and to have been through the campaigns against smoking.

When it was discovered that smoking caused cancer and even second hand smoke could damage the health of the person inhaling another persons’ cigarette smoke, it was quite a brawl. Sort of like the one we are having with masks or going without a mask. The arguments are the same and the people I have encountered without a mask are the same people who refused to give up blowing smoke into the environment of those who don’t smoke.

What is also amazing is that these are the same people who refuse to give up their identity as “better than.”

Your identity is basic to your being. To have been raised with an identity which claims you are “better than” and experience that as comfortable and that by which you live and move and have your being and by defining others as “less than”, as people who owe you their agreement to stay in “their place” and not disturb the outer, better, larger environment where the “better than” thrive, is a soul destroying thing.

Once upon a time, many years ago, I was on the National Board of NOW. At that time, the law suits and one push was on stopping people (actually men) – (actually white men) from smoking cigars on airplanes because the exhaust and replenish system on the airlines could not effectively remove all of the smoke and other pollutants which such smoking put into the air. Only one or two people were needed to smoke cigars on the plane in which you were traveling to cause problems for everyone else. That, according to the science coming out, not only caused health issues with everyone, but created an extremely uncomfortable environment for those flying.

It was a pitched battle. Finally, after many resources spent – time, money, etc. – the airlines decided to eliminate cigar smoking on planes. That was an incredible victory.

Later, the battle began to eliminate cigarette smoking as the scientific papers were published about the damage cigarettes could do to the human body. That battle was worse than the one around cigars. The cigar smokers just started smoking cigarettes on planes instead of their beloved and deadly instruments of disease.

Gradually, the fight was and still is being won as people today have to deal with even apartment buildings which now say if you live in that particular apartment building and are a smoker you have to agree to smoke outside and not in your own apartment building for which you pay substantial amounts of rent.

Restaurants were another place where the battle against smoking inside the restaurant raged. It was won and people started moving to eat in the “bar” side of the restaurant so they could smoke while eating. The war against smoking found them and today even those in bars can’t smoke inside the bar, but must go outside for their favorite bit of poison.

When that fight was raging I was at IBM. They had a thing where you had to go to Atlanta, GA. for six weeks of training before you could sell those wonderful machines. In the training classes people, of course, could smoke. Light up anytime and foul the air for those in the class who found that a horribly filthy and very uncomfortable habit.

We fought that in many ways. During my class time, success was not gained, but in subsequent classes smoking was outlawed in the classroom. One had to go outside to smoke. So progress does happen. It happens excruciatingly slow and people lose their lives and health in the process, but it happens.

One action we took, as an aside, was to also challenge IBM’s inviolable “dress for success” class and rules. On one of the last days of class we arrived (females, of which there were almost none), in MuMu’s, hair in large curlers, no make-up and slippers. The men arrived (not all, but many) with their jockey shorts over their dress pants and cut off t-shirts over their dress shirts. It was hysterical and great fun, but produced no change in IBM’s dress rules or the necessity of taking such a class.

What is it about human beings and the human spirit that everything must be as we are and everyone must live according to how we live and want life to be. We change facts to accommodate our comfort zone and claim we have the “right” in this country to jeopardize the health of and make uncomfortable and even denigrate and destroy those who aren’t like us?

Those who don’t live our lifestyle? Those who insist on refusing to change when the growing body of science shows us problems which we could address and make better with some simple changes of our lifestyle? We prefer to demand our “rights” to do things harmful to others while totally overlooking the other persons’ “right” to be safe and more. Doesn’t that come from our basic need to be “better than”? The belief system, culture and more that many would rather died for than give up and change.

If we are “better than” our neighbors, friends and all others then we can go about without a mask because we find wearing a mask uncomfortable, not pretty or stylish and all the other reasons we have thrown up. We do not want to become comfortable wearing a mask because it is our “right” to go around without one. Isn’t it interesting how we can demand what we consider our rights, even when those rights that we claim jeopardize the health and well being of others?

It is no mistake that we elected a man who exemplifies all of that and demands his rights over all other human beings? The man who demands to be top of the heap and all others are under him accepting what he doles out to them and for which they are grateful. How come we do all of that? What is there in the human spirit which thinks that is great. We join wild groups because they reinforce the identity we are on the verge of losing – “better than”.

That “better than” need is more lethal than the most terminal and painful of cancers. Yet we insist on living through that kind of culture and that kind of life.

That “better than” need led our ancestors to euthanize attempt to exterminate American Indians. It allowed and encouraged us to use slavery to build these United States. Used the Chinese in a slavery kind of structure to build our railroads – and all through we use denial so we don’t have to acknowledge what we have done and are doing to the detriment of ourselves and others.

To care for others. To be concerned about those with whom we live on this planet doesn’t take much.

An example from my IBM experience shows the difference. I lived in Ambassador Andrew Young’s house while I was in training at IBM. I could not live in the townhouse apartments right next to the classes during that time because I had two young children with me. They had me and I had them and wherever I went they went for all the years of their growing up.

It was difficult driving the 30 to 45 minus to class each day instead of walking a short distance to the classes. It was horrendous trying to figure out and find ways of making sure they were taken care of during the day. That would have been simple had I been able to live in the housing provided by IBM, It took a lot away from my time and ability to really get into the training – although I did a respectable job of it.

No one at IBM cared about the situation I was trying to handle. Men were the main people in those training classes. Men had wives at home who stayed there and took care of the children and anything else that needed to be taken care of because society looked at that as the job of women.

Towards the end of my time in training at IBM, I had caused such an upheaval that a couple people turned their attention to seeing what they could do to make things right.

My girls were learning horse back riding during that period of time so the IBM people found a camp not far away which had young people – about the ages of mine – who lived at the camp and followed their program of learning to ride, show and jump horses. That was a near miracle. I picked up the girls on the weekends and we went ‘home’ and were able to do touristy things satisfying to all.

How wonderful if IBM had put together a few people who gathered such possibilities for people in my situation so my time during training could have been more productively spent. It didn’t take a lot, just caring. Their response, at the time, was to eliminate people like me because it was too much to include us and much better to carry forth the “better than” attitude.

The caring that is missing amongst the people who refused to smoke outside; who wanted to smoke while in class; and so much more.

There were only two or three people in those classes who smoked. They, however, made the room unbelievably uncomfortable and dangerous to the health of the rest of us. The same attitude prevails among people who refuse to wear masks. One would think that past ones time as a rebellious teenager, the need to “prove” things would have abated.

All of those folks have something in common – their identity, which contains the strong belief that they are “better than” the rest of us and why should they accommodate. What a wonderful change in this world when and if they are able to do show some kind of caring for others where there is no payback that they can see for themselves.

“Better than” is a vicious philosophy by which to live. It is incredibly destructive of the human soul as it takes hold of ones personality, character, lifestyle and makes them so incredibly ugly to the rest of society. “Better than” so blinds us as humans that we can’t even see how negative is the way such people are seen by others.

May God forgive your sins against one another and give you the ability to open your hearts in a caring, healing, wonderful way to experience this life as it was intended to be experienced, not to experience it within the confines of a lifestyle with ways of living and choices which lead to a life of denial which leads to a life of lying, cheating, etc. etc.

Tags: "better than ", #betterthan, American Indians, Chinese, Chinese Americans, Cigarettes, Donald Trump, dress for success, IBM, Institutional Racism, Institutionalized Bigotry, Racism, Sexism, Wearing a Mask
Posted in #BlackLives Matter, #meToo, American Corporate Businesses, Andrew Young, bigotry, Donald Trump, Empathy, Feminism, Health, Historical Support, Marceline Donaldson, Native Americans, NOW, racism, sexism | Comments Off on To Wear a Mask or go Maskless says what about you?

Girl, that could be you!

Monday, November 9th, 2020

Marceline, don’t just read this and cast it aside, I am writing it and sending it to you for Bettina Network’s Blog. Someone should write your biography. As I saw Kamala Harris I thought about you and had to sit down with my pen before I got involved in something else and this moment would not come again.

We need a Truth and Reconciliation moment as all of this will only accelerate. It is a time during which much history will be forgotten or re-written to satisfy those who want to keep society as it is, but will effect change – for the moment.

When I saw Kamala Harris on that stage, I thought of Marceline Donaldson. I know, I know, you like to write, talk and think about others, but it is time you reflected on your life.

My first thought was that the two of you look enough alike that you could be mother and daughter. And then I realized that was a racist thought because what you have in common physically is your hair and color. Otherwise, you are very different and to realize your hair commonalities one had to know you way back when – before you turned gray.

We have been friends long enough for me to know your first analysis of Kamala Harris would be her clothes style – not southern, not new england, not mid-western, but very decidedly California.

Your second thought was probably to think – she didn’t take ballet lessons and all the rest as a child to force herself into that ‘constrained southern lady’ thing. I say thank goodness. Don’t remember what you would say because you were usually all over the map about that.

I thought immediately of the Truth and Reconciliation Task Force because when I first saw Kamala Harris come onto that stage I started crying and couldn’t stop. I knew I was not alone because I was sure you were doing the same thing. I remembered all the many times this white woman cried with you, for you, and for myself. We will probably be crying for months at the least little things because much of what we experienced has been pent up for decades. It will take more than this for the dam to break, but hopefully, shortly, enough will happen for all of those pushed down feelings that we all have, to erupt.

My pain does not begin to be the huge pains you carry, because I didn’t put myself out the way you did – and probably still do. I want to put out in public just a few because what individual women have gone through just to exist and move ahead in this world needs to be aired. I hope others follow this example and will send you their stories. That kind of pain needs to be shared because those who caused it go around without a thought as to what they did and what they are doing to other human beings just because those others are women. And I mean women and men have caused enormous pain and agony to each other.

The memory I won’t ever forget = can’t forget was being in your brokerage office – Dain, Kalman & Quail, inc. – trying to become one of your clients. You had just become the first African American stock broker in Minnesota. I believe you were the first in the country, even though several African American men have been knocking themselves out to prove otherwise. Don’t know if you knew that, but they approached me trying to get my cooperation. A book or something like it is being written to wipe you out of history.

In that stock brokerage/financial investment office, that day I began to realize the enormity of the problems you were facing and would face and the almost insurmountable obstacles that are thrown in all of our paths on a daily basis. Just to keep us in our place – “less than”. And you as a black woman have had to face unbelievable times. Well “almost black woman” – (howls of laughter from me – a sort of private joke).

Into the office, while I was waiting to see you, came a group of black men. They demanded to see the president and were apparently known by a couple people in the office. They were ushered right into the presidents office. I didn’t know them, but as talk went around me I understood they were the heads of the local offices of a few national civil rights organizations and one was there – brought by the others – to be your replacement. They were in the office that day to demand that you be fired and this black man be hired in your place because of the incredible, horribleness of your having been hired over a black man in the first place.

They expressed their indignation at your being a stock broker and what an insult that was to Black men all over. They wanted you fired and they brought along with them one of the Babington-Johnson brothers as someone who should have been hired instead of you. The fact that you walked into the office and applied for the job, backed by Lillian Anthony as your reference and a few other black and white brothers and sisters meant nothing to them. The fact that the Babington-Johnson brother hadn’t thought about applying for such a job and wasn’t doing that now, but was going along with this kind of awfulness meant nothing to them.

One was head of the Minneapolis Urban Coalition – on which you were a member of the board. We went to a few board meetings together. Another was head of the Mpls Urban League. One was a “gad fly” who worked for one of the large companies – a utility company, I think – whose demeanor I never liked. Never did learn who the others were.

While I sat and waited for you – thank goodness you were no place near to hear all of this – I got to hear the meeting and it was a list of grievances and outrageous insults and put downs of black men with this one topping the list.

I hadn’t thought of that before. I had always thought of black men as allies in this fight for women’s rights. That day changed all of that.

When they left the office, I did too. I couldn’t face anyone after that so I went home. I was so upset it took days for me to settle down. I left that office a strong feminist, although that was not who I was when I went there looking for you. I had been to a luncheon panel discussion on investment at a local hotel – don’t remember which one – an investment luncheon which you organized and led and I was high on women now being equal after that brief time. I should have known better, but I was quite young and ‘unexposed’ never having been in a civil rights fight or organization before that.

Those black men demanding you be fired and a black man hired in your stead did something to me from which I have never recovered. Before witnessing that meeting I was quite shy about calling myself a feminist. After, I have been a proud feminist to this day. And as such a supporter of Kamala Harris for as long as I can participate in this society’s politics.

I hope others follow this example and let the Dam break with the flood of stories of what women – white, black, brown, yellow, red, etc. – have experienced in this life so men could assume the mantle of “superiority over” women and not have to work hard for their “better than” identity. And I hope all women realize it is not only white men who have this “better than” need and whose egos can be bruised quickly by a woman exerting the fact that she is their “equal.” To break the stereotype of women as always held up and respected “on a pedestal”, “motherhood uber alles”, our job being to take care of the home and family while men go out to work, etc. And lets not even begin to go into the stereotype of black women.

Haven’t used your “better than” quotes, but I will do so now extensively. Maybe a little late to the party, but my memories are going to flood out to whoever, wherever I can share them. Unfortunately, they are the memories of an observer rather than of someone who participated in change, but maybe today I can correct that before I leave this earth.

Tags: Dain Kalman & Quail inc, Feminism, financial investment professional, Kamala Harris, Lillian Anthony, Marceline Donaldson, meToo, Minnesota, Racism, Sexism, stock broker
Posted in #BlackLives Matter, #meToo, American Corporate Businesses, Dain, Kalman & Quail, inc., Feminism, financial investment professional, Kamala Harris, Lillian D. Anthony, Marceline Donaldson, meToo, Minnesota, racism, sexism, stock boker | Comments Off on Girl, that could be you!

A Publicly Acknowledged Bigotry acceptable for Supreme Court Justices.

Friday, October 16th, 2020

by: Marceline Donaldson

It is not only acceptable but a required part of your resume´ to be seriously considered for a substantial position within this Trump administration.

We have watched such happen for four years and each time a new set of nominations comes along we know the people so nominated have made Trump comfortable with the fact that they are full of prejudices and ready to act on them to bring about the ‘Northern European-ancestry white person’ as better than anyone to create the society Trump and his followers envision. After all, he did not have the Bible, nor Thurmans ‘Jesus and the Disinherited’ on his bedside table as did Martin Luther King, Jr. and so many others. On his bedside table – according to testimony in his divorce hearing – was a constant copy of ‘Mein Kampf’. Today, he does not have to go back and rummage through to come up with ‘what would Hitler have done’ – he has so internalized that way of being that it just oozes from him automatically in just about everything he does.

That can be clearly seen as we have lived through the many which this current Trump administration has nominated for top positions, middle and ‘at the bottom’ positions to maintain the bigotry which has existed in this country since its beginnings in slavery.

if you are full of racist, sexist, homophobic, immigrant, religious and all the other bigotries which we have been and are forced to live with to create and maintain one group ‘better than’ all others, then you have a chance of making Donald Trump’s list of nominees for government positions.

If your lifestyle shows you live that bigoted life as normal and everyday, you are certainly in line for promotions. If you assault women, have sexual problems disrespecting and forcing yourself on women or getting involved with all kinds of sexual deviancy and show your disdain and disgust for women who are independent and demand to live a life ‘equal to’ then you are also meant for greatness in this Trump government. If not, you are just cast aside and blocks thrown in your path even if you are far from the center of power. You still have to struggle so you won’t do much damage to the bigoted lifestyle required of you.

Currently, the topic is the Supreme Court nominee – Amy Coney Barrett.

What a great jurist she could be if only she wasn’t so imbued with the extreme bigotry which has been her lifestyle choice. What a destruction of the talent God gave her to use for good instead of for the evil path she has chosen.

That affects the rest of us because we do not have the internal strength and fortitude and honesty to call her out on her bigotries because we are afraid that in the process we might also be outed for all to see. Or, at the very least, have to endure shame and embarrassment as others rush to her defense.

During the hearings, to determine if Ms. Barrett should be confirmed, what was missing were questions about her extreme sexism. How can someone be a Supreme Court Justice in these United States when you believe women are inferior to men and cannot do the things a man can do or rise to the level to which a man has an automatic right to attain.

And then immediately comes – from many of you, even as you read this – DENIAL, DENIAL, DENIAL, EXPLANATION, EXCUSES, etc, etc ,etc.

I have heard those denials and explanations and excuses my whole entire life and today, being over 80 it is beyond enough already. But because I am losing the ability to continue to tolerate such doesn’t mean it will go away. My mother reached that point – so did my grandmother – and my grandfather – and I could go on listing all of my ancestors. But who would care? A few of you would give lip service and commiserate for a moment or two, but that would be the extent of it.

My family has achieved much, but their achievements have been in the midst of incredible sacrifice – ‘on all sides’.

To come from generations of people who intermarried and tried to be family under the stress and weight of this society’s bigotry has been an unbelievably difficult, painful, searing life experience.

I identified with Amy Barrett as I watched her demeanor, her dress, her way of speaking and recognized them all from my New Orleans upbringing. She certainly does not dress like a New Englander and I was just delighted to see that.

However, as who she is and the choices she has made through her life were exposed during these hearings my New Orleans upbringing at its most painful was also exposed.

New Orleans was and is a place where the most liberal and most conservative can co-exist and that goes through the generations. There were slave markets and free blacks with substantial assets. I grew up in a mixed neighborhood – white, black, rich, poor, mafia, police all lived within a couple blocks of one another. Three white families on my block.

By the time I went off to college, Eisenhower had started his extreme geographical segregation of whites from blacks and turning middle class ‘mixed’ neighborhood into all black, drug infested blocks with the beautiful boulevards with their trees and picnic tables in those mixed neighborhoods into filthy, crime ridden places where expressways – freeways – whatever they are called were built over those boulevards and became areas where you would then find abandoned cars under the freeways and the trees and picnic tables and white and black small businesses on both sides of the freeway gone and bars and other such places even today existing in their place without even a historical reminder of what went before.

Children assume that is how it ever was and ever will be because as they become adults they see what their efforts amount to – nothing except pushing them down and holding up those who are quiet and appear to be satisfied with the status quo.

Amy Coney Barrett comes from a neighborhood which I remember well and I am sure with a little prompting you will also. “Old Metairie” – where those who were ‘wanna-be’ lived in cultural constriction and extreme racism. Turn the pages to the time of Katrina and remember when people in New Orleans trying to escape the fast rising flood waters ran to escape by attempting to cross the bridge from New Orleans to Metairie and were met by those with guns determined that “those people” are not going to threaten and rape our women. And what happened? “Those people” trying to preserve their lives were stranded at the top of the bridge and had to stay there for very long periods of time in the heat, the blazing sun, no food, water, shelter because they couldn’t turn around to go back from whence they had come – the flood waters now prevented that.

That would have been one of many events which shaped Amy Barrett’s life and life choices.

How did she respond? She became, on the one hand someone who adopted Haitian children, which gives her some “street cred”, but on the other, where her identity lives she became an extreme sexist – which by definition is a hatred of women.

Her Catholicism, in which she was raised, gave way to belonging to “People of Praise” – a paraChurch, where those belonging run back to their identity within the Catholic Church when that is more comfortable, but do not leave behind their beliefs as “People of Praise.”

One of their most basic beliefs is in the inferiority of women and that is shown clearly in their structure. Men only on the board of those who governs Women subjected and under the governance of their husbands. Things most of us have not had to deal with for decades.

Women getting the vote; LGBTQ rights; equal pay; and so much more has come from our moving beyond by light years from where Amy Barrett decided to sit and make her life and out of that life her choices and now she is being promoted as someone who can make choices for millions of others for decades and where are we – talking about not criticizing her religion because that wouldn’t be right and so much more nonsense. Nonsense to allow the status quo to exist while we claim to be in another place fighting for equality.

Equality does not come from putting a woman or a man on the Supreme Court as a jurist who does not believe in equality and whose “integrity” will allow her to vote in such a way as to insure that equality does not come and the racist, sexist, structure of this society which we have all fought to change remains in tact. Maybe a few cosmetic changes, but with Ms. Barrett’s beliefs, not even that, especially since those questioning her demurred from the most basic issues – do you believe in the equality of women or do you equivocate on that and are not willing to step out and be counted.

My husband and I pray for this society daily. All we have left is the hope behind those prayers – that the next generation will not have to endure and go through the kind of horribleness we have been put through because some people’s egos and identities were so weak they could only survive believing they were better than and insisting that the society in which they live continues and maintains its structure which allows the bigoted to be sated and not threatened with having to go through the emotional trauma of moving from ‘better than’ to ‘equal to’.

We have so much to atone for and every time we make a start, the fear rises and the future without the identity you were raised to believe was your birthright comes forward and does not look good so we take a side curve and move in a direction where ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same.’

It would be tragic for Amy Barrett to be confirmed as it was tragic for Kavanaugh to have been confirmed. We saw the pattern, but when it happened again we decided to walk the same path because it was easy and those who stood up to say it is time to change this were martyred – and that is normal for us. We do that so well we have even hidden the mechanisms by which that happens and we look the other way.

Sadly, in this society, our excuses come down to money. How much will my doing this cost me – how much will I gain from being silent – how much will I get to rake in from going out on the limb just a short distance making sure I am always safe enough to be able to get back to the trunk in case the branch shows signs of breaking.

God forgive!

________________________________

Tags: #AmyBarrett, #DonaldTrum[p, Donald Trump, LGBTQ rights, Mein Kampf, New Orleans history, Racism, Sexism, Supreme Court Justice nominee
Posted in @AmyBarrett, Amy Coney Barrett, Donald Trump | Comments Off on A Publicly Acknowledged Bigotry acceptable for Supreme Court Justices.

Living in Cambridge/Boston While Black! – Part 3

Saturday, March 14th, 2020

This is the third segment on what is happening with Robert and Marceline. It is horrible and the racism is being compounded by the way this is being handled. The agency responsible is Somerville Cambridge Elder Services. They are known to be racist and work beautifully with many in the Harvard Square area (all white) and rumor has it they put blacks in institutions the way they have Robert and drain their insurance and other benefits while labeling them “indigent”. The move they make against blacks in the Cambridge Somerville area always characterizes the black and their families in the most negative stereotypical way possible. Why are they still being allowed to destroy Robert and Marceline and why is there and has there been no investigation over the years – at the very least closing this agency? This has been going on for at least 20 plus years with people around this agency knowing what has been happening.

More to the point what involvement do the Courts have in this situation? They have to be involved – when you think they facilitated this by making a decision without any notice to the other side. Clearly, they look as though they are implicated somehow. And the Cambridge Somerville administrative people who are heads of these agencies, particularly this state agency has done nothing to investigate these goings on and the attorneys who represent these agencies. They have to know what is going on within them.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I saw Robert and Marceline walking together in Harvard Square last Thursday. – March 5th. They are the cutest couple. What amazed me when I heard this, that was a day before Robert was forced into Massachusetts General Hospital. They went into the post office and were talking to an African American woman in the most animated way. It looked as though they were having a great conversation.

I saw them a bit later as I turned onto Memorial Drive. They were sitting on a bench by the river.

Since then and hearing that Robert was put into Mass General by the police and kept there – I thought about the contrast. He was in the sunshine, walking with his wife, enjoying life and maybe that was too much for the people involved in this. Apparently, the next day or the day after he was confined in an institution where he is in bed all the time, under police supervision, no sun, no walks around his neighborhood and his wife kept from seeing him because of the bad influence she would have? Good and bad take on very different meanings in this context.

Values count! These values are that an African American man can’t walk around Harvard Square in pleasant circumstances, talking to friends, sitting on the benches by the river. We have to stop that, other African Americans might find that a great picture of life and come to live in Harvard Squarte themselves and then what would we do – have an integrated neighborhood? That is being stopped in the ugliest way. I know Robert and Marceline have had to fight almost daily the intrusions on their lives living where they do. This fight is beyond despicable.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I saw Robert Bennett and his wife on Thursday, March 5th in Harvard Square in the post office talking to Mrs. Clark. He looked great. I waved as I passed and they all looked as though they were having a lovely conversation. Is that what caused all of this? I can’t believe I really live in a place where this happens. With all the people pouring into New England from places like California, is this how we get housing for them? Since they are mostly white we have to move blacks out of white areas to find room for these white immigrants among their own kind? Even if it means doing this?

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

by: Marceline Donaldson

I would like to tell you how Robert is doing, but I am not allowed to see him. There has to be a Security Guard and a Policeman present for me to talk to Robert and one time I tried the hospital people turned me down because they were short of personnel and didn’t have a Security Guard and Policeman to be able to allow me to see him and then I am only allowed 30 minutes.

I wanted to keep all of you up to date on what is happening with daily updates, but that won’t be possible. We have hired attorneys and you know what that means. They don’t want to work in full, real time exposure.

We hired Burns and Levinson as attorneys to work with Shippen Page to bring some justice out of this farce.

Things were horrible in the deep south where I grew up, but I experienced nothing like this.

The attorneys don’t want me to put out all the gory details because they have their work to do and prefer to do it without my writing about what they are doing. After it is done I will have the freedom to write about this, but in the meantime you will hear very little from me. I wanted to share the letters we are receiving from all over, but I won’t even be able to do that. Those letter are going to the attorneys.

It is unbelievably painful not to see your husband of 36 years with whom I lived 24/7. We have never been separated this long ever.

When I saw Robert in the hospital my heart broke. Before the police picked him up he was beautiful and vibrant and strong. Now he is almost shriveling as he sat in a large chair with pillows propping him up looking just miserable asking me to take him home. The mean, viciousness which put him there and is keeping him there is beyond my ability to understand.

Most heartening about all of this is the support from so many people who call to let me know they are there if we need anything. What they don’t have is the magical power to get Robert out of confinement enforced by the police. Call it what they want, the establishment has put an African American man under the police in spite of his not having done anything even close to what would have put him under police control. They have also weaponized my family and friends.

I think constantly of what I used to hear as a child. It was, at the time, related to the holocaust – ‘ if they come for me in the morning and you do nothing and they come for my family in the afternoon and you still do nothing, they will come for you in the evening and there will be no one to help you because there will be no one left.”

We have great lawyers with Lisa Cufier with Burns and Levinson and Shippen Page. The cost is going to be exorbitant. One way or another the goal of destroying us and getting rid of African Americans in the Brattle Street-Harvard Square area will have been achieved. We’ve had lots of problems with people doing all kinds of little harassment over our time living in Harvard Square. We overcame that. We cannot overcome this without your help.

___________________________________________

For those of you who have asked – the attorneys we hired are:

Lisa Cukier is a firm partner and Executive Committee member. She concentrates her practice on all aspects of estate and trust litigation, fiduciary litigation, probate law, child custody, parentage issues and divorce, planning and litigation for blended families, adoption, guardianship and conservatorship, and elder financial exploitation.

Recognized for her expertise and skill, Lisa is a frequent speaker on the topics of trust and estate litigation, estate planning, and family law, including undue influence and financial exploitation of elders. She is also a regular contributor to various publications, including Boston Spirit Magazine, and a columnist for the Weston Town Crier and Wicked Local Wayland.

Lisa serves as private adjudicator, Special Master, Guardian ad Litem, and mediator.

You can look at the last Bettina Network Blog and you will see a paragraph telling you something about the other attorney – Shippen Page of Page and Powell attorneys.

______________________________________________________

Tags: Marceline Donaldson, Racism, Robert Bennett
Posted in Marceline Donaldson, racism, Robert Bennett | Comments Off on Living in Cambridge/Boston While Black! – Part 3

Hospitals and Bigotry – Institutional Racism, alive and well!

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2020

Every place you live, work, visit is imbued with racism and other forms of bigotry. They are entrenched and have not gone away in spite of the many lives which have been sacrificed to change things.

We stayed away from the medical/health industry for years, but were recently forced to get involved.

What I saw as a child in the deep south is being re-enacted in the Greater Boston area. Racism is alive and well and functioning throughout the health care system. The difference? No one comments or analyzes or tries to change things – from what we could tell.

We recently interacted with two hospitals – Beth Israel and Massachusetts General. The experiences were so different I thought I was in different countries. One was horrific and one was unbelievably good.

Our first interaction was with Beth Israel and we barely survived.

We entered Beth Israel through the Emergency Department. That was a horrifying experience. We were directed by the Primary Care Physician to the wrong Beth Israel. We were directed to a suburb of Boston It did not have what was needed to deal with the problem we presented. It was quite some time – with a serious problem – that we stayed in the waiting room and at first had to endure ugly treatment until one of us complained and then everybody started smiling at us. We were then moved by ambulance to the Beth Israel in the downtown Boston area.

When we arrived we were brought to the examining area. A room with a curtain across the front and lots of equipment. That was time spent for a couple days seeing nobody – waiting for something which didn’t happen – watching what was happening outside this examining room.

There were people stacked all around the hallways in hospital beds which apparently brought them to the hospital. Along every wall – every turn of the corridor, people sick enough to have come to the hospital were all over the place – not in private rooms, not in examining rooms, not in any space which could even remotely be called a room, but in the hallways almost stacked one on top of another.

One of us started walking around the hallways and stopped periodically to try to deal with the shock to our system. At one stop in the middle of the hallway a nurse was vicious accusing us of violating the patients confidentiality by having stopped to catch our breath. My face must have shown the shock I was in, but she was just ripping me apart for this violation of her patients confidentiality. How was that done? When I stopped, in the middle of the hallway, she was in the process of talking to a patient asking questions about that patients health and background. I wasn’t aware of any of that I was just looking around at the horribleness of what was in front of me. I wasn’t even aware of the patient – who was in the hallway, on a hospital bed – apparently rolled there from an ambulance and left barely covered with all kinds of people all around.

I stuttered to the nurse that I wasn’t violating any patients confidentiality I was simply walking down the hall trying to cope with the shock I was feeling. The nurse continued to just rip me apart and demanded that I leave the area. Since we were in the examining room just on the other side of the hallway to the patient who was against what wasn’t even a wall, but a desk. Someone was working at the desk, not family nor medical person involved with this, and was clearly closer to the patient whose rights I supposedly violated and was being ignored by the nurse as someone also possibly violating this patients right to privacy. I don’t know where the nurse expected me to go.

That was just the tip of the iceberg. I was also in shock and reacting to the fact that there was a “bull pen” in the middle of this very large room filled with rows of desks and people working, talking, relaxing, joking in this “bull pen”. What I was shocked about was not all of the above, but by the fact that everyone in that bull pen – the professionals in that part of the hospital, were white. Not black, not brown, not colored, not asian, not any of those things – traditional white northern european types working and communicating back and forth about the patient and hospital business. They were, from what we saw, the closest to the top of the pyramid in that hospital.

As I took in that scene I looked around this very large room and blacks – mostly black women were seated around the periphery of this group, working. They looked as though they were the receptionist for the group, but they were not doing receptionists work.

And other minorities? Blacks occasionally came to the floor working, but they always carried a pail, mop, broom, etc. because they came to clean the examining rooms when a patient left and before another patient arrived.

What was striking was that most of those blacks had Caribbean accents and clearly came from another country.

TO BE CONTINUED

_____________________________________-

IT COSTS MONEY TO PRODUCE THIS BLOG. WE HOPE YOU WILL CONTRIBUTE SO WE CAN EXPAND AND CONTINUE THE RESEARCH AND WRITINGS WHICH KEEP YOU KNOWLEDGEABLE ABOUT MANY THINGS THAT WOULD NOT REACH YOU OTHERWISE ALONG WITH THE OPINIONS AND WORK OF THOSE WHO ARE MEMBERS OF BETTINA NETWORK’s LIFESTYLE COMMUNITY.

What follows are some of the ways you can support our work:

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

Project 1 – Estate Sales after the Sale!*

*This contribution is to the Bettina Network Foundation, inc which is a 501(c)3 organization and tax deductible.

Project 2 – #WellsFargoBoycott*

This contribution is to the Bettina Network Foundation, inc. which is a 501(c)3 organization and tax deductible.

Project 3 – Growing Bettina Network’s Blog

into a major media outlet bringing to the public news, recipes, thoughts, reviews of businesses, etc. from the perspective of those who belong to Bettina Network’s Lifestyle Community. This is not a tax deductible contribution. You can send a check to Bettina Network, inc. P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 to support this blog! Please make your check payable to “Bettina Network, inc.”

Project 4 – Boycott the Twenty Dollar ($20) bill

If you prefer your gift go to the Foundation, make your check payable to Bettina Network Foundation, inc. The money we receive for the Foundation will be used to support the many activities in which we engage to try to make this a better world.

_________________________________________________________

Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net

Tags: Beth Israel, Bigotry, hospitals, hospitals and racism, Institutional Racism, Institutionalized Bigotry, Mass General Hospital, Racism
Posted in American Corporate Businesses, Bettina Network Blog, Health, health Industry, racism, sexism | Comments Off on Hospitals and Bigotry – Institutional Racism, alive and well!

Bettina Members Respond to Trump

Saturday, February 1st, 2020

Bettina Member Speaks: Thank you for the blog on Kobe Bryant. No one wants to go there, but Donald Trump has pulled out all the stops to distract from his horribleness and he has been very good at it. It took me quite awhile before I realized the distractions he and his followers apparently created were just that and neither news nor anything else. When it came to the time of Trump’s trial to remove him from office it is clear there would be another distraction to make other distractions look small by comparison to attempt to lessen the impact of his criminality being in the news. Kobe Bryant’s death was just that and its timing was exactly at the time Trump needed such. It did serve as a distraction like nothing else could have.

When John Bolton’s book excerpts started coming out at the same time as Trump’s removal trials were starting, I felt something really big would happen because something outrageous and vile and extremely evil would be needed to attempt to diminish Trump’s negative headlines. After the killing of the guy at the top of Iran happened because Trump gave the order for what looked like the same reasons, it did come to mind that someone could have caused Kobe Bryant’s death and that someone would probably be Donald Trump and his supporters. No one has had the guts to say anything about that, but you folks always come out with truth and this could very well be truth and not a conspiracy theory.

Looking at what is happening around the world, it all seems geared to keeping a white master race over all. So it has been almost from the beginning of this country and so it is now. Those in control have been feeling insecure as the United States moves towards the minorities becoming the majority and the same thing is happening in other parts of the world. The people fighting to maintain the kind of control they have maintained over the generations is becoming more visible and shows their insecurity and the lengths they will go to maintain themselves as white and – as you folks would say – “better than.” Russia, under Putin, is the first to come to mind and aren’t they a very white nation? And on and on it goes.

You had a down time with the blog which worried me. I called to find out what was happening that we weren’t seeing blogs. I was sure before I called you would be in the midst of some kind of harassment, but I was equally sure you would come out of it. Glad to see you back. I am enclosing a contribution to keep you keeping on. Keep fighting back. You are trying to combine a great business with an outlet for those who who use your services to have things to say that are not credibly being said by others. Keep it coming and don’t let up.

You have lots of followers, lots of love and many people pulling for your success. We know what happened with Airbnb and it was ugly. Every time I see their name I get angry, especially when I see the mess they are making of what was a fantastic industry that survived over the generations. I also see Marceline’s family background in journalism coming through. That is a powerful combination and I hope you pull it off. – call me when you need help and I will certainly positively respond. In the meantime, I will be out here spreading the word about all of you and your business.

++++++++++++++++++

Ed. Note: Thank you so much for the contribution and for being there for us as we move ahead growing and changing the business, keeping the blog moving towards our goal of a media outlet which puts out the ideas and more that we pick up in the process of meeting folks who become supporters and our source of news, ideas and more. You are the reason we keep going.

_____________________________________________________

What follows are some of the ways you can support our work:

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

Project 1 – Estate Sales after the Sale!*

*This contribution is to the Bettina Network Foundation, inc which is a 501(c)3 organization and tax deductible.

Project 2 – #WellsFargoBoycott*

This contribution is to the Bettina Network Foundation, inc. which is a 501(c)3 organization and tax deductible.

Project 3 – Growing Bettina Network’s Blog

Project 4 – Boycott the Twenty Dollar ($20) bill

_________________________________________________________

Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net

Tags: #Kobe Bryant, Airbnb, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Bigotry, Donald Trump, Fascism, Putn, Racism, Russia, Sexism
Posted in #DonaldTrump, #KobeBryant, #meToo, Airbnb, Bettina Network Blog, Bettina Network Hedge Schools, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Blog Response, Conspiracy Theories, Donald Trump, racism, sexism | Comments Off on Bettina Members Respond to Trump

Kamala Harris vs Michael Bloomberg

Wednesday, December 4th, 2019

by: Marceline Donaldson

My candidate, as everyone knows, is Kamala Harris. I hope her campaign suspension is temporary and she comes back strong.

We all acknowledge that Donald Trump needs to go soonest. He is like a huge, overgrown pig eating at the trough pushing everyone else away because he wants no one on his level. And considering how foul he is, I don’t think anyone else wants to eat at the same trough, but another pig has joined the primary campaign – Michael Bloomberg.

When we move from incredible greed, arrogance, lies, grossness, to just the normal kind of such ugly foul things politicians do, we can now add Michael Bloomberg, an American Oligarch, as one of the pigs.

I have been listening to what the talking heads are saying about Kamala Harris’ decision to suspend her campaign. None have mentioned the ugliness caused by Bloomberg’s entry and the press release by his new ex-Harris staffer which was one of the most vicious such things I have been. All of that makes Bloomberg look a bit like Trump. No way that press release went out without Bloomberg’s blessing

Give him time. From his initial roll out – which included stealing a member of Kamala Harris’ staff – who didn’t just leave, but left using that exit to give a huge boost to Bloomberg at Harris’ expense, had to have been done with Bloomberg’s knowledge and consent.

Kamala Harris had a perfect roll out of her campaign and her appearances have been stellar. All of the hopes for her candidacy began to fade as time went on and racism and sexism took over to push her out.

One of the major pushers was Bloomberg. To enter a race late, to do so with the obscene amounts of money Bloomberg spent and intends to continue spending makes him look like a version of Donald Trump. He is not, however, feeding at the pig’s trough, he doesn’t have to, he is feeding others at his own personal trough – like the person he ripped off from Kamala Harris campaign to join the staff of his campaign. That had to be upending for Harris and her campaign and who else and what else did he do to get rid of a competitor? A move worthy of his American Oligarch status.

Really vicious – especially when you read the press release that person wrote dissing Kamala Harris and her ability to lead her primary presidential campaign making her look totally incompetent, indecisive and more. All of the great and correct things she did were washed out with that one move by Bloomberg and his new ex-Harris staffer.

Those talks between Bloomberg and his new hire from the Harris campaign must have taken place over a period of time. One doesn’t just jump ship without having been offered something you can’t resist – like more money? more power? more…….

Both Bloomberg and his new hire need an ethics transplant. Politics is about money and clearly in this instance money was offered and succeeded in its goal. Get a good staffer in the middle of the campaign, which you enter late, and hurt the competition in the process. On their way to hell with those moves.

I don’t know where I will go from here, but it certainly will not be supporting the Bloomberg campaign and I hope all of you follow suit.

We have to draw the line and begin insisting our politicians have a better moral and ethical base and these moves early, in the middle and later in their campaigns fit a higher moral and ethical place than is happening now.

What becomes clear to me is Biden was the fair haired boy who was to walk away with the primary. That isn’t happening, so the Oligarch’s who need a president they can control, are now jumping into the campaign. Their panic at possible loss of advantages in this society are growing so they are showing their hands – and their hands are all looking quite dirty.

________________________________________________

What follows are some of the ways you can support our work:

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

Project 1 – Estate Sales after the Sale!*

*This contribution is to the Bettina Network Foundation, inc which is a 501(c)3 organization and tax deductible.

Project 2 – #WellsFargoBoycott*

This contribution is to the Bettina Network Foundation, inc. which is a 501(c)3 organization and tax deductible.

Project 3 – Growing Bettina Network’s Blog

into a major media outlet bringing to the public news, recipes, thoughts, reviews of businesses, etc. from the perspective of those who belong to Bettina Network’s Lifestyle Community.

Project 4 – Boycott the Twenty Dollar ($20) bill

You can send a check to Bettina Network, inc. P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 to support this blog! Please make your check out to “Bettina Network, inc.” since the blog income is not the foundation income.

If you prefer your gift go to the Foundation, make your check payable to Bettina Network Foundation, inc. The money we receive for the Foundation currently is going to support the Wells Fargo Boycott.

_________________________________________________________

Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net

Tags: #meToo, American Oligarchs, Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Donald Trump, DonaldTrump, Kamala Harris, Michael Bloomberg, Pigs Feeding at the Trough, Racism
Posted in #DonaldTrump, #meToo, American Corporate Businesses, American Oligarchs, Bettina Network Blog, Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Class in America and the World, Donald Trump, Kamala Harris, Pigs Feeding at the Trough, politics, racism, sexism | Comments Off on Kamala Harris vs Michael Bloomberg

Health Industry the new Oil Industry Scam

Friday, November 22nd, 2019

We have just been through the scariest time of life. An unexpected health emergency requiring hospitalization.

We have stayed away from medicine, hospitals, doctors for our adult lives and now clearly we know, without a doubt, that was a good/great decision.

What we encountered was a money pit which makes the oil barons of old look like good samaritans on the edge of poverty. The kind of money and resources being drawn from the society by the health industry with little to no results is endless and will become even more so. So, until something changes, we are not for “Medicare for All”. That will give full and total control over the universe to those in the health industry, but only to those at the top. The rest will be scrambling, working unbelievably hard for almost nothing and the maintenance of the racist, sexist system in which we were raised has a stronghold for generations. Civil Rights activists in other areas are simply a distraction giving the real continuation of White Supremacy a chance to develop to its full strength such as has never happened before.

The first thing we encountered was the entitlement and arrogance of those on the front line as you go in the door. You know clearly you are in a territory where – without some kind of uniform or connection to the health industry, you are second, third and fourth class citizens.

The second thing we encountered was the incredible racism – based on skin color – that is totally expected and has created a ghetto like none we have ever seen.

After having been escorted to an examining room, which was a small space with equipment and a sort of hospital bed with a curtain separating you from the outside you have a few hours to look around before you come to anyone’s attention. Once inside this room, where you get to wait for hours for nothing, and once settled (sort of) you look around and see you are one of the privileged. Outside this small space, lining the hallways and every available wall in the place are beds with patients waiting for treatment or for one of the rooms which you now inhabit. Every available space has a gurney with an ill patient in the hospital for emergency treatment. All just lying there out in the open, seemingly ignored with their pocket books or bags or whatever they came in with on top of them on the gurney. It is gruesome.

As you look past all of humanity waiting for emergency attention because of something which sent them immediately to the hospital you see what makes your stomach wrench. Out in the middle of the room – like the space once inhabited by stock brokers with their machines to call and follow their customers stocks – were the “medical professionals”. In that central space was a sea of white. We were there for several changes of shifts and at no time did the skin color in that middle group change.

Every once in a while a wheel chair passed with a patient being wheeled someplace. There the color changed because the person pushing the wheel chair’s skin color was very dark. Other times the sea of white was lifted as a gurney with a patient was pushed past the curtain and you saw the person doing the pushing of the gurney’s skin color was very dark.

When those small spaces became vacant, which held a patient, who was now moved on someplace else, then you also saw the skin color change in the room because the person now in that, space cleaning it, had a very dark skin color.

And so it goes – the institutionalization of bigotry in all of our corporations is alive and well and moving into the next generation without comment. We have searched the news for several years and found no push back against this extreme bigotry.

Ed. Note. This is the beginning of a series of articles on what we are finding in the health industry. We feel as though we are lancing a boil which has been throbbing with pus for decades hiding out under the pretext of saving lives.__

________________________________________

What follows are some of the ways you can support our work:

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

Project 1 – Estate Sales after the Sale!*

*This contribution is to the Bettina Network Foundation, inc which is a 501(c)3 organization and tax deductible.

Project 2 – #WellsFargoBoycott*

This contribution is to the Bettina Network Foundation, inc. which is a 501(c)3 organization and tax deductible.

Project 3 – Growing Bettina Network’s Blog

into a major media outlet bringing to the public news, recipes, thoughts, reviews of businesses, etc. from the perspective of those who belong to Bettina Network’s Lifestyle Community.

Project 4 – Boycott the Twenty Dollar ($20) bill

_________________________________________________________

Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net

Tags: Bigotry, health, health industry, health scam, hospitals, Racism, Sexism
Posted in #meToo, American Oligarchs, bigoty, Emergency Treatment, Health, health Industry, Hospitals, racism, sexism | Comments Off on Health Industry the new Oil Industry Scam

Zillow, Realtors, Racism

Monday, May 6th, 2019

We have known for generations that the segregated neighborhoods that refuse to show any signs of integration, which cause segregated schools, which are enabled by redlining (although today there are more sophisticated names than redlining), are caused by the collusion between realtors, those serving the professional real estate community, banks and other financial institutions.

We am having an experience of what that is like in 2019 because one of our own is selling her house and is mind blown by what she is experiencing.

Her neighborhood is one of the “upper class” neighborhoods in Cambridge, MA. It is about 99% white and for the last 37 years that she has lived and owned a house in that neighborhood there has been no change. One black man lives in the neighborhood and has lived there longer by a fluke of government contracts. Architects built an apartment building using HUD money. Those HUD contracts were to bring “affordable housing” into the neighborhood and to help insure people with very little could afford to buy condominiums and live and raise their families in a really fantastic place.

Unfortunately, the HUD contracts were only for one generation of buyers, so once the condominiums were sold if the people who bought them were foreclosed on or met some other kind of tragedy which mandated they move then the builders were free to take back the condo’s and resell them at market rate to whoever, no matter their wealth or financial status.

Since the terms to buy were way beyond what most in the economic/financial situation to which those contracts were pointed and the terms under which the condo’s were being sold were generous to encourage such buyers – people bought who could not afford the condo’s they were put into and in short order the buildings units were being foreclosed or people were forced out by turning over their deeds or whatever arrangements they made to get out of what they bought as a dream, which was actually a nightmare. There were no safety measures in place under that HUD contract which could have helped many retain their homes.

One lone African American man remains in the neighborhood because somehow he managed to keep his condo and is still there today. Otherwise, it is like looking for hens teeth to find any other African American homeowners, unless they are temporary residents under the wing of Harvard University.

So now the stage is set. Along comes one of our leaders – an African American woman who buys into the neighborhood. That was horrific on its own. But that settled down and she lived a mostly peaceful, rewarding life making many friends of her neighbors.

She decides to sell. Looks up Zillow and find her house has a Zillow Estimate of about $4.9 million. And then the fun starts.

That Estimate stays for several months after the house is listed on Zillow and is close to professional appraisals of the house. Until, apparently, Zillow discovers the African American residents and the house tumbles in value on Zillow by almost $1 million dollars within two to three days.

How did Zillow do that? And what are they counting on to erase their attack? The way they set up their Estimate. In one to two months that history will be history and things will look normal – well, sort of.

To reach that Estimate, Zillow compared her property not to other houses in the Brattle Street, Gold Crown Historical District, but made a comparison of her house to homes in Brighton/Alston, Central Square, etc. and the size of the homes to which her home was compared were 1,000 to 2,000 square feet smaller. A comparative value, found from such circumstances would be much lower than one if the house was compared to those actually similar.

When Zillow was called and emailed to say – why? They did not respond.

What happened to the house that after a few months with the house on Zillow at $4.9 million approximately, the Zillow Estimate drops to $3.5 million – which is actually substantially below the value of the house in todays market and that drop happened within about 24 to 48 hours..

After more investigation, we discovered the answer. It has to do with race.

What is that called? Why are they allowed to do such? What are the alternatives?

That made us look around to ask – Zillow can’t be alone with these practices and are there official places which make this possible and Zillow comfortable in what it is doing?

Let’s investigate!!!!! Stay tuned for more. We have started some investigative work to look closer and deeper.

____________________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

[give_form id=”3763″]

Project 1 – Estate Sales after the Sale

Project 2 – #WellsFargoBoycott

Project 3 – Growing Bettina Network’s Blog

into a major media outlet bringing to the public news, recipes, thoughts, reviews of businesses, etc. from the perspective of those who belong to Bettina Network’s Lifestyle Community.

_________________________________________________________

Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

TO LEARN MORE try www.bettina-network.co

Tags: Bettina Network, Bettina Network Blog, Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network Hedge Schools, Bettina Network Lifestyle Community, Property Value, Racism, Real Estate
Posted in Bettina Network, Bettina Network Blog, Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network Hedge Schools, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, House Sales, Property Value, racism | Comments Off on Zillow, Realtors, Racism

Bettina Oracle Speaks – New World Order

Friday, May 3rd, 2019

So much happening in your world and there are so few people – beyond those doing the planning – who understand and get what is probably going to be their future.

George H. W. Bush – Donald Trump – New World Order – blocked by the Clintons.

Have you noticed the continuum between H. W. and DJT? What you can’t have missed was H. W. diminishing Thurgood Marshall by replacing him with Clarence Thomas. What you can’t miss today is William Barr – Attorney General during the Bush Administration and now Attorney General during the Trump Administration. And please don’t be so obtuse that you can’t connect the dots with Barr committing impeachable offenses during both times he supposedly served the country, but actually served as one of those on the front line for the New World Order.

Who will lead the world in the coming years – Government, the way you have lived under, preferably elected governments; or the Billionaire Class which is strongly moving to take over so they can accumulate more, more and more without government muddying up the waters. That is the war going on in the earth sphere. So primitive and with such incredible ugliness because you are still bound by greed, horrible ethics, lack of integrity in those you have chosen to lead and on down the list into more and more muck.

Every once in a while someone comes along sacrificing themselves for the good of the whole, but that never works. At most it buys you time and space to get your act together to move ahead into a more beautiful space. But the uglies always have a plan and people to carry out the plan to make sure liars, cheaters, thieves, those who have no integrity and mostly greed take over and turn the earth sphere into something ugly.

Once upon a time earth was a beautiful place. But those who were in that beautiful place gradually turned it into the filth it is fast becoming where disease is rampant following the greed which has created the many diseases now plaguing the earth.

Sexual deviants have taken over bringing in sex trafficking, rape, and all the other horribleness perpetrated on others. You can see the filth in their souls as they try to blackmail those who might break out and they always use some kind of sex threat in the process. Sex is beautiful and is the way you survive on earth. How else do you help in the creation of others being born into what should be an ideal existence? Those full of greed, sin, filth and more have taken the core of existence to blackmail and try to turn others – and they have been majorly successful because we have not rescued sex from the ugly into the beauty that it is and was created to be.

Look at how you treat serious sexual deviants: You just elected one president of the United States. Trump, who uses sex as a tool to gain power and control over and to feed his sick male ego, has been majorly rewarded for his braggadocio and the things he has done to attempt to debase women. There are so many more, but I won’t dwell on that negative you see it on a daily basis.

You have taken the basics of life and allowed those who will destroy even life or at the very least the quality of life to gain money, power and control to use those basics of life to gain material wealth leaving many destitute, in pain, sick, homeless – and many on earth have done this over even too many generations. Instead of thinking on and creating real wealth and beauty and making sure you have no homeless – instead you cordon off what you can claim as wealth, put it into the hands of a few like those who are so ugly and so full of sin.

Food is something which you decided to cordon off and manipulate to gain material wealth. So are the other necessities of life. And now instead of turning around to make right what you have destroyed you will do even more ill by trying to go off into space to do the same thing elsewhere, leaving the poor, the destitute, the hungry, those without adequate clothes and shelter in their state because you need them to be so.. How else can you claim and feel so victorious and better than if others don’t pay such a price to your egos?

As life move along and you continue in this path things will all of a sudden become excruciatingly painful for you and lets not even begin to talk about your death.

At this point the business interests are winning and that is tragic. All forms of bigotry have made that possible and irreversible. The different forms of bigotry invented on earth are now coming close and rubbing elbows with each other. The nazi’s, the racists, the sexists, the homophobes, those who hate muslims, and all the rest are living cheek by jowl and shoring up their “leaders”. They think they are about to gain control. In fact, they are about to reap their Armageddon.

And those who do nothing will stay in a sphere of nothingness. That is a state which makes solitary confinement in your jails look like a party.

You all need to wake up and understand what is happening around you.

Make the parallels between H. W. and DJT and see the progress that has been made. Thurgood Marshall to Clarence Thomas to Kavanaugh. Plot that path.

Take a look at the Clinton’s. Why is Hillary such a threat? Try answering that question and you will unlock the evil in Donald Trump.

What are the billionaires doing with their money? Even those who seem to be “do gooders”. You will be shocked – maybe into sanity and an understanding of the direction in which your world is going.

Who is really running your government? In the United States it certainly is neither Trump nor Putin.

Are the great empires of the past really beginning to come back and reassert themselves?

Is Trump crazy? weak? or is something else going on?

How come the people in power today are those who were mentored by the evil of yesterday – Trump and the combination of Roy Cohn and Joseph McCarthy. And didn’t Bobbi Kennedy come out of that Communist threat McCarthy brought into the United States. Wasn’t he a staff attorney to the McCarthy hearings and more? Look at those in power and see who mentored them! It is an amazing lesson in why the world is in the state it is in today. And, don’t stop at the United States. Do the same thing around the world and you will have a greater understanding of where we are – where we are going – and why.

Think about what it means to have a president who was mentored in his young adult years by serious alcoholics who were almost always drunk. McCarthy was a known and dangerous alcoholic, but he remained in office and was allowed to do a substantial amount of harm to tens of thousands of people. So was Roy Cohn. And now their protege has reached a level of power they couldn’t dream to reach. In spite of that history, today we try to look for reasons for Trump’s actions – he is weak; he is crazy; he is, etc. etc. We look every place to try to explain Trump except where we will find answers. He was raised within a mafia family of influence which goes back through his father to his grandfather and who knows what beyond that. He was mentored by drunks and those with no integrity and horrible ethics. How was he supposed to turn out. AND, we voted him into the highest office in the United States even knowing his family history, his adult years, the evil he did through his life. Is that a Trump problem or is there something wrong with the rest of us? The leader you get is the one who most reflects you.

Think and watch and wait.

_______________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

[give_form id=”3763″]

Project 1 – Estate Sales after the Sale

Project 2 – #WellsFargoBoycott

Project 3 – Growing Bettina Network’s Blog into a major media outlet bringing to the public news, recipes, thoughts, reviews of businesses, etc. from the perspective of those who belong to Bettina Network’s Lifestyle Community.

_________________________________________________________

Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

TO LEARN MORE try www.bettina-network.co

Tags: #meToo, Bettina Network Blog, Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network Hedge Schools, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Bill Clinton, Bret Kavanaugh, Donald Trump, Feminism, Hedge Schools, Hillary Clinton, Homelessness, Joseph McCarthy, Mafia Speak, Nazism, politics, Racism, Sexism, Vladimir Putin, William Barr
Posted in #meToo, Bettina Network Blog, Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network Hedge Schools, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Bill Clinton, Brett Kavanaugh, Donald Trump, Feminism, Hedge Schools, Hillary Clinton, Homelessness, Joseph McCarthy, Mafia Speak, Nazism, politics, racism, sexism, Vladimir Putin, William Barr | Comments Off on Bettina Oracle Speaks – New World Order

Posts Tagged ‘Racism’

The Arrogance 0f Bigotry

Who the X%#&XD^ do you think you are!!!!

What a Trial the Donaldson/Bennett’s have endured. Did we tell you about the attack on them by Massachusetts Dept. of Revenue? Which is still going on?

What does Emmett Till, Uvalde, Buffalo all the way to the beginning of the massacres of children have in common?

Chris Rock’s Sexism on High Display – it is time to end this kind of comedic bigotry.

………An Elegant Historical House for Sale!

RUSSIA – UKRAINE – USA

A History of Segregated Housing – sort of!

Jessye Norman – A Christmas Story!

Generational Wealth, Minorities and Criminal Conspiracies!

To Wear a Mask or go Maskless says what about you?

Girl, that could be you!

A Publicly Acknowledged Bigotry acceptable for Supreme Court Justices.

Living in Cambridge/Boston While Black! – Part 3

Hospitals and Bigotry – Institutional Racism, alive and well!

Bettina Members Respond to Trump

Kamala Harris vs Michael Bloomberg

Health Industry the new Oil Industry Scam

Zillow, Realtors, Racism

Bettina Oracle Speaks – New World Order

Blog Search

We are the Bettina Network

Categories

Archives

Bettina’s Lifestyle Community