Member 1
Rev. Dr. Robert Bennett is the second African American – that we know of – who has had a negative interaction with the police. He is the second African American who had done nothing even remotely criminal and yet the police came to his house twice and forced him out and incarcerated him. The second time for five weeks.
The first we heard about was “Skip” Gates.. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar, journalist, cultural critic, and institution builder.
The attempt was to arrest Skip Gates. There are now pictures in the papers which show him on his porch in handcuffs with the police standing around.
Even if they could not be held, their images could be tarnished and it gives jokes among white supremacists.
And, by the way, how come the police in Cambridge, Ma. are becoming whiter along with Blacks being “arrested” for no reason.
Why was Gates “arrested”? For breaking and entering into his own home.
And Bennett? To be “sectioned” at the local and apparently ‘going along with the program’ hospital. He who had never had a hint of any kind of mental problems was picked up by the police, forced into the hospital to be psychiatrically examined because he was considered a threat to the public. Someone who might do harm to those around and about.
Both are living in areas of Cambridge which are known to be “for white patrons only.” It is an area which traditionally was and is “red lined.”
Rev. Dr. Bennett lives in that area and he is not Harvard connected. Well, except for a Harvard doctorate, however, he was supposed to live in faculty housing so the neighborhood would be confident he and his family would be moving along once he retired. Disappointed and having to come to grips with the reality of where they lived, they decided to sell their house, but then took the house off the market. Shortly thereafter white anger was unleashed and this is the result?
Member 2
What is incredibly disturbing in what I have read about all the things happening to Rev. Bennett is the fact that he had a probate attorney draw up a Health Care Proxy – which we are all advised to do – and that was drawn up months before he went into the hospital for surgery. Apparently, a judge, at the request of an attorney- who really seems ‘sketchy’ – invalidated that Health Care Proxy and put in its place a Health Care Proxy that Rev. Bennett did not want, had not signed, with a proxy he did not want and that Health Care Proxy was the reason Rev. Bennett had this new Health Care Proxy drawn up. Rev. Bennett was forced by the judge’s decision to have that proxy. Rev. Bennett apparently tried to correct that awfulness by having a probate attorney draw up a Health Care Proxy which invalidated the one he knew nothing about and the Court validated that proxy – the one not signed by Rev. Bennett, one he did not know existed and invalidated the one he clearly wanted. It is mind blowing! Are our attorneys and court that crooked? That said clearly to me this is all about setting up the situation to rip off Rev. Bennett’s assets and not about anything else.
Attorneys who have no ethics about what they are doing and who possibly have hidden interests in so doing can change our wishes to what benefits those attorneys and their clients. What kind of court system do we have? The way it is developing is that of an extreme dictatorship that wants to present a good “front” with no problems letting such things happen. Sadly, some folks have discovered the pots of gold at the end of United States citizens lives and have figured out how to put those citizens into extreme pain, make the end of their lives a torture and wind up with everything they managed to save so that end of life would be decently lived.
People who do not have endless money to be able to hire attorneys to go to court for as long as is necessary to correct this horrible wrong are at the mercy of tainted courts and -should we say ‘crooked’ attorneys? Even then, I suspect it would be a waste of money because the first attorney and judge did ugly things. Isn’t that illegal? Shouldn’t that be illegal? And what recourse do you have except continuing in court – bleeding money to attorneys – and even then – nothing.
Keep publishing. We need to know these things!
This entire thing has upset me and my family unbelievably because we have a probate attorney we hired to make sure we were all covered with what we need and want for those times we might not be able to or not allowed to control our own lives and this says to me that was just a waste of time and money. Money well into four figures. The court and an attorney can invalidate all of it in seconds.
Whatever happened to the United States and its honest court system? Was there ever such a thing and we only knew the image and not the reality?
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Member 3
Thank you for all of your postings about what is happening to Rev. Dr. Bennett. I was a student of his years ago and it grieves me to see what he is going through today.
He is a lovely person. Very quiet, self-effacing and extremely shy!
I was a student at EDS at the time and took his Hebrew Bible Class and a class on Racism he co-taught with his wife, Marceline Donaldson. They also taught that class at Trinity Episcopal Church in Boston, but it was more complete at Episcopal Divinity School.
At the time, when they invited the class to tea at their home, my thoughts were – one day this community is going to attempt to destroy them. They were the only African Americans owning a home in that neighborhood and I knew a few of their neighbors who were not happy with “those folks” living close to them. Besides their comments to me, they smiled nicely when they encountered the couple. I know that because I was with them when one of the neighbors greeted us. They didn’t know Dr. Bennett and his wife so I introduced them. I was so shocked at their response – smiling, lovely, welcoming and just two days prior they were bitter in their comments to me about “such people” living so close.
If there is any way I can help, please let me know. They can’t be left alone in this fight because it is one that affects us all.
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Member 4
My husband and I have been calling Robert and Marceline who we have known for years. At first, I could not believe what was happening to them. After some thought, I realized the same could happen to any of us. My work has made me aware of the result beginnings of these Guardianship Corporations which fly under the banner of “helping the elderly who are alone”. We had one problem in our church with a member who was fairly well off and all of a sudden was embroiled with one of these Guardianship groups trying to take them over. It became clear that they were trying to take over and drain off their assets.
Given what we went through with that family, please know that we are here to do whatever we can for Marceline and Robert. They have always been a very beautiful couple. Their sense of humor with each other is great! It is a shame that this is what they are experiencing at this time of life.
We are praying for them – however, we also want to know what else we can do. My husband thought about organizing a group in the church to work with them and keep that group going after their problems are solved to work with others in the same place.
Stay in touch and please keep those write-ups coming so we all can keep up with what is happening with Dr. Bennett and his wife. When I receive mine I send it around to as many people as I can think of who would be interested and the feed back has been dynamite.
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Member 5
Reading about all of this it is startling and very disturbing.
We have pictures of Skip Gates – from Harvard University – in handcuffs on his own porch – being arrested by the police for breaking and entering his own home?
And now we have Robert Bennett picked up in a huge drama, which we watched and were appalled at the Cambridge Police for allowing themselves to be so used. Or – were they a part of this whole drama before it happened and were attempting what was attempted with Skip Gates?
Do you realize how the Cambridge and Boston police are becoming “whiter”? Now that we are decades away from what caused these areas to attempt to diversify their police force, that has gradually slipped away and we see the whitening now happening. Will we now see more of this happening in Cambridge? Clearly, African Americans can be picked up in Cambridge, by the police, even though there is not even a hint of criminality involved and they can be imprisoned for indefinite periods of time for no reason. And what happens after that? Any and All Americans can be picked up in Cambridge, by the police, even though there is not even a hint of criminality involved and they can be imprisoned for indefinite periods of time for no reason. Do you doubt that? After this, I don’t!
I guess we consider ourselves so influential that we can make those same African Americans pay for their own imprisonment. Isn’t that what happened with Robert Bennett? I would love to know who paid for all of this? Hopefully, not my tax money and hopefully not the Bennett’s insurance money. Either way I am getting ready to protest all of this somehow.
If you are all sleeping and not paying attention to this and not intervening to make these things stop you could be next. I was raised with the saying – Nazi Germany is what happened because good people did nothing. You are seeing the same thing happening in these United States and what are you doing about it?
#BlackLivesMatter
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Electoral College Trumps Democracy!
Friday, September 4th, 2020With the upcoming vote being what is dominating the news, the one thing mostly absent from the discussion is the Electoral College.
We have suffered through Donald Trump as president because of the racism and sexism structured into this country and its Constitution by our Founding Father. They were unable to envision a country in which all people were created equal. The fear that ‘others’ – other races, immigrants, women, slaves might be able to rise up and exercise control over those who they felt were the real Americans and so the Electoral College came into being as the structured racism and structured sexism put into the Constitution to prevent such an occurrence.
In 2016 that Electoral College gave us Donald Trump as president. A man so morally deficient in what we consider our “American values” that our country as we know it has almost ceased to exist.
We have immigrants being destroyed at the southern border. We have young children of immigrants by the thousands who can’t be found, while we have the suspicious swell in Sex Traffickers having a huge supply of young children they are abusing.
We have as president a man who had “Mein Kampf:” next to his bed for years on his night stand and who has just automatically put in place Hitler/Nazi type institutions into this American country. The latest being his Attorney General trying to eliminate the International Court of Justice.
The 2016 election clearly said – from a democratic place; from the democracy we wish we had structured instead of the republic under which we live – that Hillary Clinton was elected president and was pushed aside in favor of a white male northern European descendant with a ‘mafia’ type family history. We have lived with the fact that over 3 million Americans voted Hillary Clinton into office as president of these United States and instead we cringed as we watched Donald Trump step over her and take the position instead. That by itself should have been the event to horrify every American and move all of us into action when one candidate has over 3 million votes more than the other and the other becomes president? How have we justified our near silence about that over these past four years? How have we justified not having made that our number one priority? How have we justified making excuses for the continuation of the Electoral College while blaming other things which did not have the strength nor the import to be responsible for such a happening?
If we were not happy with that structural racism we would have moved to change it over these last four years. We have not. Instead, we have attributed that loss not to what our Founding Father institutionalized and what we have lived under all of these hundreds of years, but to James Comey writing a memo which is not the kind of thing which would dictate the winner of the 2016 presidential election.
It is time for us to “man up” and admit our failings and move swiftly and together to change that. We have “Black Lives Matter”, but do they really when we cannot take out of our institutional, political structure what has been put there to make sure whoever is running for election as president of this country has a very large barrier to cross if they are not northern European and if their class is not the preferred class of our Founding Fathers.
It is time for us to be – structurally – a democracy – and not hide behind the fear of “the others” taking over and running this country. It is time for us to be an actual democracy where white northern European upper classes in these United States are one of – are equal to – are working alongside those who are not white, not upper class, not the kind of person who originally wrote the Constitution and instituted slavery and the extreme oppression of women with immigrants being treated as they are today.
Why is equality such a scary thing to all of us. Why do we need the accident of our birth to determine our level of power, wealth and control in these United States. What is it we are afraid of? That blacks will rule the country? That Jews will be the financial arbiters? That we will all slide ‘down’ into a culture taken from American Indians? Need I go on?
Get your guts together America and act out what we claim to believe – that we are all created equal and we all have much to give to the betterment of these United States and we need to make sure everyone is allowed to give of their talents and that each one’s vote will be equal to the vote of their neighbor, friend, co-worker, colleague, ……….
The first priority in voting is to eliminate the Electoral College. We cannot afford anymore Donald Trump’s – and, we might add, eliminate many of those presidents who would not have been elected but for the Electoral College – all of whom added their bit to the destruction of this country through their fear of losing the advantage of their skin color, their culture and their financial status which they did not earn, but were given by their birth.
Your birth gives you many things – it does not give you “better than” against other human beings.
ELIMINATE THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE TODAY!
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