Voters illing in Illinois after 3 Governors indicted

The ill state of Illinois Affairs
By; Ms. Beauty Turner

We living in an ill State of affairs, when we as a people can no longer trust the ones that we have elected ,to take care of our State.
By now the people of Illinois should be tried and sick too their stomachs, from the ill state of minds of Illinois politics, once again another politicians , another Governor is being marched down to the slammer in handcuffs,
Accused of trying to sell the vacant, United States, Senate seat that President Elect Barack Obama once occupied , briefly . like death comes in threes so does indictments in Illinois....
I could imagine Governor Rod Blagojevich, standing in front of the Congress behind a pulpit during a news conference with his small brown hammer auctioning off the senate seat , with each strike against the desk, his thick brownish, black, wavy, curly, hair swings, like the legs on Elvis Presley dancing to a beat.
I could hear his southern voice, crackling like fried chicken, swimming in hot grease, anticipating the sound of crispy green thousand's of dollars bills, being laid in his lap, just that thought along makes his voice echo out these words.
“I have here in my power a slightly used Senate seat, barely been sit in, it comes with power, prestiges, comfort and it's a soft cushion type of a job.
Do I hear $50,000.? Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. allegedly was the first one to bite.
(Imaginary only)
He waves a small sign with number 5 on it.”I got five on it,” Congressman Jesse Jr. (fictionally) said in his baby voice.
I could imagine Governor Rod in the imaginary mold of thinking, and losing all touch with reality, he under the impression thinking seriously that he's is hearing an applaud, “No applaud please, no pat on the back, show no appreciation, just throw money please! “Do I hear a half of million dollars?
Once again Jesse allegedly waves his number 5 sign.
The sound that the Governor hears in reality is the clink from the gray, steel, bars and the silver handcuffs that wraps around his wrist like a bracelet.
When will we the American people say no more,.we can no longer watch the cancerous, festering, swollen, red sores of ignorants, an injustice run over and corrupt what we deserve meaning a better way of life for the people.
We need an oversight committee,a committee of American people to monitor our politicians, plus they the politicians needs to be tested for drugs, at least once every two months.
Two other Governors lied to the people and told them that they would give us hope, and that they wanted reform, and each one of them walked away with the people cookie jars.
This Governor who was young, with energy, with a thick head of curly hair or a to pay,a southern preacher voice,preaching hope, to the people as well, but if the accusations are true that the Federal agents have against him- all I can say is-
“HOPE THEIR GOES ANOTHER ONE!'.

Let the harvest begin by Ms. Beauty Turner

Ms. Beauty Turner
Let the Harvest begin
The tears of our ancestors rain down for three days.
It is time for a harvest
The rich, coal , black, soil that grows our livelihood
Is being set up to be tiled.
We standing in the twenty first century ,where our eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the lord, bless and ordain, a black man as president of the United State, by the name of Barack Obama.
Where his ideology lays not too far fetched from which we already had.
An ideology that only speaks to the middle class .an exclude the poor.
The golden kernel of corn that I felt being placed in my hand in a dream by my ancestors
lay ready to be placed in my people brains.
The seed is being planted today.
Our homes are being torn down one by one, and block, by block, and our schools are being privatizes and charter out, prominent black African American leaders names like Ida B, Wells,Robert Taylor, and others are being ripped from the pages of our history books, as well as from the faces that once was called public housings.
Jobs is only a sweet memory that once dwell on the lips of many poor people that came up north from the south. Our Black ,brown and poor white babies are being murder and shot down right here on our city street, right here on America. soil.
It is time for a harvest, but nothing will happen to the blessed ,coal, black ,soil,
without us as a people putting in the work!
Let the Harvest begin!
Poor people from around the globe yelled out in happiness when Barack was elected.
Thinking that a change was going to come.
People that lived in the bellies and in the bowels of the ghetto's grabbed a hold to the tail ends of the whirl winds that stir the winds of change in order to create a President of color.
Not one time did I hear any candidate say anything about the poor.
The poor must adopt the ideology of People Organizing Over Resource, in order to be seen on the radar of change.

Copper pennies are stilled being distributed through out the poor, but not enough to lift them up off the grounds of poverty and let them spring forth into the birth of a new day!With Every obstacle have been placed in your walkway,We as a people needs to take wings in flight and lay our agenda's at the feet of this new administration that beginning to seen like an old carbon copy of the old mindset that once dwell in city offices.
A mindset that never worked and never will concerning those that are swollen and pregnant with poverty.
Too many times I have heard people who makes policies say that a person that is poor needs to pull themselves up out of quicksand by their booth straps.
An impossible tack by any man measure.
Especially when they can't afford any booths or the straps.
These mindset are that straps that bind the poor from ever obtaining anything.
That just like a poor, black child, dressed in rags, peering through a candy shop window, mouth watering with only cotton a piece of lint in his pocket, all while watching a rich child pile his pocket up with sweets, the rich child walks out where the poor child is standing and ask him
why aren't you eating?

A Ngoma with the Ancestors By: Ms. Beauty Turner

A Ngoma with the ancestors ( Message to President Elect Barack Obama)
By Beauty TurnerAward-winning journalist, advocate, researcher and former resident of the Robert Taylor Homes

It was a golden bronze and sunny 70-degree-day-in-mid-Autumn in November, right here in Chicago, a day God had ordained and blessed. Normally, the climate in Chicago at this time of year is frigid enough to make polar bears wear fur coats and retreat inside to hibernate from the cold. But something about this day, Nov. 4, seemed strange, historic and spiritual. A black man with a funny name, Barack Obama, had endured a whirlwind run for president of the United States of America against the political elite—and won.
He did it with a slogan that echoed across the heavens: "Yes, we can!" Now it's: "Yes, we did!!!"
An estimated 250,000 people—black, Asian, Latino and whites alike—covered the emerald green grounds of Grant Park in the heart of downtown Chicago. Most just wanted to be a part of history, others just wanted to get a glimpse of the first African-American president and first family that just happened to be from Hyde Park right here in Chicago.
President-elect Obama has family, like his father, from Kenya in Africa as well as family, like his mother, who just happened to be white from Kansas.
African drums and dance delivered the messages of our ancestors. A Ngoma took place in the streets of Kenya. Chants of Obama poured like sweet wine from the lips of the men, women and children who wore colorful ancestral tribal garments as "Yes we can" leaped from their lips with a joyful tone of the colorful rainbow of American people all over the globe.
The ancestors shed tears in the form of rain three days later as told to me in a dream more than a year ago.
I dreamed that I was back in the days of slavery. I was in an old red barn at night. In the barn with me were prominent African-American leaders such as Frederick Douglass, Ida B Wells, Sojourner Truth, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey and others.
They told me that it was time. The red blood of our ancestors was crying out from the ground for justice. They talked about the rites of passage in slavery days. They showed me naked brown bodies of our young men and women and children drowning in an angry green sea. They showed me black men hanging with a loop from a weeping willow tree. They showed me bloody bruises on an old white-haired Negro man, and we were crying.
In his hand, Douglass held a long grain of wheat. Wells held a sack of cotton, and they handed me a kernel of corn. We danced around flickering candles to the beat of a drum—a Ngoma with the ancestors.
They told me to look out of the barn door, which I did. A white mist filled the air with a subtle fog, and a clear window appeared. I saw the 21st century where a young black man with golden skin, the color of a setting sun, standing on a stage amidst the people with his arms outstretched. A loud joyful cheer echoed from the mouths of the people. His name was Barack Obama. He had become president of the United States—black man!
In the dream, the ancestors told me that after he is elected it will rain for three days. They told me to put my hand in the rainwater and feel the tears of our ancestors, for this is the very place that once owned slaves. Now a child who is the descendant of the people who were enslaved will occupy the White House.
The ancestors told me to keep him focused concerning the plight of the poor and to tell him "Forget not from which you came!"
Mr. Obama, all eyes of the nations are focused on you; so stay focused on the mission that was ordained by God, which he has laid upon you to do!
Be a president not just for some of the people but for all.

A people in perils By Ms. Beauty Turner

Ms. Beauty Turner
“A People in Perils”

As we stand in the mist of a new millennium, about to embark upon another long and stressful journey against injustice; concerning housing,police terrorism, racial profiling, and ex-offenders, homeless veterans, and our babies being rocked and cradle by the state.
I can no longer pretend that I'm blind walking in the dark with a cane or a seeing eye dog, I see what is laid out before our eyes.
I see poor people as well as middle income people being forced out of this city in record numbers, and not because of a viability study, nor a Congress mandated law, but only out of a need for greed.
I see the road that is paved out before us, a marvel, hard and rocky road, we have many pot holes, and many cracks in this system; on this city sidewalk street of life; that needs to be filled and addressed, filled with an understanding that the poor will be among you always.
The poor will no longer hide in the cracks of society or no longer bow down and be the foot stools for the rich, but will stand tall against injustice and shall and will be counted.
I'm no longer Sleeping Beauty, I'm wide awoke and is trying to enlighten my people!
I see big company merging and forcing small companies out of business, I see the state taking paternity of our children, and I see young men and young women being locked up behind cold, gray steel bars, being used as commodities for cheap labor.
I see many of my people being issues felonies like Halloween candy on trick or treat night; a scary thought.
Many of them will not be able to vote in the up incoming historic election.
I can see in the water and spot dry land.
A familiar road, one that we as a people have travel down many times before , a road of injustice that have stolen many lives, and many people lively hoods; where every day is a constant battle just to get up!
A long dusty, whinnying road of trails and tribulations.
We as a people have came to a cross road, and have hit a fork in the road, that leaves us asking the questions, that we need to ask ourselves.
Where do we go from here?
Do we turn back the hands of time? And go back into the days of slavery, or segregation, or march forward into a brand new day into Freedom and jubilation, or stay put, or digress into transgressions?
My heart, mind body and soul and every fabric of my being, screams out and aches with pain and is saying, we came to far to turn back now!
We as a people, need to say no more, we can no longer accept the unacceptable!
Our little Black, Brown and poor White babies deserve a future!
No longer shall we allow the strong holds to bind us, nor cloud our best judgments against righteousness.
Oppose wrong and do the right thing concerning my people!
For over 400 years we have been put down, spit on, marked and ridicude in your unjust society.
Too many of our so called prominent leaders hands are in the cookies jars, afraid to lose a crumb off of the master table, otherwise tied because of too many favors.
My hand is not tied, but open wide to receive, and reveal the truth.
My calling is to reveal the truth so that injustice can no longer countinue to grow and flourish like weeds;
growing from the good emerald green ground.
Otherwise it can no longer hide it ugly slimy gray head. Even in high places!

A word to the wise, remember there's something or someone higher than you!
This unjust system will one day surely fall, just like the bricks from public housing wall's, and just like the walls of Jericho, all of this will tumble down one day.
We as a people must continue to stand up against injustice, for God is the beam that we stand for and they stand against.
We will not fall, but stand tall in God's mighty light!
I say just like the days of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Do you have your marching shoes on? Otherwise keep on a walking, keep on a talking, marching down the Freedom lane, marching toward the Freedom Train!
It will come a day when men that think like me will no longer be called Common men, but be known as men that is common!

One of Beauty's favorite poem- A Black prayer

The Black Prayer


This is deep, so take your time.

Why Did You Make Me Black Lord .....
Lord ..... Why did you make me black?
Why did you make someone
the world would hold back?

Black is the color of dirty clothes,
of grimy hands and feet...
Black is the color of darkness,
of tired beaten streets...

Why did you give me thick lips,
a broad nose and kinky hair?
Why did you create someone
who receives the hated stare?

Black is the color of the bruised eye
when someone gets hurt...
Black is the color of darkness,
black is the color of dirt.

Why is my bone structure so thick,
my hips and cheeks so high?
Why are my eyes brown,
and not the color of the sky?

Why do people think I'm useless?
How come I feel so used?
Why do people see my skin
and think I should be abused?

Lord, I just don't understand...
What is it about my skin?
Why is it some people want to hate me
and not know the person within?

Black is what people are "Labeled"
when others want to keep them away...
Black is the color of shadows cast...
Black is the end of the day.

Lord you know my own people mistreat me,
and you know this just ain't right...
They don't like my hair, they don't like my
skin, as they say I'm too dark or too light!

Lord, don't you think
it's time to make a change?
Why don't you redo creation
and make everyone the same?

God's Reply:

Why did I make you black? Why did I make you black?

I made you in the color of coal
from which beautiful diamonds are formed...
I made you in the color of oil,
the black gold which keeps people warm.

Your color is the same as the rich dark soil
that grows the food you need...
Your color is the same as the black stallion and
panther, Oh what majestic creatures indeed!

All colors of the heavenly rainbow
can be found throughout every nation...
When all these colors are blended,
you become my greatest creation!

Your hair is the texture of lamb's wool,
such a beautiful creature is he...
I am the shepherd who watches them,
I will ALWAYS watch over thee!

You are the color of the midnight sky,
I put star glitter in your eyes...
There's a beautiful smile hidden behind your pain...
That's why your cheeks are so high!

You are the color of dark clouds
from the hurricanes I create in September...
I made your lips so full and thick,
so when you kiss...they will remember!

Your stature is strong,
your bone structure thick to withstand the
burden of time...
The reflection you see in the mirror,
that image that looks back, that is MINE!

So get off your knees,
look in the mirror and tell me what you see?
I didn't make you in the image of darkness...
I made you in the image of ME!

"Chicago 2007 Pepsi Every day Freedom Hero Award winner-Ms Beauty Turner"

/ Heroes / 2007 Chicago Heroes Bios / Beauty Turner

Beauty Turner

Beauty Turner leads a bus tour of Chicago. Missing on her tour, however, are the Sears Tower, Wrigley Field and every other landmark you’ll find in a Chicago guidebook.

That’s because Turner’s excursion is a trip through Chicago Housing Authority projects, some of which are no longer standing. A product of Chicago’s public housing herself, Turner is now the assistant editor of Residents’ Journal, a bi-monthly magazine.



The tour is Turner’s attempt to share the history, personalities and sense of community that define Chicago's infamous public housing developments. Many of these developments have been torn down as part of the Chicago Housing Authority’s $1.6 billion project to replace low-income high rises and with new mixed-income communities.



“Today these women are in South Chicago, Danville and Inglewood,” Beauty has said. “They had to abandon their homes and their communities. A lot of the people dependent on public housing won’t be able to afford the new condos,” she explains. “They won’t ever be able to move back to the place they called home.”

With that as her motivation Beauty Turner has spent her time writing award-winning investigative articles and commentaries and co-directing the Advocacy and Outreach Initiative. She is a well-known community activist as well as a regular columnist for the Hyde Park Herald and other community newspapers.



For the last several years, Beauty has worked as a research assistant for Professor Sudhir Venkatesh, a sociologist at Columbia University and has founded an organization called Poor People Millennium Movement - dedicated to helping poor people with important issues.



A moving speaker at events, panels, and universities, she has served on the Executive Committee of the Coalition to Protect Public Housing and also on the Steering Committee of the October 22nd Coalition, a campaign against police brutality.



Today many voices that would normally be silenced are now being heard thanks to her work.

One of Beauty's favorite Lanston Hughes poems

A poem from Langston Hughes
Between -1931-1940

“A poem after Ms. Beauty Turner own heart”

Listen!
All you beauty makers.
Give up beauty for a moment. Look at harshness, look at pain
Look at life again.
Look at hungry babies crying.
Listen to the rich men lying.
Look at starving China dying.
Hear the rumble in the East.
In sprite of it all.
Life must not cease,
Because the fat and greedy ones.
Proclaim their thieving peace.
Their peace far worth than the war and death-
For this is better than living breath.
Free! To be Free!

Listen! Futile beauty makers-
Work for a while with the pattern breakers-
Come for a march with the new-world-makers’
Let “Beauty” be!

God's eyes is on the sparrow

Ms. Beauty Turner
Founder of Poor People Millennium Movement


Americans poor people are locked down inside ghettos of material privatizing and spiritual debilitation , just like the late Civil Rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said. And all of us can almost feel the presence of a kind of social insanity that will erupt like a volcano into a lava of acid that will devour the land with violence and destruction.
Examples: Fights breaking out in school yards like Hyde Park ,Wendell Phillips, Englewood, Dunbar, and others.
Gun shots being sprayed out of a revolver like raid in a roach infested project apartment.
Even in areas that was once consider sacred Ivy League colleges,
(Columbine ) (NIU,) Chicago University.
We need to ask ourselves what are we doing wrong as a society,
when young people are afraid to go to school and receive a quality education because they are being gunned down by their lockers, we as a society needs to ask ourselves what is being done that created this state of mind.
Instead of using an automate weapon a book, that can uplift ones mind to a higher plane, a higher level, their choice of weapons today are becoming guns that can only cause despair.
Words like hope and care, and compassion doesn’t even enter into our children Webster dictionaries.

which could lead to national ruin. The true responsibility for the existence of these deplorable conditions lies ultimately with the larger society and much of the immediate responsibility for removing the injustices can be laid directly at the door of the federal government.
We who are in the city of big shoulders are resting on a slanted messed up attitude that every thing is okay.
We as a nation is facing a morale dilemma, that threaten every grain of soils that makes up our so called great America.
If America which to remain a great nation they must address the agonizing suffering of the poor. And than and only than can they lift their voices and sing in the purist of harmony and unity and reclaim what is rightfully our-Our home sweet home! The land of the free and the land of the brave, and liberty and justice for (ALL)

We need economic justice in the poorest of community a massive surge of jobs with livable salaries, as well as housing for the poor.
We who have lived in the bowels of the ghetto’s, in the crust of the barrios and down in the valley are lifting our voices in unity today.
And saying- Do the right thing!
For God’s eyes are on the sparrow and he sees all!

Our Journey to Justice

Our Journey to Justice
By; Ms. Beauty Turner

"We shall overcome,are lyrics that I heard many years ago,
during the civil right movement as a small child, those
verses, and lyrics still lingers in my head like sweet poperie in the air,
and the taste for freedom still linger on my breath like sweet potatoes pie.
Every word that I speak toward freedom is like a breath of fresh air and a colorful bouquet of roses.
"How sweet it is!"


“We shall overcome one day!”
But yet we who are baby boomers, who were mere children in the early fifties and in the early sixties, the time of a struggle for civil rights and change.
When the loaves of brown bread were being baked, split-up hand out and given away by the slices , by those who led the movement. we were mere youth.
We as children, innocent as we may be, looked up with our big brown , sad eyes that glowed at every accomplishments at those who were the fuel in the economic engine that drove the civil rights movement to new heights .
We sung, we danced, we marched and we bleed in the streets from dog bites and from billy clubs striking us like Ernie Banks hitting a homerun, from those who took an oath to serve and protect us !
Chicago finest on our journey to justice!
Now in the twenty first century in a new millennium we are faced with the same types of problems that we thought that we had overcome.

Nooses in a tree, we as a people still are not yet free!
Today in the new Millennium we find ourselves reaching out for just the mere crumbs of what the civil rights movement left behind; none put away for the future generations.

We find ourselves back on the same path as we did in the Civil Rights days, a path laced with injustices. People, politicians and preachers that is bathes in the same colored as we are have sold us out like Black slave catchers, that hit us with the leather bull whip harder than any white slave master.

We who are black are being barricaded , locked out and forced out of a city and pushed out in a wheel barrel like used up derbies and laid by the side of the road, like road kill, when it comes to housings, jobs, and a pursuit of happiness.
We need to pick ourselves up, brush ourselves off and begin again on our journey to justice.
Our Journey to Justice can not be deterred by those who have their hands in the cookies jars of despaired!
Our journey to justice can not be turned around and derailed by those who don’t know what freedom is!
Here in the twenty first century forty years after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. marched on the crumbling , cracked up pavement in the windy city streets of Chicago for housings, education and jobs. Can we as a people lay down and be stepped on.
We need to be like gum, crazy glue , stuck on the issues and never giving up on us!
For our poor black babies, our poor white babies, and our poor red, and yellow babies deserve a future.

As a baby boomer who were raised in the time of change , who understood our journey to justices I will not wither, I will not sway, and I will not fall, but stand tall and stay on the battle fields for justice!