What I want for Christmas

I want a moratorium on all foreclosures. Most folks have practically paid for their houses anyway when you take into account the enormous amount of interest that has been paid. And who said it’s fair to charge anyone more than two percent interest. Every homeowner should be given an opportunity to renegotiate their mortgages at a fair price.

And no new Vikings stadium! If the local lawmakers can figure out a way to build a stadium for a rich guy, they ought to be able to figure out a way to come to the aid of the homeless and the unemployed. I also want:

— An end to begging folks with government contracts to share a percentage of it with people of color who, by the way, contributed to the pot through their taxes.

— An end to the disparities that plague Black folks in the Twin Cities. Our children are not being educated for a variety of reasons. Anything you name as a cause is probably right, but wouldn’t it be nice to simply get our children educated?

— An end to the famine ravaging the Horn of Africa. I would like to see artists rally around this worthy cause like they did in the early ’80s when pop artists in the U.S. led by Michael Jackson sang “We Are the World” and reminded us that we indeed are one another’s keeper. The British charity song “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” I thought was a bit more direct with its call to “Feed the world. Let them know it’s Christmas time.” Good words for today.

— An end to the uneven and unjust mass incarceration of our young people.

— An end to our young people walking around with their pants hanging down, not because I am opposed to them having their own style, but because I know that if they put more into their brains and truly felt better about themselves, they would pull their pants up. But I can’t blame them for sagging — sagging pants are a way of saying, “I dare you to take these pants — you have just about taken everything else.”

— An end to the witch hunt of Somali citizens who have the right to choose sides in a fight involving their own country.

— An end to FBI repression and the detaining of people without trial.

— An end to all the killing the Black president is doing through drone warfare.

— And of course an end to all injustice including war, racism, sexism, homophobia, poverty, homelessness, unemployment, underemployment and any other unjust foolishness.

— An end to all the posturing and hypocritical and fake Christianity that’s displayed by people like Rick Perry and other so-called conservative Christians. One doesn’t have to know much about God or religion to know that what these people are practicing is not of God.

It would be nice if Christians taught the true meaning of the birth of Jesus and stopped trying to pretend that God sent His Son into the world as a middle-class carpenter. Jesus was born among animals to a pregnant teen mother into a race of folks who were being oppressed by the Romans and their own Uncle Tom ruler Herod along with a collection of religious hustlers and others, mainly tax collectors, willing to do the bidding of the State to the detriment of their brothers and sisters.

It would be nice this Christmas if folks were reminded of the idea that the Divine sent a message through his young child that things have been reversed. The Divine favors the poor and not the rich, and despite their circumstances they are still favored by God.

Mel Reeves welcomes reader responses to mellaneous19@yahoo.com.