George Washington # 1

Three years ago George Washington was voted Britain's greatest enemy commander by a poll over nearly 8000 people held by the War Museum in London, beating out IRA leader Michael Collins, Napoleon Bonaparte, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey. His statue resides before the National Museum in Trafalger Square. The soil beneath the statue's plinth came fromhis native Virgina, as the general had vowed imported Virginia soil to never to set foot on British soil again

Washington's posthumous victory in the poll was explained by a prominent historian, “His army was always under strength, hungry, badly supplied. He shared the dangers of his men. Anyone other than Washington would have given up the fight. He came to personify the cause, and the scale of his victory was immense.”

George Washington was unable to attend the award ceremony, but his words on peace live forever.

"There is nothing so likely to promote peace as to be well prepared to meet an enemy."

In Defense of Spike Lee

Back in 2014 a Abraham Lincoln lookalike visited Fort Greene on President's Day to promote Quicken Loans. They promo team offered $25 to put a photo of the ersatz Abe and #quickenloans on your Facebook page. I tried on my cellphone without success. The young girl gave me a card for trying and I purchased two bottles of wine for $18 at the liquor store on Fulton.

Some things never change.

Spike Lee doesn't feel the same way about Fort Greene with good reason.

At a speech at Pratt Institute the film director had attacked gentrification as an invasion of uncool white motherfuckers who call the police to quiet his jazz playing father and white couples bogarting Fort Greene like it was their birth right.

He's actually very funny about how realtors changed Bushwick to East Williamsburg, why there's more police protection and better schools.

This telling of the truth was met with anger by the newcomers and Uncle Tims like John McWhorter of Time Magazine without any mention of economic cleansing of Harlem, the Lower East Side, the East Village, and Brooklyn.

Spike Lee was speaking against reverse migration and for affordable housing.

"Where are we going to go?"

"People can not afford to live here anymore."

I know the story.

I was moved out of my place on East 10th Street.

I had lived there almost thirty years.

They and we know who they are don't want us here.

In Russia they call it a pogram.

'They' want the poor, minorities, and the disenfranchised to leave without a forwarding address.

Well, we ain't going right yet and I applaud Spike Lee telling the truth.

It has to be said and said by 'us'.

Not them.

To see Spike Lee's speech at Pratt Institute please go to this URL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GI73SRbi8AQ

George, Washington 1972

Back in late August 1972 my college friend Ptrov Sinski and I hitchhiked west from Seattle. A rancher left us off at exit 149, serving George, Washington, a small farming community surrounded by endless fields of ripening wheat. The two of us ignored the sign forbidding hitchhiking, but within ten minutes a Highway Patrol car halted on the shoulder. The officer wasn't that much older than us, but he had an old head. A cracker's head.

"You boys can't read." The buzz-cut cop pointed to the sign at the bottom of the onramp after checking our IDs.

"We can read, officer." I played polite.

It was a waste of time. We hadn't bathed in days. To him we were dirty hippies. It wasn't easy to bathe on the the road. Not for hippies or any travelers.

"Then go back to read that sign again." This was an order and the trim trooper stared hard at Ptrov. His hair was longer than mine and his name was foreign. "If I find you anywhere near the highway, I'll give you a ticket. Do anything else and I'll arrest you."

"Yes, officer."

"You boys think I'm being a hardass, but a week ago an officer was struck dead by a passing vehicle and the order has come down to enforce the laws." Cops were very protective of their own, especially those fallen in duty.

The uniformed officer drove off in his high-powered Plymouth Grand Fury. We obeyed his edict and held up a sign saying EAST to the cars passing on I90.

For several hours local teenagers gave us the finger and shouted garbled insults. Their hatred of hippies was not a fad. We wanted to get out of there, but we were trapped off the Interstate.

A little before sunset a Chevy van stopped on the shoulder and we ran up the highway.

Before we reached our ride van, the trooper showed up with light flashing.

"What I tell you boys?"

"We weren't hitchhiking on the highway."

"But a car stopped for you on the highway. Same thing.

He asked for our IDs. We received $50 tickets for hitchhiking and the driver was fined $20 for illegally stopping for hitchhikers.

"But we weren't on the highway," Ptrov protested in earnest outrage.

"You saying I don't know my job?"

"No, officer, we're not saying that. We just want to get home."

"Then get in that van and don't come back through here again."

We entered the van and the driver pulled away from the exit at less than the legal speed limit.

"Cocksucker." He looked in the rearview mirror, then tore his ticket into pieces.

"What are you doing?" I had put mine in my wallet.

"I'm from Ohio. I ain't ever paying that ticket." The driver pulled out a joint and lit it with the lighter. He introducing himself as Jackson.

"You going to Ohio?" Ptrov asked with high expectations. His girlfriend lived in Milwaukee. It was on the way to Ohio.

"Just as far as the Coeur d'Alene in Idaho. I'm working on the highway building rest stops." Jackson passed the joint to my disappointed friend. "We can crash there. Don't look so sad. At least you're out of George, Washington."

He was right and the two of us tore up the tickets like anti-war protestors ripping up draft cards at the Pentagon. I threw the shreds out the window. It was good to be free again.

Battle Of Long Island 1776

After successfully ousting the British from Boston on March 17, 1776, General George Washington assembled the 10,000 strong Continental Army in New York to deny King George III's Royal Navy access to the harbor. Throughout the spring and summer Washington's commander's prepared defenses in Manhattan, however in July the British task force landed in Staten Island and General Howe gathered over 30,000 troops for his offensive.

After making landfall on August 22, the redcoats strengthened their numbers with Long island loyalists. Still believing the city to be the prime target, Washington sent over 1500 troops as reinforcement to General Isaac Putnam's command.

It was not a feint and on August 27 the first assaults on the forts of Long Island took the rebels by surprise with overpowering force of arms.

The battle was a disaster for the Americans.

The bravery of the Maryland 400 forestalled defeat, but at day's end Washington and his troops were trapped under Brooklyn Heights. One more push and the rebellion would be quashed with traitors hanging from every available tree in New York.

The the finishing coupe never came that night.

The British had been taught a deadly lesson at Bunker Hill.

They dug ditches ever closer to the American lines.

In the morning the redcoats discovered that Washington and his soldiers had been evacuated by John Glover's Marblehead regiment. Fishermen, whalers, and sailors.

9000 troops had escaped the trap and the war wasn't destined to end until General Conwallis' surrender at Yorktown six years later.

Not a victory.

Most certainly not a defeat.

More a draw with the British realizing that the world would turn upside down one day.

But not on August 27 for General George Washington.

True Lack Of Color

George Washington has been revered as the Father of this Country since its birth. The Virginian planter and his wife owned 318 slaves. Life of the plantation masters had always been painted full-white, however the Southern climate had been deadly to white women and slave owners exercised droit seigneur over the chattel women and girls.

The races mixed in blood.

Families were not pure.

Not everyone white was white.

And Washington well could have had black as might have Robert E. Lee.

Many of the early presidents possessed African blood, except in paintings.

Even the Father of the Nation.

Washington's Birthday - 2015

Today America celebrates President's Day to honor past presidents, but especially George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. New York only recognizes George Washington on his birthday of February 22, 1732 almost three hundred years ago. Gilbert Stuart painted the Father of the Nation as a white man as had countless other artists, however historically many English male colonists sired children with female Africans, because white women couldn't survive the climate or the summer fevers. Not all of the forefathers were white. They were only painted white. Was George Washington white?

The Virginian owned 123 slaves.

His views on slavery changed through the years.

"Here is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for this abolition of slavery but there is only one proper and effectual mode by which it can be accomplished, and that is by Legislative authority."

-GEORGE WASHINGTON, 1786

According to mountvernon.com Washington also explored ways to reduce the number of enslaved people at Mount Vernon without selling them. Most ideas involved renting or selling land to finance an emancipation. He was unable to execute any of these plans during his lifetime.

Were it not then, that I am principled against selling negroes, as you would do cattle in the market, I would not, in twelve months from this date, be possessed of one, as a slave.

-GEORGE WASHINGTON, 1794

Only the year before he had a slave woman whipped for refusing to work.

Her name was Charlotte.

There was no good in slavery.

No good in owning slaves.

Washington freed them all at his death in 1799.

Slavery remained the GM of the South until 1865 and thereafter with the Jim Crow laws subjected Africans to enslavement of another kid.

Father of a Nation.

No slave owner can claim that title.

Us against them.

George Washington In London

In the Spring of 2014 I was waiting for Brock Dundee in Trafalgar Square in London. Tourists mounted the four lions at the foot of Lord Nelson's Column for photos and art lovers queued before the National Gallery to view the Leonardo Da Vinci exhibition, while busy Londoners strode across the square for various rendezvouses in the capitol.

Brock showed up on time and I asked the avant-garde filmmaker, if he wanted to see the exhibition.

"With all those tourists?" He shook with revulsion. "Better I take you to the best pub in London. It's right around the corner."

"Sounds good to me." It was already past noon and we walked toward St. Martin in the Fields. I stopped in my tracks upon seeing a familiar personage posed in bronze on a thick plinth.

"There's the Father of your Nation."

"What's he doing here?" The writing on the plinth stated that the statue had been donated by the people of Virginia."

"Supposedly the soil underneath the statue had been imported from the USA." Brock had lived in New York for a number of years. He had almost married the most beautiful girl in the city. The Scot had even written a play for her. It had something to do with a revolt on a Caribbean island. She left him for Hollywood. We didn't talk about those days now.

"What for?"

"The Father Of Your Nation once said he would never step foot on British soil again."

"Washington had never been to England." I had minored in American History at university.

"You're forgetting that America was British soil before the Revolution." Brock hooked his arm with mine. "Let's get us some beer."

"In honor of George." I headed east with a parting nod.

"He was a man who never lied." Brock was an historian too.

"Just like my father." My old man came from the same stock, only we hailed from Maine.

There were no statues in London honoring anyone from the Pine Tree State.

I know, because I googled it.