Tim Hayes – Page 6

Muhammad Ali January 17, 1942 – June 3, 2016

June 4, 2016 by Tim Hayes Leave a Comment

I don’t remember the date, it was in September of 1970, I knew I was hungry, as I had almost nothing to eat the day before. Not an unusual thing in those days when I was full time in the Black Panther Party. On the streets of Atlanta Georgia, I had decided to go to Chestnut and Fair Street, in the center of the Black College complex. Clark College on one corner Spelman College a block away Morehouse College where I was technically still a student on the opposite corner. I was standing there trying to sell Black Panther News Papers. If I sold enough to cover the cost of food for the Free breakfast program I would be able to keep what ever was left for myself. I was busy trying to sell a paper to a really pretty Clark College girl and didn’t notice until I turned around that there was this really tall guy standing right next to me. After I sold a paper to a passing car I noticed the look on the face of the buyer when he looked at the tall guy. I stepped back on the sidewalk and looked up and sure enough it was Muhammad Ali. It was him who struck up a conversation. He said how he respected the BPP and the work we did and was sorry that he had not done more to donate money to our community programs. I told him that we all knew what he was going through, and that to us he was always the “People”s Champion” we went into a lot of subjects Like Abdul Nassar who had just died and how the new Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was a real Egyptian …a Black man and not an Arab. I told him that it meant a lot to many of us that he had taken this stance on the war.Ali kept saying that he had not planned any of this…he just had to do what he thought was the right thing…”suppose ” he said ..”when they grow up …my kids ask me what did I do about this” …”I don’t want to have to say I did nothing ” simple words …but I knew exactly what he meant….You have to understand that during the time Ali had been suspended from boxing the number of Black as well as non-Black men drafted to go and fight that war had grown enormously This was over forty five years ago so a lot of the words have faded away. But what got me was after about ten minutes somebody across the street said “HEY LOOK ….IT’S ALI “..all of a sudden his voice changed, his posture changed, he began to speak more in a “ghetto dialect” and got really loud.It was like a switch was thrown and he turned on his other persona….I think in that moment I learned more about him that in any of his interviews ….he knew who he was, he knew what he was. I knew in that one second that Ali was not being manipulated by Malcolm or Elijah Muhammad. Within seconds there were dozens of people ….trying to get close to Ali. I noticed that a bright yellow limo drove up..Ali pushed through the crowd ..gave me a ten dollar bill..I gave him the Black Panther newspaper, he got in the car and was gone. I found out a few minutes later that Ali had been using the gym at Morehouse College to train for his up coming comeback fight..against Jerry Quarry…it was an easy win about a month later. A lot of things happened to me during those Black Panther years but this day is one memory that I treasure…To guys in my generation maybe Stokely may have made Black what we called ourselves..but it was Ali who maybe not alone but in terms of the loudest voice, taught us how to BE Black men and women…real Black men and women…We were under no obligation to aide America in it’s imperialism …and it fact had more in common with the people America wanted us to kill…The most powerful words spoken by a Black American ..ever, were “NO VIET CONG EVER CALLED ME NIGGER” This took what we were still calling a “civil rights” movement and turned it into something much bigger. That’s what Malcolm died trying to do…it’s what MLK came to embrace at the end of his life…and despite all the money and being the “worlds most famous person” This is and will be what made Muhammad Ali….”The Greatest”…don’t have to tell Ali to “rest in power”…..we know he is.

Memorial Day 2014

June 2, 2016 by Tim Hayes Leave a Comment

I actually wrote this one morning two years ago but a friend of mine saw it recently and suggested that this remembrance belonged here……May 26th 2014…I woke from a fitful dream this morning , in my sleep I kept seeing guys I knew who never came back from the war Viet Nam..in that way that dreams can be, some of them were real guys that I knew in high school or from my “hood” but some of them were just faces. I think it’s because I went to sleep with the TV on and there was so much stuff on about Memorial day… But yes I knew a lot of guys and even a few women who went to “the NAM” many never came back. As high school was ending for me and my generation, you had many people who lived in complete fear of the day they would get “called up” in the draft to go fight that war To be honest I also grew up with guys who grew up watching all those WW II movies with John Wayne and Audie Murphy..( I know none of you young people know who Audie Murphy was…do what you do best google him) and these people could not wait to get in uniform and go fight and kill some communists. You have to understand that everybody I mean EVERYBODIES Dad had fought in WW II in fact you could not buy a house in our neighborhood unless you were a veteran. Also I have to mention that not as many Black men went to college as they do today some didn’t have the grades , even more could not afford it. I was in that few who were sought out by the colleges both Black and White. We didn’t have Affirmative Action back then so all the big white colleges would literally hunt down Black “super students” …you only needed two or three in your school then no one could say Cornell , or Dartmouth were “racist” ..but you really had to be that “super student” ten times better than the white student to be what we called in those days “the nigger who sat by the door”..I didn’t have the best grades but in my IQ tests I scored in the 160s ..by the time I was in 11th grade it was not unusual for there to be a big black car sitting in front of my parents house when I got home from school two or three times a week ..all asking us to sign an agreement for me to go to their University … I don’t say this to brag .in fact it was a curse that inflicted a lot of pain on my parents and to this day colors the relationships I have with my siblings. But that’s a story for another day, the point here is that I seemed to be in a position to not be “cannon fodder” in that war….But they got a lot of us…I feel bad about it today that the stupid young man I was would make fun of these guys..”hey man you a little brown guy who is treated like shit in your own country going off to kill little brown guys on the other side of the world who just want to run their own country, man you’re a complete fool”. That was easy for me to say …I would have a student deferment and would not have to go…or so I thought ..that’s another story too for another day or for my blog. But the point here is Uncle Sam took a lot of boys through no fault of their own .Money and class for the most part decided if you had to go or not.0ver 58,000 never came back.. and today I salute every single one of them. This picture is of a statue that sits in the park where the Viet Nam Veterans Memorial is….I kind of like it ..look closely at the soldiers faces ….I think it says it all.

Sorry, I just could not stay out of commenting on this election, even though I wanted to stay away until I dealt with some medical stuff.

May 25, 2016 by Tim Hayes Leave a Comment

Well …..I’m trying so so so hard to stay out of it while I deal with some things..but the insanity surrounding this election is making it so hard to stay away..one particular person on my friend’s thread was just so adamant about the only true moral way out was to not vote or even better to write in Bernie if he did not get the nomination..because ” crooked Hillary” had already stolen the election….I put up a valiant effort I think ..to hold it in rather than respond to this scary but growing totally fruitcake opinion…but suddenly ……all on their own my fingers jumped up and flew across the keyboard with this ……” I’m sorry but that is both childish and also a misreading of history. What George Bush Jr. did to Al Gore was a stolen election. But whether you like Hillary or not what has happened in this election is the same way we have elected Presidents for decades. I resent the fact that after 25 years of a Republican war on Mrs. Clinton, when she runs for President by the same rules all the rest have run with for most of recent history..so many clueless people are having a “hissy fit” because the person they like may not get the nomination. The person I like has NEVER gotten the nomination…ever. Hey I would like to see John Lewis get the nomination…or for that matter Bobby Seale..but that ain’t gonna happen. I knocked on hundreds of doors this past year trying to get people to vote for a person ( Bernie Sanders ) who made the choice months ago to run as a Democrat EVEN THOUGH HE WAS NOT ONE HIMSELF. Bernie knew then what the rules were. Now when as could have been predicted it looks like he probably won’t get the nomination all these silly children have picked up the talking points of the Republican party and just like Trump are making this some how Mrs’ Clinton’s fault. I don’t even like her but this whole “crooked Hillary” bullshit is just another example of how a whole group of alleged “progressives” got masterfully PLAYED by the Republican party.” my god I feel so bad now for falling off the wagon…but I could not take this fool for another second….now I have to start all over again.

On Sanders and AIPAC

March 22, 2016 by Tim Hayes Leave a Comment

I was going to respond to Bernie Sanders’ position on AIPAC with a long article for my blog web site …but after
three hours knocking on doors today ..campaigning for Bernie …people seem to want to know how I feel “right now”…Well I wrote this early this morning in a personal response to a dear friend at about 6:30 this morning and have not had time to write a longer article but this pretty much sums up what I feel Bernies AIPAC speech was worth…”for me Mr. Sander’s speech amounts to one step out of the United States/Israel “comfort zone” and two steps back into the usual bullshit. But for an American politician that one step may be a real first. What I mean is I think Sanders really does mean it when he speaks about the importance of the occupation. I quote him here. “Peace will mean ending what amounts to the occupation of Palestinian territory, establishing mutually agreed upon borders, and pulling back settlements in the West Bank, just as Israel did in Gaza – once considered an unthinkable move on Israel’s part.” for me that was the step forward, and I commend Mr. Sanders for that. But just like the well–intentioned Obama administration it falls short of mentioning the nature of Israel’s role in provoking a sometimes violent resistance to that occupation. Wrapping it in that old bullshit racist chestnut.that oppression is “necessary” for security . when in fact. Palestine’s right to RESIST is AT LEAST as important as Israel’s right to exist. Until not just Mr. Sanders ….but ANY U.S. presidential candidate comes along who at least acknowledges this double standard, and how it manifests itself in the continued spiraling down into Apartheid. WE won’t see anything but the same old “mumbo-jumbo”..I still support Bernie and in fact am scheduled to speak to over a dozen more church groups to get out the vote for Bernie in the primary…he is after all my choice in this election…but I am not fooled by this and I will not lie to voters.

Democrats need to CHILL

February 12, 2016 by Tim Hayes Leave a Comment

I am THRILLED that the GOP seems to be eating itself alive..But I also fear that the Left…what’s left of it is also in deep “doo-doo”..You ever heard the joke about the “circular firing squad” well for months now we have had the more “rabid” element of the Sanders supporters picking up the baton from the decades of Hillary hating Republicans and running with it. I’m a Sanders supporter and I see it everyday, I’ve seen it in the street and I’ve seen it.on the internet..and in recent days Clinton supporters have gotten just as willing to fight with dirt as the “Bernie Bots”..I have major differences with both Clinton and Sanders.. Clinton while a solid liberal in many ways stands for “business as usual”…while Bernie really speaks to me and what I want for America.but. he has all the foreign policy knowledge and experience of my cat..But either of them would be light years better than what the Repugs have in store for us..get behind Hillary or “feel the Bern” but DEMOCRATS CHILL OUT…..

It’s time for Democrats to pull up their “big boy/girl” pants

January 15, 2016 by Tim Hayes Leave a Comment

I am a Bernie Sanders supporter, in fact I was in several locations in North Philadelphia today talking to voters about Bernie. I am also a mature experienced community organizer with about 50 yrs of working for the people in the “hood”. Although I am a strong supporter of Senator Sanders. I have tried my best to stay as far away from the confused group of people who think that the way to campaign for Sanders is to demonize Hillary Clinton and totally forget that she is in the same party as Bernie..not to mention the fact that the only person the Repugs hate more than Obama would be Mrs. Clinton. Today I visited two daycare centers..one elementary school at dismissal time and one senior center. I got over a hundred people to sign a pledge to vote for Sanders in the Pa. primary with about 60 people agreeing to canvass their neighbors for the Sanders campaign..It might be my last good organizing day for a while because of the weather and some medical things I have to pay attention to. But my point is that I did that WITHOUT ONE SENTENCE of Hillary Bashing..Sanders is a good candidate and I simply did not have any reason to go there. Okay …..all of that said let’s get down to pulling up our “Big boy/girl” pants. I refuse to bash any Democrat in this election frankly because I think we have two really good candidates ..who happen to be good for different reasons…I would trust either of them to be a better President than ANY of the Repugs who are running. Second only an idiot would put her/himself in the position of demonizing one Democrat to the voters ..and then if that candidate gets the nomination …go back to the same voter and say ..OPPS..that person I said all that crap about six months ago is the person I’m telling you to vote for now…You know up here in S.W. Germantown I can walk down blocks and point to houses where I have registered three generations of voters in the same family…I never tell people who to vote for but I do tell them who I like….there is a difference. People come up to me in the market all the time asking me who looks like a good candidate…if I pull the type of crap the people I call the “Bernie Bots’ pull… crap like calling the other democrat “too corporate” or too close to wall street. When that candidate actually did nothing in her campaign that Obama did not do. And then if she gets the nomination and I have to go back and say “well yeah you should vote for her”…30 years of credibility will go down the drain. I know this is getting long but one more point. In 2008 I had the hard job along with about a dozen other people of mending fences in the Democratic party between the Hillary Clinton people and the Obama people…there was a lot of nastiness built up there..and what a lot of people don’t know is getting the cooperation with the two camps of organizers and street people was very very hard..This time I’m too old..and I really doubt if any of the short sighted Bernie Bots have it in them to rebuild bridges like we had to…they seemed cursed with a shoot ourselves in the foot psyche. Well I just watched an interview on Rachel Maddow with Hillary..she seemed sharp ..knowledgeable and ready to actually lead..I saw two interviews with Bernie this week He seemed sharp ..not quite as knowledgeable ..but with a fresh message that I like and ready to lead..which is why he gets my vote…..What do the Repugs have?? ..and do you want any of them picking the next Supreme Court Justice..??????…

Just how do we know who are our “allies” ?

December 29, 2015 by Tim Hayes Leave a Comment

Every once in a while I run into some one who for one reason or another tries to tell people in my community not to vote. Sometimes it’s other Black people but most of the time it’s a very special breed of White “know it all” ..many of them are the kind who in the wake of the “Black Lives Matter” movement have taken to calling themselves “allies”.And I have been hearing that term a lot. As well as seeing it in articles. One article I read by a Paul Kivel gives a detailed account of what some white people can do to be “allies” But even this guy , who seems to have made a career out of being the “go to” white guy in terms of being a friend of the “struggle” drips with the kind of “white boy arrogance” that has given me the “creeps” for decades..You get lots of so-called reasons from these people in terms of why voting is not important. One is ”there is much too much money involved in politics” well yeah, it costs to run for office and particularly in some of the national races like congress..Races can’t exactly be bought but a lot of them are influenced by how much money can be thrown at a candidate..for media and a good ground game.But even this can be busted up if enough local people knock on those doors and seek out the local committee positions. I’ve seen this enough to know that it can be done ..and is done all the time But for the most part it’s the local races that are the most important to the individual voter..in other words every vote is important ..but the closer to home the more important each and every vote is.And you get to see the result of your voting right away The Mayor, the District attorneys, the city council people..ALL the people we confront when we go out and protest and demonstrate are elected…and you can’t buy a local election if the people are motivated. But even if NONE of the above is true or is not enough to get you to see how important voting is..What kind of “allies” would be telling you to not use what may be the only voice you have. Protests and Demonstrations are important ..and I have done a lot of that over the last fifty years…but we are almost always protesting to get the ear of someone who was voted into office..DO NOT CALL YOUR SELF AN ALLY OF OUR PEOPLE IF YOU UNDERMINE OUR VOICE…Voting is our right..our sacred right..and the list of people who died for us to get it is too long for us to let any body fuck with it.

WHO AM I ?

December 1, 2015 by Tim Hayes Leave a Comment

When time permits I have been writing here for a few years. Today I was asked for a “bio” by a group that will put me on a panel discussion about a new book dealing with the civil rights movement. I also realized that I had never done that here…so from now on I guess this little blurb that we put together this morning will be my “official” bio. Tim Hayes has been an activist all his life. Inspired by the freedom riders in 1961, Tim still in elementary school sought them out. Even sneaking out of his Mothers church on Sundays to attend meetings of the Atlanta Student Movement. Later Tim spent most of his high school years following the older members of the new organization SNCC. Just doing anything he could just to be around them and a part of the organization. Making coffee , getting sandwiches ,or what ever it took.In January of 1965 while on a trip to New York for the National Science fair. Tim met and talked with Malcolm X . Who he had seen speak several times in Atlanta but had never got a chance to actually meet. This was where Tim got the idea that the civil rights movement was really only a small part of an international struggle to rid the world of Imperialism and colonialism. In March of 1965 Tim was allowed to go on his first real civil rights demonstration. He was a part of the group who marched across that bridge in Selma Alabama on “Bloody Sunday”. On that day he was teargassed and beaten and was run over by a horse before getting away. After high school Tim attended Morehouse College and Yale Univ.. But dropped out when he was asked to join the Black Panther Party . This was directly related to the words he remembered from Malcolm X. Tim founded the Atlanta Ga. chapter of the party and worked in the Chicago , New Haven, and Los Angeles chapters and several offices in New York city..The Black Panthers were an organization that developed solidarity with most of the liberation movements in Africa and Asia at the time.Tim used this opportunity to visit and work in many countries , Cuba, Angola, North Viet Nam and Israel/Palestine.During this time he dug wells in Guinea, inoculated children against TB in Angola during the middle of the war for liberation there and spent time in an Israeli prison under some of the harshest conditions you can imagine. When Tim decided he wanted to settle down and have a normal life and raise children. He found this was impossible to do in his home town of Atlanta Ga. It seemed that he was simply too well known by law enforcement to just be a “regular” citizen. So he moved to Philadelphia in 1973..Taking jobs first in drug rehabilitation and then with the Philadelphia board of education. When Tim moved to the Germantown area in 1978 he found his new mission . and has mostly devoted his time to voter education and registration.And from time to time if the candidate inspires him he works in political campaigns most notably the Irv Ackelsberg and Sherrie Cohen city council campaigns. In 2014 Tim registered over 4000 voters in the Philadelphia area..Today Tim spends most of his time trying to be a good grand father and still plays music with among others the legendary Philadelphia band Philly Gumbo.

Tim Hayes with his two grandsons Julian and Milo

Well Done Willie Mays

November 25, 2015 by Tim Hayes Leave a Comment

Truth be told at this time in my life I am hardly any kind of fan of professional sports. But during the time when I was growing up we had icons of the sports world who were indeed super men and women. During “jim crow” or American Apartheid we had to take our heroes where we could get them..People like Althea Gibson and Willie Mays although not the first..they had skills that were so phenomenal that they actually seemed like they were super human…Our country may have treated our people like shit. By law ..but we still had people in the sports, academics and the political worlds who let us know.that we were as good as white people or as my Uncle Johnny used to say “we might be even better than them ..because we haven’t rebelled and killed them all”. Willie Mays just might be along with Jim Thorpe the greatest all around athlete of all time..But certainly the greatest player to ever take up the sport of baseball…I was more than over joyed to see that Willie Mays….the “Say Hey Kid” as they used to call him when I was a boy… received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Well done Willie and well done President Obama.

New Purchases and Old Age

September 16, 2015 by Tim Hayes Leave a Comment

My wife and I have been together for a long time ( met in ’71 married in ’72 ) . Like many young couples we were near destitute for the first half decade or so. But we were very happy. I look back sometimes on our tax returns from 72-77..when we got by somehow on five to six thousand dollars a year..and that was with a young child. When we and our long past grown up kids get together sometimes today my kids actually will look back fondly on having fish sticks for dinner sometimes three times a week.They seem to have no idea how poor we actually were for a while. With the cost of living today I have no idea how we got by some times…I remember the tiny little oven I had for many of those years. But being the son of a chef… we had some wonderful holiday meals prepared on that piece of shit oven..Twenty years ago we bought what we thought would be our last major kitchen purchases…a seemingly nice oven..and a fridge with a huge freezer section..Thinking of all the stuff we would buy at bargain prices and then freeze. Getting ready for living on a fixed income. Two days ago our “golden years” oven died …and I of course panicked..But my wonderful spouse ..did for me what only she can do..calmed me down and reminded me of those credit cards I have but almost NEVER use..( I have a dreadful fear of debt…that my Dad passed along to me )..so after looking around ..big time ….for half the retail price I’m going to have the oven of my dreams for half the retail price !!!! ..and actually allowing for inflation at about a third of the price we paid for the last one twenty years ago………right now you are asking yourself >>>why is he writing about this ??? Well it’s because I’m OLD…and this is the kind of shit we think about…have a great day ! Top picture is My wife Conni and I in 1972..newly weds..the bottom pic is from the party we had on our 25th anniversary in 1997

TIM HAYES'

TALES FROM POST-RACIAL AMERICA

Author: Tim Hayes