About Us

 

Hello!  My name is Xena.  I’m administrator for this blog.  We Hold These Truths To Be Self-Evident believes in diversity, love, kindness and equality for all, regardless of religion, race, gender, or sexual orientation.

On this blog, you will find that we follow trials; encourage people to be kind to each other; joke a little; report on some current events; and other things.

Thanks for visiting this page.  Please follow me on Twitter, @XenaBb7.

History

On February 26, 2012, a 17 year old’s life was brutally taken in Sanford, Florida.  His name is Trayvon Martin.  The man who killed him, George M. Zimmerman, claimed self-defense under Florida’s stand your ground statute.  He was not arrested until April, 2012, after the governor of Florida appointed a special investigating State’s Attorney to the case.

A few of us met in the comment section of Yahoo articles.  As discovery was released, we thought it would be good to have one place to upload it for convenient retrieval.  We started a Yahoo Group titled Blackbutterfly768.  As time went on, online comment sections on news sources became places of hate-speech, mean-spirited, game playing places for trolls.  That is how the thought of starting a blog came about.  The title “Blackbutterfly” was already taken on Word Press.  We added “7” to the title, and in August 2012, Blackbutterfly7 was launched.

My interests in the case first centered on stand your ground law.  I soon discovered that the majority of others on social media centered on race.  I thought the days of using racial slurs and statistics in effort to support white supremacist ideologies had ended long ago.   It hurt my heart deeply to realize that people did not stop to think of those things that effect all humans that do not discriminate; things such as hunger, grief, and yes — death.

Death does not care about the color of skin; financial status; gender; age; I.Q; education or any of the things that mankind uses to categorize others.   We’re all residents of this planet called Earth. We can come together when there are natural catastrophes, and do not seem to care about the color, gender, religion or gender preferences of those who help.  We should be able and willing to carry forth that respect for everyone, every day, all day.

As of July 2019

I’ve had the humbling honor of finding that some of my posts have been cited in professional publications.

The book titled New Mexico 2050, published in 2015 by the University of New Mexico Press, contains a footnote to this blog.  They cited a post that I wrote in March 2014 about the death of Jonathan Mitchell.  It was to support the writer’s opinion that New Mexico needs to hire more Black police officers to “… help build a culture of understanding …” and “… put an end to cases like the one involving the death of Iraq War veteran Jonathan Mitchell …”

Published in 2015, Cultural Issues in Criminal Defense – Fourth Edition, is a book written by lawyers.  It footed a reference to this blog for a court decision in the Marissa Alexander case.

Printed in 2016 is a paper written by John R. Rickford and Sharese King of Stanford University titled “Language and Linguistics On Trial: Hearing Rachel Jeantel (And Other Vernacular Speakers In the Courtroom and Beyond.”   On page 977 is a footnote to a blog post I wrote in June 2013 titled, “Frank Taaffe and the Butterfly Effect of Precious.”

Silent Cells: The Secret Drugging of Captive America, by Anthony Ryan Hatch and published by the University of Minnesota Press, copyright 2019.

Other writers have linked to this blog in support of their articles.  Amanda Tullos of Ranker included links to my blog post, The Jeffrey Dahmer Victim Who Did Not Have To Die.  As of April 2020, those links have been removed.  However, other sources that apparently first read Tullos’ article found the referenced link and included credit to this blog.  One such source is a Podcast.

 

Along with the citations, I’ve been blessed with being nominated for numerous peer-to-peer awards and as of 2020, have accepted thirty-six nominations.

When this blog was opened in August 2012, I had no idea what would happen – no idea how it would grow – no idea how many others I would be acquainted with.   I thank everyone who has participated here making this possible.

As of July 2019

In September 2018, I was diagnosed with HER2 positive breast cancer.  I began chemo treatment and in March 2019, had a double mastectomy and removal of 4 lymph nodes.  The Pathologist’s report was good news.  No cancer cells were found in the tissue, nor the lymph nodes.  The cancer/tumor marker test scored 11, meaning no cancer cells in my blood stream.  If you’re interested in more about my journey, the post is at this link. All it takes is for one of those zombies to get loose from the original tumor and hide out for years before recurrence. To prevent recurrence and lengthen my life, as of July 2019 I am still undergoing treatment with two targeted drugs.