Quotes To Live By

What Would Martin Be Like Today?

The minute Martin Luther King, Jr., went from talking about equal rights for Black people to calling for the end of war and a shift from giving the military a blank check to a fair and equitable distribution of wealth in the U.S. and around the globe, he was a dead man walking. Those with the Power-To-Define in the White Supremacist system didn't feel threatened by King talking about Black folks suffering or White folks having privilege. That was just considered "whining." White Supremacy says Black peoples' suffering is acceptable, if it's noticed at all, and White folks have earned their privilege.

But when he started pointing at the basic foundation of White Supremacy, the mother lode of capitalist profit that gushes from the wounds of millions of exploited workers -- Black and White -- into the hands and bank accounts of the few at the very top, it was time for a lynching. And lynching it was.

White History Month...?

"One of the things that most afflicts this country is that White people don’t know who they are or where they come from. That’s why you think I’m a problem. I am not the problem; your history is. And as long as you pretend you don’t know your history, you’re gonna be the prisoner of it. And there’s no question of your liberating me, ‘cause you can’t liberate yourselves. We are in this together. And finally, when White people talk about progress in relation to Black people, all they are saying, and all they can possibly mean by the word ‘progress’, is how quickly and how thoroughly I become White. I don’t want to become White; I want to grow up! And so should you." ~ James Baldwin

White Denial (cont'd)

The Phoenix Will Rise

“If you cannot remember or imagine what it is to lie down finally and wait for an end – that or deliverance; if you cannot consciously feel the pull of your wretched past or the pitiful attempts at a carefully planned life for yourself, there can be no windows or answering tools with which to say ‘this is so’ or ‘this is why.’ And there is no joy, no secret part of your thoughts that can exalt at simple pleasures, simple achievements. You must be fired in adversity, greatly torn, to take any satisfaction in having lived. Pity the poor who’ve never fallen, never lost; the sum of their losing now can be pitifully small and a great price for them alone.”  ~  Charles Ricehill (False Spring, 1974)

Hear, Hear

"The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals fierce conflicts of interest (sometimes exploding, most often repressed) between conquerors and conquered, master and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex. And in such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners.” ~ Dr. Martin L. King Jr., “Beyond Vietnam – A Time to Break Silence,” April 4, 1967

A. Phillip Randolph, Organizer Extraordinaire

"Justice is never given; it is exacted and the struggle must be continuous ~ for freedom is never a final fact, but a continuing evolving process to higher and higher levels of human, social, economic, political and religious relationship." ~ A. Phillip Randolph, who demonstrated how to make 'em listen

Why I Blog

"The people must know before they can act, and there's no educator to compare with the press." 

Ida B. Wells-Barnett, journalist and anti-lynching activist (1862-1931)

On This Day In History

On this day in 1964, Nelson Mandela stood before the Supreme Court in Pretoria, South Africa, against the urgings of his lawyer, and made the following statement before being sent to prison for twenty-seven years:

“During my lifetime I have dedicated my life to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal for which I hope to live and to see realised. But, my lord, if it needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

Once Social Change Begins...

"Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot un-educate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore." – Cesar Chavez, Address to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, Nov. 9, 1984

Taking a Moment to Reflect

As the old year slips away and the new one slides into place, let's consider this painting by Goya and this line attributed to Rebecca Adamson:

"If we don't change direction, we're going to end up where we're headed."
Nuff said?

Please??

Serve Yourself

"Service is the rent we pay for the privilege of living on this earth. It is the very purpose of life, and not something you do in your spare time." ~ Shirley Chisholm

Shirley Chisholm, earned a degree in elementary education and ran a day care for some years before becoming the first African-American woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1972, she ran for the Presidency "in spite of hopeless odds," as she put it, "to demonstrate the sheer will and refusal to accept the status quo." In other words, she didn't just talk about service, she put her money and her energy and her reputation and her commitment where her mouth was. There is much we could learn from her example.

As you know from my frequent whining, I spend a lot of my time overburdened and overwhelmed. I keep it like that. And while there have been times in my life when I was dodging reality by doing this, and while there have been other times in my life when I think I was just doing this from sheer habit, it's different now. I'm serving. And aware of it. But, of course, I still whine. Or brag. What's the difference?

Anyway, the point is, I've been thinking of late about the benefits I enjoy by the accident of nature or design that put me in the U.S. born to my college-educated parents in this skin with this brain at this point in history. I'm not high-rolling by a long shot, but I eat pretty much what I want or at least I don't go without food. I have four rooms all my own plus a bathroom with a flush toilet that works all the time. I have drinkable water coming out of three different faucets and take a hot shower whenever I like. I can flick a switch and get adequate light or heat or air conditioning at will.

I have a job paying a living wage. I have a car that runs pretty well almost all the time (even if it looks a little funky). I can buy clothes when I need them and boots just because I want to. I can get what I need to manage my diabetes without worrying about it. I belong to a gym and I already have my plane ticket to go see my daughter in New York City for Christmas where I will spend fifty dollars just getting from the airport to her apartment in Manhattan. I buy books -- albeit used -- on a regular basis. I can occasionally spend forty bucks on dinner without more than a pause (and have been known to spend more on very special days). I bought new flannel pajamas when the old ones got too big. I have a few pieces of art just because. I can afford to send money to feed street kids in Haiti or regularly help sustain the work of my local NAACP chapter or pick up the tab for a student's dinner. And I have ready access to two computers (just for me), the internet, services beyond any rational limit, and a ridiculous variety of almost any product you can imagine.

In addition, I can expect that, under most circumstances, I will not be stopped or arrested by the police for no reason, I will get a more or less fair shake in court, and I will not be followed around a store to make sure I don't shoplift. I don't have to be concerned that I might be snatched up by mistake and deported. My skin tone won't keep me out of a job, should I need one. And most of the time, I will be treated with respect I may, quite frankly, not have earned.

I mean, life is good. For those like me.

But I am incredibly aware that it's not like this for everybody. Increasingly, it's not like this for many, many people. Even right around the corner from me.

My point? Well, according to Shirley Chisholm, I owe for this. There's a bill. Just as surely as the one I pay with my debit card -- and without thinking -- at the restaurant table or the cash register or the toll booth or on the internet. Only you can't pay it with a debit card (though money, too, can be useful in a wide range of positive ways).

But when push comes to shove, I owe with my body. With my brain. And with my time.

This whining I do, this feeling overburdened and overwhelmed, needs to go. I am rolling in wealth, comparatively speaking. I am surrounded by beauty and joy. I am awash in the best of so much of what life offers that I really must just say thank you and ante up in every way I can and look for more opportunities. THIS is what is meant by you reap what you sow. THIS is what is meant by the more you give, the more you receive. THIS is what is meant by whatever measure you use to give will be used in measuring what you get back. It's NOT cash money the way the evangelists (hungry for their cut) suggest. It's our lives we owe. And absolutely worth it.

It's a great thing, in my opinion, that Barack Obama was elected to the U.S. Presidency, but that doesn't get anybody off the hook. If we expect one human being to fix this mess (which every one of us has helped to create either by what we do or what we haven't done), if we imagine that one human being can somehow magically turn this ship around, we are still living in la-la land. Let's make it happen. Let's change the world. Yes, we can. Yes, I can. Yes, I will.

Quote of the Week

"People say, 'What is the sense of our small effort?' They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time." ~ Dorothy Day

Long Live Steve Biko's Words!

On this day in 1977, Stephen Biko, a thirty-year-old student activist leader against the apartheid system in South Africa was beaten to death by the police who were holding him in custody for his commitment to justice for all. 15,000 people attended his funeral and thousands more were turned away, but we remember him today particularly for his ideas related to the ways oppressed people internalize their oppression. His founding of the Black Consciousness movement, calling for the psychological and cultural liberation of his people so that they could then set themselves free politically, may, in fact, be the touchstone all revolutions must visit in order to be effective.

It's no wonder the Afrikaner power structure put a ban on his public speaking. Nevertheless, we can still read his last public statement, made very publicly in spite of the ban and then subsequently captured in the book Black Consciousness in South Africa, edited by Millard Arnold.

It is telling -- and chilling -- that Biko was arrested under the Terrorism Act in his nation, which gave rather broad scoped powers to those that feared him so. It is equally telling -- and chilling -- that the officers who brutally beat and starved Biko for the last twenty-four days of his life were absolved of any wrong-doing in the matter of his death, despite the medical report that he died due to a brain lesion caused by the “application of force to the head”. Increasingly, under current policy and practice, we see routine news reports of people being brutalized and even murdered by law enforcement officers in full view of witnesses without their being held legally responsible.

Time has moved on. There is a different government in South Africa, although it sometimes seems that not much has changed after all. I can't help but think that Biko would not be surprised. Worse, though, is the fact that run-amuck Terrorism Acts have now popped up as de rigeur in most nations and most certainly in ours.

I would suggest that we all need to consider what Biko was trying to tell us about internalized oppression. Before more of us have been caused to join him as heroes. Dead heroes.

Quote of the Week

"My continuing passion is to part a curtain, that invisible veil of indifference that falls between us and that blinds us to each other's presence, each other's wonder, each other's human plight."

~~Eudora Welty

Quote of the Week

This poster is available from Northland Poster Collective.

Quote of the Week

"Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to 'jump at the sun.' We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground."

~~ Zora Neale Hurston in Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography

One World! One Dream!

"The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us?" -- Dorothy Day

Quote of the Week

"What after all has maintained the human race on this old globe despite all the calamities of nature and all the tragic failings of [hu]mankind, if not faith in new possibilities and courage to advocate them?" -- Jane Addams (1860-1935)

Quote of the Week

"It is good to know that there still remains a creative minority who would rather lose in a cause that will ultimately win than to win in a cause that will ultimately lose."
~written by Martin Luther King, Jr., to Charles Sherrod, Diane Nash and the others who went to jail on this day in 1961 for requesting service at a lunch counter in Rock Hill, South Carolina. The ten college students refused to post bail and demanded jail time rather than paying fines, refusing to acknowledge any legitimacy of the laws under which they were arrested.
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Thanks to This Week in Peace History for this information.