2011 Role Models #3 & #4: Eduardo da Silva & Leonardo Bento

I thought a while about this one before I decided to post it. One has only to scan the right side of my blog to see that I have a sensitivity to the way police power is all too often used in this country and in the world. When push comes to shove, unless we're talking about serial murderers, my sympathies tend to lie, more often than not, with the underdogs -- and they're usually the ones doing the running rather than the chasing.

Nevertheless, I was moved recently when I saw a New York Times article with the video above about what's been going on the last couple of years in the City of God.

I remembered the location, 15 miles from Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, because it was the subject of an award-winning film released in 2002. It was painfully dramatic, but even more dramatic was an hour-long special feature documentary I also watched while I had the DVD. Gripping was not the word for it.

2011 Role Model #2: The Rabbis for Human Rights

Many African-Americans in the United States live in what might as well be called a war zone. Unexpected violence waits around every corner in many, if not most, poverty-stricken communities as some residents are forced to engage in dangerous practices in an effort to pay the rent or alienated souls prey on others because of the demons that torment them or law "enforcement" officers, often twitchy with fear themselves and in advanced stages of White Supremacy sepsis, lash out randomly at unsuspecting "suspects" powerless to protect themselves.

A friend who lives on the border between Texas and Mexico recently told me that her region also has come to look like a war zone of late, with pit-bullish browbeaters wearing various kinds of uniforms attacking people at will and thinking up "explanations" later.

But we know that neither of these situations is precisely what is being experienced in other parts of the world, too often bankrolled by our own hard-earned wages (and I can't begin to tell you how it goads my soul to work a day every week for the U.S. government so that they can spend my money on killing people I don't know and don't want to kill). The war zones this nation's government is not bombing personally (like Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan, just as examples and just at the moment -- it could change in a heartbeat) depend on a continual flow of U.S. dollars and weapons and influence to keep the process escalated and dangerous on both sides and endlessly, infinitely profitable to corporate coffers. There's a reason why we strike terror in the hearts of humans all over the world and terror is not the same as respect.

In any case, since the subject of this blog is the socially-constructed, political notion of "race," I don't write often about other things, no matter how strongly I feel about them. Like the situation in Palestine, where Zionism (a political movement, not a faith) is trying to wipe out the Palestinian people completely -- as in genocide. This week, however, I'm posting about role models -- people who are choosing to demonstrate to the rest of us how one person can make a stand, alone if need be, just because they know it's the right thing to do -- and for 2011 Role Model #2, I've chosen to feature any member of the Rabbis for Human Rights organization. As you'll see from the New York Times op-ed video above, these valiant individuals put themselves boldly in harm's way to make even the tiniest difference in the lives of others to whom it means so much.

2011 Role Model #1: Deonte Bridges

Yesterday I promised I would spend this whole week writing about people who make a difference because they have decided to do what they can wherever they are with whatever they have. I'm calling them "role models" for the rest of us and they represent a range of individuals who are at different places in their lives, but they are all showing us how it's done.
I'm starting off with Deonte Bridges, a young man who graduated from Booker T. Washington High School in Atlanta, Georgia, last May. During the commencement exercises, Deonte gave the address captured in the YouTube video above.
So often, we feel as if the obstacles we face as individuals and as a society are just too massive to overcome. Sometimes we get tired of trying to rise above whatever is pushing us down. Shaking our heads in frustration, we're quick to say "somebody ought to do something," adding "and as soon as I..." (fill in the blank here), "I'm gonna step up and..." (fill in this blank, too).
But that's not how it works. Life happens. And we don't get to wait. We're presented with an evolution of realities on a daily basis. We don't have to kill every dragon. We don't have to win every battle. We don't have to bankroll an army. We just have to do the next right thing as we go along. If we're honest with ourselves, we know in our gut what the next right thing is. And if you're not sure, take a couple of minutes and listen to what Deonte Bridges -- our 2011 Role Model #1 -- has to say.