The Women Disobey protest against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) “zero tolerance” policy separation children and families at the US/Mexico border. 28 June 2018. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. Author: Sarahmirk .
By Kathie MM
Believers in peace and human rights are reeling from national symptoms of fascism, racism, and violent responses to engineered fear and misdirected rage–and now on top of everything else, an opening in the Supreme Court.
But, there’s an antidote to despair in The Progressive’s 2005 article from Howard Zinn.
Here are a few excerpts, reminding us: we have overcome before–and can do so again.
“It would be naive to depend on the Supreme Court to defend the rights of poor people, women, people of color, dissenters of all kinds. Those rights only come alive when citizens organize, protest, demonstrate, strike, boycott, rebel, and violate the law in order to uphold justice….
The rights of working people, of women, of black people have not depended on decisions of the courts. Like the other branches of the political system, the courts have recognized these rights only after citizens have engaged in direct action powerful enough to win these rights for themselves….
Knowing the nature of the political and judicial system of this country, its inherent bias against the poor, against people of color, against dissidents, we cannot become dependent on the courts, or on our political leadership. Our culture–the media, the educational system–tries to crowd out of our political consciousness everything except who will be elected President and who will be on the Supreme Court, as if these are the most important decisions we make. They are not. They deflect us from the most important job citizens have, which is to bring democracy alive by organizing, protesting, engaging in acts of civil disobedience that shake up the system. That is why Cindy Sheehan’s dramatic stand in Crawford, Texas, leading to 1,600 anti-war vigils around the country, involving 100,000 people, is more crucial to the future of American democracy than [particular judicial hearings and appointments]…”
There’s gold in them there words. Keep the faith. Heed the call.
Martin Luther King Jr, at a press conference / World Telegram & Sun photo by Walter Albertin, 8 June 1964. No known copyright restrictions
By Anthony J. Marsella
Ladies and Gentlemen, I write to you today from Atlanta, Georgia, USA, birthplace and national shrine of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968), clergyman, civil rights leader, social activist, Nobel Prize Laureate, and martyr to the cause of justice.
I write to call your attention to the land where one man made the word ‘‘justice’’ a living reality, where one man’s relentless and indomitable pursuit of “justice” for his people, and for people everywhere, changed history through non-violent protest inspired by an oratory filled with inspired thought and hopes.
I write to welcome you to the land where one’s man’s vision changed a nation’s identity, conscience, and heritage of slavery and abuse of African-Americans, and of all people living in bondage across the world seeking opportunity, screaming for dignity, begging for relief.
It was here, more than 50 years ago, in Atlanta, Georgia, and in a thousand other places across the land, from Alabama to Chicago, from Washington D.C. to California, a deep, resonant, baritone voice of a Black man electrified the air with words of such magnitude, of such righteousness, of such eloquence, of such truth, they crushed historic roots of oppression lifting the human spirit to new levels of possibility.
It was here, in Atlanta, Georgia, a Black man refused to be silenced, denying fear, injury, and pain, and threats, dangers, and risks to life. It was here, and across the land, hundreds of thousands harkened to King’s inspiring words, joining in protests at costs to their safety, health, and life.
The task before King, and for countless others taking the cause of “justice” in those tumultuous years, was to undo a history of oppression, and to build a future founded on laws guaranteeing justice, equality, and liberty, regardless of race, creed, color, gender or any social-identity marker.
This, then, is the pressing challenge of life in our global age, as nations withdraw from social responsibilities, and dismiss ideals promised by government, and guaranteed by universal human rights and accepted moral codes.
Wednesday, April 4, 2018, in memorial celebration of the tragic assassination of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., we gather to share ideas, to seek wisdom, to pursue inspiration, and to bond in common purpose, in honor of Reverend King’s legacy.
Let me, however, be clear in my message to you:
I do not write to tell you the profound changes inspired by King and countless others who followed his ways in the 1960s are sufficient. Nor do I write to tell you we must be content with the many broken political barriers, proud of social advances, and with patient remaining challenges.
I write today to tell you King’s words are enshrined in stone to remind us the struggle for justice will always continue. I write to you today to tell you the fierce and exhausting struggle beginning in the Land of King 50 years ago, has not ended, and will continue for generations to come.
I write today to tell you the roots of hate, ignorance, and evil endure, nurtured by the protective veils of government corruption, cronyism, greed, and religious prejudices sanctioned by dogma and custom. I call upon you today to join King’s call to justice, now more than 50 years old as it still echoes throughout our global age.
Listen! Can you hear the cries of the masses around the world leading lives of desperation, lives devoid of hope, lives existing from moment to moment, each breath lacking reflexive assurance the next breath will bring solace to an aching body, and also to a troubled mind?
Events in recent months regarding the betrayal of our government’s Justice and National Security Agency staff and offices raise serious questions about the sources of Reverend King’s assassination. It is said, Reverend King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, with a rifle bullet fired by James Earl Ray at 6:01 on April 4, 1968. A single assassination? A conspiracy? Today’s DC scandals leave open the question of assassination, albeit we now know government offices, agencies, and people have engaged in criminal acts.
There was, at the time, extensive fear among the highest offices of our land that Reverend King’s words would spark massive protests for social reform regarding legal and civil rights, especially for African American populations doomed to limited fixed roles and opportunities.
It is well known, and inescapably criminal, that J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI, and one of the destructive forces in his time, sought to stop Reverend King’s influence by threatening him with exposure of affairs with women and urging him to commit suicide. Hoover was furious over Reverend King’s efforts to stop the war in Vietnam, efforts that were to prove prescient as the war’s tolls upon Vietnam and the United State of America’s society became doomed with endless guilt at its carnage.
Hoover was also fearful the civil rights movement would challenge the status quo:
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, feared the civil rights movement and investigated the allegations of communist infiltration. When no evidence emerged to support this, the FBI used the incidental details caught on tape over the next five years in attempts to force King out of his leadership position in the COINTELPRO program.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King_Jr.
The question of Reverend King’s assassination remains open to debate. Today, a building in Washington, DC, is named after J. Edgar Hoover, and a gradually expanding national monument is being built in Atlanta, Georgia, close to Reverend King’s home and church, to honor Reverend King. The monument is insufficient given Reverend King’s legacy and impact. We must insure his words will be present in every classroom across the land because they go beyond protests, anti-war and civil rights protests. “They are timeless!”
Slavery, and its brutal legacy, sullied and stained by inadequate USA peace and justice efforts, continue. Reverend King’s words and actions challenged the comfort zones of those in power at local, national, and international levels. Their efforts after saturating Black areas with illegal drugs, and imposing prison terms on offenders with even slight amounts of illegal substance, were unable to halt the rising tide of freedom and justice Reverend King’s word inspired. Was the “War on Drugs” really a war on black people?
Today, we are engaged in a global struggle for justice. There are victims of war and violence. There are victims of labor, gender, and child exploitation. There are victims of oppression, there are victims denied freedom. All victims yearn for recognition, support, and justice. All victims are you, for there is no other! This was the message in King’s words.
Answering King’s call, and the call of billions of others living amid injustice, will not be easy! Heeding King’s call will add burdens to conscience, press discomforting responsibilities upon daily rounds, and risk threat to security.
In answering the call, your life will not be the same. You will be required to face harsh realities; you will be singled out for abuse from reactionary forces whose accepted inhumanity keeps them locked in hate. Your life itself will be at risk. Yes, your efforts will bring you threats and surveillance.
What will not be at risk, however, is your personal integrity, your dignity, your identity, and your position of gratitude, respect, and admiration in the heart and minds of those you help.
Pursuit of justice is not for the faint of heart. You can expect condemnation, ridicule, insult, entrapment, and defamation; costs are high, but rewards are more than gold or silver; rewards come in knowing in our brief time on earth, you have done something to advance the cause of “justice.”
As Reverend King would, in my humble opinion, say: Brethren, I share with you the words spoken before in a distant land, by a humble man, who understood the evils of violence and hatred, anticipating his own death at vile hands:Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.AMEN
Protesters fill in along Independence Avenue hours before the Women’s March on Washington kicks off. 21 January, 2017.In the public domain. Author: Voice of America.
By Gordon Fellman
It is interesting that the main word in “Make America Great Again”—the crucial adjective—remains not only murky but completely undefined. We must guess, but Mr. Trump’s public remarks may offer indirect clues.
Does “great” suggest reinstituting slavery? Renewing colonialism? Returning to the least comprehensive and most inadequate health care system in the entire industrial world, the one that preceded the Affordable Health Care Act? Going back before the New Deal to life without social security, without government support for those suffering from economic injustice and collapse?
Many people assume that defining that word does not matter, understanding it simply as code for “white,” as in Make American White Again. The race interpretation makes sense, of course: 1) The Republican Party imploded in 2008 when faced with the first Black US president, a reality dealt with as intolerable and to be ignored, defined, reviled, and undermined at all costs. 2) Demographics make it clear that whites will be outnumbered by nonwhites in this country within a generation or two. And then there is Donald Trump’s bizarre birther obsession, slimily born and slimily renounced.
Changes in this country since the Civil Rights, antiwar, Women’s and LGBTQ movements have understandably rattled people who felt themselves, by their own self-definition, bypassed by those vast changes in our society.
Little attention has been paid during this election year to what it might feel like to have one’s confidence in the assumed superiority of whiteness, war, men, and straight sexuality attacked head-on by forces not easy to understand if you cannot see yourselves as part of them.
People guiding the victories of those movements ignore where they leave people who feel bypassed by them. That anger was part of the reaction is puzzling only to those who wish not to face the emotional realities, including many forms of felt loss, that social change necessarily brings in its wake.
Why do some people welcome change and others meet it with fear and dread? One group finds something added to their lives (dignity for all), the other focuses on what appears to be taken away (white privilege, male privilege, etc.) Both the celebrations and the fears and dreads make sense to me.
Those striking movements of the last sixty years can usefully be seen, at least from the point of view of many white men (and some white heterosexual women), as bound together by their massive rejection of normative, or traditional, white masculinity. It is, after all, white men who have played the dominant and dominating roles in interlocking systems of racism, sexism and patriarchy, war, and heterosexism.
The movements in question all threaten the masculinity that had been taken for granted among white men for centuries.
Trump is reasserting normative white masculinity, evoking such forms as the frontiersman, business tycoon, white prizefighter, and football memes of masculinity. Trump walks with a certain swagger that characterizes this normative masculinity. His unrelieved rudeness, sarcasm, and bullying fit iconic playground, football, and college fraternity strivings to be seen as acceptably masculine.
Consider the normative male pride in showing off what male peers consider the trophy wife. We don’t know what Melania feels about this, but plenty of women respect and likely long for the reassertion of the normative male. (Not all women are feminists and may be bewildered by its claims.)
Trump’s scorn for the rich (a group in which he boasts membership), women, the Pope, immigrants, Mexicans, Muslims, the poor, disabled people, et al is a style associated with calculating, cruel, hard men from time immemorial. What I see in Trump’s swagger and in his eyes is coldness, insecurity, and emptiness.
Beneath all the bluster and boasting in that kind of man (and his female accomplices) has got to be unfaced, unrecognized, undealt with pain. That pain surely matches the pain beneath the surface in his wildly cheering audiences.
As Trump skims over all policy and other political issues, what is left is style. It is the style of a man who wants, pathetically, to be recognized as a man’s man and to welcome aboard only those who will share in that aspiration and self-delusion. The people so frantically trying to share this macho pretense join him in denying that it is on life support at best. It will give way eventually, or we are doomed, to empathy and compassion. That frame of mind must trump this sad, overblown toughness and bullying if we are to survive.
The old masculinity is Trump’s. The new masculinity will rejoice in preserving dignity, humility, life, and the integrity of our fragile planet.
Gordon Fellman teaches sociology at Brandeis University and chairs its Peace, Conflict, and Coexistence Studies program. Having earlier written on the possible shift from adversary relations to those of mutuality, in his book Rambo and the Dalai Lama: the Compulsion to Win and Its Threat to Human Survival, he is now writing The Coming End of War, which offers a three part deconstruction of war and several suggestions for how to memorialize what war has been and how to move past it.
Fellman is a long time activist joining with those who have worked for a two state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Rather than arguing right and wrong, he brings a sociologist’s tools and sensibilities to making sense of this conflict and how it might eventually be resolved. He has also been a community and campus activist during Civil Rights day, the Vietnam War resistance days, and since.
Camp Pendleton Counseling Services’ POWER Workshop is a program designed to help service members and their families overcome domestic violence and child abuse. This image is a work of a U.S. military or Department of Defense employee, taken or made as part of that person’s official duties. In the public domain.
The corporate media, when it does not have enough juicy crime and scandal stories to shock and awe, often provides us with a new episode in the “war on terror”.
Internationally, the dominant approach to combatting terror appears to be using or threatening more terror.
I think we know how well that has served us. (Is the world safer for democracy yet?)
Let’s face it, wherever there is an imbalance of power, there is a potential for terrorizing.
Often, throughout history, in much of the world, men have terrorized women (including husbands terrorizing wives), first borns have terrorized later borns (think of Cain and Abel), members of different gangs have terrorized each other, bullies have terrorized whomever they can, and, sadly, the rich and powerful have terrorized the poor and meek (who seem to have a long way to go before they will be allowed to inherit the earth).
If we are going to have a successful war on terror, we need to take an ecological approach; that is, we need to tackle terrorizing at all levels of society—in the home, in the neighborhood, in the broader community, in states, and in the international community.
Terrorizing behavior is contagious—once you allow it into your home, it can go viral.
All of these programs have flaws; after all, they were developed by human beings. However, if you want to participate in the most general, most far-reaching, most likely-to-succeed war on terror, then supporting , defending, trying to improve, and contributing to the success of those programs is as good a place to start as any.
Protesters fill in along Independence Avenue hours before the Women’s March on Washington kicks off. 21 January, 2017.In the public domain. Author: Voice of America.
