New Year’s Resolution 1: Resist and Rise

Greenpeace’s activists and supporters before the Global Climate March,  November 29th 2015, Madrid. Text on the banner: “100% Renewables.”. Licensed under the Creative Commons AttributionShare Alike 3.0 Unported license. Author: OsvaldoGago.

 

By Kathie MM

New Year’s Resolution 1 comes from the long-time successful activist group Greenpeace International.  They have resolved: Tomorrow we rise.

Here are their specific resolutions:

“Tomorrow we break the cycle of overconsumption.

Tomorrow we hold corporations accountable.

Tomorrow we try to decrease the terrible impact of the industrial livestock machine.

Tomorrow, we stand together so that people everywhere are treated a little more equally.

Tomorrow we shake power structures that only serve the few at the expense of the many.

Tomorrow we are positive about our future and will rebuild the planet the way it should be.

Because tomorrow, we resist and we rise.

We’ll see you there.”

Will Greenpeace and Engaging Peace see your signatures on petitions? Will we hear your voices at rallies on behalf on the environment and peace?  Will you join us at the ballot box next November, supporting candidates who understand the threats to our environments, and our futures?

Will you rise and resist?

Will you send us your own resolutions to share with other readers?

Now is the hour: Use the holidays to pledge your commitment to peace and social justice.

And please support Engaging Peace.  You can click here to donate.

 

Pledging Allegiance

George Washington presiding the Philadelphia Convention for the signing of the Constitution of the United States. Artist: Howard Chandler Christy (1873-1952). In the public domain.

by Kathie MM

The Pledge of Allegiance is not sacrosanct. Within my lifetime, the words “Under God” were added to the Pledge because Congress and the President wanted to differentiate the US from the godless Communists.

Here is my recommendation for an updated Pledge:

I pledge allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it’s the guide, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty, justice, and equal rights for all.

Pledging allegiance to a flag is not a good idea. Flags are symbols that are too easily manipulated, used to whip up armies and compel people towards violence.

What Americans should pledge allegiance to is the Constitution—an imperfect but perfectible document created by dedicated freedom fighters desiring a more perfect union and wise enough to provide mechanisms for reforming and ripening the fruit of their labors.

Let’s replace “for which it stands” with “for which it’s the guide”; we should not stand still, mired in dirty politics, but instead move toward the more perfect union envisioned, at least vaguely, by  founders of our government; there is much in our evolving Constitution to provide guidance.

“Under God”—a controversial term. Organized religion, like other self-promoting hierarchies, has fed divisiveness and violence over the centuries; however, if there is a God, and only one God, then all believers  have faith in the same God, by whatever name they use and however much they want to assume God plays favorites. Plus, reverence for a Higher Power that makes all living things sacred is more life-enhancing than idolizing money and power.

“Liberty and justice for all” have too often been denied, but they, along with equal rights, must still be the goals towards which we pledge our allegiance. A more perfect union will be an indivisible multi-hued union of all living things, interdependent,valued, and mutually sustaining.

 

Unfinished business

Idealized image of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin reading the Declaration of Independence to colonists.
Idealized image of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin reading the Declaration of Independence to colonists. Public domain, work of the United States federal government

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…” (From The Declaration of Independence: A Transcription, IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776, The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, signed by 56 white men).

Members of those 13 colonies successfully fought King George for independence, but large segments of the population then and now were excluded from the select group considered entitled to “certain unalienable Rights.”

Among the groups excluded from “all men” by the formulators of the Declaration were, of course, all women, plus all native peoples, slaves, freedmen, and others not seen as deserving the same rights as the men in the emerging power structures in the colonies.

There was no inclusive view of human rights in the minds of the authors of the Declaration of Independence—or most others of those times.

A vision of equal rights for all did not gain legal status in the U.S. until the passing of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution (1866), which  included an Equal Protection Clause guaranteeing all citizens equal protection under the law. The 15th Amendment (1869) prohibited both the federal and state governments from denying the right to vote for reasons of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” It was not until the 19th Amendment (1920) that women were given the right to vote.

Today, in 2014, women’s suffrage seems pretty secure within the United States—at least for women in the white majority; however, there continue to be efforts to prevent people of color from voting.  And rights are far from being equally distributed.  Lots of work still to be done.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology