Posts labeled Activism
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“I could mention just one more thing… I have talked about it a great deal in the last few days: the administration of justice. Something is wrong with a society where, in the last four years, since 1960, twenty-six Negro and white Civil Rights workers have been murdered. In most cases, nothing has been done about it. Only one person has been convicted of murder. The others were not even convicted for murder, but, as in Montgomery the other day, the conviction was for conspiring to violate civil rights. The accused murderers of Rev. Reeb were released. We have got to go all out to deal with the question of segregation justice. We still have a long, long, way to go.”
--Martin Luther King Jr. (December 15, 1965)
#raremlk
#drewdellingersluminouslibrary
"We don't have to argue with anybody. We don't have to curse and go around acting bad with our words. We don't need any bricks and bottles, we don't need any Molotov cocktails. We just need to go around to these stores, and to these massive industries in our country, and say, 'God sent us by here to say that you're not treating his children right. And we've come by here to ask you to make the first item on your agenda fair treatment where God's children are concerned. Now, if you are not prepared to do that, we do have an agenda that we must follow. And our agenda calls for withdrawing economic support from you.'"
--MLK Jr. (April 3, 1968)
#luminouslibrary
"If any of you are around when I have to meet my day, I don't want a long funeral. And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long. Every now and then I wonder what I want them to say. Tell them not to mention that I have a Nobel Peace Prize, that isn't important. Tell them not to mention that I have three or four hundred other awards, that's not important. Tell them not to mention where I went to school.
I'd like somebody to mention that day, that Martin Luther King Jr., tried to give his life serving others. I'd like for somebody to say that day, that Martin Luther King Jr., tried to love somebody. I want you to say that day, that I tried to be right on the war question. I want you to be able to say that day, that I did try to feed the hungry. And I want you to be able to say that day, that I did try, in my life, to clothe those who were naked. I want you to say, on that day, that I did try, in my life, to visit those who were in prison. I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity."
--Martin Luther King Jr., "The Drum Major Instinct" (February 1968)
#drewdellingersluminouslibrary
You're Invited to Drew Dellinger's Ph.D. Dissertation Defense!
Friday, April 27th, 2-4pm
CIIS -- California Institute of Integral Studies
1453 Mission St., (between 10th & 11th) Room 306
San Francisco, CA
Open to the public! Come early; space is limited.
(This is the abstract for my doctoral dissertation. I am finishing a Ph.D. in Philosophy and Religion, with a concentration in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness, at CIIS -- the California Institute of Integral Studies.)
The Mountaintop Vision:
Martin Luther King’s Cosmology of Connection
This dissertation asserts that Martin Luther King Jr.’s social justice vision was based on a worldview of interconnection. This work examines cosmological and ecological dimensions of King’s thought that have been largely overlooked in previous King scholarship.
King’s vision connected racism with war and poverty, stressed the unity of peoples and movements around the planet, and recognized the interwoven nature of the universe, which he described as, “the interrelated structure of all reality.” His holistic view of the cosmos and society is the hallmark of what I call his Mountaintop Vision.
In the last years of his life, which I call his Mountaintop Period (1966-68), King identified systemic links between social justice issues that were largely viewed as separate, fusing them into a unified critique that fundamentally challenged the modern system. This work articulates six aspects of King’s Mountaintop Vision: (1) connecting justice to the cosmos, (2) emphasizing economic justice, (3) confronting systemic racism, (4) challenging U. S. militarism, (5) exemplifying the prophetic path, and (6) building a global movement.
King’s worldview constituted a cosmology of justice in which interdependence and compassion are woven into the fabric of the cosmos itself. In King’s view, “the universe is on the side of justice.”
This dissertation examines King’s speeches, sermons, and writings to demonstrate his vision of radical connection. I argue that King’s view of existence as a “network of mutuality,” in which “all life is interrelated,” should be recognized as an early expression of systems thinking and ecological consciousness. King’s Mountaintop Vision linked social justice, cosmology, and ecology in a way that may yet provide guidance for our future.
Drew Dellinger
©2012
"A realization of the inter-relationships within an ecosystem is essential for man's continued occupancy on earth. We cannot go on polluting our air or our rivers without affecting all life. We cannot, for example, continue with impunity to increase the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere at the rate it has been increased over the past fifty years. The consequences of such interference with the biosphere, the world ecosystem, would be disastrous climatic change."
--Raymond F. Dasmann, A Different Kind of Country (1968)
#drewdellingersluminouslibrary
"The unleashing of a voracious prison apparatus after the mid-1970s partakes of a broader restructuring of the state tending to criminalize poverty and its consequences so as to impress insecure, underpaid jobs as the modal employment situation of the unskilled segments of the postindustrial proletariat. The sudden hypertrophy of the penal state was thus matched and complemented by the planned atrophy of the social state."
--Loic Wacquant, "Class, Race & Hyperincarceration in Revanchist America" (2010)
"I am convinced that capitalism has seen its best days in American [sic], and not only in America, but in the entire world.... It has failed to meet the needs of the masses.... There is a definite move away from capitalism, ... capitalism finds herself like a losing football team in the last quarter trying all types of tactics to survive."
--Martin Luther King Jr., hand-written notes on capitalism (1951)
#raremlk
#drewdellingersluminouslibrary
"One of the remarkable things about Occupy is how kind people are to each other. As I have at other protests here, I met many good and decent people with whom I had great conversations. Most of these people really care about the state of our world, and have embraced this movement with gratitude for having a place where they can figure out ways to take that caring and turn it into tangible action.
I point this out because no matter what the mainstream media says about Saturday’s action, there’s a big piece of the story that can only be absorbed by walking with these people and getting to know them. The heart of Occupy Oakland is so good. It’s been a bit broken by all the repressive police actions, ranging from waging war on the Occupiers the day of the first raid, to arresting people for things as petty as taking a blanket out of a garbage can. In spite of all the attempts to break the the movement’s heart and destroy it, it continues on, beating strongly and moving forward."
--Kevin Army, from his article in Salon.
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"The day has passed for superficial patriotism."
--Martin Luther King Jr. (April 30, 1967)
#drewdellingersluminouslibrary
#raremlk
"It would be well to remind white America of its debt to Dr. Du Bois. When they corrupted Negro history they distorted American history because Negroes are too big a part of the building of this nation to be written out of it without destroying scientific history. White America, drenched with lies about Negroes, has lived too long in a fog of ignorance. Dr. Du Bois gave them a gift of truth for which they should eternally be indebted to him."
--Martin Luther King Jr. (Feb. 23, 1968)
#drewdellingersluminouslibrary #raremlk
In honor of today's national holiday clebrating Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement, here's a video of some recent remarks I made at Darrin Drda's book release party.
"I saw Martin do things that truly made my flesh shake on my bones… That’s how I really got with him. I began to feel like he was a man who really was living what he preached. I’ve seen Martin, knowing how bad the Klan wanted him, I’ve seen him do things no normal man could do."
--Hosea Williams
(speaking about the campaign in St. Augustine, FL, 1964)
#luminouslibrary
"Crompton argues that environmentalists need to do more to challenge the individualistic worldview in their campaign work.... The research coming out of Yale's Cultural Cognition Project...has found that a major determinant of whether a person rejects the scientific consensus on climate change is whether they have a strongly 'hierarchical' or 'individualistic' worldview...78 per cent of subjects who display an 'egalitarian' and 'communitarian' worldview believe that most scientists agree climate change is happening (which is true) - compared with only 19 per cent of those with a 'hierarchical' and 'individualist' worldview.
For me, it follows from this that part of being an effective environmentalist is trying to win more people over to a worldview in line with the laws of physics and chemistry, rather than offering shopping advice and touting 'market-based solutions."
--Naomi Klein (NY Times, December 7, 2011)
#drewdellingersluminouslibrary
#readthomasberry
"All I know is that when I see white people regularly yelling at police officers then something good is happening. I know it is easy to be snarktastic, but why do it with the Occupy Movement? There are plenty of things to snark about that don't involve the oppression of the poor. Do yourself a favor. Be on the right side of history."
--W. Kamau Bell
Read the article here.
Matt Taibbi nails it.
Excerpt:
"What happened at UC Davis was the inevitable result of our failure to make sure our government stayed in the business of defending our principles. When we stopped insisting on that relationship with our government, they became something separate from us."
--Matt Taibbi
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Glen Greenwald hits the nail on the head. Here's an excerpt:
"The intent and effect of such abuse is that it renders those guaranteed freedoms meaningless. If a population becomes bullied or intimidated out of exercising rights offered on paper, those rights effectively cease to exist. Every time the citizenry watches peaceful protesters getting pepper-sprayed — or hears that an Occupy protester suffered brain damage and almost died after being shot in the skull with a rubber bullet — many become increasingly fearful of participating in this citizen movement, and also become fearful in general of exercising their rights in a way that is bothersome or threatening to those in power. That’s a natural response, and it’s exactly what the climate of fear imposed by all abusive police state actions is intended to achieve: to coerce citizens to “decide” on their own to be passive and compliant — to refrain from exercising their rights — out of fear of what will happen if they don’t.
The genius of this approach is how insidious its effects are: because the rights continue to be offered on paper, the citizenry continues to believe it is free. They believe that they are free to do everything they choose to do, because they have been “persuaded” — through fear and intimidation — to passively accept the status quo. As Rosa Luxemburg so perfectly put it: “Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.” Someone who sits at home and never protests or effectively challenges power factions will not realize that their rights of speech and assembly have been effectively eroded because they never seek to exercise those rights; it’s only when we see steadfast, courageous resistance from the likes of these UC-Davis students is this erosion of rights manifest."
--Glen Greenwald
I just picked up a cool new book, Visions of a Better World: Howard Thurman's Pilgrimage to India and the Origins of African American Nonviolence.
by Quinton Dixie and Peter Eisenstadt
Check it out.
"We are not going to allow any military industrial complex to control this country."
--Martin Luther King Jr. (1968, ten days before his assassination)
Bill Twist, Pia Banerjee, Lynne Twist, John Perkins, Drew Dellinger, Jon Symes. Here's a photo from the panel that followed the Awakening the Dreamer "Super Symposium." Yesterday's event was the unveiling of the newest version of the Symposium.
In 2003-2004, Drew was a key member of the team that developed and designed the Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream Symposium. The Symposium has now been used in 60 countries, in 14 languages.
"The dispossessed of this nation--the poor, both white and Negro--live in a cruelly unjust society. They must organize a revolution against that injustice, not against the lives of the persons who are their fellow citizens, but against the structures through which the society is refusing to take means which have been called for, and which are at hand, to lift the load of poverty."
--Martin Luther King Jr. (1967)
"Let us keep the issues where they are. The issue is injustice.... Now we've got to keep attention on that. That's always the problem with a little violence. You know what happened the other day and the press dealt only with the window-breaking. I read the articles. They very seldom got around to mentioning the fact that one thousand, three hundred sanitation workers were on strike, and that Memphis is not being fair to them, and that Mayor Loeb is in dire need of a doctor. They didn't get around to that."
--Martin Luther King Jr., April 3, 1968
I was honored to have Joel Olson as a guest speaker in a class I taught at Prescott College in the late '90s. Later I heard him speak in the bay area about his excellent book, "The Abolition of White Democracy."
I respect Joel and his scholoarship immensely. Check out his recent article, "Whiteness and the 99%."
Occupy Wall Street Drew Dellinger
We need global
citizens for some sit-ins
again.
I say we all meet
on Wall Street
and lock down--
lock the whole block down!
[Drew Dellinger, 2001]
I take exception to the rule
of the greedy and the cruel.
This fall, school’s in session
and the lesson is Wall Street.
It’s time for action
and your name’s on the call sheet.
It’s time we all meet
and name what it is:
the game has been rigged
to enrich corporate
business interests that sent this economy spinning.
Charlie Sheen is not the only clueless dude that thinks he’s winning.
See, the one percent done spent all the rent.
And now the rent’s due, so we’re coming to a tent near you.
We’re the like-minded ninety-nine percent
standing up to corruption with loving dissent.
We stand for justice,
and the future,
and all of humanity.
Embracing all people.
Yes, even Sean Hannity.
The message is simple:
greed, injustice, and eco-destruction have to go.
Pay attention corporate media. We’ll try to say it slow.
It’s time to
rock the nation,
rock this occupation.
It’s time for the people to peacefully fight back.
Tell Congress and the media we’re taking the mic back.
Tell the jaded it’s that long-awaited revolution.
Put away the pepper spray and re-read the Constitution.
These cops are paid to go crazy, yo.
But we’re peaceful.
Don’t tase me, bro.
We came to incite insight,
unite and discuss this.
We came to hang, and to bang the drums of justice.
Let’s occupy
with our love and our light.
Let’s occupy
the earth and the sky,
and live with all beings
as a planet-wide tribe.
Occupy the divine mind residing inside.
See, I’m the type writer
that’s known to light fires
and prone to inspire
the moment’s own higher desire.
‘Cause history knows it’s the time
for resisting the team at the scene of the crime.
Tell your friends I’ll meet ‘em there at Freedom Square.
They can’t stop us, from Seattle to Chiapas.
It’s our mission to envision
what comes after the catastrophe.
How do we move past
the capitalist disaster?
Our communities need us.
We are all leaders.
How could we ask for anything less than the future?
--Drew Dellinger
(October 13, 2011) www.planetizethemovement.org #OWS copyright c 2011
"Calling someone a racist individualizes the behavior and veils the fact that racism can occur only where it is culturally, socially, and legally supported. It lays the blame on the individual rather than the systemic forces that have shaped that individual and his or her society. White people know they do not want to be labeled racist; they become concerned with how to avoid that label, rather than worrying about systemic racism and how to change it."
--Wildman and Davis, "Making Systems of Privilege Visible,"
in White Privilege, Rothenberg, ed.
A great spiritual leader has passed. Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, known for his fearlessness, initiated the Birmingham Campaign that turned the tide of the nation and led directly to the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and the Civil Rights Act.
In 1956, after 16 sticks of dynamite blew off the corner of his house and literally blasted him out of bed, he was never again afraid. "It took the fear out of me and it made me know that god saved me to lead the fight so that I was never fearful after that."
“Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our shores, the scar of racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society. From the sixteenth century forward, blood flowed in battles over racial supremacy. We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or to feel remorse for this shameful episode. Our literature, our films, our drama, our folklore all exalt it.”
--Martin Luther King Jr.
from I Have a Dream: The Quotations of Martin Luther King Jr., Hoskins, ed. (1968)
#drewdellingersluminouslibrary
"In this extraordinary endeavor to create the country called America, a great many crimes were committed. And I want to make it absolutely clear, or as clear as I can, that I understand perfectly well that crime is universal, and as old as mankind, and I trust, therefore, that no one will assume that I am indicting or accusing. I'm not any longer interested in the crime. Peope treat each other very badly and always have and very probably always will. I'm not talking about the crime; I'm talking about denying what one does. This is a much more sinister matter."
--James Baldwin, "The White Problem" (1964)
U.S. in a nutshell: People cheer when Carlos Santana speaks the truth through his guitar; people boo when he speaks the truth about racism.
"I write because of my fundamental faith in the transformative power of narrative; not in the notion that simply by telling stories one might come to transformative truths, but rather that in unearthing the silences of the past we are necessarily involved in understanding the forces by which those silences were created and are maintained."
--Jennifer Morgan,
in Why We Write: The Politics and Practice of Writing for Social Change
"The black revolution is much more than a struggle for the rights of Negroes. It is, rather, forcing America to face all its interrelated flaws: racism, poverty, militarism, and materialism. It is exposing evils that are rooted deeply in the whole structure of our society. It reveals systematic rather than superficial flaws, and it suggests that radical reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced."
--Martin Luther King Jr. (1967)
"There aren't enough white persons in our country who are willing to cherish democratic principles over privilege."
--Martin Luther King Jr.
"For years now, large numbers of prominent scientists have been warning, with increasing urgency, that if we continue with business as usual, the results will be very bad, perhaps catastrophic. They could be wrong. But if you’re going to assert that they are in fact wrong, you have a moral responsibility to approach the topic with high seriousness and an open mind. After all, if the scientists are right, you’ll be doing a great deal of damage."
--Paul Krugman,
April 4, 2011
"The important thing about Jesus to me was one little line: He went about doing good. He went about doing good. Not simply talking it, but doing it; not reading about it, doing it; not repeating some worn-out cliches, but doing good."
--Rev. C.T. Vivian
(Quoted in Moldovan, 1999)
"You cannot tell people what to do, you can only tell them parables; and that is what art really is."
--W. H. Auden
February 11, 2011 MSNBC anchor, Tamron Hall, speaking to Egyptian opposition leader, Moustafa El Gindy, on Egyptian Independence Day:
Tamron Hall: You used the word 'dream.' Did you ever imagine this dream of the leadership being ousted there could actually happen in the hardest days that we've watched?
Moustafa El Gindy: Yes. Yes, I dreamed. Yes, I will keep on dreaming and I will teach my kids to dream. Yes, I was one of not-a-lot of people who still had hope. And I was telling them, 'Believe in your country. Believe in your country.' I will teach my kids to dream. Anybody that I will meet, I will tell them, 'dream.' Dream means you live. Dream is life. And we will dream. We are 5000 years old civilization and we are still dreaming, and we will keep on dreaming. Egypt is a dreamland. Like America is a dreamland, Egypt is a dreamland."
[News Nation with Tamron Hall, MSNBC, Feb. 11, 2011]
King and members of SNCC, April 16, 1960 -- Raleigh, NC Dr. King in Durham:
"You students of North Carolina...have taken the undying and passionate yearning for freedom and filtered it in your own soul and fashioned it into a creative protest that is destined to be one of the glowing epics of our time.... What is fresh, what is new in your fight is the fact that it was initiated, fed and sustained by students. What is new is that American students have come of age. You now take your honored place in the world-wide struggle for freedom."
--Martin Luther King Jr. in Durham, NC, Feb. 16, 1960
"To the prophets even a minor injustice assumes cosmic proportions."
--Heschel, The Prophets, Vol. 1
Rabbi Heschel and Dr. King on the March from Selma to Montgomery "Instead of showing us a way through the elegant mansions of the mind, the prophets take us to the slums."
-Abraham J. Heschel
"However clearly we may think this or the other doctrine to be deduced from Scripture, we ought not therefore to impose it upon others...unless we would be content also that other doctrines should be imposed upon us in the same manner."
--John Locke, Letter Concerning Toleration
Check out my new article in Tikkun magazine, "Five Lessons from Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement."
"We were made for the stars."
--Martin Luther King Jr. (1966)
"We spend far too much of our national budget establishing military bases around the world rather than bases of genuine concern and understanding."
--Martin Luther King Jr., at Drew University, Feb. 5, 1964
Gays and lesbians are serving in the military. The only question is whether they will do so with, or without, their full human rights.
"Better that right counsels be known to enemies than that the evil secrets of tyrants should be concealed from the citizens. They who can treat secretly of the affairs of a nation have it absolutely under their authority; and as they plot against the enemy in time of war, so do they against the citizens in time of peace."
--Benedict de Spinoza, Political Treatise (1677)
Where there is secrecy, there is no democracy.
"Bull Connor didn't know history. He knew a kind of physics that somehow didn't relate to the transphysics that we knew about. And that was the fact that there was a certain kind of fire that no water could put out."
--Martin Luther King Jr.
April 3, 1968
Jon Stewart complains about dismissive coverage of the Tea Party, versus the anti-war movement. Uh, Jon, the media have given almost zero coverage to the anti-war movement for seven years. Despite the tens of millions involved, the peace movement has received a sliver of the coverage that's been heaped on the Tea Party.
(Martin Luther King Jr. in Harlem, December 1964, his first speech upon his return from receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway):
"This has been a marvelous...week in my life....I've been so moved by experiences that I had in Europe, meeting hundreds and thousands of people of good will. And so I tell you, my friends, for the last ten days I've been on a literal mountaintop, having transfiguring experiences.
Oh, we've had the privilege of meeting and talking with kings and queens, meeting and talking with prime ministers of nations, meeting and talking with the humble people of the land. I would love to stay here, because it's a marvelous mountain.
And I can tell you that it does mean a little something, because I do live almost every day under the threat of death and it is a fit contrast to have people saying nice things about you. It would be nice if I could stay up here. I wish I could stay on this mountaintop. For it isn't the ususal pattern of my life to have people saying nice things about me. Oh, this is a marvelous mountaintop. I wish I could stay here tonight.
But the valley calls me.
(Audience: laughter and applause.)
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"I believe that the dignity and the worth of human personality will be respected one day. I believe this and I live by it."
--Martin Luther King Jr., in Harlem, December, 1964
No matter what happens, we have the strength to love.
No matter what happens in the future we can all choose compassion, solidarity, connection and love.
Medea Benjamin explains why I can't get excited about Jon Stewart's rally.
Dr. Cornel West (photo: glen E. friedman)
“…my basic aim in life: to speak the truth to power with love so that the quality of everyday life for ordinary people is enhanced and white supremacy is stripped of its authority and legitimacy.”
--Cornel West, Race Matters, p. x
"Our arrogance can be our doom. It can bring the curtain down on our national drama. Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation."
--Martin Luther King Jr. (Feb. 25, 1967)
read more here
OK, this is becoming one of my pet peeves.
I've been in conversations about the ecological situation, and the fate of the planet, at least since I started college 20 years ago. And I can't tell you how many times I've heard someone say something like this:
"You know, the Earth will be fine; It's humans who will be extinct."
Or "The planet will survive just fine, it's just that humans won't be around." Or something like this.
I'm sure I must have heard this 45 times or more. In fact, I think I've even said it myself. Year after year, it keeps getting repeated as if it's a clever, insightful, or accurate rejoinder.
But it's not.
Just last Saturday night I heard it said by a noted environmental thinker, Stewart Brand. Brand is the visionary who created The Whole Earth Catalog and called for a photograph of Earth from space. Brand is also a bit of a contrarian. He's not afraid to advocate a controversial idea, such as nuclear power or GMOs. But even knowing the contrarian side of Brand, I was stunned to hear him repeat the old canard about how 'the Earth will be fine..."
Here's the context:
This was a panel of ecological folks that followed a screening of an excellent new documentary, "Climate Refugees." Brand and others were discussing the immense threat that climate change poses to humanity and civilization. This is, of course, a clear and compelling point that we all need to understand. But to my mind, Brand stretched the point too far when he implied that the only threat or primary threat was to civilization. Specifically he said "Life will be fine." And later, "The planet's OK."
This was more than enough to send my pet peeve sensors into high alert.
But it doesn't matter who's recycling this golden oldie, because whether it's an environmental legend, your earnest college roommate, or an annoying co-worker, here's why it's totally wrong.
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"The historical mission of our times is to reinvent the human--at the species level, with critical reflection, within the community of life-systems, in a time-developmental context, by means of story and shared dream experience."
--Thomas Berry, who passed one year ago today.
"It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality."
--Martin Luther King Jr. (Dec. 24, 1967)
Martin Luther King Jr.:
Along with the scientific and technological revolution, we have also witnessed a world-wide freedom revolution over the last few decades….In one sense the civil rights movement in the United States is a special American phenomenon which must be understood in the light of American history and dealt with in terms of the American situation. But on another and more important level, what is happening in the United States today is a significant part of world development.
We live in a day, said the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, “when civilization is shifting its basic outlook; a major turning point in history where the presuppositions on which society is structured are being analyzed, sharply challenged, and profoundly changed.” What we are seeing now is a freedom explosion, the realization of “an idea whose time has come,” to use Victor Hugo’s phrase. The deep rumbling of discontent that we hear today is the thunder of disinherited masses….All over the world like a fever, freedom is spreading in the widest liberation movement in history. The great masses of people are determined to end the exploitation of their races and lands. They are awake and moving toward their goal like a tidal wave….For several centuries the direction of history flowed from the nations and societies of Western Europe out into the rest of the world in “conquests” of various sorts. That period, the era of colonialism, is at an end. East is moving West. The earth is being redistributed. Yes, we are “shifting our basic outlooks.”
--Martin Luther King Jr.
"Chapter V: Where Are We Going," pp.169-70, from Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community, (1967)
Van Jones resigned last night.
My heart is heavy today.
Van is a personal friend and one of the most inspiring and effective visionaries of our time.
I am almost speechless about the right-wing racist attack machine. It's jaw-dropping to see the venomous comments from hate-filled know-nothings all over the web, spreading lies and distortions, calling Van a "racist" and "avowed communist."
(Most of this "communist" nonsense comes from one paragraph in a highly problematic profile of Van from the East Bay Express a couple years ago, the point of which was how Van has moved far beyond his youthful radicalism, and embraced market-based solutions to ecological and social problems.)
I am disgusted, saddened and worried about our country.
The hypocrisy of the Republicans, the right and the media is overwhelming. Do I even have to mention how many right-wing office-holders have said things 10x worse than Van's statements? Everything Van said was accurate, if occasionally provocative to a mainstream culture unaccustomed to critical thinking.
Van Jones is a hero, working for the well-being of all people. It is unimaginable to see him slandered as a "racist" by people who have no idea what they're talking about.
I am proud to stand with Van and to call him a friend.
My heart is very heavy today.
The right-wing is lying about Van Jones, and Glenn Beck is their Liar-in-Chief.
This is just the latest in a long series of attemtps to cynically swiftboat our discourse and our democracy. The untrustworthy folks who won't hesitate to smear the service of veterans like Max Cleland and John Kerry, who claim that health insurance reform is a plot to kill grandma, and Obama is a foreigner with a fake birth certificate, are now spreading ridiculous lies about the White House advisor for Green Jobs, Van Jones.
Somebody should tell these clowns that their neo-McCarthy red-scare antics are wearing thin. The American people want ideas and vision, not lies, hysteria, and racist fear-mongering.
I've known Van Jones personally for the last ten years, and ideas and vision are what he's all about. Van is quite simply a hero, committed to the well-being of all people.
To anyone who knows Van, and his work as a compassionate, visionary bridge-builder and leader, it would seem incredible that the Republican slime-slingers would attempt to slander him as a racist, communist, socialist, or whatever nonsense they're spewing...but arrogant disregard for truth has become the Republicans' only strategy. Why sweat facts when you're committed to spreading fear, and attempting to play the American people for suckers and fools?
In the last few days, right-wing dittoheads have been flooding websites with comments describing Van Jones as a "racist," and "avowed communist." These charges are simply false. The people passing along these lies don't know Van and don't know what they're talking about.
It is laughable to see these ludicrous claims that my friend of ten years "hates white people."
(Apparently, noticing or mentioning the history of racism is all it takes to be accused of hating white people.)
We progressives must stand strong when our allies and leaders are maliciously maligned. The unscrupulous mendacity of the right wing must be challenged and refuted.
Van Jones is working to create jobs for Americans of every race and background. He is a loving father, and a person of immense integrity. I am honored to stand with Van Jones in his work to build a green economy, and deeply grateful to call Van Jones my friend.
Like many of you, I wept a tear or two the night Barack Obama was elected president of the United States. The tears that flowed for so many across the country gave testimony that the last 8 years have been trying. But more than that, the tears of joy and relief--springing from the depths of our national soul--testified to four centuries on the fault lines of freedom and slavery. A history filled with trauma, though not without triumphs.
November 4, 2008, was one of those triumphs.
I felt giddy when my dad called early in the evening and said, "It's over. Obama won Ohio." Though the networks wouldn't call it for another hour, I went to the fridge and popped a bottle of champagne. Channel-surfing the live TV coverage with my son, we were watching Jon Stewart's show when he told Stephen Colbert and a delirious crowd the official news: Obama would be the 44th president. Involuntarily, my chin buckled a bit, my chest quaked, and I did something like a half-sob. On TV, the usually ever-ironic Colbert was wiping his eyes.
The tears around the world were not only mirrors of the past, but also libations for the future, dedicated to the proposition that we can heal and transcend the brutal shadows of history, see the full picture of the present, and manifest a transformative tomorrow.
The election of President Obama represents a stunning moment in the history of systemic racism in this nation--a profound moment in the spiritual journey of the country, and an amazing moment in the history of the world.
But as Obama said on election night, " This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change. " Looking at the past, we see that history is made by mass movements, more so than by a single person--even a prophet or a president. To reverse catastrophic climate change and runaway global warming, we need a movement. To dismantle institutional oppression, we need a movement. To save the Earth's biosphere--the sacred, fragile and disappearing web of living species--we need a movement. To end poverty, and the unnecessary, unconscionable suffering it causes, we need a movement. To transform our country from an empire into an ally, we need a movement.
We desperately need to start a new story.
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WTO protest, Seattle, Dec. 1, 1999 WTO Protests, Seattle, WA, December 1, 1999 (Photo: Holly Roach)
Below is a open letter from my dear friend, Holly Roach, along with a press release, describing a historic victory for free speech and the right to protest.
I was honored to stand with some 50,000 protestors for global justice in the streets of Seattle in 1999.
I felt sanctified going to jail alongside 600 courageous activists, undettered by the casual brutality of the state. Occasionally during the days in jail, while being transferred in handcuffs, chains and shackles, I would turn to one of the cops, and say, "We are being held illegally and unconstitutionally." The cops of course responded with a snicker, a smirk, or stony silence, but 9 years later a jury agreed.
The case of 175 protestors arrested at Westlake Park in downtown Seattle finally made it to court, and the jury found that the police and the city had violated the Constitution. The jury awarded us $1 million dollars.
Much more important than the money, is the message this verdict should send. Governmental and police officials must be accountable, and cannot be allowed to trample the Constitution and the rights (and bodies) of those working for peace, justice, democracy and the earth.
I felt lucky to be a Westlake Class member, and I was thrilled to channel every cent of my share of the settlement back into the global justice struggle, to support those working on the front lines of the movement, in the hearts of our communities.
Please consider supporting this vital work for global justice by contributing a matching donation to the MONEY to MOVEMENTS project.
--Drew
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Chevron Protest Sit-In at the Chevron Refinery, Richmond, CA, 5th Anniversary of the Invasion of Iraq, March 2008 (Photo: Jessica Tully)
Yesterday, as we approach the 5th anniversary of this damned war, I went to a powerful rally at the Chevron refinery in Richmond, CA, where the war profiteers are choking the community with their pollution. Though we blocked the entire highway at Chevron's gates, the cops decided to wait it out. First there was a march, from the rally in the park at Point Richmond to the poisonous Chevron refinery. There was a marching band, the Brass Liberation Orchestra, as well as a flatbed truck with music and MCs. Then the sit-in in front of Chevron, blocking the entire highway.
Earlier the cops had closed all of the off-ramps from Highway 80, which was a major deal, and while it's great that this important demonstration was able to disrupt the flow of traffic-as-usual, the cop's preemptive blockade of all the highway exits leading to Richmond kept away many folks who wanted to come protest. With some orange rubber cones and police cruisers, the State, once again, blocked citizens from exercising their constitutional rights. I was turned back twice by traffic cops steering all cars away from the rally and march area. To make it to the protest I had to sneak past the police checkpoint by driving through a hotel parking lot. Then, having missed the rally, I caught up to the march.
Some folks, about 24, were arrested at the very end, after we ignored the barricades and entered Chevron property. Dr. C., an Environmental Justice organizer from Richmond, listed Chevron's crimes against the community, and my friend D., who always has a great way of framing things, said, 'We're going past the barricades to ARREST CHEVRON, so if you see any CEOs in there you can put them under citizen's arrest.' The cops freaked when we simply moved their iron gates. (I love disobedience to illegitimate authority!) Then we clustered together again in a sit-in; this time inside Chevron's property. The arrests happened later, but I had left by then. It was a beautiful day in the streets.
There are huge marches this week in SF and around.
(Thanks to Jessica Tully for these photos of the protest.)
Forty years ago today, Martin Luther King, Jr. stood before a microphone at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles and spoke words that would forever alter his place in history: "I oppose the war in Vietnam because I love America."
Though past the peak of his popularity he was at the height of his prophetic powers. Increasingly embattled, his influence waning, with the climactic victories of the civil rights movement behind him, King first announced in the City of Angels the opposition to war that marked his spiritual growth in the last years of his life. His concern anticipated that of many Americans about the current war.
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