Written instead of watching the state of the union address In the 1960s, faced with the draft meaning an almost certain tour of duty in the Vietnam war, people choose to defy the draft knowing it would mean five years in prison and not a comfortable five years because conscientious objectors would be targeted more than usual by the prison population and the guards but it was a moral stance and an act of self preservation. They didnt all end up serving time, as the US government was faced with too massive a non-compliance with the law, but those in the first wave of draft registration resistance were all preparing for up to five years behind bars. Where I grew up there’s a small square with seventeen trees for the seventeen guys I went to high school with who died in the war. Forget about how do we convince the power structure. How do we make climate change, income inequality, racism, slavery and every form of oppression personal to each and everyone we interact with? The theater philosopher Antonin Artaud says, ‘the problem is that we don’t truly feel. For if we could really feel we would feel the pain of the world and that pain would be so great that we would have to end it’. In the #blacklivesmatter actions in new york city when we blocked traffic we explained to the motorists that their inconvenience was in a way similar to the inconvenience of stop and frisk that people of color face every day just by being someplace through no fault of their own where they were stopped, manhandled and made to feel less than what they are. How do we make people feel the sense of emergency that we feel? How do we build a movement that touches people so deeply that they are moved to act? One analysis that threads it’s way through many struggles is the act of personal sacrifice. This is portrayed by the beatings taken on bloody Sunday during the Selma campaign and how that magnified the movement. It is portrayed buy the pepper spray and the arrest of the 700 on the Brooklyn bridge and how that grew the occupy movement. But personal sacrifice does no good in a vacuum. It must be part of a strategic campaign. Jonathan Schell in his book The Unconquerable World puts forth the analysis that the revolution has happened in the hearts and minds of the people before the uprising begins. How do we make this happen? I feel that we have to learn how to talk to each other and how to talk to the person whose mind is closed. I feel that art is necessary. I feel that community is necessary. The forces aligned against us are formidable. Yet I am amazed by workers against injustice who I encounter everyday. They help me with my personal challenge of how do I make my life poetry? How do I awaken everyday and say what can I do today to make the revolution? How can I reach out and touch someone, reach into them and take ahold their soul, pull their soul out and hold it up in front of their face so they can see it, rip it up into little pieces and throw them up in the air so the pieces land all helter skelter and then offer them a new way of putting the pieces of their soul back together?
Posted on: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 03:06:41 +0000
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