I've been thinking a lot about Teddy Kennedy since his illness, like many Kossacks. The mention of his letter in President Obama's speech to the joint session of Congress was poignant, and thought provoking.
It provoked me to think about the old wounds and divides being deepened across the country. I say deepened and not created, because I've been around the block and down a few dark side streets to know that they have never fully healed. They have never "gone away" and I know the sad truth is that we will not see an end to racism in my lifetime. They say that for every year of marriage, it takes twice that number to recover from a divorce, and our nation is wed to her schisms. It would be foolish to deny this.
The racism that we've seen unfurling like some dry rotted, moth eaten flag has prompted a lot of people to say that they are reminded of the Civil Rights era. I've had the same thoughts and Teddy's death at this juncture made it nearly impossible to not remember the other Kennedy brothers who died at a time when we were challenged to see if we really held the truth to be self evident that all men are created equal.
The right is angry.
That concludes the Mister Obvious portion of this diary. What is worrisome, is that we've seen this simmering, scalding rage before. We've seen what challenging the status quo and the supposed supremacy of white people in America can do, for good and for ill. This diary is about progressives keeping in mind that the past is prologue.
The good thing about calling up memories of the Civil Rights movement is that we are in a position to see the fruit of the work. We also have the ability to draw from the good, learn from the bad, and to say "Never again". That's the big takeaway, darlings. We can say never again, but we need to know which direction to cast our voices, if we truly mean to speak truth to power and that can only be done by being honest with ourselves about what we are hearing and seeing. Fortunately for everyone reading this, I'm going to let those who have earned their place as icons and inspiration to do the rest of the talking. I hope (there's that word again) it helps as we move into shaping the future and we encourage ourselves and others to stand "strong in will to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield".
These children—unoffending, innocent, and beautiful—were the victims of one of the most vicious and tragic crimes ever perpetrated against humanity. Yet they died nobly. They are the martyred heroines of a holy crusade for freedom and human dignity.
And so this afternoon in a real sense they have something to say to each of us in their death. They have something to say to every minister of the gospel who has remained silent behind the safe security of stained-glass windows. They have something to say to every politician who has fed his constituents with the stale bread of hatred and the spoiled meat of racism. They have something to say to a federal government that has compromised with the undemocratic practices of southern Dixiecrats and the blatant hypocrisy of right-wing northern Republicans. They have something to say to every Negro who has passively accepted the evil system of segregation and who has stood on the sidelines in a mighty struggle for justice.
They say to each of us, black and white alike, that we must substitute courage for caution. They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers. Their death says to us that we must work passionately and unrelentingly for the realization of the American dream.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. - Eulogy for the Martyred Children of the Birmingham Church Bombing
Too often we honor swagger and bluster and the wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others. Some Americans who preach nonviolence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them.
Some looks for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear; violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleaning of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.
For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly, destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is a slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter.
This is the breaking of a man’s spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all. I have not come here to propose a set of specific remedies nor is there a single set. For a broad and adequate outline we known what must be done. When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies – to be met not with cooperation but with conquest, to be subjugated and mastered.
We learn, at the last, to look at our bothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community, men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear – only a common desire to retreat from each other – only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. For all this there are no final answers.
Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is now what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of human purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.
Sen. Robert F. Kennedy -- Remarks to the Cleveland City Club
I think that an objective analysis of events that are taking place on this earth today points towards some type of ultimate showdown. You can call it political showdown, or even a showdown between the economic systems that exist on this earth which almost boil down along racial lines. I do believe that there will be a clash between East and West. I believe that there will ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those that do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the systems of exploitation."
Malcolm X
The white man's victory soon became complete by fraud, violence, intimidation and murder.
Ida B. Wells
Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety. And at such a moment, unable to see and not daring to imagine what the future will now bring forth, one clings to what one knew, or dreamed that one possessed. Yet, it is only when a man is able, without bitterness or self-pity, to surrender a dream he has long cherished or a privilege he has long possessed that he is set free — he has set himself free — for higher dreams, for greater privileges.
James Baldwin -- Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son