Poor, Black, White, and Brown Together we will Overcome

I find it odd the NOI is calling for ‘unity’ (as reported) when the NOI is a group that is separationist in its actions and racist philosophy. It is also a group that has little issue of meeting out violence to its members and neighbors and at the same time attending a rally against violence.

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Great Article!

We only regret that you did not mention the 5 families from the Valley and the Bay Area , who have lost loved ones at the hands of law enforcement, who marched along with Reverend Floyd Harrisson. The families held their first support group minutes prior to the march, and will meet every 4th Sunday of the month in Fresno. For more information, e-mail isf23 [at] sbcglobal.net.

These are times of great crisis. People are dieing for justice all over this planet. I want to talk to you about my fears in this moment in time. I also want to talk about what gives me hope.

I am a fan of music and think the world would be a much safer place if artists had more funding than the militaries. The great hip-hop artist Michael Franti has this line on his Stay Human CD that has been running through my head every time I hear the news. Franti says "We livin' in a mean time and an aggressive time...a time were cynicism rots the vine."

I worry about these mean and aggressive times as we come together at a peace rally to note one more child, one more young man, one more person killed by gun violence. It is a mean time when yet another child brings a gun to school to shoot his playmates. Children killing children is surely a sign of the aggressiveness that surrounds us in these times. It is a mean time when a society thinks it acceptable to sacrifice music programs in our local schools as too costly for our miserly and measly tax dollars. Mean times when you kill the creative hope of youth and then wonder at their implosion into self-hatred and rage.

It is a mean time, an aggressive time, when a few years ago The Bee reported that deaths from domestic violence in Fresno tripled in an eight month period and people wrung there hands rather than packing the city council meetings to demand shelters and violence prevention programs.

It is a mean time when one report notes that that
"The number of people in prison, in jail, on parole, and on probation in the U.S. increased threefold between 1980 and 2000, to more than 6 million...This buildup has targeted the poor, and especially Blacks. In 1999, though Blacks were only 13 percent of the U.S. population, they were half of all prison inmates. (Parkin)"
It is a very, very, mean time when "The state of California has opened only one college since 1984 -- [but has opened] twenty-one prisons (Currie)."

It is a mean time, an aggressive time when we can even discuss the idea of creating a drunk tank that will place those arrested on drinking charges in outdoor cages in the hot Fresno sun as though retribution and not rehabilitation were a solution for addiction. And it is surely a time of blinding meanness when we don't see how these cages are merely a homecoming of what we've come to accept in the treatment of prisoners in places like Guantanamo, Cuba.

It is a mean and aggressive time when not one, but two, prison scandals involving beating and torture break in one month, one in the California Youth Authority, one in Iraq and we don't notice the links. An aggressive time when in article after article on the torture in Iraq my local paper tells me only of the outrage in the Middle East. Well, I'm here and I'm outraged; outraged that my leaders would speak as though the worst problem in either scandal is that the pictures got out not that the torture occurred.

It is an aggressive time when the top leaders of our country could ever contemplate let alone draft a document that questions the basic protections of the Geneva Conventions, protections built out of the carnage of two World Wars.

Yes, these are mean times, aggressive times. When I stay in the moment I get overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the onslaught. But what I've come to realize more and more is the illusion of a focus on the moment. The powerful want us caught in this trap, so we don't notice the larger context. And it is when I think of that historical context I feel hope. These mean times did not start with Bush or Clinton or Reagan or even Nixon---These mean times are the result of centuries ...the result of all that led up to and came from that voyage of Columbus. A result of a system that entwined capitalist greed, imperial military power, racism and sexism into a mighty force to extract goods for the few from the well being of the many.

Now --you might wonder--how could placing today in the context of a history of slaughter and slavery, rape and pillage, give me hope? This historical context gives me hope because it reminds me that out of these incredible difficulties have emerged powerful histories of communities of people that have risen, in each generation, to redefine the world "by the people and for the people." Let me point to a few examples of this legacy upon which we stand today.

In the French revolution in 1789 the peasantry joined with the urban underclass and declared against all odds that liberty, fraternity, and equality should rule this planet and its people, not the monarchy, not the wealthy, not the church.

In 1848 a group of women and men, mostly activists in the abolitionist struggle, gathered in Seneca Falls New York, and reclaimed the U.S. Declaration of Independence, boldly reframing it to state
"We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

And in each communal struggle, individuals emerge to show us the great potential of human dignity when fueled by a politics of humane hope. People like Frederick Douglass, a run away slave who rose to become a U.S. minister to Haiti, and was a lifetime leader for both African-American and Women's Rights. His words certainly continue to have meaning when in 1857 he stated
"The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle...If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation...want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.... Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will. "

Placing our work today in this long history struggle, I recognize how honored I am to be asked to speak today by that incredible force for peace historically, locally and globally the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. In mean times like these the first and most humble necessary act of citizens is to simply stand up and be counted. Like the anti-fascist forces who first struggled against the Nazi's in Spain, we come today to ask our community-- "Which side are you on?" I am proud to stand and be counted with you today, to stand against all the forces that would weaken democracy by promoting a politics of hate. We must not end with standing, but standing is a start. Let us swell our ranks so that a politics of love, compassion, and community will again bring hope to us all.

One writer says that the NOI is racist and violent but offers no examples. My observation of the NOI has been that it unifies Black people and brings them into peace through a reclaiming of self knowledge. Maybe the writer is observing the fact that the NOI does not seek to keep Black people trying to integrate with what could be easily termed, 'her abusive husband' represented by the system of White America and those who support her.