Amy Goodman: Swords or Shields

(8:45 PM EST – promoted by Nightprowlkitty)

I’m a bit overwhelmed after the last day of the National Conference on Media Reform. It was only a half-day today, but boy did they pack it in. I don’t know if its a result of the impact of what I just heard or the exhaustion of 3 days of all this, but today I cried 3 times in 4 hours. I was that moved by it all. I’ll try to walk you through 3 speeches I heard today. I’m hoping some of it winds up on youtube and if it does, I’ll add it to the essay.

First of all, I watched a film distributed by the Media Education Foundation titled “Tim Wise: On White Privilege.” This guy packs some power into what he has to say. I’ve read and heard an awful lot about this topic. And this speech is perhaps one of the most powerful I’ve ever heard. Here’s a clip of it from youtube:

I was a bit disappointed that this is the excerpt they chose to use as a trailer because, believe it or not, the rest of the speech is even more challenging. For example, the one part that really stands out to me is that he discusses our use of the word “underprivileged.” The very existence of that word implies that there are those of us who are “overpriviledged.” And yet the latter is not a part of our vocabulary…why?

It is in that context that he goes on to talk about the harm done by white privilege, not just to people of color, but to those with the privilege as well. One of the examples he used of this is that we never heard a person of color after 9/11 ask the question, “Why do they hate us?” Some of that is because they understand both the promise and the oppression this country is capable of, and have no illusions about how the rest of the world might see us. Those are just a couple of small kernels of wisdom in this speech, its packed with that kind of thing.

Part of the closing plenary was a speech by Van Jones. If you haven’t heard of this young man before, check him out. I can guarantee that he is one of the bright stars of our future.

There were no titles for these plenary speeches, but I think if there was, this one would be “From Protest to Governance.” Trying (sometimes in vain) to stay away from partisan politics, Jones assumed we as a country are about to embark on some historic changes that are the result of alot of the work progressives at this conference have been involved with for years. As he said:

We would not have had FDR without the radio

We would not have had JFK without television

And we would not have had Obama without the internet.

But he challenged us all that we will not have won come November. We have to learn how to move from protest to governance. And he outlined 4 things we’ll need to do:

1. Hold the President accountable. And he stressed the “hold him” part of that.

2. Move from agitation to education. We are used to using the hammer to tear down what’s wrong and will need to learn that the hammer can also be used to build things.

3. Stay united and get away from the kind of thinking that there is one right answer and anyone who doesn’t agree is a sellout.

4. Don’t give up on our ideals.

His closing words were:

Its our turn now. If we can move from protest to governance, we will be more than the generation who takes America back. We’ll be the one that takes America forward.

Finally, there was the amazing and courageous Amy Goodman.

This is the one that I really hope will show up on youtube. Imagine an auditorium of almost 3,000 spellbound to the point that you could hear a pin drop. That’s what happened this morning as she told about an incident she experienced of being beaten and almost assassinated in East Timor 17 years ago.

Amy told that story because what saved her life was the fact that she was an American – and the police didn’t want to deal with the repercussions of having killed someone from the country that provided them with the guns they were using. She talked about the fact that the rest of the world sees us as both the sword and the shield. For too long, the sword of our military power has been on demonstration. But we also have the power of the shield – the ability to share knowledge and information that can shine a light in the darkness…if only we’ll use it.