This old Chinese proverb is said to be a curse. I suppose  that may be true, but we only live in the times in which we live. History will have to be the judge long after we’re gone about whether or not that was a curse.

According to Wikipedia, Robert F. Kennedy was one of the first from the United States to use this proverb at his Day of Affirmation Address to students at the University of Capetown in June 1966. The main message of this speech can perhaps be found in these words of his:

So the road toward equality of freedom is not easy, and great cost and danger march alongside us. We are committed to peaceful and nonviolent change, and that is important for all to understand–though all change is unsettling. Still, even in the turbulence of protest and struggle is greater hope for the future, as (wo)men learn to claim and achieve for themselves the rights formerly petitioned from others.

He then goes on to list four dangers that will be faced in this struggle.

I was reading over at The Field Negro this morning and in his July 4th eve post, he tells this story:

First, I want to talk about the lynching back in 1946 of Roger and Dorothy Malcolm, and George and Mae Murray. According to the AP, “on July 25, 1946, an angry white mob of as many of 30 people dragged the two couples from a car,tied them to trees, and fired three volleys of bullets at them, leaving their bodies slumped behind in the dirt. Dorothy Malcolm was seven months pregnant”.

This happened about 45 miles east of Atlanta (the city that’s now too busy to hate), and my man Hiroshima Harry Truman was so outraged that he sent the feds to investigate. Of course they got nothing, they were met with a “wall of silence” so they had to shut down their investigation. — And people think black folks invented the “no snitch” code.–

But not to worry, justice might be served after all these years. Back in 1991 Clinton Adams came forward to say that as a ten year old boy he saw the lynchings unfold from some bushes he was hiding behind. I wonder what took him so long? Well the good Governor of Georgia reopened the case, and now, finally, the frat boy’s Justice Department is following up. I say the good Governor of Georgia, because Georgia’s governors apparently weren’t always so good. Did I mention that the lynchings might have been sanctioned by Georgia’s Governor at the time, Eugene Talmadge, to sway rural white voters during a tough election?

On May 12th ICE agents raided the Agriprocessor plant in Postville, Iowa and detained nearly 400 men, women and children. Here’s a video of Sister Mary McCauley of St. Bridget’s Catholic Church talking about the impact of this raid on their small community and the efforts of the church to provide assistance.

I have a friend who is the director of an organization here in the Twin Cities, Centro Legal, that provides legal assistance for the immigrant communities in the area. Today I got an email pointing me to the following letter asking for assistance for this small town that has been devastated.

For awhile now, I’ve been feeling like what little hope for the world is out there is coming from South America. Leaders like Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Evo Morales of Bolivia, and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela are showing a tremendous amount of courage in taking on US imperialism. And the more they do so, the more they will be vilified by our media.

I am grateful to davidseth who so regularly keeps us informed of a variety of issues that are emanating from this part of the world. His most recent essay about Ingrid Betancourt, the good news of her release, and the questions surrounding that are a wonderful example.

Alternative news sources are critical in so many instances, and never more so than as we try to understand what is happening in South America. That’s why this video of Greg Palast explaining what is happening in Venezuela is something I wanted to share with all of you.  

This essay is about my journey and is very different I’m sure, from others. Its also not meant to be a statement on anything that happened here over the last several days. But as we talk about conflict and comfort, I wanted to share a bit of my experience in that area.

Perhaps like many of you, I grew up in a family that did not allow conflict. My father and mother have been married for over 50 years and to this day brag that they have only had one disagreement…yeah right. They just learned how to do it in passive aggressive ways that made everyone just as uncomfortable as open conflict would have, perhaps more so. There was one exception. That being when my father and brother would scream at one another and it always ended with my brother getting the shit beat out of him. I felt my father’s backhand across the face once…when I dared to challenge my mother. So yeah, I learned very well to keep quiet and keep my thoughts to myself. Of course, that was also good training for an authoritarian personality. My father ruled and we had no voice. And his rules came directly from God, of course.

When I almost accidentally got a job working in a residential program for kids who were chemically dependent right after college, I was ill equipped to deal with the kinds of conflict that ensued as a result of much of the rage these young people were feeling. For the most part, I failed miserably in helping them. Usually that’s because I tried to avoid dealing with conflict or used what I had learned from my father to shut them down.  

OPOL asked an important question in his essay Take One Last Look.

How best to fight back people?

Please share your thoughts.

I know that many of us have been pondering an answer to that question. And for me, it has spurred many additional questions. For example, in the comments, I embedded a video from This Brave Nation of a conversation between Pete Seeger and Majora Carter. I know that a lot of you don’t have 20 minutes to watch the whole thing, but I’ve been thinking alot about the portion at about 14 minutes where Seeger talks about his experience with Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks. He tells of his disappointment when MLK chose the Montgomery Bus Boycott as his first action when there were other civil rights issues that had a far greater impact on African Americans in the mid 1950’s.

Seeger answers that question with this:

When you face an opponent over a broad front you don’t aim at the opponents strong points, you aim a little off to the side and you WIN IT. And having won the bus boycott, 13 months it took him to do it, then he moved on to other things.

Is this advice we should take today? I think that’s exactly what Buhdy was trying to do with the Maddow Movement. Can we stick to something like that for over a year before we see victory?  

Today I’m going to quote mostly from a book that I have just begun reading – but has already had an enormous impact on me. It’s The Bond Between Women: A Journey to Fierce Compassion by China Galland. Here’s a bit from the synopsis.

Around the world, women are working for healing, and the lives of these women reveal an unusual source of strength: the fierceness of compassion, symbolized in ancient icons, images, and archetypes of the divine feminine. Known to Buddhists in Nepal and Tibet as Tara, to Hindus in India as the goddess Durga, to Catholics in Europe and Latin America as the Black Madonna, and as Jemanja in the Afro-Brazilian tradition of Candomble, this fierce divine feminine arises when the world is on the brink of destruction, and saves us, the ancient stories say.

Galland begins this journey by telling the tale of the Hindu Goddess Durga.

I’m sure you’re aware that folks like Lou Dobbs have decided that all that is wrong with the US can be traced to those crazy Mexicans who keep invading our country to take advantage of the so-called “perks” that accrue to folks who happen to live in this land of dreams fulfilled.

Well, I wonder what the likes of Dobbs would have to say about a story in the Dallas Morning News that tells us about this:

With gasoline prices hovering near $4 per gallon, Texans along the U.S.-Mexico border have discovered a cheaper alternative: Mexico.

Mexican service stations all along the border report brisk sales in recent weeks as fuel prices in Texas continue to climb…

In Mexico, gasoline is about a dollar cheaper a gallon because the government subsidizes it.

I just ran into an interesting discussion over at Jack and Jill Politics about a column at Diversity, Inc. titled Why Whites Can’t Get Over Color. Apparently Luke Visconti has a regular column there titled “Ask the white guy” that I’m going to have to check into further…sounds interesting. These are the kinds of conversations that I think we need to be having.

Anyway, a woman writes in to say this (I’ll quote a bit, but please go check out the whole thing).

I am a white female and I can tell you that I don’t talk about blacks for fear I will be called a racist or be called to the table, especially in the workplace, for discrimination.  We (whites), at my company, are not allowed to talk about blacks or any other ethnic group because we would get fired.  I will say that whites are very sensitive now because we are discriminated against…

I love the fact that America is a big melting pot, full of color and different cultures. Why not embrace that instead of constantly bickering over it. We need to start looking into the future instead of constantly looking behind us and pointing the finger at people who were not even thought of in the times of slavery.  Yes, it was a terrible thing to have happened to anyones ancestors but until we get over the past we will never fully get along.  I teach my children not to see the color but to see the person. It is getting harder to do when all they hear about in the news, school, or articles is color.  Get over the color!  We are all Americans and instead of fighting between ourselves, we need to worry about turning our country back around.  There are important issues out there that if we do not address them and come together, then we could say goodbye to our freedom.

Did you ever make a mistake when you were 13 years old? Hang around with the wrong people? Go to the wrong places? Take risks with your behavior?

Well, imagine that in addition, you’re a black or brown 13 year old who has lived a lifetime with neglect, abuse, poverty, crime, and drug abuse on a daily basis. Imagine the kinds of “mistakes” you might make.

Do you deserve to spend the rest of your life in prison?

Well, in this United States of America, that’s exactly what has happened to 73 children who were sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole for crimes that were committed when they were 13 or 14 years of age. All of this according to a report by the Equal Justice Initiative.