Tuesday, November 22, 2022

Lest We Forget

(I'm sitting here in tears listening to soul singer Marvin Gaye's rendition of "Abraham, Martin, John" as I write this. )


It was exactly 59 years ago today.

My fingers were fumbling away at the keyboard in Mrs. Jefferson's 5th period typing class when the teacher from across the hall came into the room, walked to her desk, leaned over, and whispered in her ear.

Mrs. Jefferson's  face turned white.

The other teacher left and Mrs. Jefferson broke into tears as she announced that President Kennedy had been shot and taken to a hospital in Dallas.

No one said a word.

Moment's later the other teacher returned. He didn't have to say a word.  His face, a portrait of horror and helplessness said it all.  We knew.  He knew we knew.  Holding back tears, he shrugged awkardly, turned -- and left. 

The unimaginable had happened.
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President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the man who had exhorted us to "ask what we could do for our country," instilling a profound sense of public service in many of my youthful contemporaries; the man who had inspired us to envision a better world, had been assassinated.  

It took my breath away. 

It was only the beginning.

Within the next five years, more shots rang out.  Three more champions of the real American Dream, the ongoing human quest to create a society that fosters human freedom, dignity, equality, and justice had fallen. 

RFK with widowed Mrs. King. 2 months later he was dead.
Martin Luther King and Malcolm X















First Malcolm X, then Martin Luther King Jr., then President Kennedy's own brother, Senator Robert Kennedy were martyred.  Each of these courageous visionaries, in their unique way, stirred our souls to action as America grappled to come to terms with it's own homegrown Apartheid, a cycle of poverty that impoverished millions of people of all races, and a bellicose foreign policy dictated by the interests of its growing military-industrial-intelligence complex that threatened to destroy us all.  They each held a vision of the way "it's supposed to be."


Living the Dream to them wasn't about Madison Avenue's promotion of the  individual pursuit of self-interested material acquisition and mindless entertainment.  The True Dream of American democracy to them, and to many of us, is what was proclaimed -- if not acted upon -- in the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution.  Although blinded to their own white supremacist, patriarchal, and wealthy elitism, the authors did attempt to create a structure that held the promise of forming a more perfect union, establishing justice, and promoting the general welfare.  The Kennedy's, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X sought to make America live up to its promise

Unfortunately that same document, interpreted quite differently, has empowered our current band of right-wingers (and their majority on the U.S. Supreme Court) to propel us toward an oligarchy where a wealthy elite that includes those who control the fossil fuel and weapons industries and those who espouse fundamentalist Christian values to have free reign to exploit the rest of us as they move toward their own dreams of an Holy American Empire.  Sigh.

I think it's time for Marvin Gaye again.  I need a good cry.

 

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My Humble Take on the Real Deal

I believe that the movement for peace, economic democracy and social justice is a Spiritual Quest. No mean feat, what is called for is a True Revolution of the Heart and Mind--and it starts with each of us.

This revolution has to be Peaceful. The Hippies (and Jesus and Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. King, et al) had it right. It really is all about Peace and Love. Besides being a total drag, violence just doesn't work. It keeps our wheels spinning in fear, anger and pain. Who needs that?

Besides some hard work, I think the Revolution also calls for dancing, plenty of laughter, and some sitting around just doing nothing. (Some folks call it meditation.)


As Stephen Gaskin, proclaimed years ago:

"We're out to raise Hell--in the Bodhisattvic* sense."

Doesn't that sound like some serious fun?

(*The Bodhisattva Vow is a set of commitments made in the Mahayana Buddhist tradition. It basically says I vow to get my act together and figure it out well enough to really help out--and I ain't gonna stop until everybody is covered.

I've found that doesn't necessarily have to happen in that order. It's best to try to help out even before you have it all together! Like right now.)

-----Brother Lefty Smith, Founding S.O.B*