What We Do Collectively As Individuals Can Change the World
For 55 years, I have been a civil rights advocate. It was a time when Segregation was the law. It separated races in every aspect of life – schools, bathrooms and water fountains, buses, restaurants, jobs and pay, the dignity as a human being. My father was a quintessential blue-collar worker – a high school graduate who was too poor to go to school on scholarship, a WWII vet, a butcher, and a Teamster. He taught me than when one’s person’s rights are violated all of our rights are violated and we are diminished by it.
I marched in the South with older cousins. I marched in Washington and Chicago – all before I was 18. I lent my voice to my oppressed fellow citizens and because I became my father’s voice. I find it comical that the people who self-righteously condemn the ancillary violence, looting, and arson are the same people and ‘support non-violent forms of protest’ – denounced that very form of protest by athletes and others for (ironically) taking a knee during the national anthem. (Irony or comedy? – when I got married in 1974, we did not have the money to take a honeymoon. We got married on a Saturday and attended a Cub’s game on Sunday before going back to school on Monday. We did not rise for the national anthem. We sat in silent protest against the War in Viet Nam. No one around us, almost all who stood, said a word. After a decade of protest, they understood we were exercising our rights as U.S. citizens.
Where is that understanding today? “Black Americans account for less than 13% of the U.S. population but the rate at which they are shot and killed by police is more than twice as high as the rate for white Americans.”Our fellow citizens of color are demanding equal rights and protection of the law. What has changed?
“If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out that's not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made.” Malcom X
It is not just okay to acknowledge the rights of the victims of institutional racism. It is our responsibility to act on their behalf. It is time we understand when the rights of one individual is violated, we (and our rights) our violated.
Yes, there are those who do not understand the teachings of Gandhi and passive resistance. Yes, there are those individuals who cloak themselves in the anonymity of the crowd to do violence – theft, arson, and mayhem. I witnessed this behavior in 1964 and beyond. It is easy to justify your fear, racism, jingoism, and authoritarianism by myopically focusing on these individuals. It is easy to dismiss the true problems by arbitrarily assigning blame to the whole.
Is every police officer a racist or murderer? Of course not! It is the institutionalization of racism that affects our society that is the true culprit. It is not just white supremacists. It is all who silently accept this institutional racism who are complicit. And, this indictment of silence knows no racial boundaries. It is all who accept the status quo and say or do nothing that perpetuate this stain on our free society. We must accept our responsibility to protect and defend the Constitution of this great country. We elected a man with no empathy – an authoritarian figure who exploits the worst in all of us for is own gain and grandeur.
Every voice is important. Each of us are important. What we do individually really matters. What we do collectively as individuals can change the world.
