Having grown up in a Catholic family Irish on one side the concept of "Who do you think you are" and a robust sense of the starving children in China I may have escaped the sense of my privilege but not the fact of it. If you did not like what happened in Ferguson but think it will not happen to you because it's strictly a Black thing you need to check your privilege.
Another thing you should do is read Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. Thoughtfully. When you step out to demonstrate against Wall Street, Income Inequality, Personhood, or whatever White People's Issue mobilizes you you may find that the tear gas is aimed at you. Unless you are of the 1% Ferguson is your town, Ferguson's civil rights are your civil rights.
So. If you are not already voting at every opportunity, start now. If you have something to say, say it now. Don't let your silence be taken for consent. If your elected representatives do not act in the interest and with the will of the people they serve vote them out. When the next batch proves no better vote them out too. 90% of the American people want gun control, want Medicare to be able to negotiate prescription drug prices, want to see banksters go to prison for tanking the economy and letting us pay for it, want the minimum wage to be a living wage.
And for something completely different:
2 comments:
Oh gee, Ellen, Loved this rant. Hope you get that I use that word lovingly. In my ideal world, all people would be buying into the spirit of your post. And trying to live it too.
Since Mike Brown was killed, I have had many, many thoughts about race in St.Louis. I spent part of my life in white suburban St. Louis. University City where "the sun never set on a n....." also known as Jewcity. But my own days were shaped by having a father & his wife intimately involved in the civil rights struggle of the 1940s and 50s as founders of CORE.
The pain, the pleasure of all that, its complexities in the late sixties--after MLK was murdered, our first child born a few days later-- when I infuriated those two righteous people by asking, "So maybe it would have been a better idea to begin with housing rather than schools?"
But this is your blog, not mine. I need to stay with my admiration for your spirit--including the song. Perfect...thanks so much for brightening my dark morning. yours in sisterhood, naomi
You ranted and well! And I missed it! There is no excuse for this.. hangs head.
Huzzah!
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