Moving Abe

An occasional one-off with a semi-celeb on Twitter is what passes for a brush with celebrity for me. So, Chicago-based rapper and political activist (as well as would-be alderman) Rhymefest has tended to have a contentious interaction with the Occupy Movement. Unlike another Chicago-based rapper who's worked with Kanye, Lupe Fiasco, he sees the Occupiers as wasting time and space better used for direct political action.

RHYMEFESTVerified ‏@RHYMEFEST

People got beat up by police for what? To not run a candidate and fund them to be the change they wanted? Boooo occupy! I'm done

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jasdye‏@jasdye

@RHYMEFEST Abolitionists didn't change things by running their candidates, but by changing natl convo and moving country towards freedom

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2:40 PM - 7 Nov 12 · 

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12hRHYMEFESTVerified ‏@RHYMEFEST

@jasdye the times have changed

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4hjasdye ‏@jasdye

@RHYMEFEST mr things change, mr they stay the same. While the GOP is off-the-cliff right (and anti-everybody), the DNC ain't repping the ppl

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Rhymefest disregards the overriding lessons of the Emancipators and the Civil Rights Era as being out of time. Fine. But then tell me that Occupy hasn't helped to shape the discourse of American politics - tell me that the Tea Party movement also hasn't done so. Tell me that right now this whole Fiscal Cliff nonsense isn't largely directed by the rhetoric of one sort of radical, non-pragmatic paradigm or another.

He's a hostage!

Well, actually...

Tell me that the post-Sandy Hook imagination of the American populace isn't directed by one form of radicalism (the No-Restrictions-Ever-on-Guns NRA and their stand-ins) and the rest of us aren't trying to feebly talk about sensible gun control measures.

Imagine if a large, national peace movement were actually put in place some twelve years ago - rather than a late-to-the-game anti-GOP posturing. How would the conversation about war and violence be engaged now?

Politicians, as historian Howard Zinn points out in his must-read work - including the Zinn Reader - do not lead - they follow. As much as Abraham Lincoln wanted to end slavery, he had to garner popular opinion in order to get to the office of president in the first place. And before that happened, the popular perception of slavery as being a largely harmless and beneficial financial institution had to be challenged.

So, the slave narratives. So, Douglass, and Garrison, and Sojourner Truth, and Beecher Stowe. These figures and their heroic, bristling words waged a war for the hearts and souls and minds of men and women.

The reformer is careless of numbers, disregards popularity, and deals only with ideas, conscience, and common sense... He neither expects nor is overanxious for immediate success. The politician dwells in an everlasting now... His office is not to instruct public opinion but to represent it.
- Wendell Phillips

The institution of slavery was peculiar to the South. It was an issue that, as a force of evil, was only understood to a small minority of the white population. Yet all were responsible for its continuation even as it was cloaked through being race-based and therefore imperceptible to the White mind as - as a deliberate matter of dividing and conquering - it was out of the sight and experience of the Whites of the North, and out of the personal physical and psychic reality of the majority of White Southerner. The South and the North needed the issue of slavery to be pushed in the open and come to a volatile head - otherwise it would have stayed hidden. Not that slavery itself wasn't a constant threat to the very Southern "way of life" that Southern elites were trying to maintain at all, unbelievable costs. But slavery may never have ended if its death knolls weren't forced through abolitionism (which, again, isn't the same as saying that abolitionists "caused" the secession. But, regardless, they had a hand in forcing the Southern elites to take a form of action, and they opened the way for Lincoln to sign both the Emancipation Proclamation and then the 13th Amendment)

That possibility would not have been the case were it not for the rebellious acts of the slaves themselves opening up the remote possibility of a way out - opening up the imagination of White Americans in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries to the radical reality that Black slaves were not property but people. I contend that slavery would have been much more profitable and therefore more desirable to the entire US if the slaves hadn't acted out in various ways against the bitter institution of slavery

All true Reformers are incendiaries. But it is the hearts, brains and souls of their fellow-men which they set on fire, and in so doing they perform the function appropriated to them in the wise order of Providence.
- James Russel Lowell

It wasn't Abraham Lincoln that freed the slaves. It was the actions of the slaves which energized the abolitionists who powered the imagination and moral compass of the United States which brought the conflict to a crucible. This crucible was important, for it meant that the slave-holding elite of the South believed that reparations with an abolitionist-leaning North were now impossible, ergo, they had to go on and make their own country and go so far as to start a war with their free neighbors to the North (Southern Apology Myths withstanding).

In all ages, it has been first the radical, and only later the moderate, who has held out a hand to [those] knocked to the ground by the social order.
The moderate, whose sensitive ears are offended by the wild language of the radical, needs to consider the necessary division of labor in a world full of evil, a division in which agitators for reform play an indispensable role.
- Howard Zinn

To use biblical imagery, when the reformer is the voice of the prophet, we have Moses confronting Pharaoh  "Let my people go." Or we have a newly liberated people, who are slightly more liberated, but then codified back into serfdom through Solomon. In the meantime, we have  Moses, Joshua, Saul, and David - each of whom represents the law, each tightening the screws on their people. Each inching just a bit closer, in their kingly duties, to the role of Pharaoh over Hebrew slaves - though this time, the Hebrew ruler was enslaving his own as well as neighbors - despite the warnings against doing such in the Mosaic law.

Then there's the Samuels and the Nathans. The prophets who spoke to and against, who checked, who lacked fear in the face of the terrifying, who dared speak against the thieving, murderous ways of the kings against common sense.

We need more Samuels and fewer would-be Solomons. We don't need our Garrisons to turn into Lincolns. We need Occupiers to continue to Occupy the American imagination, not pragmatically bow to the whims of a fickle populace.

Wrath and Patience

We struggle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers.

This is where it gets personal for activists/slacktivists and others like me filled with, say, righteous indignation. It's right and good to be angry about certain things. But to be overcome by it is to lose grasp of the fact that we are in a long-range run.

The arc of history is long but it bends toward justice.

That means, for me, I must not grow weary in doing good. But I must not also stoop to the level of demonizing those I disagree with. And trust me, that's freaking easy. Someone accuses Black and Latinos pointing out institutional racism as being, itself, racist, and I'm ready to send them a verbal hell-storm.

But maybe being incredibly radical isn't about forcefulness of the mean as much as direction of the end. Maybe radicalness isn't so much about treating one group of persons as a protective class as it is about treating the (oftentimes ignorant, sometimes ignoble) oppressors as fully human persons and demonstrating that shared humanity in front of them.

I, for one, can learn much from the patience - and radicalness - of the Quaker John Woolman.

John Woolman believed slavery was unjust— that it was cruel for those in bondage and corrosive for the bondsman. So he wrote an essay explaining why (“Some considerations on the keeping of Negroes: Recommended to the professors of Christianity of every denomination”). And then, since he was sure that his condemnation of slavery was true, and that the truth of it was compelling, he set out to talk to those who disagreed.
One by one, meetinghouse by meetinghouse, home by home. He would speak to gatherings of Friends, or would arrive for dinner at the home of Quaker slaveowners, and he would talk to them about his “considerations” and concerns with this practice. After the meal, he would pay wages to those slaves who had attended him. And he would invite the slaveowners to liberate their slaves, paying them back wages for their years of service.
Crazy. But even crazier: This worked. Conversation, liberation, transformation. That was Woolman’s method and he continued it, unchanged, throughout his life.

Well, almost unchanged. He eventually switched to traveling on foot out of consideration that the stagecoaches he had been riding in were cruel to the horses.

If you live somewhere on the East Coast of the United States, anywhere in between New York City and Richmond, Va., then you’re probably not far from some old historic Friends Meeting House. John Woolman spoke there. He arrived there on foot and spoke about slavery until he had convinced the Friends who gathered there to condemn the practice and cease participating in it by emancipating their slaves and paying them for their service. And then he left on foot, heading for the next such meeting house or home to have that same conversation again, and again and again.

And that is how John Woolman changed the Friends, and how it came to be that the Friends would help to change America. 

That really happened. That is really how it happened.

A re-education. Others talk about violence being the only way out of slave conditions. Still others maintain (out of a belief that property rights trump all else) that the slave owners need to be paid for the loss of their "property." But I see that as a false equivalence. The best process is to demonstrate that there are better ways, while protecting the oppressed.

Homosexuals, bisexuals, transgendered, African-descendents, mixed-raced, Anglo, Latino, poor, rich, management, cops, protesters, the 99%, the 1%, indigenous, English Language Learners, gringos, straights, queers, agents, hip-hop heads, scholars, Africans, South-East Asians, long-distance drivers, manufacturers, union members, prostitutes, slave-wage earners,sweat shop workers, bureaucrats, Parisians, Kenyans, Afrikaans, day laborers, servers, activists, civil servants, farmers, pharmacists

Among this list are scattered oppressors and oppressees, with many carrying both titles. But all are human, even when they/we don't seem to be. The greatest danger, IMO, is forgetting that we, in our fight against the violence of oppression, do not pick up the tools of the oppressor and so become the oppressor - only changing the face of the game, but not the game itself. Compare Woolman's approach to Soviet Russia's.

Although sometimes the new masters are better and more benevolent than the old ones, it seems to me that history has taught us that we need a different approach, a different way of seeing reality than through our relation to our money and our leaders. These are abstract ways of viewing life and they serve the function of denying us the pleasure and reward of our own work, world, and relationships.

It is not righteous wrath that will deliver us out of the systems of oppression, but revolutionary patience.

Zinn Reader i

First in occasional series of direct quotes from the Howard Zinn Reader.

These quotes are all taken from the chapter entitled, "Abolitionists, Freedom Riders and the Tactics of Agitation"

At issue are a number of claims advanced by liberal-minded people who profess purposes similar to the radical reformers, but urge more moderate methods. To argue a case too heatedly, they point out, provokes the opponent to retaliation. To urge measures too extreme alienates possible allies. To ask for too much too soon results in getting nothing. To use vituperative language arouses emotions to a pitch which precludes rational consideration. To be dogmatic and inflexible prevents adjustment to rapidly changing situations. To set up a clash of extremes precipitates sharp conflict and violence...

To jump to the cry "extremism" at the first glimpse of the unfamiliar is like a boy with his little telescope peering onto the heavens and announcing that the star he dimly perceives at his edge of vision is the farthest object in the universe...

Anna Gardner (1816-1901) was a teacher, writer, secretary of the New England Anti-Slavery Society, worker for women's rights, universal suffrage, and temperance.

It is paradoxical that the historian, who is presumably blessed with historical perspective, should judge the radical from within the narrow moral base of the radical's period of activity, while the radical assesses his immediate society from the vantage point of some future, better era. If progress is desirable, and if escape from the bonds of the immediate is healthy, whose perspective is more accurate - that of the agitator, or that of the scolding historian?

James Russell Lowell wrote in 1849: "... the simple fact undoubtedly is that were the Abolitionists to go back to the position from which they started, they would find themselves less fanatical than a very respectable minority of the people. The public follows them step by step, occupying the positions they have successively fortified and quitted, and it is necessary that they should keep in advance in order that people may not be shocked by waking up and finding themselves Abolitionists."...

[Lloyd] Garrison was quite aware that most of the American population to which he was appealing was not sympathetic with his views, and he was completely conscious of how distant were his own fiery convictions from those of the average American. But he was persuaded... that only powerful surges of words and feeling could move white people from their complacency about the slave question. He said once in Philadelphia: "Sir, slavery will not be overthrown without excitement, a most tremendous excitement." He must lash with words, he felt, those Americans who had never felt the whip of a a slaveowner... "I have need to be all on fire, for I have mountains of ice about me to melt."...

The politician is annoyed and angry at the pushing of the radical reformer, and the moderate observer thinks the radical unfair and injudicious in making extreme demands of the man in office, but both critics fail to distinguish between the social role of the politician and that of the agitator. In general, this distinction is perceived more clearly by reformers than by office-holders. Wendell Phillips put it neatly: "The reformer is careless of numbers, disregards popularity, and deals on with ideas, conscience, and common sense... He neither expects nor is overanxious for immediate success. The politician dwells in an everlasting now... His office is not to instruct public opinion but to represent it."

James Russell Lowell expressed the idea in another way: "The Reformer must expect comparative isolation, and he must be strong enough to bear it. He cannot look for the sympathy and cooperation of populace majorities. Yet these are the tools of the politician... All true Reformers are incendiaries. But it is the hearts, brains, and souls of their fellow-men which they set on fire, and in so doing they perform the function appropriate d to them in the wise order of Providence."

These children that you spit on As they try to change their worlds...

There are always going to be conservatives - those who, by definition, believe that society is working just fine, that we should not struggle so hard for new things. New developments, they argue, may be at odds with the natural and right order of the world*, or they may be good things that will come about in their due time if we only wait for the good timing of the good people running the town.

Of course nothing is perfect, they reassure us. So when we replace one system, we'll just get another imperfect one to replace it and we'll have to ask, why oh why did we ever waste so much time and energy? Because, rest assured, that system will be just as bad as - if not worse than - the one that it replaced.

It is understandable that the rich and powerful beat this drum. It is their livelihood that is in danger if the world were to turn upside down and every person demanded what was theirs to have. The only reason it's unsurprising that women and minorities and working class white males add their gongs and timpanies and harps and bongos and shakers and tom-toms and djembes and horns and keys and cymbals and whistles and chimes and congas to the deafening cacophony is because history has shown this to be the case time and again. The house slave is elevated above the field slave for the master's own manipulative purposes. The white sharecroppers often side with the white shareholders, not just because of their shared skin color (which is a component), but also because they are afraid of losing what little they have, not to mention losing the remote possibility that they may one day be rewarded for playing according to the rules and see a plentiful harvest in their days.

It all reminds me of teaching in the public schools. I wasn't the best. I wasn't anywhere near what I wanted to be as a classroom manager. A few managed to do all right, though. Some of my colleagues managed to excel. But at a great price. The odds were stacked against our students and they knew it. Whereas white kids in the burbs had a pretty good idea of the options in front of them, most of our Latino and African American students did not see a correlation between what we were offering in the classroom and what few options the world offered them after they left campus - whether for the day or for good.

Largely as a result of this disconnect, I think, and as a growing disconnect between the black young male and his environment (wherein many of the older would-be role models are incarcerated) male black students almost routinely envision themselves as pro-basketball stars. Against impossible odds, this is where they hope to be. The ONLY place they can see themselves. The very system comprised of systemically isolated and ostracized individuals within larger, but forcibly broken communities - made of impoverished youth and women, imprisoned and blackballed men, and a tiny sliver of very wealthy athletes playing for even wealthier white men - this system should not be questioned because it means the end of an impossible dream.

This dream will only be realized for 1 out of every 1,000 of those who are enthralled in it. For the other 99.9%, they are simply victims in its horrible wake.

As odd as it may be for the police state apologists to recognize thus, however, they are in a similar, fantastic and fatalistic predicament.

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*c.f., Slavery, Apartheid, Jim Crow, the need for universal health care

Slactivism

A good friend started an entire blog just to give me a ribbing today. And that's fine. That's why he's my friend. And like all good friends, he challenged me. My friend - let's just call him Mr. Ed -basically asked, "What's the point of wasting time and bytes arguing about stuff that may not directly affect you?"

If that were solely it, of course, I would say, "There is none. It's a vanity. A chasing after the wind."

But I like to believe that my words here and on Facebook are a sort of ministry - a furthering of my vocation. I learn and teach, that's my lifelong goal and calling. And I believe, firmly, that teaching is a way of redeeming when it's done correctly.

It allows people to ask questions of the world and the way it is: Is this how it should be? Is this how it can be? Is there something else? Is this right? If not, what could be right? How can you and I imagine a better world?

And it gets them in contact with resources they can use in order to answer and keep questioning and implore others and act themselves and then encourage others to act.

Case 1 in point: One of the friends of this blog, Kurt Willems, has been doing a series on non-violent resistance. This helps people like me because my environment - the physicality of it, the geographical mapping of shootings and gang turf wars, the robberies, the tv and movies that surround me, the ads, the reality of third world peoples that I come in contact with through one medium or another - is rooted in violence. It helps and inspires me to creatively ponder other ways of addressing problems in a creative, sustaining way.

photo © 2010 ASU Provost Comm Group | more info (via: Wylio)
Other blogs introduce me to ideas, perspectives, means, ends, problems, problem-solvers. And they make me laugh and smile and chuckle. And that is good for the soul.

Additionally, I have gained quite a few friends through the practice of blogging and social media. And for me getting to know them and their stories, pray for them, and even meet some of them (IRL) is tremendously impactful and good.

Case 2 in point: Being involved in politics allows some of us to care for the needs of "the least of us" - those who are disenfranchised, those who are marginalized, those who are not listened to.

And, through the miracles of social media, we can actually do something - even just a small thing such as add our name to an ongoing petition, to add to the voice and stir the conscience of our captains of industry. Take this recent letter sent by Change.org, for example:

We are blown away by the incredible impact Change.org members have made around the world by starting, joining, and winning dozens of meaningful campaigns over the past few weeks. So we wanted to drop you a quick note to say thank you. And congratulations. And let's keep fighting.

Here are a few of the top victories and successes we’ve had together:

* Late last week, the largest florist in the world, 1-800-Flowers, responded to 54,000 Change.org members and agreed to begin selling Fair Trade flowers and insist on a strong code of conduct for all their suppliers to counteract the deplorable working conditions that thousands of female flower workers face in South America. They’ve promised to offer Fair Trade flowers in time for Mother's Day, making 1-800-Flowers a leader in the industry.

* After a devastating clothing factory fire in Bangladesh took the lives of 27 workers, you asked seven clothing companies, including Abercrombie, the Gap, and Target to compensate the victims' families and revamp safety standards in their affiliated factories. After 65,000 of us spoke up, a spokesperson from Target said this to us: "I want to understand what we have to do to get our brand off the Change.org petition … Tell me what we need to do, and we will try to do it." All seven companies met your demands.

* An Ohio mom named Kelley Williams-Bolar was sentenced to jail last month for sending her kids to a safer school in a neighboring district. Another mom in Massachusetts started a petition on her behalf – and the campaign gained wide notice in Time, USA Today, and on Good Morning America. We teamed up with grassroots groups Color of Change and MomsRising to deliver more than 165,000 signatures in person to the office of Ohio Governor John Kasich. Less than 24 hours later, Governor Kasich took an important step toward pardoning Kelley.

* After firing a lesbian soccer coach for having a child with her partner, Belmont University heard from 21,000 of us -- including students, athletes, and alumni of the school -- and has adopted a new policy to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation. And although there's still work to do to stop Chick-Fil-A from funding anti-gay groups, your activism made national news (including the New York Times!), and Chick-Fil-A’s CEO was forced to post a video responding to pressure from pro-equality advocates and Change.org members across the country.

* Kim Feil, a Change.org member from Arlington, Texas, has been successfully beating back the massive Chesapeake Energy Corporation from dangerously drilling for natural gas in her neighborhood, with the support of more than 8,000 Change.org members across the country. The Arlington city council has now twice delayed its decision -- one member told the local Fox affiliate that the council has been overwhelmed by messages sent by Change.org members.

The list doesn’t stop there. You’ve made a jaw-dropping number of victories possible, from pushing Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to grant clemency to Sara Kruzan, to successfully calling on the South African Minister of Justice to meet with activists combating “corrective" rape, to getting Nashville's housing authority to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation.

You can read more about these victories and many others here.

Each victory was only possible because an activist like you decided to start a petition to make change in their community, city, or country. If there's something you want to change, you can start your own petition here: http://www.change.org/start-a-petition

We're so proud to be working with you. Thanks for everything you do.

- Patrick and the Change.org team

In these days, when people are on the move for freedom throughout the Middle East and Midwest, we can align ourselves and support them in solidarity. It does make a difference.

Note: I want to clarify that I mean that activism - and that with risk - is in many ways more important than slactivism. Slactivism supports activism. So, if it's at all possible, join a strike or a march, a boycott. Get involved with your community. Get out of the house and be about justice. If it's not possible, however, support those who are able to do that in whatever way you see fit. No guilt. ;)