Communique #16

Frederick Douglass Speech 1857

“If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without demand. It never did and it never will.”

Comments

Communique #5

Conspiracy Theory If you really want a conspiracy theory, I have it on good accounting that this Pandemic has been orchestrated. In our funny very human manner we have not considered that the higher beings we have looked for in the universe aren’t ever present here on earth, influencing human history. No we can’t see, small or taste them. Their intervention, in this case, the Pandemic is an effort to slow down the environmental degradation and an effort to create a teaching moment for our species. It is an act of grace from a higher power willing to attempt to create a better understanding amongst us, thereby bending the curve, from mutual self destruction, our current trajectory, to a higher order for our species. Why have we so thoroughly separated and isolated ourselves from one another? We have separated ourselves from one another to the great detriment of the planet, ourselves, and all other species here on earth? And why are we in this race to destroy our habitat? The...

Communique #11

I can't breath Reflecting on the horrendous scene in Minneapolis, “I can’t breath”. I think of the disproportionate number of people of color who get sick and die from Covid-19. I think of the respirators pushing oxygen into the lungs of people who are horrible sick. “I can’t breathe” and I think of the lack of good health care in the Inter-cities and among the rural poor in the United States. Before the pandemic this was just normal. With people in the streets there is hope for a new normal. Still, I am seventy-one years old and this racial hatred has been present my whole life. I have seen its many manifestations, a numbing number of means of disadvantaging the other. I have seen how it has been used for political gain. Everywhere I have lived, it lives, North, South and West. When I took the white supremacy in Oregon course I felt overwhelmed by the relentless discrimination, it has so many heads. I don’t know if it c...

Communique #12

I wake up in the night, feeling warm with a dry throat and wonder if I have the virus. I dismiss it and go back to sleep. But, there are more cases now than ever. The normal that one might want to achieve seems farther and farther away. We are at an extended existential moment. The future is unknown. I suppose this is more realistic-- thinking one knows the future is an illusion, and yet culture, our culture plants the seeds and creates the markers for this illusion that the future is secure, corollary, one is safe and immortal, this against all evidence. I suppose my surprise at how strong ideology is, some who are able to deny the science of the virus, is not that different then this culturally propagated belief, the future is known and secure. The pandemic brings this belief into question and we can call it existentialism. No, the future is not known, so get over it. Life is a fragile gift, we don’t know what happens tomorrow....

Communique

Search This Blog