Activism for the Rest of Us
It’s been weeks now since the video of the killing of George Floyd. Maybe you’ve been to a demonstration in your town or a nearby town. Perhaps you’ve written commentary for your local paper. You might have been nervous about going out to a demonstration because you are immunocompromised and the Covid19 is still a real threat. It’s a possibility that like me, you just don’t know what to do that makes any sense or doesn’t involve the possibility of catching a fatal disease.
I don’t blame you. I’ve mentioned already in my very first post that I am old. Because I was career military, it never even occurred to me to protest anything. I also live far from any big city, and small-town demonstrations tend to take place on the local talk radio programs or in the Letters to the Editor section of the local newspaper.
However, for the first time in my life, I attended a demonstration in the form of a candlelight vigil. The vigil took place starting at 7pm in hopes it would get dark soon after that. It didn’t, being June and close to the solstice. It was still light at 8pm when we closed the vigil down because there’s a curfew in place and all of us elderly people have no desire to get into an argument with the local police. After all, we know these people. We go to the same churches. Our kids, or grandkids if you will, play softball together. We went home after an hour to comply with curfew.
While we were there, there were a lot of honks of support. There were a few people who thought yelling obscenities out of their car or truck windows was an appropriate response. I was nervous at first, as a few days earlier, as reported in our local paper, some local folks came armed to the central shopping center and intimidated a small group of people. I’m talking under 10 people here, who had heard there was going to be a demonstration and came to participate. It was ugly and to be honest, I had no desire to be face to face with an angry, gun-wielding, self-appointed guardian of local commerce.
Unlike the group from a couple of days earlier, we had no trouble. I was glad. I was relieved. I was also left with the feeling that I didn’t do enough. The next day, a short video was posted to the local paper’s Facebook page showing the vigil, and the comments were, to a large part very ugly. There’s an undercurrent of hate and racism in my little town that I was unaware of. I’m embarrassed, ashamed, and to be honest, a little cowed by the vehement vitriol that was plastered on the page.
So what do I do now? I could go stand on the main intersection corner in my town with a sign that says, No Justice, No Peace. I could write letters to the editor or call into the local radio station and try to get a conversation started. But really, what’s one voice in the wilderness?
A friend of mine posted a suggestion on social media. We can put our money where our mouths, or hearts, are. He found a couple of links and suggested that a twenty-dollar donation to some specific non-profits who are fighting for equality, would go a long way to helping. Especially if a whole lot of people did the same. Here they are: https://borgenproject.org/non-profit-human-rights-organizations/
https://www.theadvocatesforhumanrights.org/human_rights_organizations
Pick any of the organizations that are listed and that speak to your heart and make your wishes real. Change is necessary. The unequal treatment of people of color, of indigenous peoples, of people of different religions, of disabled people, and of women must stop. Major changes to our society must take place. Poverty must be addressed. Unequal education, unequal medical care, unequal pay, all must be changed to solve the social issues that confront us and turn our country inside out.
Lot’s of people ask, “Who’s going to pay for all this?”
My response is that there’s plenty of money to go around. Revise the tax laws so that major companies and the oligarchy start paying more in taxes than the poorest 10% of citizens. Stop bailing out companies that don’t even register in this country. Reinstate the laws that prosecute companies for dumping toxic waste in our air, land, and water. Matter of fact reinstate laws that protect the American consumer and the citizens of this country from financial and other malfeasance of big corporations who are only in it for greed.
Most of all, if you aren’t registered to vote in November, you are part of the problem. Get registered and get to the polls. Register for mail-in voting if it’s available in your state. In Arizona, get on the Permanent Early Voting List and vote by mail. Change happens in a lot of different ways. Make it your mission to be part of the change!
