It is an everyday struggle to neither fall into despair nor explode in anger.
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It is an everyday struggle to neither fall into despair nor explode in anger.
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I get it, I'm going to ride my bicycle than come home and write some checks to worthy causes. Money might move the needle, hands on action even more so. This is the best I can do today.Quote:
Originally Posted by admin
If people do what they are supposed to do it solves a lot of the problem.
They do not always yet people are good by design. When we set the table with good intent followed by real actions, well, people do change for the better.Quote:
Originally Posted by Clyde
.Quote:
Originally Posted by Clyde
There is a big difference between knowing what to do and being told what to do.
The former requires lots of brain power.
Life in a civil society is not that difficult but it does require you to be open and honest and recognize that you are not an individual but a part of a greater movement. It requires a little effort on your part.
Sadly not everyone is capable of thinking independently but acting globally.
Can concur. Virus, Idiots, Racists, Idiots, Psychopaths, Idiots, Zealots, and more Idiots. My mellow is seriously harshed lately.
The most difficult thing you will ever have to do is surround yourself with people capable of both giving and receiving love.Quote:
Originally Posted by kpomtb
When some jackass spouts off "All Lives Matter" and I tell him that is true but he's missing the point of BLM. Until society values all lives regardless of race (can add religion, orientation, etc, just simplifying), we're just passengers on the Titanic feeling good about ourselves because our end of the ship didn't hit the iceberg.
Opinion | Racism Can Be Defeated by a Revolution of the Heart - The New York Times
"These things will require not mere policy tinkering but dismantling the interlocking systems created by and for white supremacy and gender-based oppressions."
And persistence, boundless persistence.
fifyQuote:
Originally Posted by Clyde
Not as an aside, I'm a skinny white boy and feel like all my goodwill is for nothing. Looking for a way to intersect with this call/awakening/whatever it is. The fact that I'm the product of second generation Jews give me some station or ability to connect with BLM et. al. In the meantime, I'm using every new meeting as an opportunity to begin new conversations about social justice, opressive racial history and what the @#$% can be done about it that actually means something.
@Too Tall Stuff that will mean something?
We could start with reparations, aggressive school integration, single payer health care, tuition free higher ed, shoring up and enhancing Social Security, and a WPA/CCC government jobs program.
However, most of this is politically impossible because a whole lot of white people don't give enough of a damn to pay for it. We don't yet, as a country, seem to believe that equality should entail the privileged giving anything meaningful up.
Because we’re not really a first world nation where this stuff is a given, let’s start with the basics. Things like making sure every child has a safe roof over their head and enough to eat. In this land of plenty it’s unconscionable that these aren’t even close to guaranteed.Quote:
Originally Posted by caleb
I do my best and have good people close. But I still live on Earth, in the US, in West TX.Quote:
Originally Posted by Too Tall
interviews with black trump rally attendees
Where are they?
Google that.
Duck and Go that.
Oh the wonder of the digital age.
A dark hole.
Enlighten me please
Seriously, show me some light.
Where you are born, the colour of your skin and all the other circumstances, it's a dice from the pot.
Can a young kid be responsible for this, and have his life changed over and over during her/his life, for the bad? Can we just think we all have the right to live with dignity, and dignity has to be debated and accepted on fair grounds?
My 2c.
I’m positively livid.
Tiny contributions:
I continue to support a tax funded single payer health care system and I firmly believe that billionaires should be taxed out of existence to help pay for it.
I’ve taken to wearing a BLM pin when in public and alone; if trouble results, I don’t want my wife or dog to be involved; I’ve gotten a few nasty looks.
We moved to Tallahassee from MCAS Cherry Point and my parents were remarkably progressive. Our mealtime blessing included the phrase “and be ever mindful of the needs of others”, and it wasn’t just words; it was money and volunteering on my mother's part (the Lincoln side). Racially and culturally disparaging comments, never mind ugly epithets, were totally alien to our household so it was a BIG surprise to hear the comments of my classmates starting in the 5th grade when we washed up here (both parents returning to university) in ‘65. Even back then I’d challenge the ugly comments on the playground. Can’t remember what I said, probably something like “what’s wrong with them” or “why”, but I clearly remember some of the replies which I won't repeat. Got in a couple fights as a result. And even with all of that my skirts aren’t entirely clean; racism is insidious and it can get on you even if only in small concentrations. The shit is there. I've heard it and like a dormant virus some of it is in me.
My lifetime batting average with taking vocal exception to racial slurs made in my presence is probably 850; the 150 deficit does not please me. Sometimes, as an adult, I’ve just been too weary to speak up. That just ended.
Haven’t been in any marches as we’re taking COVID very seriously. That bothers me.
I knew racism was broad and deep but the new (to me) information that pops up on a nearly daily basis is blowing my mind. Whatever I thought, it’s vastly worse and like a cancer that’s metastasized to every damn cell in our cultural body. We, the dominant culture, definitely need to make constructive, durable, forward thinking reparations to black and native American folks with the aim of enabling full equality and opportunity in every dimension of our existence.
As to police violence and excessive use of force? That’s a subject for another day but I am stunned, and that doesn’t easily happen to me; we need to radically re-engineer policing and hold offending officers fully accountable just as we would for anybody else. I found this interesting: The Police Weren't Created to 'Protect and Serve.' They Were Created to 'Maintain Order.' A Brief Look at the History of Police in America | naked capitalism
I am tired. I can’t begin to fathom how the long oppressed folks feel. Like the lady said in a recent video, it’s a good thing that they want only equality and not revenge.
Vis-a-vis my earlier post:Quote:
Originally Posted by jclay
1) We don’t need to merely “enable full equality and opportunity in every dimension of our existence", as in offering the levers of power and opportunity to others (or thinking we have); we need to, in controls engineering speak, make the “systems integration” happen. It will take folks who are smarter and more educated than I to figure out how to do it.
2) It wasn’t that I was some sort of “woke” fifth grader with anything like a comprehensive and sophisticated understanding of the issue; I was a stupid but kind kid who was lucky enough to have been born into a family that wasn’t on the racist end of the spectrum. You just didn’t say that sort of shit or hold those sorts opinions in our family. We grew up with concern for others; many of my classmates in Tally grew up in families where being overtly racist was the norm and that was, of course, reflected in their actions and words at school and later in life. The arrogance I had was rooted in being from a multi-generational "hotshot" naval aviation family; doncha know that naval aviators are superior to all other beings. It’s complete horse-shit of course, took me an embarrassingly long while to realize and to a degree dormant elements of that particular infection still persist, but it is instructive. Our family “superiority” could have just as easily been a racial thing (as in "as long as the lowest white person can look down on black peeps....") rather than about being military airplane drivers.
John, thanks for that. What each of us does to bring to the forefront these issues is hard to tease out...what matters and what is just self placating.
Caleb, I’m searching for what works. Seems like voting does not matter, giving $$ does not hurt. Lending my intensity to old and new conversations, standing for what matters is important but does not move the needle. “Stuff that will mean something” is me in search of how to make a difference.
Quote:
Originally Posted by caleb
Voting matters. Big time. Getting others to vote matters more.Quote:
Originally Posted by Too Tall
I've discovered that writing to my Republican MOCs doesn't matter squat. In reply to a nice letter I wrote my congressman (an MD, courtesy of the Army and our tax dollars), advancing Single Payer, he simply replied that he didn't agree that Single Payer was the way to go, and thank you very much. What matters is voting the bastards out of office. Long term we need to be electing forward thinking progressives, not corporate democrats, but for the time being the imperative is to stop Trump and his ilk before they do even more damage.
My dream headline the morning after the election? TRUMP, GOP, OBLITERATED
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bob Ross
You fixed it for YOU not ME, I said what I meant and meant what I said. Take responsibility for your own words, that's part of "doing what you're supposed to do" means.
Hell yes!Quote:
Originally Posted by jclay
Quote:
Originally Posted by Clyde
Geez...Strong post content to thread title correlation. We're practically in BikeForums.com territory now!
Okay, here's me "doing what I'm supposed to do" and offering my own words on this topic: If more people treated others the way they wanted to be treated -- i.e., followed The Golden Rule -- there'd be less Insatiable Rage from all sides.
Could not say it better Bob.
Apres’ vous the “riots” outrage has taken a new turn. Rage and outrage has been replaced with will to change and that goes hand in hand with peaceful protest.
I said voting does not matter, it does...no @#$% yet it didn’t four years ago and trust me it might not matter again...my point.