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The Civil Rights And Peace Movement

November 18, 2008

I am long overdue to begin writing about my experiences in what is quickly becoming the civil rights and peace movement of the 21st century. For me, the journey to my present involvement in activism was founded early in life.

The day that we here in the United States elected Barack Obama to be our first African American president was a day that I had pondered since my youth. I can still remember looking at the faces of our then former presidents and asking my mom why we had not had a black president. She told me that no one had tried to run for president who was black and I told her that they should. Now, over 20 years later, we have him! God bless America!

In the light of our country’s perceived acceptance of diversity, it is a true wonder that, in the very same election which gave us our first African American president, we here in California elected to remove the rights of homosexuals to marry. This is the first time in history that the people have voted to remove rights that had already been granted. This, for me, was the beginning of my journey as a peaceful dissenter, not because I care to ever be married to a man or a woman, but because I saw the civil rights that every American holds dear being disregarded for the sake of religious fervor and over an issue of the mere semantics of using the word “marriage” to describe the civil union between people of the same sex.

I originally became involved in rallies and protests against prop 8 because, one day when I was walking home from school, I saw protesters on the corner near my house and wanted to join them because I believed in their cause. I put my backpack down in my house, got something to eat and went back out to join them, but they had left by that time. Then, I searched on the internet to see if I could get hooked up with individuals who were protesting this prop that way. I went to the next rally and this is also when I became involved in peace rallies, something which I had longed to do since the very beginning of the war but lacked the knowledge of where to go to protest. As I became more involved in both the peace movement and the civil rights movement, I realized the potential magnitude of citizens united peacefully for a cause. I had often theorized about these things, but the reality of it all, in the midst of a multitude of peaceful protesters, was far greater than anything I had ever imagined!

I began to read things about Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. and I realized that peace is truly more powerful than war and violence. As the wisdom in Proverbs 25:21-22 goes, “If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink; for so you will heap coals of fire on his head, and the Lord will reward you.” If you return peace to those who give you violence, they are the ones who will bear the hot coals of shame upon their heads. This is what Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Jesus all taught and practiced and it is just as powerful today! I realized that the power behind the civil rights movement of the 60’s was in those multitudes that protested peacefully, not in the few who protested violently.

Another great strength of the movements during the 60’s was the strength of the youth. When it comes down to it, the youth of this country will have to live with the decisions of their elders for a lot longer than their elders will and so we should be the backbone of the movement, just as was the case in the 60’s. When I look around, I do see our youth involved some, but there are so many who are just content to live their lives and hope that other people make the right decisions and that other people fight for their rights. That has to end.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT:
Are we all so concerned with our immediate future that we refuse to stand up for our own rights? Are we only concerned with our own rights? Don’t we realize that if people are allowed to take away one right from one group, whether we agree with that decision or not, that the rescinding of rights will stop there? Who’s rights are next? Do you have to be a gay person interested in marrying someone to protest the passing of prop 8? Would you have had to have been an African American during the 60’s to protest for African American rights? We are all in this together and as such, we cannot sit back and ignore this. It may be gays today, but tomorrow or next election, it could be any other minority. Minorities need the majority to help and not be silent, not on the basis of beliefs, but on the basis of being fellow human beings who also bleed red!!!

The DNA Of A Hero

I don’t know why I must feel this way from time to time. Agony crashes down upon me like a fierce wave of evil emotion. I go under before I can take my first breath and those that I count dear see my weakness and push me under faster. As if being under the agony wasn’t bad enough, they push me yet deeper until all the light of the surface fades away and my soul wonders if it will ever escape. The evil currents carry me deeper still as my lungs begin to burn and long for fresh oxygen, but I am so tormented that I can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t be. The agony is dark and lonely and suffocating. It is no wonder that it should be lonely, for no one can take the journey into agony with anyone else. Each one must face their own demons and their own darkness alone. Each one understands only their own pain.

Love on the human plane is a lie, told by those who would impose their will upon others, believed by those who have been deceived into thinking that life is some sort of perfect fairy tale where the prince saves the day and they live and love happily ever after. The lie is told everyday, day in and day out. For this lie and many more, I am pained, a black sheep rejected by the flock, left to walk alone in the dark night.

Depression is a familiar and perhaps even welcomed friend. At least she buries me softly in the rivers of despair like a worthless rotting corpse. Her arms surround my brokenness and let me down gently into my own private hell. I bang and scream on her chest and yet she remains with me, my silent companion. Silently, she says more than words could say as I wait in her embrace. I am waiting to be rid of her but life is familiar in her arms. Soon, she will let me go and I will float back up to the top again, to the life that I once lived in the fake plastic world that I have no choice but to call home. Sometimes I wish to go back there and pretend that life is a happy experience, but I know that where I am is more real even though it is crushingly sad. There are no plastic knights in shining armor with more courage than brains. Happily ever after is a sick joke here, as phony as fools’ gold, a tale for fools indeed. Some try to go back to the plastic world by swallowing tonics, but one cannot go back until the time is right. One can only become drunk and numb in the real world, but one cannot turn the channel from sadness to glee.

What is so wrong with heartbreak, tears, sadness, depression, distress? Are they not universal feelings felt by all human beings? Should we be so arrogant as to think that we will only get happy things in our lives without having to bear the sad things? If no one was ever sad, would anyone ever truly be happy? If there was no true sadness, would there even be plastic happiness? And still I groan under the familiar and yet unbearable weight of the pain.

Now, practically, pain, even though it is intangible, is perhaps one of the most felt forces in the world. Who has not felt the heavy burden of pain on their shoulders as if there were a boulder of invisible steel resting there. The strange nature of pain is that, even though it seems heavy for all people, no one feels the weight of pain in exactly the same way. Perhaps something that would be a light burden for some is an impossible load for others. For this reason, no one can judge another’s source of pain. There is no scale with which to weight each source of pain for the experience of pain is purely subjective.

Since pain is such a subjective experience, each person is alone in their own pain, as if they were in some kind of invisible solitary confinement. A group can mourn together, but each one mourns alone. Perhaps the aloneness itself is enough to cause the pain in the first place and the vicious cycle of pain begins and continues this way. It is no wonder, then, that many times it feels as if the pain with last forever since the experience of it causes more pain which causes more pain, ad nauseum.

So what is the solution to this convection of pain? In all honesty, for every soul that has been beset by pain, a most tempting option is suicide. Yet suicide enters the soul into the unknown of the afterlife and no one can prove where that road leads. Who is to say that there isn’t more pain, perhaps the infinite pain of Hell awaiting there? Suicide, although tempting on the surface is, therefore, a most dangerous option.

Some try to solve their cycle of pain by pretending that it does not exist: a fake it until you make it strategy. However, it is almost psychotic to think that one can become something simply by pretending to be something. I could perhaps sit here for hours and pretend to become my computer and I would breach the line of sanity if I actually professed to be a computer, wouldn’t I? The same, I believe, holds true in pretending to be happy. It is a lie at best. Lies will certainly only lead to more pain.

King Solomon said that the more wisdom one has, the more suffering they will experience and this is a true statement. Most of us strive for wisdom, but no one can say that they are any happier for having found even a small portion of it, for wisdom includes the knowledge of all the evil both in the world and in oneself. So should one flee from wisdom into stupidity and folly? No. The stupid may appear to be happy, but only inasmuch as anything living in a plastic reality could be happy and we are faced with the same situation as those who would pretend that they are happy. This happiness is based on ignorance which is a mere step up from deception.

Shall we sit then and wait for the pain to end? Surely most pain ends eventually. So we wait until we have exhausted all of our patience and then we revert back to the previous solutions that solve nothing. What, then, shall be done about pain?

I suggest that we embrace it, love it, cherish it, learn from it and become better people for it. Pain, sadness, depression: these are not malfunctions of the human brain! These are tools with which to mold the human spirit into something better. What? I don’t know, but I know it will be better. We will know how to lead others down the dark road that we have traveled even though we cannot ever go with them emotionally. We will return from the depths of pain as victorious warriors against the horrors of reality for isn’t that what a hero is? A hero fights against the cold, harsh realities of death, depravity and destruction. A hero does not back down and run away from the danger of it all, but rushes in so that others may be benefited. A hero lives for the struggle and emerges victorious. Pain is no different than a raging fire. Both are dangerous and difficult, but one can come out of them victorious, having helped others along the way. So, really, a hero is one who, despite the pain and difficulties, can stick it out and live to see another day, emerging victoriously from the fiery backdraft of pain carrying all that they have saved from the inferno. So the hero emerges from their own hell on earth with new wisdom and with the maturity to handle the suffering that comes with such wisdom.

Therefore, at the turning point of pain when a decision must be made to either carry on or give up, let us face the pain boldly and go into the fire, knowing that what will emerge on the other side will be a new person, strengthened by the fire. Let us go forward and not give up so that we can save others too. Let us not fear, knowing that just as there is pain as a result of wisdom, so there is wisdom that can be gained from each thing that we suffer. Let us never give up!

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