Making
Progress
“If
there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom,
and yet depreciate agitation, are [people] who want crops without plowing up
the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean
without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or
it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical, but it must be
a struggle.”
Frederick
Douglas
The
past week has been both heroic and tragic here in the US of A. People have been
in the streets protesting the killing of black men by white police officers, and
the disproportionate numbers of coronavirus deaths in people of color. We have
seen physical scuffles, and the brutal teargassing and flash-banging of
protestors for no good reason, and we have seen the abuse of police officers
and the destruction of property. It is a scene that stretches the imagination,
exhausts the body, and puts us on edge emotionally. To call America a powder
keg would be accurate right now.
While I was walking Liza
last night, I overheard two young, white women chatting from their porches; one
said someone drove through their neighborhood the night before shooting an
automatic rifle up in the air. The other said that bullets had rained down on
her roof and caused a leak into her daughter’s bedroom. They felt afraid for
their children—as black mothers do every single day and night.
I don’t like the struggle
because people get hurt, but I understand it. It is a moral struggle with
physical consequences. An alert went out on Thursday that a KKK rally had been
called for downtown Birmingham. The University closed early, as did many
businesses. The mayor had chain-link fences erected around the downtown parks where
two Confederate statues had been removed, and assembled police to defend them,
but the Klan never showed up. Thankfully.
Struggle is an essential
part of progress; uncomfortable, dangerous, difficult, but necessary. Whether
we are trying to make change within ourselves or in our culture, we must struggle to
achieve it. Take, for instance, the personal challenge of losing weight. For me, it is
hard to deny myself that peanut butter cup, or that extra helping of mashed potatoes.
Even when I manage to resist them, the scales don’t show much change—it’s hard
work, a struggle—lots of exercise, lots of pushing-back from the table.
Changing attitudes is
hard work, too. Take racism, for example. No one enjoys the struggle—not the
people on the front lines with tears streaming down their faces from teargas, nor
the mothers with bullet holes in their roofs, and certainly not the mothers and
fathers with bullets in their children. However, the death of an unarmed black
man in Minneapolis at the hands of police officers brought about massive
protests and raised awareness of the universal mistreatment of people of color around
the world—the streets of Paris and many other cities are now filled with
protestors. George Floyds's death was a tipping-point that pushed consciousness forward. Progress
is often painful, sometimes bloody, but always forward. And this will be no
different. Change will come out of it. Hopefully, change for the better.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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