http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0117-31.htmPublished on Published on Monday, January 17, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
Our Velvet Revolution
by Doris 'Granny D' Haddock
A growing number of Americans are beginning to identify with the pro-democracy activists whose courage opened much of the world to freedom in the final decades of the 20th Century.
We remember and honor the poet revolutionary Vaclav Havel of Czechoslovakia, where Charter 77 rendered the flowers and songs of a velvet revolution more powerful than the guns of oppression. We remember the shipyard hero, Lech Walesa, of Poland. We remember those who stood non-violently in Russia, in Yugoslavia, in Tiananmen Square, in East and West Germany. It was their fearless living that ended the Cold War, not Reagan’s saber rattling.
When people stand united with certain courage against oppression, they get their way. That is an axiom in the geometry of world history.
snip to the end:
My advice to the activist is to look at the work of groups like City Repair of Portland, and of ACORN, and other groups that work to make everyday life more joyful for our people. Get involved with them. There are simply not enough of us to effect dramatic political change as things stand today, so we must labor happily in these vineyards until we are enough. And we must open the eyes and minds of our neighbors. Just as the religious groups go door-to-door with their pamphlets, so must we, with pamphlets that fill in the gaps of information about our government, our environment, and our situation in America and around the world. These activities--working with people who need help and spreading the truth--must be joined, and our political work will come easier.
Let us string lights in the trees and bring out tables of food. Let us buy the things we need from the workers here who need the work. Let us invite the musicians and the artists and the academics to do their part. Let us do, in short, what we would do if the present order fell to feathers with all its mortgages and credit cards. It will do just that if we so elect, and this is the election that matters. The things we dislike in the present order are sustained only by our fearful complicity.
Look at me: I am still alive, and I am looking at you, and you are alive. This is our world as much as anyone else's. We who are old enough or wise enough to see the edges of life can understand that we have a choice between fear and joy, and between victimization and service. All elections and other indications to the contrary, happy days are here again when we but say they are. We do not turn our hearts away from injustice or suffering, indeed we mend them as best we can with our joyful engagement and our courageous non-cooperation with the forces of fear and death. And no one can take away our joy, for even our suffering for justice and brotherhood is joyful.
This is our Velvet Revolution, American style. We resist what we must and what we can, but our victory is not in defense, but in a cultural offensive made irresistible by the power of love and courage, pulling our people together, and our own lives together, over time.
We have tried this before in America. Things got in our way: drugs, wars, fears. We became parents. We became distracted. It is now time to get it right.
Thank you.
Doris "Granny D" Haddock is celebrating her 95th birthday (Jan. 24) with a quick speaking tour in Florida over the next few days and then speaking at the January 20th Inauguration Day Protests in Washington, D.C.
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