We’ve Got The Power!

power

When I read Mirza Yawar Baig’s “Silence Is Culpable” at CC, it could have put me into a seething fury if I didn’t control my anger and use it to good purpose (such as trying to foster peace in my own community). It is because I agree wholeheartedly with the stance, as well as find the conditions that are described therein as deeply deplorable, utterly tragic and totally unacceptable.

There are no reasonable excuses for horrendous behaviors — bombing civilian populations abroad, raping eight year old girls, beating and kicking to death people trying to bring voting rights to maligned people, ignoring homeless people half-alive and starving to death in the city streets, killing a child of another religion with stabbing knives on a train and so on.

Some of us are going to fall down (i.e., be imprisoned and/or murdered) as we fight the current systems and mental outlooks in place. We are fought against again and again as we fight unjust social and political outlooks held by those in power and if we are deemed too dangerous to the monopoly in place, we are often “snuffed out.”

Listen and ponder:

The Speech That Got JFK Killed – John F Kennedy’s Secret Society …
Video for the speech that got John F. Kennedy killed
▶ 5:57
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63kUsgJw-T4
Oct 18, 2017 – Uploaded by Billy Carson 4biddenknowledge
Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen: I appreciate very much your generous invitation to be here tonight. You …

USA: KKK stage rally in Charlottesville, attract hundreds of … – YouTube
Video for supremacist kkk hate speech usa youtube
▶ 2:03
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pxFJXpZPV4
Jul 8, 2017 – Uploaded by Ruptly
About 50 members of the white supremacist group Loyal Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) staged a rally …

The same problem exists across the world. People with power, control, money and other self-serving benefits want to maintain the disparity. So there are insiders and outsiders based on religion, skin color, caste, culture and other differences. This discrimination involves othering outsiders. It is a way to maintain privilege and during cave days ensured survival … just as it does now when there are not enough essential resources and land for everyone to well survive in some regions. So people are contained, such as the Palestinians, or told to vacate some regions like the Rohingya Muslims. It is the same happening across the world.

The Problem of Othering: Towards Inclusiveness and Belonging …
www.otheringandbelonging.org/the-problem-of-othering/
Introduction. The problem of the twenty-first century is the problem of “othering.” In a world beset by seemingly intractable and overwhelming challenges, virtually every global, national, and regional conflict is wrapped within or organized around one or more dimension of group-based difference. Othering undergirds …

I have no idea about what Indians can do other than keeping on fighting for change if you maybe live in the land of the sheeple so that they can be more like our socialist oriented state, MA USA, wherein 40,000 strong march against hate speech and corruption. It is about changing the mentality. (We know where everything heads if we don’t keep up “the good fight,” although undertaken in a nonviolent way…

I get sick at heart when I think about Chandrashekhar Azad ‘Ravan’ or Dr Kafeel Khan. I just don’t want any more losses of the shining lights that serve in part to encourage us all to keep our lights going strongly and steadily like their own!

 

the Revolutionary Speech of Chandrasekhar Azad Ravan

Velivada

Understanding the Revolutionary Speech of Chandrasekhar Azad Ravan


First They Came For …

First they came for Medgar Wiley Evers and Martin Luther King, Jr.

King was imprisoned and then murdered for Civil Rights activism.

Evers was murdered for the same reason.

What did I care? I was not an African American.

Next they came for Freedom Riders working for Civil Rights.

They kicked, stomped and beat two Jews
and one African American to death.

They slaughtered the Riders
James Chaney, Andy Goodman, and  Michael Schwerner,
and threw their mangled bloody remains into a farmer’s dam.

What did I care? I was not a Freedom Rider

trying to get African Americans to vote in the southern USA

and bring them material aid.

 

Then they came for Muhammad Ali
because he was drafted

and refused to participate in their Vietnam War.

He said:

“Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? No I’m not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand would cost me millions of dollars. But I have said it once and I will say it again. The real enemy of my people is here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality. If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people they wouldn’t have to draft me, I’d join tomorrow. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I’ll go to jail, so what? We’ve been in jail for 400 years.”

So what? Women like me weren’t drafted in my country. So I don’t care.

 

Next they came for “Mordechai Vanunu,
also known as John Crossman,
is an Israeli former nuclear technician and peace activist
who, citing his opposition to weapons of mass destruction, revealed details of Israel’s nuclear weapons program to the British press in 1986.”
Wikipedia

What’s it to me? So what if Israel has the nuclear bomb
and imprison Palestinians, including young children?

I don’t live “over there”.

 

Next they came for Steve Biko and Nelson Mandela,
South African anti-apartheid activists.

Government related forces beat Biko to death

and imprisoned Mandela for 27 years.

So what? I’m not a South African.

They are still coming for the natives
of Central and South America

since their legally owned land

is wanted for mining, logging, farms, oil and fracking.

Why should I care if they are brutally slaughtered?

I don’t live in their lands.

They are coming to slaughter
and imprison all across the Earth
many social and environmental activists.

So what? I don’t live all across the planet.

 

Now they have come for Chandrashekhar Azad ‘Ravan’,

a strong and powerful human rights advocate

trying to help Dalits and other marginalized people.

So what if he is in prison and may soon die there

due to poor treatment of his health needs?

What do I care? I don’t live in India and I am not a Dalit.

Yet now the ruling elites are coming for me.

They don’t like my views.

They don’t like my religion.

They don’t like my skin color.

They don’t like my socio-economic status.

They don’t like anything about me.

Their mercenary and armed forces are coming.

I hear their footsteps coming to my door
to murder me or cart me off to prison.

Who now is left to stand up for me?

Who will speak up for and protect me?

 

The writing above is loosely based on this quotation:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Martin Niemöller: “First they came for the Socialists…”

https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007392

Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) was a prominent Protestant pastor who emerged as an outspoken public foe of Adolf Hitler and spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps. Niemöller is perhaps best remembered for the quotation: First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was …

Let’s go forward, people:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BRv9wGf5pk

 

“The Power” is an electronic pop hit song by the German music group Snap! from their album World Power

Sally Dugman is a writer in MA, USA.

 

 

Tags:

Support Countercurrents

Countercurrents is answerable only to our readers. Support honest journalism because we have no PLANET B.
Become a Patron at Patreon

Join Our Newsletter

GET COUNTERCURRENTS DAILY NEWSLETTER STRAIGHT TO YOUR INBOX

Join our WhatsApp and Telegram Channels

Get CounterCurrents updates on our WhatsApp and Telegram Channels

Related Posts

Join Our Newsletter


Annual Subscription

Join Countercurrents Annual Fund Raising Campaign and help us

Latest News