Progress for them, along the line of their mandate for life. This was this morning. Early. I just went out this eve to see any difference. What i am hoping is to see the evidence of their transition from consuming to transformation. Not yet. the Consuming continues.
I will tell you that i am completely absorbed with the Events in Ferguson Missouri. I read everything i can, i watch video, i sit and stare at image slide shows. All of it. Everything.
"The Pew Research Center released a national survey of attitudes about Ferguson and it's meaning. Asked whether the shooting in Ferguson "raised important issues about race", 80% of black respondents agreed. And while two-thirds of black people said the police response in the aftermath of the Ferguson shooting went too far, only a third of white people thought so. Only a quarter of white respondents said they had followed the story closely, compared to half of black respondents." White America's racial blinders Derrick Z. Jackson Globe Columinst
I lived in Detroit, Michigan during the "riot" of 1967. Lived in an apartment just off the campus of Wayne State University, downtown. I was young. and what i remember most was having gone late at night to the White Castle oh so cheap hamburger joint a few blocks away, walked there, and sat eating hamburgers (that i would NOT eat today) and just talking to whoever was there. Somehow, and looking back, i am in total awe of it, really, somehow having a sense of safety. That nothing could happen to me. I wish i could go back and talk to that me, find out what she knew, what she was thinking. How she felt that she was safe. What she thought about it, that she did never feel threatened. What the ignorant innocence was that made her feel immune to harm. ANY harm. Any harm at all. Same as walking in protests in Detroit over Civil Rights, same as participating in protests of the war in Viet Nam. That same odd sense of immunity.
There are many many photographs that are stunning and heartwrenching coming out of that small town in Missouri this August, 2014 .
this one to me was the Strongest. I was born in Detroit, my father worked for the DSR the bus service. I remember, when i wa s young, and then later when i was no longer young, my father talking about the Negros. About how their hands are different, have scales. My father was a racist. I grew up for the most part in the suburbs of Detroit where there were only White people. But somehow, something inside me was repulsed by my father. So i think, what is That?
And i am looking at this photograph. Looking at something really, plain, a man stung by Pepper Spray, Capsicum, capsaicin, the chemical, and someone pouring MILK on his face. MILK. Same as when i eat too much chili here, now, that is too hot and i drink a glass of milk. Milk. Milk on his face and look. Look at the detail in this photograph....i am STUNG, stung hard that this is happening still. And it's happening still because no one wants to look. No one really wants to Stand and Face. We are not much farther along, really. Years go by and we don't look at Things.
Me, here, thinking all the above and yet
just Making a Cloth. Feeding Goats. Writing words here.
There is a woman, Hedy Epstein, who just turned 90 just now and is a Halocaust Surviver who is in Ferguson, Missouri. walking with the people.
