[Xmca-l] Re: Out of the mouth of babes

[Alfredo Jornet Gil]

Yes, it has been really inspiring to see and follow Saturday's "March for our Lives," and I am hopeful that Andy is right concerning escalation. 

I was particularly moved by Emma's 6 minutes 20 seconds silence (and that is the force of the movement, right? that it moves, that it is moving to see and join and makes to want/feel/join). It really brought up a performative, aesthetic dimension to the event that was arresting. During those seconds of abrupt silence you could see, hear and touch the absolute weight of the tragic event, not only in the silence, but also in the people's sobers, sudden screams, the unbearability of that weight and the struggle to bear it. That was one of the most powerful artistic instalments that I have witnessed. Talk of perezhivanie! To me, that was an impressive display of talent and competence to lead movement and move, and do so with content. I see very little of that in adult politics, unfortunately. 

Alfredo Jornet
________________________________
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From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org>
Sent: 26 March 2018 08:00
To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Out of the mouth of babes

Yes, they did so many things *right*. It is so good that
this generation has been watching and learning. That we have
a social movement (and abundant recruits to many more social
movements for the years ahead), who also deliberately focus
on getting people elected/unelected and laws
passed/repealed. No sign of disdain for electoral processes
(c.f. Occupy). And yet skilled and energetic on the street.

One of the things about America's dominant position in the
world is that your social movements tend to spread across
the world as well as your soldiers and your money. :)

An interesting question which Fernando and Monica have not
yet commented on: Formally, the object of Saturday's marches
was gun control. And yet we are all confident (aren't we?)
that the student who said "Welcome to the Revolution" was
also not completely mistaken. That is, that we expect to see
considerable "cross-over" into a wide range of issues which
are nothing to do with gun control. A cascading effect,
where a successful event leads to participants and observers
"raising the stakes" is a known phenomenon. Brecht de Smet
(an xmca-er) observed it in the events Egypt which did not
start by calling for the end of the regime, but escalated to
that object. My friend Mitch Abidor said the same thing
happened in Paris May 68 - one thing led to another - people
discovered that they weren't they only ones .... What was it
about the 18th school shooting in 2018 which triggered this
response? How much had 14 months of Trump to do with it? MDS
is a "grade A" school - was this a factor in its being a
trigger? ...

Andy

------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden
ttp://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
On 26/03/2018 1:37 PM, Peg Griffin wrote:
> That March provided experiences that moments can yield a movement: More words and acts are planned and will be carried out with leadership by youth dedicated to hard, focused, intelligent, heart-filled work.
> Some as young as 9, none more than 20, they've revived so many of us!  And they are not being tripped up on divisions exploited by those who make the problems in the first place.  They recognize each other across all kinds of constructed barriers as fellow "troublemakers" (as John Lewis says) for those who make our problems.   There was palpable unity in whispers and shouts and tears among the 800,000 on Pennsylvania Avenue, answering the calling for REV (Register, Educate, Vote at local, state and federal levels) in spring and summer acts to follow.
>
> Even the New Yorker magazine last night posted  ( https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-extraordinary-inclusiveness-of-the-march-for-our-lives  ) about the rarely found or built inclusivity that was a carefully arranged part of the march yesterday.  That inclusion is remarkable and laudatory in and of itself.  For that alone, I think we should just about kiss the youngsters' feet, sing their praises for a few days and learn how to learn from their example!  In that diverse crowd on the podium and in the streets, hundreds of thousands of people wept with the brother of the twin who was shot in a neighborhood robbery, they chanted Ricardo for the Los Angeles young man whose sister told about him, they saw the tape being ripped off their mouths by the two young men who finally had a forum for inner city gun violence discussion, they empathized about police violence, they appreciated the students’ understanding of so many complicated aspects of the problem, knowledge of specific
>   details, and the rhetorical power of their talks and videos.  We could see power sharing of MSD group and BLM.  The focus of the national media reporting was on MSD but the students from there addressed white privilege and arranged to take up less than a third of the rally speaking time; they spread to other organizations the finances for buses full of teens and pre-teens from diverse neighborhoods near and far.  There is so much that they did so well, even, Andy, rebutting the proposal to spend government money to arm teachers while highlighting government failure to provide living wages for teachers and other funds needed in education. Several times they also made clear the relation between economic inequity and locations of gun violence -- not just during crimes but also by police.
>
> This old lady's tears still well up when I recall episode after episode:
> Samantha, shot in the leg with shrapnel wounds in the face, threw up at the podium, but then grinned in triumph as she went right on explaining an action plan for spring and summer of full focus activism before she starts college in the fall.
> Emma's fully engaging silence offered us the chance to feel the 6 minutes and 20 seconds it took to kill her 17 school mates.  She capped it by her final call to "Fight for your lives before it’s someone else’s job.”
> And so many more.  Each important for the moment and all building a movement.
> Peg
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Andy Blunden
> Sent: Saturday, March 24, 2018 11:42 PM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Out of the mouth of babes
>
> What a wonderful blast of sunshine, like the first rays of summer across an arctic landscape! These kids who have "Marched for Our Lives", in such gigantic numbers. This must be the broadest movement we have seen in a generation, and so young and creative and energetic, promising a better future. The issues affecting the young (and surely this activism will flow across to education cuts, casualisation of labour, and all those broad issues which affect young
> people) are not sectional. This is not a movement of well-off people wanting for the poor but a movement which sees itself as defending its own vital interests. This makes it very powerful. They are even working at getting MLK-type rhetoric going in times when we might have thought that that sort of rhetoric was dead. :)
>
> Enough to make an old man cry to see this movement!
>
> Andy
> --
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> Andy Blunden
> ttp://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
>
>