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

[Peg Griffin]

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
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Andy Blunden
ttp://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm