Dear John
Thankyou for this reflection....how perfectly and simply put! "To stop"....the
only way out.
I am afraid that the problem of reconciliation is seen to be so much more
important than this simple solution. There is more political investment in
problems in the name of seeking solutions.....deceit with catastrophic
consequences. The solution so simple ....dying to the past....
Kind regards
Sadhana Kay Needham.
Sent on the go with Vodafone
<div>-------- Original message --------</div><div>From: "lynxdn@xxxxxxxxx
[ConstellationTalk]" <ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
</div><div>Date:01/01/2016 4:37 AM (GMT+10:00) </div><div>To:
ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx </div><div>Subject: [ConstellationTalk] Re:
Justice and the Balance of Giving and Taking </div><div>
</div>Thanks Alison for launching this thread.
As an African American living and observing and engaging others in my life and
times, deep questions like yours are not only played out within me, but through
various movements and prominent black national orators.
Just yesterday I began listening to "Say It Plain: A Century of Great African
American Speeches," edited by Catherine Ellis and Stephen Drury Smith. New
York: The New Press. Library of Congress System: PS 663 N4 S39 2005; Dewey
System 815' .508896073—dc22; ISBN 1-56584-924-8 (hc).
This is a text and CD set, so I can hear the person's recording while reading
along with them. I reached Fanny Lou Hamer's speech before the National
Convention of the Democratic Party in 1964. She talked about a group of black
people in Miss. traveling via bus to their county seat to take tests in their
efforts to register to vote. The bus driver was fined for having a bus "the
wrong color" by the police. She gets home and the white landlord she
sharecropped from is terribly upset she went to try to register. She told him
she didn't register for him, she registered for herself. She had to flee the
plantation.
She was stopped, arrested, and beaten by the police. Yet she stood before the
overwhelmingly white DNC and plead her case to become the official MS's
delegates to the convention. Meanwhile, this powerful speech was deliberately
being preempted by (white) President Johnson for a "urgent national
announcement" on the Vietnam War he understood the (white) networks would jump
to cover. Intentionally, he timed it at the exact time of Hamer's speech, so
she never got the coverage.
This is part of our species' legacy for enacting sadomasochistic (SM) patterns
with each other. Once I understood that I see it everywhere, of course. SM is
about power, it is just handy when dominance can be linked to some marker, be
it gender orientation, gender, or skin color. But, what about greed? some may
ask. Greed means little if one lacks the power to enforce it on others
unwillingly.
SM is widely thought of as a sexuality kink. What is not generally known,
though, is that the parties have mutually agreed to a "safeword" to stop the
action when either feels things may get out of hand. In the "Hunchback of Notre
Dame," if anyone is being pursued by the police (flee and chase being a type of
SM) and reaches the great cathedral they can call out "Sanctuary!" and the
chasing police respect the sanctity of the church and stop, voluntarily. In
Africa, in many villages, the same thing would happen if you can reach the
chief's house.
The beginning of healing is mutual voluntary self-restraint. We need
punctuation, a full period STOP, to the continuing abuse and re-patterning as
dominant and subordinate. The world needs to find and agree to a safeword.
"Sanctuary" to all,
John Perkins, Seattle, WA, USA
