URBAN CROP CIRCLE PROJECTA messy little place where I take my messSunday, January 29, 2006Tell MartinTell Martin:The Dream has awakened! Tell him that the little black boys and black girls that he dreamed of are walking hand in hand with the entire spectrum of humanity, and all though for a great deal of us, that process seems to have gone to far to fast and for too many of us that process has not taken us far enough fast enough. Tell him yes many of us sit at the table of decision. Men and women sit with the leaders of the known world and contribute to a great deal of justice, also, sadly, a great deal of harm. Tell him we are still seeking and creating our identities as a collective with the rest of the whole world and this cauldron we call the United States of America, and as individuals. We are likened to the character in the book “The Man Who Cried I Am”. We are seeking to find a voice that is at once universal in its meaning and still unique in its expression.Yet sadly, we ask you to beg forgiveness, because the dream did oversleep, we did ignore the alarm clock and we have taken too many liberties before the goal is accomplished.We slept on the teachings of many, George Washington Carver, Malik Shabazz, R. Buckminster Fuller, Mother Teresa, Mother Waddles and too many for me to name. We have allowed some of our greatest dreamers and creative minds to rot in prisons and slums. We allow them to temper and harden in the extremes of urban expectations or rural isolation. We have allowed them to harden into weapons of self destruction, seeking their own reflections as targets. We have allowed the world to become a ghetto and we celebrate our baseness.We have forgotten the loss of icons and those who would be warning cries. We have forgotten the lessons of Emmett Till and young men like James Byrd, we have abused the struggle of Rosa Parks who has left us here to repeat that painful ordeal. We have lost our respect for experience and the wisdom that comes with age. We have forgotten the images of the heroes and heroine that fought so hard for the right to be, that we strive to exceed our forefather’s abuses with atrocities of our own. We celebrate murder, openly use as terms of endearment, names that denote the lowest of persons and call our women a name for mongrel dogs and common garden tools. Still we grow nothing to feed our own children. We turn our virgins into whores on the television and computer monitors before the eyes of the elderly and infants alike.Still, there are some and I am willing to believe more who are standing up and taking responsibility for our effect on the world. Taking active vocal responsibility for how our spending habits affect people in other lands. How the manner in which we exploit ourselves affects the lives of our young. The arms of the clock move in a cyclical fashion and as we move forward and as the clock’s hand spin, we do repeat history. We have gathered in front of the monuments of the architects of this republic, this federation of states, and wondered what are we to do now? We have allowed ourselves to focus too closely on the present state of being and struggled too hard to maintain the status quo. We call our selves being realistic, “keepin’ it real”. We have allowed our access to information and that information gives us pleasure or desire or dictates an image of us. Still too few of us dictate what image we desire to be seen as.When Americans, especially the African Americans, of this nation lost so many leaders is such a short period of time, Americans became afraid to raise up leaders who would face the world. Still leaders came, unlearned and poorly groomed for the tasks, still leaders came and those leaders experienced everything first hand. Like David, as a king they lead and they lead, they are captains of industry, entertainers and educators, role models and inspiration to millions, sometimes for the wrong reasons. Sometimes to the disenchantment and often to the mistreatment of human life, sometimes to the elimination of humane values and judgment, we have allowed our media access to define and convince us that we are poor, because we do not have the material trappings of the wealthiest. That without money, fame and violent vulgar power we are unattractive, undesirable and unacceptable. We take sociological and technological advancements and misuse them, make them into sources for personal commerce and a reason to mistreat others, without regard for the affect or effects on human lives. We have taken the right of free speech and made it the right to offend as many as possible instead of creating forums for solutions. There are still too many brilliant minds in ivory towers of academia, having solutions to problems and conditions and render them useless with bureaucracy or human fear of the unknown. We still fear the future.Yet we move forward and we learn, we learn to wake up and dream, imagine, plan, design, build and create the world we want to live in, knowing that only when we improve the whole community can we feel secure in our individual spaces We are heroic and tragic, we are beautiful and ridiculous. We are myopic and selfish, and we are greatly generous and grateful. Rather we like it or not, tell Martin, in all its wonders and its flaws; the dream has awakened and realized we are completely and truly American. We are becoming global citizens and seeing to the needs of an ailing planet Earth. We are becoming aware of the universe as a living being.Tell Martin, I said, "Yes brother, The Dreamer is awakened".And we still have so terribly far to go.Ulysses Newkirk II
https://theblacklist.net/
Comments