Freedom to express ourselves as we choose is essential to ethics and democracy. The right to speak freely and to be heard is an indispensable part of equality. Equally indispensable is the community’s receptiveness to ideas: its willingness to listen and hear. This is a daunting challenge in the modern urbanized and suburbanized world, because most of us can never…
Read More
Value for Wednesday of Week 32 in the season of Ripening
Being Publicly Involved through Activism
Great leaders are activists.
- Some say we should not engage in activism. Instead we should leave everything to our politicians and just vote for a change instead. But what do we do when there is no political will? What do we do when the politics needed are nowhere in sight? [Greta Thunburg]
- My activism did not spring from my being gay, or, for that matter, from my being black. Rather, it is rooted fundamentally in my Quaker upbringing and the values that were instilled in me by my grandparents who reared me. [Bayard Rustin]
- Things will only improve when the people – all of us – say to authorities, “I will hold you responsible.” We should all be showing up at city council meetings, lighting up every community with activism and mobilization. [attributed to Erin Brockovich]
- I’m not quite sure precisely when social and political activism became a visible brand of my DNA, but it seems to me that I was born into it. It is hard to be born into the experience in the world of poverty and not develop some instinct for survival and resistance to those things that oppress you. [attributed to Harry Belafonte]
- I guess because the shows were activist in their own way – the marriage of my public activism and my career activism, you know – people understand me very well. They also understand there’s a very strong bipartisan part in all of this. [attributed to Norman Lear]
Real
True Narratives
Book narratives:
- Benazir Bhutto, Daughter of Destiny: An Autobiography (Simon & Schuster, 1989).
- David Frost interview with Benazir Bhutto (Nov. 2, 2007)
- Ingrid Betancourt, Even Silence Has an End: My Six Years of Captivity in the Columbian Jungle (Penguin Press, 2010).
- Peniel E. Joseph, Stokely: A Life (Basic Civitas, 2014): Stokely Carmichael’s activism as a lesson in how the United States “came to a moral fork in the road and opted to go straight.”
- Jeanne Theoharis, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks (Beacon Press, 2013): “. . . a fiercely determined activist behind the mild-mannered lady in a hat.”
- Laura Wides-Muñoz, The Making Of a Dream: How a Group of Young Undocumented Immigrants Helped Change What It Means to Be American (Harper/HarperCollins Publishers, 2018): “Immigration reform and the student activists who tried to make it happen.”
- Raymond Arsenault, Arthur Ashe: A Life (Simon & Schuster, 2018): “ . . . he was a man who needed to do more than just hit the ball well; he needed to give back to the world . . . ”
- Imani Perry, Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry (Beacon Press, 2018): “Lorraine Hansberry was one of the most brilliant minds to pass through the American theater, a model of that virtually extinct species known as the artist-activist.”
- James McGrath Morris, Eye On the Struggle: Ethel Payne, the First Lady of the Black Press (Amstad/HarperCollins, 2015): “By her late 20s and early 30s, Payne was fighting housing segregation and defense industry discrimination with the local chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. When A. Philip Randolph, the founding president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters — the most powerful black union in the country — reached out for local support for the emerging March on Washington Movement, Payne answered the call. This was the opening salvo of the civil rights movement, and she was right smack in the middle of it.”
- Rachel Holmes, Eleanor Marx: A Life (Bloomsbury Press, 2015): This daughter of Karl Marx “was . . . from earliest childhood smart, passionate, argumentative. Although in love with literature and languages, music and theater, it was always radical politics that set her on fire.”
- Ira Berlin, The Long Emancipation: The Demise of Slavery in the United States (Harvard University Press, 2015): “‘The Long Emancipation’ offers a useful reminder that abolition was not the charitable work of respectable white people, or not mainly that. Instead, the demise of slavery was made possible by the constant discomfort inflicted on middle-class white society by black activists.”
- Ibram X. Kendi, How To Be an Antiracist (One World, 2019): “Kendi is on a mission to push those of us who believe we are not racists to become something else: antiracists, who support ideas and policies affirming that ‘the racial groups are equals in all their apparent differences — that there is nothing right or wrong with any racial group.”
- Adam Hochschild, Rebel Cinderella: From Rags to Riches to Radical, the Epic Journey of Rose Pastor Stokes (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020): “Hochschild’s book shows us what a radical movement looked like from the inside, with all of its high-flown idealism and personal intrigues. Whatever protections we take for granted once seemed unfathomable before they became real.”
- Roxane Gay, ed., The Selected Works of Audre Lorde (Norton, 2020): “The rise of the prison abolition movement has followed the decades of activism by Lorde and fellow Black feminist writers . . . . She feels present in every call to reconceive models of care and justice”
- Barbara Demick, Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town (Random House, 2020): “The cycle of resistance, crackdown, resistance, crackdown — with the crackdowns serving mainly as goads for further resistance — culminated when locals, most of them current or former monks from Ngaba’s Kirti Monastery, found a new and uniquely public way to protest Chinese rule and call for the return of the Dalai Lama. In 2009, they started setting themselves on fire.”
- Maurice Chammah, Let the Lord Sort Them: The Rise and Fall of the Death Penalty (Crown, 2021) “promises a history of 'the rise and fall of the death penalty.' But as it tells that focused tale, it becomes — almost unwittingly — a case study that speaks more broadly to our current moment, about building monumental change brick by brick.”
- Kate Clifford Larson, Walk with Me: A Biography of Fannie Lou Hamer (Oxford University Press, 2021), “is a gripping and skillfully researched political biography that embeds Hamer’s personal history within a compelling account of the post-World War II civil rights movement.”
- Keisha N. Blain, Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer’s Enduring Message to America (Beacon Press, 2021): “. . . Blain asks us to revisit the activist’s achievements through the lens of the current civil rights movement. She argues that Hamer pioneered an approach to fighting racism, sexism and class discrimination that is relevant today.”
- Nice Leng’ete, The Girls in the Wild Fig Tree: How I Fought to Save Myself, My Sister, and Thousands of Girls Worldwide (Little, Brown & Company, 2021): “This Kenyan Activist Said No to ‘the Cut’”
- Timothy Egan, A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over American, and the Woman Who Stopped Them (Viking, 2023): “Stephenson was an early-20th-century type: a malign Harold Hill, a man of uncertain origin and sinister charm who grifted his way from town to town, his eye on the main chance.”
Technical and Analytical Readings
Photographs
Documentary and Educational Films
- Sing Your Song, on Calpyso singer and political activist Harry Belafonte
Imaginary
Fictional Narratives
Novels:
- Meg Wolitzer, The Female Persuasion: A Novel (Riverhead, 2018): “ . . . Wolitzer is an infinitely capable creator of human identities that are as real as the type on this page, and her love of her characters shines more brightly than any agenda. People — loving them, knowing them, letting them shatter and rebuild us again — are Wolitzer’s politics . . . ”
Poetry
I looked like Abraham Lincoln.
I was one of you, Spoon River, in all fellowship,
But standing for the rights of property and for order.
A regular church attendant,
Sometimes appearing in your town meetings to warn you
Against the evils of discontent and envy,
And to denounce those who tried to destroy the Union,
And to point to the peril of the Knights of Labor.
My success and my example are inevitable influences
In your young men and in generations to come,
In spite of attacks of newspapers like the Clarion;
A regular visitor at Springfield,
When the Legislature was in session,
To prevent raids upon the railroads,
And the men building up the state.
Trusted by them and by you, Spoon River, equally
In spite of the whispers that I was a lobbyist.
Moving quietly through the world, rich and courted.
Dying at last, of course, but lying here
Under a stone with an open book carved upon it
And the words "Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven."
And now, you world-savers, who reaped nothing in life
And in death have neither stones nor epitaphs,
How do you like your silence from mouths stopped
With the dust of my triumphant career?
[Edgar Lee Masters, “Elliott Hawkins”]
Other poems:
- Edgar Lee Masters, “The Spooniad” (analysis)
Collections by poets who focused on activism:
- Jan Heller Levi and Christoph Keller, eds., The Essential June Jordan (Copper Press, 2021): “Writing is an act of faith in a future where meaning is possible. Some poems may make nothing happen, but any poem has a formidable potential, an energy that, in the right conditions, can cross time to change a life.”
- Natasha Trethewey, ed., The Essential Muriel Rukeyser: Poems (Ecco, 2021): “. . . the Arc of Moral Verse Bent Toward Justice”.
Music: Composers, artists, and major works
Musician and activist Fela Kuti “pioneered Afrobeat music and was repeatedly arrested and beaten for writing lyrics that questioned the Nigerian government.” “Young people from all over Nigeria flocked to hear his songs, which developed themes relating to Blackism and Africanism, encouraging a return to traditional African religions. Later he was to become satirical and sarcastic toward those in power, condemning both military and civilian regimes for their crimes of mismanagement, incompetence, theft, corruption and marginalization of the underprivileged.” “He is best known as a pioneer of the Afrobeat genre, a blend of traditional yoruba and Afro-Cuban music with funk and jazz. At the height of his popularity, he was referred to as one of Africa's most ‘challenging and charismatic music performers’. (He was) ‘a musical and sociopolitical voice’ of international significance.” Books about Kuti are by Adeshina Afolayan & Toyin Falola, Michael E. Veal, and Tejumola Olaniyan. Documentary films about him are entitled “Finding Fela” and “Music is the Weapon”. Here are links to his releases, his playlists, and some videos.
In matters great and small, Irish singer Christy Moore has long expressed his concern for the human condition. He has sung of the tragedy of greed and myopia, and the tragedies of personal life, and issued urgent calls to action. “The ballad’s longevity and endurance as a vital form of cultural resistance to prevailing orthodoxies, hegemonies, and power abuses are highlighted by the performances and recordings of contemporary Irish singer Christy Moore.” Videos about him are the documentary film “Christy” from 1994, and a 2022 interview. Here are links to his releases, his playlists, and some videos.
The art form known as jazz music easily lends itself to and marries with political and social activism. Albums along these lines include:
- Various artists, “We Out Here” (2017) (55’): “This vivid snapshot of young London's jazz scene, featuring nine bands and a collective pool of 35 musicians, contains close to an hour of daring and uplifting music—from rebooted spiritual-jazz through abstract experimentation to Afrobeat-flavoured dancefloor urgency, a rich mix further enlivened by shots of grime, hip hop and funk.”
- Pharoah Sanders, “Black Unity” (1971) (37’): “The only cut on the album is ‘Black Unity,’ over 37 minutes of pure Afro-blue investigation into the black sounds of Latin music, African music, aborigine music, and Native American music . . .”
Works:
- Charles Ives, Orchestral Set No. 2, “An Elegy to Our Forefathers” (1919) (approx. 15-16’), is a three-movement work about an outdoor people’s meeting and a popular uprising.
- Stefan Wolpe, The Man from Midian (1942) (approx. 32’): “His Moses was not the philosopher-priest, but rather the political agent who strove to liberate his people from oppression” (from the liner notes to this album).
Albums and tracks:
- The Awakening Orchestra, “To Call Her to a Higher Plain” (2020) (117’) “has to be heard as a dramatic whole, reeling from collective crescendos, delightful fugues and sonorous interludes—especially the saxophone on 'i can see my country from here . .. free labor, free land, free men.'”
- Joel Harrison + 18, “America at War” (2020) (73’): “For all of guitarist Joel Harrison’s 62 years, the United States has been entangled in overseas military exploits, sometimes bringing the conflict home. This epic saga warrants bold and thoughtful compositions, and throughout America At War, Harrison’s music proves ideal for such a demanding story.”
- Yothu Yindi, “Treaty” remixes: this aboriginal group called for a treaty through music.
- Danilo Pérez & The Global Messengers, “Crisálida” (2022) (50’): “Pianist, composer, humanitarian and activist Danilo Pérez believes that a united global perspective for the arts and social justice are the keys to moving humanity forward in harmony.”
- John Lane, Allen Otte & Torch Quartet, “Trigger” (2022) (49’), is a response to gun violence and gun obsession in the United States.
- Paul Smith, Voces8, Apollos & Barnaby Smith, “Renewal?” (2022) (55’): “The multifaceted texts by Lal Ded, Edmund Spenser, W.H. Auden, Lord Byron, Pablo Neruda, Maya Angelou and others offer thoughts about our world and about our past, present and future.”
- Juju, “A Message from Mozambique” (1973) ( 45’): “Juju’s music matched the fire of their activism. ‘As a band, we blew, pounded and stroked our instruments like there was no tomorrow, like our life’s work was wrapped up in each session. We approached our performances like religious rites and the music mesmerised, informed and awakened people.’ The band’s first album, A Message from Mozambique, was intentionally political. While the anti-war movement focused on Vietnam, Juju looked towards wars being waged in South Africa, Angola and Mozambique over issues of white supremacy and control of natural resources.”
- Badiâa Bouhrizi, KahruMusiqa (2023) (50’): “(Bourizi) is known as the writer behind protest songs that became hymns of the Tunisian revolution . . .” The album is a retrospective of her work, mainly in electronic music, since 2000.
- Marc Ribot, “Songs of Resistance 1942-2018” (2018) (54’): “‘Protest recognizes the legitimacy of the power to which it protests. An anti-war song is asking the government to stop a war, but it recognizes the power and legitimacy of the government it is petitioning,’ Ribot says. ‘A song of resistance has a different purpose. It doesn’t necessarily recognize the legitimacy of those who it is opposing. Its purpose is to cheer up the people who are opposing, or it’s speaking to the people who are opposing.’”
Music: songs and other short pieces
- Pete Seeger, “If I Had a Hammer” (lyrics)
- Peter, Paul and Mary, “If I Had a Hammer”
- Trini Lopez, “If I Had a Hammer”
- Sam Cooke, “If I Had a Hammer”
Visual Arts
Film and Stage
- The Ipcress File, about an heroic spy
- Watch on the Rhine, about an anti-Nazi crusader and the people around him
