Peace Requires Action

Is your town racist? Apparently it's a topic white people a) admit outloud they are and take actions to frighten and intimidate anyone of color, b) don’t want to talk about it, c) proactively take actions to not be, d) deny they are, while at the same time vote in overt racists for federal, state and local offices. Why don’t most white people talk about racism? I live in a racist town. You can tell by the census. Plus I have met it on my own property and on this island. While I was teaching here, I heard racist statements in the teachers room. I was raised in two racist Indiana towns. And yet, nobody white that I know will talk about the racism of the current day and fresh history of even the years of my parents' and grandparents' lifetimes. I have been reading the history over this time period and have had my eyes opened. It is blatant and definitely real. A couple years after I and my Black African American partner separated, a huge swastika was drawn on what was his garage stall door in Rhode Island. I took it as a racist act. Also, many other acts were done to us that spelled it out to me. These things happened in Indiana, at church, in Rhode Island and Barbados. Peace will never be on earth until we face that this country was based on racism. We tried to erase the indigenous peoples who lived here before Europeans came here and took away their lands, their children, denied them their own beliefs, ways of life, clothing, hair styles and using their own native languages. Peace is not passive and it is up to us to bring peace into possibility. We can either force everyone to live one way, or accept that other peoples have the right to their own beliefs, ways of life, culture, dress, food and for sure their own languages. Justice cannot be only for white causes. Ancient Native American ~ Something lives only as long as the last person who remembers it. My people have come to trust memory over history. Memory, like fire, is radiant & immutable while history serves only those who seek to control it, those who douse the flame of memory in order to put out the dangerous fire of truth. Beware these men for they are dangerous & unwise. Their false history is written in the blood of those who might remember & seek the truth. Kanghi Duta 👉🏾 RedCrow

He was born Floyd Westerman on the Lake Traverse Indian Reservation, home of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate, a federally recognized tribe that is one of the sub-tribes of the Eastern Dakota section of the Great Sioux Nation, located in the U.S. state of South Dakota. His Indigenous name Kanghi Duta means Red Crow in the Dakota language (one of the three related Siouan languages of the Great Plains). At the age of 10, Westerman was sent to the Wahpeton Boarding School, where he first met Dennis Banks (who as an adult became a leader of the American Indian Movement). There Westerman and the other children were forced to cut their traditionally long hair and forbidden to speak their native languages. This experience would profoundly impact Westerman's development and entire life. As an adult, he reclaimed his heritage and became an outspoken advocate for Indigenous cultural preservation. Westerman graduated from Northern State University with a B.A. degree in secondary education. He served two years in the US Marines, before beginning his career as a country singer. Kanghi Duta 👉🏾 Red Crow, aka Floyd Westerman was a Dakota Sioux musician, political activist, actor. As a political activist, he spoke and marched for Native American causes. Born ~ August 17, 1936 Lake Traverse Indian Reservation, South Dakota, U.S. Died in California from complications of leukemia ~ December 13, 2007 (aged 71) He was survived by his wife Rosie, four daughters, and a son.

Tap on the image to enlarge. Peace starts with our daily words and actions. Justice cannot be only for white causes.

We Must Find A Way ~ As If We Were One Single Tribe

"Wakanda will no longer watch from the shadows. We cannot. We must not. We will work to be an example of how we as brothers and sisters on this Earth should treat each other. Now, more than ever, the illusions of division threaten our very existence. We all know the truth: more connects us than separates us. But in times of crisis the wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers. We must find a way to look after one another as if we were one single tribe." King T'Challa of Wakanda

Chadwick Boseman: November 29, 1976, Anderson, South Carolina ~ August 28, 2020, Los Angeles, California

Ryan Coogler, Writer & Director of Black Panther

Tapping on images will enlarge them, so you can read the words on them. 

Chadwick gave this speech at the Thalheimer Freedom Fund Awards Dinner at the NAACP July 26, 2017. This was at the NAACP 108th Annual Convention at the Baltimore Convention Center:

Chadwick Boseman speech at the NAACP Annual Convention

This is my 2020 entry for Mimi Lenox's annual Peace effort. We believe words matter. We believe the energy we put out into the universe matters and makes a difference. 

Peace Within ~ Without

Personally

Personally, life has thrown me into many, many months of being off course of my life of plans, forcing me to stopping practicing my singing and piano, composing, my creative projects. Even my work on the house, including sanding, painting its exterior. Everything has been pushed aside, while consumed by this issue. Much of the time has been gotten through by getting from one minute to the next. Usually, a person who spends time standing for others' human rights, I have been forced to do a lot of work about the personal issue. 

Control of the issue is not mine. I do work hard on what I can. Diligent, persistent, dedicated. Not knowing how this will affect my life in the end is part of the difficult story. There has been no cadence. 

I am aware that I am not a refugee, forced to be separated from my family, going without food and a warm, comfortable bed. I am sad for those that suffer these things. 

The only creative thing that I have done is to write. To work through my feelings. Writing in my journals. Writing is cathartic, therapeutic. But writing forced to be only for me. But writing is a gift, a refuge. A saving grace.

Click on images to enlarge. 

What have I done to get by? I give myself pockets of time to stop working on the issue. To try to leave the worry, and get some sense of release. When the situation is in a pause and allows it.

Globally

Today, Nov 4, 2019, the USA formally took the first steps to leave the Paris Climate Agreement. I believe this is one humanly made disastrous mistake. 

I leave this excerpt of John F Kennedy's Peace speech: 

So, let us not be blind to our differences, but let us also direct attention to our common interests and the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. 

For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal. President John F Kennedy Peace Speech at American University June 10, 1963 

This post is a part of the Blog for Peace annual November 4 effort. It is an online Peace Community started by Mimi Lenox. We post on our blogs, or a create a peace même, called a Peace globes and post at Instagram, Twitter. This year the theme is Change Your Climate, personal or global.

Note: can’t get my own comments to post. Using an iPad. My comment responses in order:
To Sherry a Blue Sky
Thank you! Yes indeed ~ writing is my saving grace. It is touching to be a part of this peace community ❤️

To Mimi Lenox
Thank you so much, Mimi. I am so grateful to be a member of this Peace community. The love and nurturing you do is so apparent. The community sprit of support is the foundation of building moments of peace into grander motion forward. Creativity is my reason for being, as is being a soldier for goodness, compassion and seeing things for what they are. Yes, I agree with your thoughts. Recognizing the power in our words, music, the arts is the gift of being connected to all. Engaging in the arts is the medicine for our need to connect, and is the way to heal whatever is fragmented, hurting, unclear, broken. My love to you❤️   Sandra 

We Travel Together ~ Passengers On A Spaceship

We travel together,
passengers on a little spaceship,
dependent on its vulnerable supplies of air and soil...
preserved from annihilation only by the care,
the work, and I will say, the love, we give
our fragile craft.
Adlai Stevenson

♥ What Was Given ♥

Music and lyrics by Sandra Hammel

This is a call to love the planet ♡

 ~ It’s not ours

To hurt, hurt, kill, kill

Free to not care.

Why so hard to love what was given?

We could heal what we hurt,

hurt our Mother Nature.

This is our home

That we’re to share with other life.

Life, not death, to share, with creation.

Why so hard to love what was given?

Given to all life’s generations,

not just you,

you

and I.

Will our life, be the death

of what was given

to all creation?

This is a cry to love the planet ♡

 ~ It never was ours

to take, steal, hurt, kill,

destroy beauty.

Dona nobis pacem,

Pa-a-a-a-cem.

Do-na no-bis pacem.

Do-o-o-na, do-o-o-na, do-na nobis pacem.

Why so hard to love what was given?
We're just passing through.

♫ What Was Given ♫ by Sandra Hammel

❤ Music ♫ May 5 ~ July 1, 2016 ❤

❤ Lyrics ♫ October 2, 2017 ❤

I wrote the music first. Finally worked out the words. I wanted to record myself for the purpose of Mimi Lenox's annual Peace effort for November 4.  I recorded this late November 4th and didn't like the few efforts. But, here is one of those. It is not perfect. But neither is this world.  

 

300,000 pieces of space junk

After decades of using space for communication and defense, we’ve left it pretty polluted: there are now an estimated 300,000 pieces of space junk a centimeter or bigger in Earth’s orbit. Some are deactivated, decades-old satellites, but most are shards of metal — the result of rockets that exploded after use, or satellites that collided. Experts are worried that growing levels of space junk could make some orbits difficult or impossible to use, and space agencies are requiring satellite operators to be more careful with their equipment after it's decommissioned. Source

  Be brave.

Live out loud.

Let your light shine.

May Sound Unoriginal, But It's HOW I FEEL

I know this may sound unoriginal, but it is how I feel.  I love justice.  When I see justice denied, I am sick.  When I witness any justice win, no matter how small the act, my heart soars, higher than the height of any bird that takes to its wings.  My heart soars to be with the stars of the sky.  I take this as a human condition...that we all want justice.  Not just for ourselves.  But for each and every human being that breathes in oxygen and breathes out carbon dioxide. 

What if this is not true?  That each human being doesn’t want justice for every other human being?  I do see behaviors that apparently are jealous enough, power-hungry enough, greedy enough, spiteful enough - that the order of the day is to put someone down to lift themselves to some level of self-importance that sustains them one more moment.  

The ultimate measure of a man

is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, 

but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

                                                                           —Martin Luther King, Jr., 1929 - 1968