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.

Love Letters ~ Soul On Ice

Excerpts from love letters taken from the book SOUL ON ICE, by Eldridge Cleaver. This is from the part in the book where Mr. Cleaver, who is in Folsom Prison, and attorney Beverly Axelrod exchange letters. The letters began September 5, 1965.  

E.C. “I feel impelled to express myself to you extravagantly, and words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs leap in my mind.  But I beat them down, refuse to write them, because it all seems so predictable and trite...What right have you to summon my soul from its slumber?......You have tossed me a lifeline.  If you only knew how I’d been drowning, how I’d considered that I’d gone down for the third time long ago, how I kept thrashing around in the water simply because I still felt the impulse to fight back and the tug of a distant shore...”

 

B.A writes back:  “...Believe this:  I accept you.  I know you little and I know you much, but whichever way it goes, I accept you.  Your manhood comes through in a thousand ways, rare and wonderful...I have no measuring stick.  I accept you...What an awesome thing it is to feel oneself on the verge of the possibility of really knowing another person.  Can it ever happen?  I’m not sure.  I don’t know that any two people can really strip themselves that naked in front of each other.  We’re so filled with fears of rejection and pretenses that we scarcely know whether we’re being fraudulent or real ourselves...” 

E.C. answers back:  “Your letters to me are living pieces, chunks of you, and are the most important things in my life...It only happens in books – or...Do you know what shameless thought just bullied its way into my consciousness? That, I deserve you, that I deserve to know you and to communicate with you...I seek a lasting relationship, something permanent in a world of change, in which all is transitory, ephemeral, and full of pain.  We humans, we are too frail creatures to handle such titanic emotions and deep magnetic yearnings, strivings and impulses… 

…The reason two people are reluctant to really strip themselves naked in front of each other is because in doing so they make themselves vulnerable and give enormous power over themselves one to the other.  How awful, how deadly, how catastrophically they can hurt each other, wreck and ruin each other forever!...Better to maintain shallow, superficial affairs; that way the scars are not too deep, no blood is hacked from the soul.  You beautifully – O, how beautifully!! – spoke...of ‘What an awesome thing it is to feel oneself on the verge of the possibility of really knowing another person...’ and...I do not believe that a beautiful relationship has to always end in carnage.  I do not believe that we have to be fraudulent and pretentious,...I know that sometimes people fake on each other out of genuine motives to hold onto the object of their tenderest feelings.  They see themselves as so inadequate that they feel forced to wear a mask in order to continuously impress the other.  I do not want to ‘hold you’, I want you to ‘stay out' of your own need for me.  ...It takes time and deeds, and this involves trust, it involves making ourselves vulnerable to each other, to strip ourselves naked, to become sitting ducks for each other...I am vulnerable and defenseless and I make myself a duck for you.  ...And it is not a fraud, forced out of desperation...”  

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