Thanks for joining me. Let’s explore this together! Both the process and the content are an experiment. An experiment in self-expression, and in sharing socially conscious, and potentially life-altering, insights with all those who have been historically exploited (a self-defined category).
I am part of a historically exploited demographic, but that does not mean people like me will stay that way. We can change course. This Blog, an experimental vehicle I’ve chosen (and I am a social media novice), is a forum for creating and sharing our Liberation Plan. There will be missteps. But we will keep on steppin’.
Step 1: Acknowledge the Problem: ongoing prejudice, persistent white supremacy ideology, racial hatred, exploitation, greed, cultural genocide, injustice, miseducation, fear…
Step 2: Analyze the Problem to identify Solutions to strengthen families, reverse ‘miseducation’ and mental slavery, improve literacy, raise cultural pride and awareness of the full history of exploitation, develope economic opportunities and collaborations, empower young people…
Step 3: Implement Solutions: restore relationship commitments, elevate the station of marriage, embrace extended family support, learn our history, unite our visions, educate ourselves, redefine ourselves, reject harmful values that intensify our dysfunction, and embrace values that unite and empower us as historically exploited people, no matter our race, ethnic origin or nationality.
Step 4: Share resources, support each other, collaborate and commit to a vision of unity, justice and prosperity for all people.
A ‘STEP 3’ POST: UNITE OUR VISION
Yearning for Wakanda: “Black Panther” Can Change Our Lives
Last week this time, I was overcome with the feeling of yearning for a place I had never imagined. On Saturday, February 17th, 2018 I saw the movie “Black Panther” with several million others across the water from me in the US. I saw the movie in Hamilton, Bermuda with about 100 Bermudians, at least 50 of them supporters of the Bermuda National Library and Ashay University, an African-centered educational program for adults.
The event was preceded by a brilliantly-conceived pre-show event: a lecture by Melodye Micere Van Putten, the originator of Ashay University, and a Youtube video summarizing the family tree of the monarchy in the fictional African country of Wakunda. All this in preparation for the Bermuda premier of the movie, being shown just up the block from the library.
We all walked to the movie theater, most of us wearing African-inspired clothes or black. We expected to be dazzled and delighted. Well, we were all blown away by the original themes, state-of-the arts special effects and the vision of the movie. It is the vision of the movie that left me unable to think of much else for several days, and on the Sunday following the movie left me with an intense sense of yearning, longing for what could be.
I have been thinking all week about the promise of recovery from hundreds of years of systematic oppression; of a world no longer poisoned by prejudices and torn apart by historic exploitation; a world where women and men labor and endeavor side by side with respect; where there is orderliness and respect for traditions which support and strengthen family, village, tribe, and nation.
What has literally infused itself into my dreams and daydreams, is the vision of empowered black people who not only can protect themselves, but who are magnanimous enough not to seek revenge or blind self-interest, but rather do the right thing by choosing forgiveness and altruism. That is the world I want to live in!
This movie triggered something in me, a creative yearning was catalyzed into action. It seems to me that it is possible this movie could spark inner transformation in a whole generation of folks, it could change the world: spark in young girls and boys an interest in science, inspire rival gangs to stop killing each other, and motivate all people to view each other as members of one human family. Black Panther could change our lives, if we allow it.
Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton
Blog Post, #2, November 4, 2020
A ‘Step 2’ Post: Analyzing the Problem
Focus Energies on Nurturing Ourselves and Our Communities
It’s just past noon, the day following election day USA. Historic and monumental on so many levels. The uncertainty alone is enough to paralyze us. But let’s not let it. That the election 2020 is so very close is the problem, regardless the outcome. Either way, this near 50-50 split means that People of Conscience have a LOT OF WORK AHEAD. To create a country that embodies the words of its constitution will continue to be the uphill struggle it always has been. There really should be no surprise here (but I cannot help being surprised).
America has not decidedly chosen honesty, justice, democracy, humanity etc over the alternative. That says everything.
America is spiritually conflicted and unhealthy. There is psychic dissonance. We are having an out-of-body, disconnect with our souls.
Our communities will need healing, nurturing, care, rebuilding and self-sufficiency. No one is coming to save us. We will have to use this reality to redirect energies to self-care, nurturing our children, forgiving each other, showing tenderness to those we sometimes neglect, educating each other, staying positive, refusing to feel hopeless, taking walks, praying together, working together, breathing deeply together…in faith.
BLOG Post #3, November 10, 2020
One week later and my beloved native country is still in reactive mode, reacting in slow motion to an evolving coup attempt. The media is speaking about it in indirect terms, but it is clear in my opinion, the USA is about to face a coup d’etat attempt in plain sight of the world. Amazingly, we were told by Trump that he would do this. Praying for justice, and that those in a position to avoid this epic catastrophe will show the courage to do the right thing.
“…The Kingdom of God is founded upon equity and justice, and also upon mercy, compassion, and kindness to every living soul. Strive ye then with all your heart to treat compassionately all humankind–EXCEPT (caps added) for those who have some kind of selfish, private motive , or some disease of the soul. Kindness cannot be shown the tyrant, the deceiver or the thief, because far from awakening them to the error of their ways, it maketh them to continue their perversity as before…” (Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Baha).
Blog Post # 4, June 12, 2021
Five months since the US insurrection of January 6th, 2021. While I predicted in November 2020 the country was heading that way, I truly thought the government’s security forces were adequately forewarned and prepared. Forewarned they were. Prepared to act to prevent disaster, they were not. The past seven months since the election have been incredibly telling about who we are as Americans, and what work people in all countries have to create a morally and materially advanced planet. This Blog, I remind myself, is about saving ourselves. SAVING ourselves. Saving OURSELVES. So, let me share what I know we must do on the saving side.
Most notable today is that there is a critical blind spot in America, in the world. It is the blackout in vision and logic caused by adherence to the caste system. Yes, I read Isabel Wilkerson’s powerful book in December, and things got clearer instantly.
Really, caste is a central vision blind spot, like advanced macular degeneration. We have lost our central vision to perceive how racial prejudice, a social construct created as a convenient tool for inhumane exploitation, is going to do us in. And by “us”, I mean everyone: rich, poor, privileged, disadvantaged, black, white, red, yellow. Earthlings, extinct.
We are all going down if prejudices and gross disparities are not eliminated. Dr Robert Henderson, a member of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of the US put it perfectly in a recent zoom presentation, “In the Red: how racism is bankrupting America”. Intense racial hatred is causing Americans to work and vote against their own best interests. No society can survive misguided self-destruction. The problem, racial prejudice. The solution: eradicating prejudice and recognizing that social and economic policies that help disadvantaged, historically exploited people, helps everyone. There is no need to choose between the uber privileged 1% and the impoverished . Protect and uplift the most vulnerable citizens, and we all win. Instead of “trickle down” economics, we should try “bubble up”.
We are One.
Saving Ourselves Blog 