For us, it usually begins with whiskey. You come to the door after the funeral, pondering combined thoughts of mortality and potential. You set your things down on the back bed and come forward to make your toast to the dead. He may have been a bastard, but he was our bastard. She may have been a gossip, but the secrets she told about the family only mirrored how much she loved and focused on us. This is a time for remembering the best, for laughing, crying, mourning and reforging.
It is no secret that I think we’ve shuffled off the mortal coil of the Democratic party, and others have made it plain that they see no death- or at least expect a resurrection in three days time. That’s fine. We’re all family and all welcome. This is a time for remembering and renewal.
So if you want to join the wake, or awaken new resolve for democracy, grab a glass and add your toast beneath the fold.
Tell us your earliest and best memories, explain where you think we are going, how you expect your lives will change. What do you hope for- and what do you fear?
Let this be a space where we think of something higher than retrenching. Remember pride? Remember hope? We all want that again, although we may differ on how to get there. It is my hope that by remembering the best we all come out with a renewed vision and energy to take us there.
Here’s to my people who built their lives to ours could be better. To my Revolutionary War soldiers, mothers, railroad workers, farmers, schoolteachers, the twin brothers who fought in the Civil War, and to the lumberjacks. I will carry on your dreams.
Here’s to my union family, the thinkers and tinkers who made their houses and furnished them with books and wit. Thank you marchers and organizers.
Here’s to the hopes I had as a girl, and the hopes I have for my girl.
I toast to you.
Peace!
Awake, Awake, I will not mourn for those not dead, but I won’t ever turn down a chance to toast and drink.
First, here is to eternity, may we spend it in company as good as gathers here.
Next, here is to the dream that lives in our hearts, the dream that no death but our own can take from us, the dream that we will one day live the democracy that lives in our hearts.
Finally, here is to all those that fought and died on foreign shores and local strike lines to give us the great and glorious Country in which we came of age. May we in our time do as much for our Country and world as did they did in theirs..
This is for my all of my family/ancestors/family and ancestors of friends and those who I don’t and will never know who were active in the organization of the UAW. [I still remember what I was told by a family member (now deceased) who survived the Battle of the Overpass.]
I love you all and I’m damn proud of your willingness to stand up for what you believed in, as you have made a difference in everyone’s life. And no, you didn’t make the history books. But I don’t care, as without you, it would have never been possible.
And thanks to my late uncle. There are people who still remember you today. You did what you believed in–and I have an idea of the truth that has been hidden. I just wish I had known you. There is a physical resemblance between us. Have a feeling there is more than that…what is inside a person…
More thanks to my late father…he knows why.
(One of these days, I’m going to dig thru some labor history archives…)
US has not had democracy for quite a while. You can’t really call it a democracy when around 25% of the people participate, and the other 75% have no reason to, because corporate rule has nothing to offer them.
And it’s not a democracy when the “elected representatives” are essentially corporate employees, and represent the corporations.
In a democracy, the idea is that the elected representatives represent the people.
Today in the US this is considered a radical idea, much in the same way that a Living Wage is considered a handout, in the same way that universal health care is considered an anti-American fringe notion, another handout.
Increasingly over the past several years, they have been victims of programs designed to exterminate the poor, the infirm, the elderly. In a democracy, especially in a nation with so many poor, infirm, and elderly, the well-being of these people, of all people, would be a priority.
Instead, in the US the priority is military aggression, kidnapping, torture, maintaining client states, invasions, occupations, slaughter, more torture.
The fundamental American value is now spending a dollar to kill someone else’s child instead of a dime to care for their own.
Obviously, this is not sustainable, and as information becomes more widely available, at the same time the gap between haves and have-nots widens to a critical level, it is inevitable that some will pass through those famous five stages of grief, and seek to save their own lives, and the lives of others slated for extermination, and simply reject corporate rule and investigate alternatives.
Obviously, if it can still be effected, which in my opinion is beyond doubtful, a political solution would be preferable.
And by a political solution I do not mean deciding to bow to corporate rule and slide back down into the bargaining/magical thinking grief stage.
Progress is possible only as a sequel to knowing and accepting where one is. This is true of a walk in the woods, where one becomes lost, losing weight, deciding to treat one’s alcoholism, or moving toward democracy.
Such a move, if a way were found to pry open the closed window of political solution, would be just as “good for” those who are pleased, or at least comfortable, and receiving a benefit from corporate rule, as those who have received from it their death sentence.
Revolutions, if you have ever seen one, whether imposed from within or without, are not pretty. People get killed, people die. It is like a war. It is a war.
Those who seek a move toward democracy for the US are also seeking peace.
I love that post! Beautiful, true and calming.
I love it too. For different reasons. None of them calming.
I share his opinion that we are past political solutions. His vision is a dark and foreboding one even if there is a hint of a sunrise on the other side.
Perhaps I’ll see my childhood wish to be a member of a tribal society come true. To get there though, I’ll need to find a way to bring my family through the fire with as few burns as possible.
A Revolution it will be.
Going into this shift with open eyes is the most hopeful thing I can muster. The least is that I see a societal shift towards fundamentalism, and social shifts go on for a long time. But I will remember the best and pass the idealism along to my tribe.
This entire diary got me thinking about my family–the union organizers. Thay is why I used the word calming as I am looking forward to the hint of the sunrise, as they were. Will it be tough? Hell yeah–what’s that saying, the good things in life never come easy. And I am not afraid.
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
Translated by David Wagoner
DF, if I ever encounter a candidate with the courage to say what you just wrote, I’ll work my fingers to the bone for him or her.
Here’s to the quiet heroes. The ones who read, who think, who send their $10 to a great candidate, who vote and registers others.
Here’s to the quiet heroes. The ones who get discouraged, depressed, despondent yet after a breath or two get up and get going again.
Here’s to the quiet heroes. The ones who follow their conscience and speak their hearts respectfully and resolutely even when they know they will meet with disapproval.
Here’s to the quiet heroes. The ones who teach their children tolerance. The ones who care for the planet and reach out to people in sorrow or need.
Here’s to the quiet heroes. The ones who are the only hope for this democracy and this planet.
and stealthily slip it into the grimy hand of the homeless woman, asleep against her cart.
$20, Ductape. –Inflation. 😉
“It’s all right the tears that you’re crying. Take your time, dry your eyes. It’s all right to feel like you’re dying, it’s just a sign you’re still alive.”
Let us not go gently. Let us rage against the dying of the light.
Let us each light our candle until we collectively become the blazing light at the end of the tunnel.
How can we toast something that has never existed?
How can we mourn something that is still not yet?
Democracy is an ideal. When it was first created in Athens some 2500 plus years ago it meant rule by the “demos” which meant the many poor, not simply the people. The demos were those who had to work for a living, who didn’t live off of an aristocratic title to land or unearned wealth and income. Compared to the U.S. Athens was miniscule; there was a sense that friendship was important, that an individual citizen might know all other individual citizens or at least their families or clans. For us today, the idea of harmony would be a good sense of “philia” or friendship. Harmony is the acceptance that other individual’s experience of America are as genuine as our own. In the most stark terms, owning slaves and being owned as a slave are both quintessential American experience. One is not true and the other false; one is not the real America and the other not. Both are real and both are at the core of a harmonius understanding of America.
What would a democracy in 21sty century America look like? The Athenian democracy selected legislators by lottery from among the different clans. While I think this is the most democratic way to elect people, it may not be practical for us. By themselves, voting, having elected representatives and majority rule do not constitute democracy. With our political process bought and paid for elected representatives don’t represent us they represent those who bought them. Our Bill of Rights exist in order to meliorate the tyranny of majority rule. The fanatic right wing wants to tyrannize the rest of us through majority rule. This is not democracy; it is tyranny.
What, then, could our democracy look like?
Will we be a democracy? Will we have something to toast? There will need to be a serious turning around for that to happen. So do we mourn what never was and leave it at that? Or do we steel ourselves for the turning?
The American model for democracy was not Greek–it was the Iroquois Confederacy
The Great Law of Peace: New World Roots of American Democracy
I have no doubt. However America is not and never has been a democracy in any way except the myths we make up about ourselves and those myths used by the founders related to Athens. So it doesn’t matter to me what the model was. What matters is the difference between myth and reality, and that an ideal can be approximated.
The characteristics of democracy that I tried to translate into something that could work in 21st century America actually come from the 19th century Lakota.
Civil Disobedience Vs. Mob Rule
Italian Minister Resigns After Libyan Protests Over T-Shirt
Bloomberg – 4 hours ago
Feb. 18 (Bloomberg) — Italian Reforms Minister Roberto Calderoli resigned after a mob attacked an Italian consulate in Libya yesterday over a T-shirt worn by the minister that was printed with a Danish cartoon depicting the prophet Muhammad.
Democracy Is Not Dead. The struggle for Civil Rights has not been won. Please read “Stride Towards Freedom.”
Stride Toward Freedom is MLK’s
first-person account of the
Montgomery Bus Boycott,
which he was elected to lead.
Over the course of 1956-57,
King and his colleagues in the
Montgomery Improvement Association
dodged assassination attempts,
wrangled with local politicians,
kept their people inspired, and
facilitated transportation for
the thousands of usual riders
who chose to stand for equality
by refusing to financially support
the systemic ill treatment they received
riding public buses in Montgomery, Alabama.
Mirroring King’s view of “practical spirituality,”
the book offers an explanation both of
the boycott’s ethical grounding as well as
the nuts and bolts of organizing effective protest.
As much as I dislike meetings & committees,
Stride Toward Freedom makes clear that mass
organizing requires a large amount of co-
ordination and concerted effort. A movement
does not necessarily require leaders (in fact,
a decentralized approach of distributed
responsibility might be more resistent to dis-
ruption), but it does need a framework
where consensus can be reached and
a course of action plotted and implemented.
Learning From Our Racial Past
George Santayana (1863-1952), an American philosopher and poet, was right when he said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
American has made remarkable progress toward becoming a more democratic, more just, more moral society. The last section of the new JCM will be a room for reflection, debate, and direction. There will be tier seating in front of a mural of civil rights martyrs.
In 2004 there are many anti-racist organizations. Visitors will be exposed to the work of present-day civil rights and human rights workers. Visitors, especially students, will have their anti-racist efforts highlighted: posters, poetry, videotaped public service clips. And, modern manifestations of racism will be examined.
See: The Jim Crow Museum
Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King are dead. Seems appropriate to do something in their honor. Democracy is not dead. Seems appropriate to do something…. not to have a wake for a form of govt that is still working for them that works it.
The point of my diary was that democracy isn’t dead, it hasn’t lived yet. It’s an ideal not yet achieved.
The beauty of America is the expansion of it’s notion of the citizen from that of a northern European descended male that owns property, including other human beings, to what it is today. This expansion has never been due to any sense of justice on the part of those in power but of the extraordinary and always resisted efforts of the labor, women’s suffrage and civil rights movements.
The trappings of democracy, (voting, having elected representatives, and majority rule) are not sufficient for real democracy which means rule by and for the common people of society, those that actually have to work for a living and earn something substantially less that those Bush thinks deserve a tax cut. Voting is only meaningful is the people we’re voting for represent real choices. Elected representatives are really representing us when they are bought and paid for by corporate money and lobbyists. Majority rule can be as tyrannical as despotism without the checks and balances Madison envisioned in the Bill of Rights and which the radical right wants to get rid of.
By the way, read that book a long time ago.