April 22, 2005

don't say it can't be done

In the comments of Katallen's powerful post on Ratzinger and why he did have a choice, I've been having a discussion with Trinker on the current status of the US and its comparison to pre- or early-Nazi Germany. My point is that I think that while there is danger and we do have to be wary and to keep speaking out, it would be much more difficult to bring that type of repression to the US than it was to Weimar Germany because of our existing diversity, our Constitutional protections, and all of our avenues to speak out, especially now on the Internet.

I was searching for something else when I came across an interview with Pete Seeger. In it, he said better than I could why speaking out one on one and in web journals and in all of the other small spots where we can be heard is important, and why it does matter, and why there is still hope:


"When the Vietnam War ended and there were no more huge demonstrations in Washington," Seeger said, "a lot of people thought, ‘Well, I guess there are no big things happening now.' I believe the big thing now is many small things. The fact that many small things are going on is the big story. I think that there are probably not hundreds of thousands but maybe millions of people like me who are working for peace and work- ing to get out the vote—but doing it in a lot of small ways, instead of one big way, and I'm convinced that that's the best way to do it.

"This is a very basic philosophical point that I'm trying to make. When you're facing an opponent over a broad front, you don't aim for the opponent's strong points, important though they may be. Pick a little outpost that you can capture and win. And then you find another place that you can capture and win it, and then you move slowly toward the big places. Look at Martin Luther King. People wondered, ‘Why is he worrying about sitting at the back of the bus or having a seat at lunch counters? Why doesn't he go after schools, housing, voting, jobs?' He took on sitting on a bus, but he won it!

Or as Pete says elsewhere:
Don't say it can't be done,
The battle's just begun,
Take it from Dr. King,
You've got to learn to sing
So drop the gun!

Posted by dichroic at April 22, 2005 03:52 PM
Comments

Hey there.

I can see that -- the "lots of small things" concept. I'm seeing a lot of "this too shall pass" from an older generation of activists, which in their case means "last time it felt this bad, and it wasn't, so I'll be sitting this round out". Maybe it *is* just that I'm younger and don't remember the 60's not because of drugs, but because I really wasn't there. (I'll be 35 at the beginning of June.) What I'm seeing, though, is that the global perception of the U.S. is spiraling downhill, and it's an unhappy thing for me, xenophile that I am.

Posted by: Trinker at April 22, 2005 04:49 PM

That's bad. the ones I know are still riled up. The reason I keep praching positivism is that the way for us all to go to hell is for people not to speak out. But I see people not speaking for two reasons: one is what you said, the perception that we really don't have to worry, that we'll survive this if we just wait it out. But the other is *despair*, the idea that we're doomed so we shouldn't bother speaking out. It has an effect like depression, where the person gives up and turns entirely inward.

Posted by: Dichroic at April 22, 2005 05:01 PM

But the other is *despair*, the idea that we're doomed so we shouldn't bother speaking out. It has an effect like depression, where the person gives up and turns entirely inward.

I haven't seen much of the "doomed so why bother" camp. If I had, I'd probably be more in line with what you've been saying.

So, we work both ends, and hope that the middle isn't that far off.

Posted by: Trinker at April 22, 2005 06:17 PM
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