Well de gal in danger, de gal in chains, but she keep on pushin’, would you do the same?
She countin’ up de minutes, she countin’ up de days.
She’s a sweet black angel, not a gun toting teacher, not a Red lovin’ school marm;
ain’t someone gonna free her,
free de sweet black slave,
free de sweet black slave.
Rolling Stones, Sweet Black Angel
Yesterday I watched an excellent documentary about Angela Davis, entitled, Free Angela and All Political Prisoners.
You might not remember who Angela Davis was. Let me jog your memory.
She was a black girl who grew up in Birmingham, Alabama and later become a central figure in the civil rights movement and a counterculture icon along the lines of Che Guevara.
She was charged with murder when it was found that she had purchased the guns used in a plot to gain the freedom of the Soledad Brothers, one of which was the love of her life, George Jackson. A plot that ended in violence and the death of a Superior Court judge in Marin County, California.
She became a fugitive and was placed on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list. She was ultimately captured in New York and held without bail for over a year, since her charges were punishable by death. When California overturned the death penalty, the judge granted a motion to free her on bail. A white dairy farmer put up his property as security for the bail bond and Davis was released and later found innocent of all charges by an all-white jury.
Davis is currently a professor at UCLA, where she had previously been dismissed due to her openly professed affiliation with the Communist Party USA.
Angela Davis was a revolutionary. Her actions were motivated not from a sense of hatred, but out of an intense desire to end the oppression of her black brothers and sisters, as well as other oppressed peoples in the world at large.
Angela believed that in order to halt the oppression, a systematic change had to take place.
I believe that she was willing to use violence to that end…at least back then.
That is where we would part ways.
You see, I don’t really see how violence will ever end oppression since, after all, violence is itself the ultimate oppressor.
Violence doesn’t solve problems, but only potentially suppresses them, for a time.
I don’t believe all the bombs that Israel could ever drop on the Palestinians, including the ultimate one, can fix their real problem of having the entire Arab world aligned against them.
In fact the current bloodshed will only make things worse.
Rather I believe what needs to change is the way people think and ultimately act.
You see “the system” obtains its power from the people. Without that support it will change, or crumble and be replaced.
Because the system needs our support.
It’s paradoxical, but true, that often the oppressed are lending their support, perhaps unwittingly, to the very system that oppresses them!
And this brings me to remind readers that THAT is what the REVOLUTIONARY Misfit blog is all about.
Don’t let that world “revolutionary” throw you back…it’s not about the violent overthrow of anything, except perhaps hard-headedness.
I wonder if Angela had really thought through the implications of a violent overthrow of the current social order. To be replaced with what?
And would the replacement really be any better…
or, potentially even worse?
If we routinely make decisions that support the status quo…that support the system, then guess what?
It ain’t going to change.
But if we change the way we think about these things and the decisions we make, then yes, it is entirely possible to change the system for the better…
without ever firing a gun, or detonating a bomb.
If we put the impact of our thoughts and actions over our own self interest, especially our economic interest, or the interest in maintaining a lifestyle that this world can no longer support…
If we adopt the mindset of The Big US… that we truly are all in this planetary boat together…
And if we take off the Impact Blinders that influence or intimidate us into believing and labeling any non-systematic idea as a bad one…
then and only then can change take place…
and the situation for People and Planet permanently improve.
image credit: GUANOdesign via Compfight cc
