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For 38 years members of SOCM (Statewide Organizing for Community eMpowerment) have waged a Young versus Old Tug of War at their annual meeting. According to long-time member Todd Shelton, the "Old" folks have always won the contest.
Here's the surprise finish of the 2010 Tug of War event on a breezy day last Sunday, October 24th, at Henry Horton State Park, Chapel Hill, Tennessee:
Here's a closeup of the rope:
Cross-posted from The Daily R-r-r-ibbit
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If transforming racism requires everyone to come to grips with their own ancestry and culture, white folks have their work cut out for them. As Ira Chernus suggests, the stories about the birth of America that many of us learned in school have been exposed for their biased, inaccurate representations, requiring us to reconsider any sense of white privilege as bound to bogus teachings and political agendas:
If the fear of a broken society is, at its deepest level, the fear of a broken foundation myth — a loss of the sense of secure identity that once came from simply living on American soil — then no party is to blame for it and no party can fix it. The parade of candidates on TV promising to make it all better is as hollow as the Columbus Day parade I saw.
The parades continue, though, because saying goodbye to the mythic Columbus and greeting a truly new world, one in which we exercise political responsibility without mythic foundations, is no easy task.
Read the whole article here.
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How does the president's acknowledgment of an appreciation for rap music become a love for "Gansta Rap?" This is not too subtle code language from a conservative media that "deracialized" President Obama has a link to the black community, an affinity to some element of African-American culture, and this is something to fear. Here is another example in a long list of examples of how some elements in the media and politics continue to play to the fears of too many in America by fanning the flames of prejudice and racism.
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This is a very disturbing trend that only heaps more injustice into our already inJustice system. I've been finding lots of stories about this issue in the last few days. Here's an excerpt from the ACLU article. You can read the whole thing and download the report here.
This ACLU report presents the results of a yearlong investigation into modern-day "debtors' prisons," and shows that poor defendants are being jailed at increasingly alarming rates for failing to pay legal debts they can never hope to afford. The report details how across the country, in the face of mounting budget deficits, states are more aggressively going after poor people who have already served their criminal sentences. These modern-day debtors' prisons impose devastating human costs, waste taxpayer money and resources, undermine our criminal justice system, are racially skewed, and create a two-tiered system of justice.
via www.aclu.org
Also see these links:
Debtor's prisons rise again in the South (by Sue Sturgis at Facing South)
Criminal Justice Debt: a Barrier to Re-entry (Brennan Center for Justice, NYU Law School)
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When I saw the title of this article by Julie Ingersoll in my daily headlines email from Religion Dispatches, I almost felt like my brain spun around. I was compelled to read the rest of it, just to find out who would say such a thing and why. I've been watching Tennessee's 2010 governor's race -- not to mention the outbreak of Islamophobia -- in a state of a dread and even horror at times, so the answer was not all that shocking:
“Islam is not a Religion.” At least that is the argument being made in a court in Murfreesboro, TN, in a suit filed to stop the building of a mosque there.
Tennessee Lt. Governor and current gubernatorial candidate, Ron Ramsey took a similar position last spring.
Without a doubt, these two instances represent disingenuous attempts to gain an edge in a political dispute. But the ambiguity in what counts as a religion creates a space for such rhetoric as well as for some profound miscommunication in contemporary debates about religion.
I'm glad I decided to read the whole article, which includes links to the background stories in Tennessee and elsewhere. This -- along with the creepy story about the Tennessee fire department that refused to help a fellow citizen, Gene Cranick, save his home -- has left me in a state of shock and awe this morning.
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Keli Goff's article at Huffington Post begins with a story of her mother's encounter with a bully many years ago, then connects bullying past and present:
Most of us would like to believe that the kind of prejudice my mom faced is a thing of the past. The thinking goes, "Sure prejudice exists but it's more subtle" or as an older family friend once said, "People no longer spit in your face but in your food."
But in recent days we've all been reminded that this is not true and that the kind of prejudice and open hostility my mom faced fifty years ago is still alive and well in America's schools.
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I almost wrapped up this dream series the weekend of 9/11, but it never really came together. Some pretty intense situations were on edge about that time, with threats to burn a Qu’ran or two – one of those was here in Tennessee – and emotional fires burning around the Park 51 community center proposal near Ground Zero, which seemed to bring into being (or maybe just into focus?) a sharp rise of Islamophobia. I was on edge, too, and frequently had to re-center in heartspace. It was hard to focus on writing.
After 9/11, at least to me, the heat seemed to dissipate, but I also wondered if it might just have slipped back underground, or if something transformative might have happened to redirect all that energy into other channels of expression.
For one thing, I began finding many articles, blogs, videos and other conversations in which people who have been on the receiving end of such hatred were talking about it. Meanwhile, I was going through a series of inspirations on where to go with this next, but before I could finish writing a new post, I'd find myself beyond that place, in new territory.
More living dreams unfold. At warp speed.
In these new dreams, I hear or see things that trigger an association back to the Knoxville rally dream or to a piece of it. This tells me that there is much more to be explored and discovered about what really ails us and how to set things right and whole again. All I can say for sure right now is that we as a nation are not done with racism. Or extremism. Or homophobia. Or xenophobia. Or any one of a number of other -isms and -phobias caught daily on tape, in print, online, in mind.
But I'm not discouraged about the road ahead. What I see emerging more clearly at these points of intersection are principles and patterns that appear to surround them all. How do I make use of these on the journey of this lifetime? Are they guideposts? Mile markers? Maps? Rest and refueling areas? I’m not sure yet. I guess all I can do is to take them one by one and keep travelblogging.
Coming soon: Dealing with the Dark Side of the Mind and the Moon
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Very interesting article from Amina Wadud at Religion Dispatches. She brings up some issues I had wondered about and filled in some blank spots for me relative to Islam in the US. Lots to think about. Read the whole article here.
I never, ever, apologize for terrorism. I never commit it and so I do not bear any personal responsibility for it. This is hard for some people to hear. Just like it is hard for many black people to hear white people say they are not responsible for slavery, since they did not have slaves. Therefore they have nothing to apologize for. In both cases what is said is true. However, the consequences of race-based slavery in America have benefited every white person in America, ever since. The consequences of the terrorist attacks in America on September 11th has not benefited Muslims in America—except for those spokes persons who have literally capitalized on it to promote the “friendly neighborhood” variety. In fact, most of us lost and lost a great deal.
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