What Will It Take?

Earlier this summer we in the U.S. were witnesses to something that purported to be a “Movement.” Black Live Matter was written across our nation in ALL CAPS. Many of us who had lived through an earlier Movement during the Civil Rights struggle of the 60s as well as that of the Viet Nam war resistance viewed this new thing with, I think, a tinge of nostalgia. We were there. Our black and white, rabbit-eared televisions put us in the mix of the struggle.
Of course, most of us were mere children at the time. But, even we could sense the electricity in the air and smell the ozone of the sparks it created.
Many of those sparks erupted into full-blown conflagrations as Watts and Hough caught fire and burned.
I will never forget watching the police in Chicago press the ‘Suppress At All Costs’ button out in the streets during the Democratic National Convention in 1968.
Nor, will I ever stop mourning four dead young people on the campus of Kent State University when Gov. James Rhodes allowed the Ohio National Guard to use lethal force against protesters.

Many changes came about during those moments in history. Voting rights were gained by the disenfranchised in America. A war in some far away jungle was fought on nightly television news. And, we saw the end of an era on April 4, 1968 when Martin Luther King, Jr. Was murdered.

I say an end of an era because in many ways it was.
People in this nation had seen and experienced enough.
Enough anger; enough hate; enough killing.
It seems as though there’s only so much chaos that we humans can endure before we simply stop and close our eyes.

So, we convinced ourselves that we had all done a great job of addressing the many issues of the day. The good results we kept. The not so good we chalked up to ‘experience’ and walked away from.

In most places that process has a name.

Complacency.

That one word describes a sense that All Is Well. Or, at least it’s Not Terrible and we can live with it.
It reveals a people who are tired and who have no desire to press the struggle to its actual terminus.
“We’ve done pretty good! Well, at least pretty OK!” we say as we turn on the ball game and open a fresh bottle of Heineken’s.

Perhaps I’m just voicing my own cynicism.
I’ve seen this process happen so many times.
People mobilize and march and stage boycotts and the news carries this or that spokesperson for the “Cause du jour.”
Then there are the rebuttals that must be shown. Equal opportunity and all that.
Soon, the news cycle shifts to the high price of chicken because of some bacterial thing that made someone in B.F.E. puke.

Then, gone.
Forgotten.

It seems that only when people break windows and burn cars and yell and scream and throw things…it’s only THEN that people pay attention.
I read the NY Times for Sunday.
There was a lot about the late John Lewis. As there rightly should be. He was a giant among Humanity.
However, the causes that he fought for were conspicuously missing.
Black Lives Matter?
The only coverage was about the Federal Government’s illegal activity in Oregon.
I haven’t seen a word about any marches or rallies on local media.
In fact, the absence of coverage for PEACEFUL and NON-VIOLENT activity, the very things that Congressman Lewis gave his life for was deafening.

Seriously, folks.
Do we need to burn the country down in order to secure some semblance of Justice for what the Bible names, “the least of these?”
Will it take more deaths and disaster to finally show us that we are all Equal in God’s eyes? So, dammit! We should be equal in one another’s eyes as well?
What will it take?
We’ve been at this a long, long time and the same issues are still raising their Hydra Heads.

I don’t know.
I hope that I will be able to see some life in our culture before mine ends.
But, that hope hangs on a thread.