From Freedom Riders to Freedom Marchers: 50 Years of Nonviolent Resistance

African American and Women's History Month held in February holds special significance this year. We mark 50 years since a dedicated group of men and women hailing from all across the U.S. boarded buses in Washington, D.C. bound for Jackson, Mississippi. Bridging the divides of race, age, and class, they united around a common mission: to stage nonviolent protests against the Southern states' outdated Jim Crow laws and their non-compliance with a U.S. Supreme Court decision that prohibited segregation in all interstate public transportation facilities.

The core membership of the 430-strong "Freedom Riders" included members of the Nashville Student Movement, an activist group who had already successfully desegregated lunch counters and movie theaters in their home city. Diane Nash, a capable, articulate spokesperson, coordinated the Freedom Riders' efforts from Nashville. Reverend James Lawson, an ardent proponent of non-violence who informed Dr. Martin Luther King's strategies and actions, mentored the Riders in the art of non-violence.

As the buses departed Washington on May 5, 1961, black and white riders sat side by side, an act criminalized in most segregated states. At stops along the way, the Freedom Riders entered "whites" and "colored" areas in contrary fashion and dined together at segregated lunch counters. The journey taken by these non-violent protesters involved brutal beatings, fire bombing of their bus, and ultimate imprisonment in Mississippi's notorious State Penitentiary, Parchman Farm. Their efforts have been hailed as a watershed moment within the trajectory of the Civil Rights Movement.

Spawned by the courage and creativity of bold young people, undivided by gender, race, socioeconomic status, these 430 individuals came together as a united front to oppose discrimination, violent oppression, and sanctioned inequity. I honor them especially right now, as the daily news bears faces of Egyptians, Libyans, Bahrainis, Iranians, Tunisians, Algerians. I see men and women, old and young, of many colors and religious affiliations. United, they stand and march and chant together for their basic human rights: to live free from violence and oppression, to overcome indignity and poverty, to have a voice in their governance.

I offer up a plea that the lesson of history will be repeated and that the truth of of Dr. King's assertion -- "The arc of history is long, and it bends toward justice" -- will have its day.

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To find our more about the Freedom Riders, watch this trailer for a new documentary by Director Stanley Nelson.

To read more about the protests rocking the Middle East, click here. And read The Economist's analysis of the protests and their potential for effecting regime change here.

Post-Valentine's Day Reflection: What's Love Got to Do With It?

Just more than a month has passed since Americans witnessed in disbelief as a young, frustrated solitary gunman in Arizona killed six fellow citizens in cold blood and wounded more than a dozen others. This stunning national tragedy generated immediate finger pointing and scapegoating, knee-jerk reactions evidencing the fault lines within U.S. politics. Slowly, however, aggressive vitriol gave way to what felt like communal sobbing. During the first 24 hours following the attack, it seemed as if millions of Americans traversed the stages of grief, albeit at vastly differing paces.

The evening of January 12th, President Obama stood before the families and friends of the slain and wounded citizens. He spoke earnestly and deeply to them in their grief. Summoned to assuage profound sorrow, to rationalize the irrational, and perhaps -- above all -- to reunite a nation deeply at odds, he chose to address the American people on themes that seldom enter political discourse. He spoke about the need for humility, for kindness, and for genuine human compassion.

With the oratorial flourish and sincerity that have become his trademarks, Obama reasoned that the sudden loss of loved ones in such a tragic, violent manner both "causes us to look backward [and] forces us to look forward, to reflect on the present and the future, on the manner in which we live our lives and nurture our relationships . . ." At times of deep loss, he reflected, we are brought face-to-face with our own mortality, the brevity of our human lives, and the fact that ultimately, ". . . what matters is not wealth, or status or power, or fame -- but rather, how well we have loved, and what small part we have played in bettering the lives of others."

As we open the pages of today's newspapers or watch the home pages of world news sites come into focus on our computers, we are bathed in images of violent reprisal to acts of nonviolent resistance. From Bahrain to Iran, Jordan to Yemen, from Iraq to the sandy soil of Egypt -- and all the places where the struggle of ordinary people to gain a legitimate voice in the laws and policies that so deeply influence the degree of their personal freedom and well-being -- we are told of aggression, of force, of some response other than that motivated by genuine human compassion. Into these spaces, I'd like to speak Obama's question: Rooted in the sanctuary of my own free and fortunate life, what small part can I play in improving the lives of others?

Long live and celebrate those brave enough to join the nonviolent movement for freedom, for voice, for greater well-being for all citizens.

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For the full text of President Obama's remarks on January 12th in Tucson, click here.

For more about the nonviolent protests across the Arab World, consult: Democracy Now! or Al Jazeera.

On National Freedom to Marry Day (celebrated February 12th)

Sandwiched in the middle of an Irish Catholic brood, I have had the great pleasure of participating in the marriages of four of my six siblings. The image of my younger sister and best friend, Moira, standing before me in my mom's exquisite ivory wedding gown, beads of August sweat pearling across her forehead and her eyes glistening with emotion, will remain indelibly etched on my heart. I thought the joy I felt that day -- her wedding day, not my own -- would be the pinnacle of my wedding-related emotions. Already in my late 20s and as yet uninvolved in any sort of deeply serious committed relationship, I assumed I would quite happily live my life as an unchained single woman. This confidence enabled me to deflect my mom's earnest inquiries into the status of my coupling for the next decade.

My whole word went dramatically topsy-turvy in January 2007 when, at the ripe age of 38, I finally had the courage to come out as a lesbian, first to myself and, subsequently, to family and friends. Fortunately, my family received the news with openheartedness, their words expressing deep care, happiness, and sincere gratitude that I had finally acknowledged this fundamental aspect of my truest self.

A New Year, A New China?

This week’s new moon dawning on February 3 marks the first day of the Chinese New Year, the Year of the Rabbit.

In China, the New Year has traditionally been celebrated as a time of family reunions and thanksgiving highlighted by a religious ceremony given in honor of Heaven and Earth, the gods of the household, and the ancestors. Days before the New Year, families busy themselves with housecleaning, hoping to sweep away all the ill-fortune there may have been in the family to make way for incoming good luck.

How telling, then, that the U.S. visit of President Hu Jintao occurred in the run up to the New Year during this traditional period of housecleaning.

Thirty years of dramatic reforms have transformed China from a proverbial sinkhole of poverty into the world’s third largest economy, one projecting to bank a $280 billion trade surplus this year. Decades of massive profits have made Beijing the U.S.’ biggest creditor and have enabled China to gain a formidable foothold in economies of many sub-Saharan African countries and nations of vital significance to the U.S., such as Pakistan. Astonishingly, China is poised to keep growing at a time when its peers struggle to keep their trousers from slipping to their ankles.

Yet, while China’s international profile and economic clout grow and grow, the country continues to draw international ire for policies and practices that run roughshod over civil and political rights. Among the long list of human rights abuses, persistent gender-related discrimination figures prominently.

Socialized to believe that they have little control over their own bodies and lives and no voice in their communities or the wider nation, few Chinese women know their rights. Rural women, especially, suffer under traditional gender roles that exclude them from decision-making and constrain their educational and economic opportunities. A staggering 70 million Chinese women – more than the entire population of France – lack basic literacy skills. Held up against voluminous research demonstrating that education proves among the most expeditious pathways out of poverty, poor health, and exploitation, this error of omission offers cause for ire.

The Political is Personal: Women Writing about War

As a girl of 10, Aminatta Forna watched her father, a physician who also founded an opposition party to Siaka Stevens’ government in Sierra Leone, being taken away by the state secret police. Her first book, The Devil that Danced on the Water (2003), describes her experience of his imprisonment from 1970-73 and the search for those who hanged Mohamed Forna for treason in 1975. Of necessity, Forna introduces the conflict between private narratives and official histories, inviting her reader to experience the uncertainty, injustice, and profound trauma of war through the written word.

In her latest novel, The Memory of Love (2010), Aminatta Forna again takes up the devastating effects of the conflict in Sierra Leone. However, she reminds her reader that people not only struggle and die, but also live, love, and dream in times of war. Indeed, she goes further to assert that individuals sculpt their character and refine their integrity in relation to events on the national stage. She introduces both the idealists who died for their cause and those who betrayed ideals for the sake of personal preservation.

In a sense, Aminatta Forna simultaneously turns Carol Hanisch’s oft-cited claim, “The personal is political,” on its head and, conversely, also reasserts its truth. She demonstrates through her writing that the political is also deeply personal, even while reasserting the intended connotation of Hanisch’s statement: the personal and political inevitably intersect in the power relationships that characterize national governance, especially in times of profound oppression and civil resistance.

Forna’s unique insight into the complex interweaving of personal with public renders a poignant, at times, cynical commentator on the slow, traumatic political processes of resistance, liberation, and reform. Her truth-telling by way of fiction and memoir affords some sense of imaginative liberation from the trauma of state-sponsored violence and the failure of fellow citizens – be they fellow countrymen or members of their global family – to deal effectively with oppression, extrajudicial murder, rape, and other extraordinary acts of injustice and violence perpetrated during civil conflict.

Forna poses and responds to an uncomfortable question concerning one’s personal relationship to broader political struggle against state-sponsored oppression and armed violence. In a recent interview, speaking of her father’s murder by the state secret police for his efforts to oppose violence, corruption, and autocracy, she explores the choice he made to be a political actor rather than to remain silent out of fear for his own life and the fate of his children. Forna inquires, “When you do nothing, what do your children inherit? They inherit nothing.”

Reflecting on 2010, hardly a year in which great strides were made to address state-sponsored oppression, militarism, violence against women, and human rights abuses, the polished writing of Aminatta Forna and her peers who take up the subject of women, families, and the legacy of war seem a powerful antidote to potential myopia and amnesia that could allow us to forget the legacies of Forna's father and people like him who courageously and unselfconsciously pursue a legacy of justice and peace.

Aminatta Forna will be speaking as part of the I.M.O.W. Speakers' Series on Wednesday, January 26^th at the World Affairs Council Auditorium. To find out more about this event, click here.

Can’t We All Be Maladjusted?

“I would say about individuals, an individual dies when (s)he ceases to be surprised. I am surprised every morning that I see the sunshine again. When I see an act of evil, I'm not accommodated. I don't accommodate myself to the violence that goes on everywhere; I'm still surprised. That's why I'm against it, why I can fight against it. We must learn how to be surprised. Not to adjust ourselves. I am the most maladjusted person in society.”

--Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel speaking in 1965

Lost in a Sunday morning reverie, the sun glinting off the undulating sea and the music of elephant seals barking dawn greetings to each other, I glanced left barely in time to see a threesome of female walkers, all in their late 60s, striding energetically toward me.

Animated in discussion, the blond-ish woman nearest me turned toward her companions.

“And I was like, ‘Hell-o?!’ I mean, really??” She craned her neck toward them, her disbelief apparent on her face.

“Yea, ‘Hello-o?!’ Whoa, what was he thinking?” her Black friend echoed back to her in obvious agreement, the woman between them nodding her approval.

I smiled at their verve, their currency with the turns-of-phrase employed by pre-teens and adolescents exchanging the latest gossip. And, frankly, I marveled at the composition of the trio itself.

Words of Hatred, Words of Healing: Re-forming our Political Discourse

[Editor's Note: Please welcome our newest contributor, Caitlin Reyes Brune! This is Caitlin's first post for Her Blueprint. To find out more about Caitlin, visit our Contributor's page.]

"...What if the mightiest word is love?
Love beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light,
love with no need to pre-empt grievance.

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,
praise song for walking forward in that light."

(from Praise Song for the Day, written and spoken by poet Elizabeth Alexander at the inauguration of US President Barack Obama, 20 January 2009 and subsequently published in Crave Radiance, a collection of new and previously published poems, pp. 247-248)

As Saturday’s news of the cold-blooded, brutal shooting of US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and a score of others reverberated around the vast space of digital media, I brooded ruefully about the state of political discourse. How, rather than embracing the “sharp sparkle” and “widening pool of light” that poet Elizabeth Alexander invoked and that so many Americans experienced so palpably on that crisp January morning in 2009, had we managed to regress into the worst kind of darkness imaginable: that which prompts one human being to irrevocably disregard the humanity of another?