Dear K. E.; [AUTHOR OF RECENT RADIO ARTCILE]
I am so honored and pleased with your publication, your visits, your concern and your suggestions. Your Heart, Soul and Mind are too precious for me to waste. So I am going to risk the same bluntness and brusqueness you engaged with me. I HOPE FOR YOUR ONGOING SUGGESTIONS!!!!!!!
K.E. 'Lose those dreadful, bleak, horrifying pictures on your posters Start! I don't what to see them! No one wants to see them! Give me something hopeful!
Start: KE, your dearest one has an attack. Clearly there is something life threatening going on. The Dr's have done their tests and now it is time to talk. HOW MUCH DO YOU WANT THEM TO SUGAR COAT THE TRUTH? ZERO RIGHT? You would rather have them be cruel, blunt, hurtful clods than to sugar coat even a little. WHY?!?! Because your loved one is at stake, you need to be totally and effectively engaged, and TOTAL TRUTH IS YOUR KEY TO THIS! Saving Darfur will take a miracle - objectively this cannot be disputed. "Miracles" come only from "families" engaged in "emergencies." (Remember the movie "The Right Stuff?" "Failure is not an option" said the mission chief. He launched political enemies into "family emergency response' mode, the caused "miracle," upon "miracle" and the rest is history.) YES we have the world's greatest defense system in our U.S. Hearts to protect us from entering this mode with "others," non "family." But there is no other source of miracles. Save Darfur et all have tried your "hopeful" approach for four years. No one has more Darfur blood on their hands than does SaveDarfur.org regardless of their good intentions. The "family emergency" response comes from unvarnished "Truth." This is true in business for god's sake, let alone for stopping a Genocide. Want to raise millions for food relief? Hopeful signs are your ticket. Want to STOP A GENOCIDE? UNVARNISHED TRUTH delivered with the ultimate sacrifice (offered, if not taken) by the few (like me, SNCC, Kent State students, Harvard Students on Hunger Strike to get living wage for their custodians....) to ignite the masses is the only way one people has ever been saved by another. Using your imagination glance, GLANCE at STARTING A MOVEMENT? EXCLUDE THE MASSES!!!!!!!! Gandhi based his life's work on this trust in the almighty power of Truth: “When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall — think of it, always," Gandhi.
and finally...
Heart of darkness
From "Haaretz"...
"This is not a girl, she is not dying," I think. "This is not her spastic body, not her trembling hands. These are not her legs, devoid of flesh, not her fly-infested face, not her expressionless eyes, not her twisted fingers. This is not a girl," the mind insists. "She is not five years old. That can't be."
We are sitting in a tent in the Djabal refugee camp in Chad, two kilometers west of Goz Beida. A few minutes earlier, we had been told that there was a girl in serious condition in one of the corners of the camp, and now she is sitting across from us on a colorful mat, next to her mother and her two brothers. I [Assaf Uni] find myself incapable of looking at her for more than a second or so, from time to time.
This denial reflex will return to me often: a kind of defense mechanism of the mind. This is not really a girl who is dragged, crying, by soldiers into a clump of bushes to be raped; this is not a man who is savagely mauled by a rope whip; these are not the final hours of the mute children in the hospital, their bellies distended from hunger, their eyes in a wide vacant stare. Soon enough, though, the mind refocuses and starts to take in the information: This is real life in eastern Chad, the life of Sudanese refugees and Chadian displaced persons. This is life and this is suffering on the fringes of the slaughter in Darfur.... (see link above for full story)
K.E.: "Not this location; not this way."
Start: Given the above, if one accepts the above for the moment, the issue is not, "not this location; not this way." The issue is: NOT ONE PERSON / MULTI FRONT ATTACK!!!!!!! One student from SNCC / ONE SIT IN? One nonviolent soldier against Brittan in India (1000's besides Gandhi) / JUST the Salt March? Etc. However, "Never believe that one committed individual cannot change the world. It is the only thing that ever has," Start Loving. :-) Unfortunately, without a first miracle SOON, clearly I am not going to be the "Start." No one else is trying or positioning to be. God save us.
Dr. King had this to say pertenent on the subject: "…the great stumbling block …[is the] moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to the positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises... to wait for a "more convenient season".
Start: K.E. - Beyond this dear, dear friend, the single most disturbing, single most important writing on nonviolent change, pertinent to this discussion, in my experience is: LOVE IN ACTION, Thich Nhat Hanh (!!! Nothing beyond hunger strike, is, or has ever been contemplated by me; and I expect nothing beyond it ever will be contemplated by me.)
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