Tomorrow's Builders

Library of Congress
ISSN #21531218
ISSN #21610908
Copyright 2015

 

“This is the story of law learned, not in the ivory towers of multi-billion-dollar endowed universities but in the bowels of the slave-ship, in the hidden, dank dungeons of America…

It is the law learned in a stew of bitterness, under the constant threat of violence, in places where millions of people live, but millions of others wish to ignore or forget. It is law written with stubs of pencils, or with four-inch-long rubberized flex-pens, with grit, glimmerings of brilliance, and with clear knowledge that retaliation is right outside the cell door. It is a different perspective on the law, written from the bottom, with a faint hope that a right may be wronged, an injustice redressed. It is a hard law.”   Mumia Abu-Jamal, Courtesy of Ramona Africa, MOVE

 

 

TOMORROW’S  BUILDERS
a Vermont nonprofit organization

volume 2 number 7

Something is gravely wrong in our society, in our town. On the one hand we have (according to those in authority) the best possible system to give each of us equal opportunity. And if that fails to be the case, if we are denied equal opportunity, here there is Equal Justice Under Law. These are the words cast in stone above the entrance to our US Supreme Court.
Only it’s not really our court. We don’t even know how the court (or any branch of government) really works. Although most of us have “studied” and even graduated school, when we have to go to court to face charges, we have no words to counter what is alleged that we did.
Although we are Innocent until proven guilty,  we have no clue on what to do, when charged with a crime. Then there is a stigma attached to an accusation, when the local press prints an arrest report without a comment from the accused.
“Trial by media” causes readers to be forever biased against the accused, regardless of the accuracy or truthfulness of the printed story. If the accused can afford a lawyer, there may be retribution in the news. But for the poor who can’t afford to pay, we rarely get to tell our story in court, or in the local news.
Some say this is the best possible society, but most people know that description is illusion and hypocrisy. So the question (for we who understand this problem) is What Is To Be Done?

Brattleboro, Vermont
January 18, 2014

Today’s performance may represent the future of this church, built in 1868. Churches were once the center of this town life, but that was generations past. Today you will notice that the Stone Church, a venerable Scottish stone edifice one block north, is an arts and performance venue- no longer a church. And you will also notice that churchgoers are a dwindling, some might say a dying breed..
Today’s performance is only to raise money for heat. In the basement of First Baptist Church in Brattleboro, from Thanksgiving – April each year, is The Overflow Shelter, a place for homeless to sleep.
Not everyone here tonight knows what it’s like to be out alone on the streets, with no place to go. But living it and overcoming it are two different things. If you are sincerely concerned with solving this persistent malady, you should not just donate your time, or your money; you should be involved in these issues which cause the problem. All is not what it seems to be. Often, thinking you are being a Good Samaritan, in reality you enable an addiction.
We should become involved in the issues which cause and perpetuate homelessness, but we shouldn’t take a bureaucratic approach. There is nothing sane about the conditions that today’s homeless are forced to endure. Sure, some heat is a good thing. But never in my life have I seen a “shelter” (except in Brattleboro) which compels its beneficiaries to sleep on the floor!
It is demeaning and degrading to be told to sleep on the floor! It is also unhealthy. Here  homeless arrive at 5:30 pm, and leave at 7am. And here, in this shelter, can be left only your bed-clothing. All other belongings must be carried away, each day! This, some call brotherly love?
What do I know; I’m not a Christian anyway.
With great trepidation I may spend my last $10 to see today’s show. I know your performance won’t disappoint me, but we can’t change society until we all change what we do.
On the fringe of society, what do we believe? Awhile back, just before the industrial age, man believed that the universe revolves about the earth; the commonly accepted understanding of our cosmos had the earth at its center. Each day the entire cosmos circled around us!?
Today we might think this is absurd. But if you lived 400 years ago the above idea was firmly implanted in your head. Throughout history, only a few do our thinking, while others convince us through education. And most accept what is said on a given subject, without question.
Beliefs are profound, and not always subject to reason. Force plays a role in what people think. We are programmed to perform in society, much like a machine. Who really cares, anyway? What distinguishes human behavior, from all other life forms, is its apparent self-destruction.

On Martin Luther King day, 2015
I was born in a NJ town where which side of the tracks you lived on was determined by the color of your skin. We were taught all about American history, by a warped, hypocritical
point of view.
Here and there truth leaked out, but always this was covered up, glossed over, suppressed. Few people of color were in my school. In most classes there was one, or none. We were taught that the Civil War emancipated -freed- Black people (that’s not what we called  people of color, back then). But right before our eyes, in every town where black folk lived, it was in squalor, separate from the white.
Where I grew up, Black people had the most menial, low paying jobs. I only saw black folk dressed up on Sundays, going to church. And yet, in spite of this dismal, depressing existence, almost without exception Black folk were (to me) generous, gracious and accepting. Still, there was a great divide in culture, which I didn’t cross until I met Lorine Johnson, from Trenton, NJ in 1976. For a few years she called herself Lorine Dever. Together we bore a child, who we decided to name Lana Joyce Dever.
I have been close to my daughter, since her birth. She is the Joy in my life. There is too little joy where we come from, trying to make a living under the gun…
Although educated, I was once ignorant about this society. Until I began to doubt what is presented as news and history, I was part of the problem. The civil rights movement, the Korean and Vietnam wars, and the police attacks on my political party changed my views. I became a participant, and an observer of life changing events.
The history and news I had been reading until age 30 just didn’t explain our reality, here or anywhere. For a while I dropped out, until I found an organization dedicated to change our society. About that time, I heard Malcolm X speak on LP vinyl record.  I then sought out his autobiography. Three times I have read this, and each time I learn something more about this most remarkable American man’s life. And each time I read this, I better understand the dilemma we still face today.
I took my daughter to see the film, Malcolm X, when it was released. The film does the book justice. I never got the true story of my hero’s life, until long after Malcolm X was gone. There are statues of lesser men. There are federal holidays of lesser popular figures in American history.
If you don’t read this book, you don’t know what is going on in this period of our life. If you really care about our conditions in America today, there is no better text to begin understanding.

ZJD & Tomorrow’s Builders
a Vermont nonprofit organization
www.TomorrowsBuilders.org
802 254 9405
all rights reserved

Of course I am a reader. My interest is, primarily, class struggle. I am not one dimensional, but being oppressed, I can never have my primary concern -freedom- far from the surface of my thought and being.
Any issue can capture my attention, but none can envelop me as the cause of exposing the hypocrisy of today’s controllers of print and media. There is, everywhere on this planet, a class struggle “now hidden, now open.” Only you will never see this analysis in print, by the apologists of the current political/economic rule.
OK, so you were deluded – misinformed. You realize we have no democracy. Yet most somehow actually believe the puppets of those in power. Most accept what is in “the news” as the truth – what actually happened. And then this one sided reporting becomes the basis for future accounts of our “history.” In fact our history has yet to be told.

Before writing, our history and ideas were passed down orally. As we read the early, surviving epics few realize that these written accounts were once, only spoken words. What survives of ancient accounts is only a small fraction of our early beliefs. Most was never recorded, or it has been destroyed.
It is apparent that very few could read and write, until modern times. And even now, in a place where most learn to read and write, few read anything of substance, of practical value. And very few can write even one coherent page on any subject!
The culture that has emerged is focused on things other than understanding our past, or our present condition. Socially we are disparate, disconnected, self-serving individuals. We are not in common; we are competing against each other for the meager existence allowed by those in power today.
Without the power to control our own destiny, we are not free. To understand our present situation, we need to thoroughly uncover our past. For that purpose, one of the best mediums is the historical novel. History, as written to date, is misleading. If we only read history we will never have a good understanding of a given period. That is because the writing of history is selective and biased.
The writer of historical fiction can take great liberties with respect to actual facts, to give us a condensed version of what really happened in a certain place and time. Thus we are able to fill the voids made from incomplete and unreliable accounts of our past.

On current affairs
To accomplish what we intend, we need to be at least three steps ahead of our enemy.
Our foundation’s being ripped apart. It’s been falling apart for the longest time. But no one seems to notice, or care anymore.
I pick up the loose pieces, hoping that soon we’ll begin to restore this building, now precariously hanging, unsupported- about to fall….
Theology cannot be separate from ideology, philosophy, or politics. These are all, one and the same subject, although some may think these are different areas of study. The essence of each course of study/ mastery is to explain our origin and destiny.
The most venerable institutions of higher learning are religious. They don’t name their affiliation in Harvard, for example, but it is affiliated/led by a certain Christian orthodoxy at its core..Some may, upon hearing a Harvard opinion, believe it must be true, coming from them!? But a religious bias is a prejudiced, one-sided point of view.
In Western schools of higher learning, the early Greek and Roman schools of thought are presented uncritically, without contradicting ideas proven wrong! There are modern, radically different ideas on critical subject matters in life. Philosophy as a changing, evolutionary series of reasoning is not taught here. Instead we are led to conclude ancient, mostly discredited beliefs.
With respect to certain subjects, those in power want us confused/ ignorant. I mean, what good will knowing how to think do You anyway?

To be continued……
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