MLK Day Series Review: Netflix Jaguar, & Justice vs. Revenge?

   It was El Ministerio Del Tiempo that brought my attention to  the Franco era, and the fact that Franco had been allied with the Nazis.  The Netflix short series Jaguar dramatizes one aspect of life under this dictatorship: the hunt for fugitive Nazis living under the protection of Spain’s dictator.  A team of hunters, all camp survivors except for the youngest, who is the son of a man killed in the camps, are working to bring a prominent Nazi to justice as he transits Spain on the way to South America.  To do this, the team needs to recruit a young survivor bent on killing the handler of this Nazi.  Since she happens to be the only person able to recognize the guy, having survived as a servant in the headquarters during the war, the team leader must persuade her to put justice above personal vengeance.  It is an excellent drama, also dealing with perceived  betrayal, redemption, and the horrible paradox of a sadistic torturer whose research also happened to provide scientific data.

Photo by Tim Simons on Pexels.com

   Today we observe Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday as a national holiday, and remember that he was preparing, when he was killed, to lead a campaign that would advocate for all people suffering from injustice.  He reminded us that

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

    This series is set in 1962 Madrid, and can be a bit hard to follow in places (particularly when the person speaks who is hard of hearing), so the Closed Captions help.  Thousands of Spaniards died in the camps, many of them simply sent for being Republicans (part of the alliance of the Republic that Franco destroyed in 1939).  Some quotes from a few episodes that really got me follow:

Ep. 1:  “Si lo pegan un tiro…nadie se enterería de sus crímenes. Nadie se sentiría vergüenza de sus actos.” Por eso tenemos la justicia.”

/

“If he’s shot…no one will hear of his crimes.  No one will feel the shame of his actions.”  This is why we have a justice system.

and

Episodio 2: “Alguien tiene que evitar que esos desgraciados mueren de viejos en sus camas.” Gracias!

/

Ep. 2: “Somebody has to prevent these jerks from dying of old age in their beds.”  Thank you!

And we also deal with the trauma of survivors, and their inability to fit in in a society that expects us all to be happy, to be normal, to live as if all were well:

Episodio 6: “…te das cuenta de que ya no eres como los demás y nunca lo vas a ser…te han quitado…”

/

Ep. 6: “…you realize that you are no longer like everyone else and you never will be…they have taken from you…”

   The interesting thing about this series is that we never really find out why any of the team members were sent to the camps.  The only religious references are to the oldest team member, a formerly devout Catholic, who has lost his faith due to the horrors he saw in the camps.  All bear the tattoos and the emotional scars, even the kid, who does not have a tattoo, but does have a photo of his father who died in the camps, and for him, it is the same as the tattoos of the survivors.  We see, in this kid, the result of trauma passed down, even when he was not in the camps, but suffers the same pain as the older survivors.  Being young, of course, he deals with it in less rational and more impulsive ways that cause problems, of course, for the team.  Even more interestingly, for  the story, we never find out who funds and runs this team.  Hopefully, that will be for a season two of this series, which deserves to be renewed and watched far more widely than it appears to have been thus far.

Podemos hacer y ser mejor…
(yes, we can Do  and Be Better…)”

  

This is another part of the work, imho, that Toni Morrison spoke of for the Black woman writer.  We must bear witness to what has been erased about our own past, yes, but Dr. King pointed out that we must also speak for those who were unable to speak for themselves, so that the past of others who were unjustly persecuted may also be uncovered, and eventually reconciled.   #ProjectDoBetter focuses on the language learning needed to facilitate both the empathy, and also the hearing and telling of those stories.

Shira

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Click here to read, if you like:

B5, Hakan:Muhafiz/The Protector, Sihirli Annem, Lupin, or La Casa De Papel/Money Heist Reviews,

Holistic College Algebra & GED/HiSET Night School Lesson Plans,

           or My Nonfiction  & Historical Fiction Serial Writing

Thoughtful Readers, please consider reading and sharing about #ProjectDoBetter.

Shira

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Review: Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

    I finally found  both  editions of this book, which I  reviewed in sections  on goodreads, but I cannot seem to find the other.  I also have no idea where all my notes went, but Dr. King cites lots of economic evidence in favor of a Basic Universal (aka Citizen’s) Income.

This book should be required reading for all Americans starting in elementary school.

The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was working for not only Negro civil rights, but for economic rights for all poor people when he was cut down prematurely. I’d heard vague comments about this as a teenager, but since all we ever heard about was his famous ‘I have a Dream’ speech, I shrugged it off. Not only has reading his book (his last, written in 1967) been an intense eye-opener, but on doing some searching, I find that it is not my imagination that the book was ignored by press and buried by libraries. My own university library cannot purchase it because it is out of print, and the public library has it in another city, on the stacks where the public can’t see it.  This book should be required reading for every American. 40 years later, unfortunately, it still rings true.   Especially with healthcare outcomes.

P. 22 , interestingly and well worth seeing the bibliography for further reading, mentions that Randolph and Rustin proposed a Freedom Budget which is also in the  appendix.  The basics of that budget could be adapted for our current needs, at the federal and local levels, conceivably.

Dr. King foresaw the link between poverty and terrorism before terrorism was recognized as such before riots were given international expression by the global economy:
“Social Justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.” P. 22
“Occasionally in life one develops a conviction so and meaningful that he will stand on… This is what I have found in nonviolence.” P. 64

He also cites Dr. Kirtley Mather, … in “Enough and to Spare” (P. 177)

As one gentleman, who may have been there at the time, points out, Dr. King is not just what you see on TV. His mantle falls to all of us to pick up…

p6: quotes Hyman Bookbinder economic opportunity statement 29 December 1966 -not that difficult to eradicate poverty in the US if we had the will. We are taught to avoid questioning our government and never to criticize in times of war.  So that short-circuits many conversations that need to be had, and then the history of slavery and the AmerIndian genocides are hushed up with ‘well that was not us, and it was a long time ago’ -resulting in further simmering of anger which never gets resolved, and injustice which continues to be perpetrated not only on these populations, but also on the unsuspecting (because uneducated) Poor and Working class White populations who are used as the buffer between the middle classes and the reserve labor army (aka, Black Folks).

A Basic Income would short-circuit all of these problems, which is part of the reason Dr. King called for it.   It may be difficult, yes, but possible: especially once we all move our money into small Credit Unions or very small local banks, shop at Food Coops or local Cooperatives (esp. worker’s coops), buy local and either use Public Transportation or walk -these are all measures that force the billionaires who depend on Our Consumption to change, as we put our money into life-giving social enterprises, and boycott those that move our money far away while polluting the environment on the backs of slave-wage labor, we make the world we need. And if those retired folks with the ability to afford running for local and national offices also do that, we can change the laws for the benefit of future generations: Basic Income, Universal Health Care, free Education are all being done, and can be done everywhere.

Gandhi and Dr. King showed us the way…

      Project Do Better is very much a child of this book.

Shira

Action Items:

1.) Share your thoughts, please.

2.) Write a story, post or comment that uses those thoughts.

*****************

Click here to read, if you like:

B5, Hakan: Muhafiz/The Protector, Sihirli Annem,  Lupin, or La Casa de Papel/Money Heist Reviews

Holistic College Algebra & GED/High School Lesson Plans,

           or Long Range Nonfiction, or Historical Fiction Writing (including Ann & Anna…)

Thoughtful Readers, please consider reading about #ProjectDoBetter.  This book review is my personal way (as opposed to founding the Project, overall) of contributing to building tools that can help increase empathy and compassion in our world.  Story, as part of how we see our world, helps us make sense of and define our actions in this world.  And remember how important story is also as part of this project.

Let’s Do Better.

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil, MAT, BSCS

ShiraDest

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Thoughtful Repost: Stayed on Freedom’s Call Page 50/50, and Endings — Inspiring Critical Thinking and Community

How does community complete a project?  Generally with a feast of some sort.  To end this project, I leave you with the feast of tradition from both the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and from Rabbi Hillel.    That of community.      I wrote this book in the belief that community cooperation is […]

Thoughtful Thursdays, Stayed on Freedom’s Call Page 50/50, and Endings — Inspiring Critical Thinking and Community via Books, Lessons, and Story

Dr. King’s Rabbinical Commentary Poster, Novel Writing, & What Do You Remember?

This famous speech made by Dr. King, treated as a sacred text: MLK3speechHillelCommentaryStudy  was what, among other things, inspired me to write my first practice novel.  To paraphrase a recently retired Park Service Ranger,  what gets remembered is often a function of who’s in the room.

That is why everyone, I feel, should write an autobiography and/or a novel, as I call for the Serving Adults and other volunteers to help with, in Phase IV of #ProjectDoBetter.

My first practice work, an unreadable Biblical Science Fiction/Fantasy novel, Creator Friend or Foe: Beginnings,  can be available, if anyone wants to torture themselves with it, but I recommend my second practice novel, instead, as more readable: Hubris and Hemlock.

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Click here to read, if you like:

B5, La Casa De Papel/Money Heist, & Lupin & Hakan: Muhafiz/The Protector Reviews

Holistic High School Lessons,

           or Long Range Plans, & Historical Fiction Serial Stories

Shira

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

His legs were praying (as he walked for All of us…)

Walking: it really is not just about my carbon footprint…

—

Walking can get you places both physically, and emotionally, when you focus on working through a goal by walking, such as walking with other people united for empathy and making this world a safer place for all people:

–

A social consciousness infused with an ecumenical approach brought Heschel and King together again on 19 November 1963, when both men addressed the United Synagogue of America’s Golden Jubilee Convention in New York. King expressed his deep accord with Heschel’s cause—which was to stand against the Soviet Union’s treatment of its Jewish population—by restating his own view that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” King stated that he could not neglect the plight of his “brothers and sisters who happen to be Jews in Soviet Russia” (King, 15). In March 1965, Heschel responded to King’s call for religious leaders to join the Selma to Montgomery March for voting rights. The march was spiritually fulfilling for Heschel, and he recalled feeling like his “legs were praying” as he walked next to King (Heschel, “Theological Affinities,” 175). When King delivered his famous address against the Vietnam War at Riverside Church on 4 April 1967, Heschel followed him as a speaker and ended his own presentation saying, “I conclude with the words of Dr. King: ‘The great initiative of this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours’” (Heschel, 4 April 1967).

–

 

I came across this link while preparing to log off for Friday afternoon, and just had to share it.

Shabbat Shalom!    ! שָׁלוֹם

Action Items in support of walking for progress that you can take right now:

1.) Consider reasons that you walk.

2.) Share them with us in the comments, here, please.

Action Prompts:

1.) Share your thoughts on how we can build empathy in our society today

2.) Write a story, post or tweet that uses those thoughts.

*****************

Click here to read, if you like:

Science Fiction/Fantasy Shows,  Lupin, or Money Heist (soon)

Holistic High School Lessons,

           or Long Range Nonfiction, or Historical Fiction

Thoughtful Readers, if you are on Twitter, please consider following   #Project Do Better  on Twitter.

Shira

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Holiday Observance Day, and his Work

       The common good was what Dr. King worked for, and reminded us, in his speech at Riverside, and in his last book,  that

“True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice that produces beggars needs restructuring.”

   Zut !  My favorite image of Dr. King at his desk with Gandhi’s portrait above him won’t display!!

Action Items:

1.)  Share your thoughts on Dr. King’s last book, or on his last speech, and how to bring that vision about, today.

2.) Write your own book, blog post or comment that uses those thoughts.

Dear Readers, what are your ideas on learning, especially multiple #LanguageLearning, on-going education and empathy-building, to #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness,  #EndMoneyBail & achieve freedom for All HumanKind? 

Shira

*****************

Click here to read, if you like:

B5, Hakan:Muhafiz/The Protector, Sihirli Annem, Lupin, or La Casa De Papel/Money Heist Reviews,

Holistic College Algebra & GED/HiSET Night School Lesson Plans,

           or My Nonfiction  & Historical Fiction Serial Writing

Thoughtful Readers, please consider reading and sharing about #ProjectDoBetter.

 

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

 

Thoughtful Thursdays, Stayed on Freedom’s Call page 35, and Ms. Marian Anderson

It is crucial that we each help our society to become more fully inclusive for all of us today, and to come and work together, for all of us.  This famous Easter Concert, in 1939, paved the way for a more famous speech, given on the very same step upon which Ms. Anderson stood to sing of freedom.   Guess who gave that speech?

 

I believe that attention to shared histories, as in DC, may provide part of an answer.  I started a note about that, a few years ago, in my book Stayed on Freedom’s Call:

” …

• Tutoring children from Shepherd Elementary school every week
• PAUSE writing club
• Africa Projects – Abayudayan Jewish Co-op Coffee”

The membership of Tifereth Israel Congregation overlaps to an interesting extent with that of the nearby Washington Ethical Society, and cooperates in various annual events with the ethically minded Fabrangen Havurah.

All three institutions espouse community cooperation and pride themselves on their social justice orientation. While they are all predominantly of European ancestral origin, these institutions have helped inspire the cause of
multiracial, multi-ethnic and inter community cooperation.

There are a few organizations in Washington, DC aimed specifically at Black-Jewish relations.
Sharing Points Of View

“My country ti’s of thee … For thee We sing.”

-Marian Anderson, 1939 Easter Concert

The Jewish Multiracial Network (JMN), like the Alliance of Black Jews before it, has been active in many cities, including Washington, DC, gathering Jews of varying ethnicities in a supportive environment, including an annual retreat, to allow sharing of the identity searching and building process that often goes with being a person of color in the Jewish community. The JMN works to
counter the frequently mentioned sense of isolation accompanying African- American members of the Jewish community. The JMN also works to raise the…

35   “

So, it turns out that I might have needed to explain a bit more about the role that this concert played in DC…

Page thirty-four was last week…

Action Items:

1.) What are your thoughts on this page?  (You can download the entire book for free via the Archive link below…)

2.) Share your thoughts on how continuing empathy-building cooperation might help, or hinder, inclusive thinking.

4.) Write a story, post or tweet that uses those thoughts.

Dear Readers, ideas on learning, especially multiple #LanguageLearning, on-going education and empathy-building, to #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness,  #EndMoneyBail & achieve freedom for All HumanKind? 

Support our key #PublicDomainInfrastructure  & #StopSmoking at least for CCOVID-19:
1. #PublicLibraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write

-we can learn from the past Stayed on Freedom’s Call for free,

         by Teaching and Learning (Lesson Plans offline) in the present, to

                help build a kinder future: Do Better (was Baby Acres): a Vision of a Better World

 

Peace     ! שָׁלוֹם

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil, MAT, BSCS

the year, 2021 CE = year 12021 HE

(Online pdfs of 5 month GED lesson 15 of 67 plans…), and

                                              Babylon 5 review posts, how story inspires learning…)

Stayed on Freedom’s Call
(free: https://archive.org/details/StayedOnF…)
includes two ‘imagination-rich’ walking tours, with songs, of Washington, DC. New interviews and research are woven into stories of old struggles shared by both the Jewish and African-American communities in the capital city.

Shared histories are explored from a new perspective of cultural parallels and parallel institution-building which brought the two communities together culturally and historically.

 

Shira Destinie Jones is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Still Separate and Unequal, and Adulting for all

This book should be read by every Adult, and our country must become more fully inclusive for all of us.   Gillon expains the importance of The Kerner Commission’s Report, which was apparently ignored, and then buried.

Following the Report’s recommendations, as Dr. King suggested, would have made, and still can make, a tremendous difference:

–

How sad that the contents and conclusions of this report are still relevant, and still ignored, today, 50 years after it was released in response to the riots in Newark and Detroit of the “long hot” summer of 1967. I found this book after seeing Dr. King’s response to the question, during the Memphis garbage workers’ strike, of what it would take to prevent or call off his Poor People’s March on Washington: the answer was to implement the recommendations in this report.

The report was commissioned to find out what caused the rioting, not how to prevent further riots. The clearest distinctions between those who actively participated in the rioting and their neighbors who did not, at least at the start of each riot, was the trigger of having witnessed or experienced police brutality. But what primed that trigger for action was the underlying anger, poverty, constant discrimination, and despair to which the Black community in particular was subjected over a very long period of time.

The report called for various measures to be taken which would have improved the lives not only of members of the Black community, but also everyone else in the nation. Measures like the elimination of sub-standard housing in inner-cities, building new schools, health centers, and community facilities, and introducing a guaranteed minimum income would help all citizens, not only those bereft of resources and hope when they were freed with only the clothing on their backs, unable to melt into White American society. From the disrespect by police, to the lack of garbage collection in inner-city neighborhoods, Black Americans were fed up with White America’s deliberate disregard for “the realities of life for many poor blacks” in the United States. This anger, combined with the criminalization of poverty (which was just beginning to kick off the era of Mass Incarceration), the lack of Black faces in [the media, police, highly paid professions and other areas of potential] power, led to a sense of hopelessness and fear that non-violent resistance would never break down a system which was inherently designed to break down the Black community. Ideas like the War on Drugs, brought back by Reagan after the Carter years, and Law and Order, parroted by both right and left, muddied the discourse around solving the problems that led to the riots, instead creating a cloud of convenient reasons to blame inner-city Black communities for their problems while ignoring the structural issues that had created and perpetuated the problems since the slavery era.

The conclusion drawn by the report, above all, was that the entire nation needed education and “a richer portrait of life in urban areas” and to hire many many more Black police officers.

I think that many of the issues of perspective mentioned in the book by the author in his analysis of the report and its time are now beginning to be looked at again, as the discussion around White Privilege becomes louder and more mainstream. That discussion is a necessary but insufficient part of the solution to our current problems, which go back to pre-existing problems pointed out by the report. Please read this book on the Commission report (and also see Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin), and then, write your reps!

Pages I found especially relevant included:

P. 6: 1966 result of creation of ghettos by the 1930s-50s urban renewal aka Negro Removal all across the USA
** P. 12: What a contrast: only 1/100 white people thought that blacks were poorly treated in the USA…
***Ribicoff P. 37: recos…
P. 100: “in the ghetto” last garbage collection (if at all), police disrespectful, school & housing dilapidated
P. 228 (and the answer to that boot-straps baloney:) discrimination and segregation prevented many blacks from following the same patterns which had been followed by immigrant groups, and limited blacks to all but the lowest … jobs

Let’s #EndPoverty & #EndMoneyBail by improving these four parts of our good #PublicDomainInfrastructure 4:
1. #libraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare , and
4. good #publictransport

–

So, it turns out that most, if not all, of these problems are still with us, today.

We could change that.

Action Items:

1.) Share this book, preferably getting the first copy from your local public library,

2.)  Share your thoughts on how a calendar based on the Holocene Epoch might help, or hinder, inclusive thinking,

3.) Write a book, blog post or tweet that uses an alternate calendar, tells a good story, and makes a difference. I’m working on that through my historical fantasy #WiP, #WhoByFireIWill. If you write a book, once published, please consider donating to your local public library.

*****************

Click here to read, if you like:

B5, La Casa De Papel/Money Heist, & Lupin & Hakan: Muhafiz/The Protector Reviews

Holistic High School Lessons,

           or My Long Range Nonfiction, & Historical Fiction Writing

Shira

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Wondering Wednesdays, Baby Acres, and The Two Whys…

This post begins the rough draft of the first Chapter of my current non-fiction WiP, Baby Acres: Making Society Suck Less in 60 Years.     The overall goal is now to explain why we need both equ. + justice, & why in 4 phases.  This chapter will transition to a chapter (2-5) for each phase, showing what Phases I-IV might look like as part of a possible roadmap for a fully inclusive society for all of us.  This vision is laid out in the hope that All HumanKind  will eventually have each person’s basic needs  met, without taking anything from anyone, and without violence, intimidation, nor coercion of any kind. 

Chapter I (part 0): why and why

This week I am very tired, and working on getting updating the chapter outlines from their initial 2019 form. 

 

Next week I will continue with the rough draft of the start of my first chapter.  Here is the semi-detailed chapter 1 outline. I tried to use this as the post featured image, but WP kept rejecting it, so I hope that the medical debt image was a decent tie-in of two of the #PublicDomainInfrastructure items.

Last week was the fifth (end of Introduction section Rough Draft…) installment of this series…

(Note to JYP: I’ve been using and expanding this high level chapter outline  until this post, as I’ve finally filled out the chapter 1 outline, realizing that I was trying to pack too much into chapter one! 

Thank you for your feedback: it has really been helping me! –

Shira)

Action Items:

1.) Search for two different sources related to FDR’s Four Freedoms speech, and compare it to Ike’s ‘Cross of Iron‘ speech (I wonder how many people were old enough to remember his touchstone reference to the 1896 Cross of Gold speech…),

2.) Share them with us in the comments, here, please.

3.) Share your thoughts on how your ideas could affect a society that might be built, in 50-100 years.

4.) Write a story, post or tweet that uses those sources and your thoughts.

Dear Readers, ideas on learning, especially multiple #LanguageLearning, on-going education and empathy-building, to #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness,  #EndMoneyBail & achieve freedom for All HumanKind?

Support our key #PublicDomainInfrastructure  & #StopSmoking at LEAST for CCOVID-19:
1. #PublicLibraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write -one can add Stayed on Freedom’s Call via this GoodReads button:

,

 

Vote, Teach and Learn (PDF Lesson Plan Book)! 

and

my Babylon 5 review posts, if you like Science Fiction,

and

a proposed Vision on Wondering Wednesdays: for a kinder world…

   

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil

our year 2020 CE =  12020 HE

(Day 1 … Day 5)

Stayed on Freedom’s Call
(free copies at: https://archive.org/details/StayedOnF…)
includes two ‘imagination-rich’ walking tours, with songs, of Washington, DC. New interviews and research are woven into stories of old struggles shared by both the Jewish and African-American communities in the capital city.

Shared histories are explored from a new perspective of cultural parallels and parallel institution-building which brought the two communities together culturally and historically.

Please leave a review, if you can, on the GoodReads page.

Shira Destinie Jones by ShiraDest is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Wondering Wednesdays, Project Do Better, & The Four Freedoms

This post finishes the rough draft of the Introductory Chapter of my current non-fiction WiP, Do Better (fka Baby Acres): Making Society Safer Less in 60 Years.     The overall goal has been to introduce one possible roadmap for a fully inclusive society for all of us, in the hope that All HumanKind  will eventually have each person’s basic needs  met.  This book lays out an idea, and a potential path for getting us there.

Introduction part III: The Four Fundamental Freedoms and “perpetual peaceful
revolution”

The “four essential human freedoms” that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt listed in his
famous inaugural (?) speech of 1941 are, as the president himself pointed out, a tangible distillation of those Human Rights as a list of freedoms that each both facilitate and require the equitable implementation of the three types of justice mentioned earlier. President Roosevelt put it thusly:

“The first is freedom of speech and expression–everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way–everywhere in the
world.
The third is freedom from want–which, translated into world terms, means economic
understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants-
everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear–which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide
reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor–anywhere in the world.
That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in
our own time and generation.
”

The president went on to say that “we have been engaged in change — in a perpetual peaceful revolution — a revolution which goes on steadily, quietly adjusting itself to changing conditions … The world order which we seek is the cooperation of free countries, working together in a friendly, civilized society.”

 That “Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere.“

These words touched off   The ( https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2020/08/world-war-ii-the-double-v-campaign/, accessed 2 April, 2021, 15:35 PST …)  Double V Campaign of the modern civil rights era.

While these rights have yet to be fully realized for all Americans, much less all human beings
everywhere, they are, as Roosevelt stated, the start of what any just society must aspire to
guarantee to all of it’s citizens.

That peaceful revolution of which President Roosevelt spoke must make needed changes to the entire set of institutions with which we govern our society so that, as the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. pointed out, “the edifice which produces beggars” is changed into one that produces truly equitable opportunities for all human beings around the world. Clearly, the rebuilding of such a massive edifice as our interconnected web of societal infrastructures, social, economic, physical, and governance-related, requires both time and fore-thought. The task of wrapping up even the most basic of essential human rights into a system capable of guaranteeing that each and every citizen is treated equitably in the light of each of the major types of justice is “a vast project.” Yet is is a project that must be taken on if the promise of those four essential freedoms that President Roosevelt spoke of and Dr. King dreamt of seeing are to be made a reality. It is a project which our founding documents, from the United States Declaration of Independence, to the Preamble to the US Constitution enshrine in law, that “we the people” “are created equal.”

It is equally clear that this is a project which cannot hope to be successful alone, even if
undertaken by an entire generation. The goal of building a just society must be one which is
undertaken and committed to by an alliance spanning multiple generations. From the Framers of the US Constitution, to President Roosevelt, Dr. Martin Luther King, and Noam Chomsky and John Rawls, together with Naomi Klein, members of Black Lives Matter, to the students from the many schools who have experienced mass shooting traumas, generation upon generation has added its voice to the calls for justice, freedom, and human rights for all citizens.

No one community is capable of welding together a system that will be just for all members of society, and no one generation is capable of finishing such a gargantuan task. It is thus incumbent upon all members of society to play a part in contributing to the vision of a just society, whether by putting forth an alternative potential vision of how such a society could function, or by sketching out what some piece of such a society could look like. Changing our societal edifice into one which not only no longer produces suffering, but even encourages the best in all of us, is not a task that even one generation could accomplish alone. We are all indeed in this together, and must do the work, all together. It can be done, if we will it. 

“Yes, we can.”

 

That is the rough draft of the third and final part of my introductory chapter. 

Last week was the fourth installment of this series…

Action Items:

1.) Search for two different sources related to The Double V.

2.) Share them with us in the comments, here, please.

3.) Share your thoughts on how discrimination could affect a society that might be built, in 50-100 years.

4.) Write a story, post or tweet that uses those sources and your thoughts.

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Science Fiction/Fantasy Shows, Lupin, Money…

Holistic High School Lessons,

           or Long Term Nonfiction & Historical Fiction

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Shira

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.