A Message from the Future II: The Years of Repair

25 Sunday Oct 2020

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Social Injustice, United States

Tags

A Message from the Future II: The Years of Repair, Animated futuristic film, Avi Lewis, COVID-19 pandemic, Molly Crabapple, Naomi Klein, Opal Tometi, Social and Economic Repair, social upheaval, The Intercept, The Leap

If you have ever achieved a goal or a dream, you know that the first step to success was in visualizing or verbalizing what you had hoped to achieve. To imagine a desirable future outcome is key to its realization. The animated short film A Message from the Future II: The Years of Repair dares to imagine a better world in which no one is sacrificed; a world in which everyone is essential.

About a month into the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown, Naomi Klein and her husband Avi Lewis, co-founders of The Leap, together with award-winning artist Molly Crabapple and Opal Tometi, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter, started a conversation about the role of futurism when so much is at stake. They concurred that to defeat Trump was not enough to fend off naked authoritarianism in the White House. Many other intersecting crises, they noted, are bearing down on America and the world: climate collapse, surging white supremacy, or widespread famine.

In shaping their “Message from the Future,” they could not ignore our burning cities and forests, as well as the global pandemic. Moreover, they could not imagine achieving a safe and humane future without escalating and winning street battles and general strikes. Their call to repair a deep brokenness provided a framework for encompassing the interlocking crises in our social, economic, political, informational, and ecological spheres.

The protagonists of their futuristic animated film are rank-and-file organizers and activists. Disparate movements get on board: organized labor, Black liberation, climate, disabled, feminist, Indigenous, migrant, worker cooperatives, and more. Covid-19 acts as a catalyst for moving humanity forward. As Naomi Klein notes in her article of October 1, 2020, on the premier of the film: “In forcing all of us to confront the porousness of our own bodies in relationship to the vast web of other bodies that sustain us and the people we love—caregivers, farmers, supermarket clerks, street cleaners, and more—the coronavirus instantly exploded the cherished, market-manufactured myth of the individual as self-made island.”

I invite you to watch the animated short film (duration 8:57 minutes) A Message from the Future II: The Years of Repair produced by The Intercept in partnership with The Leap.

“Male and female He created them”

14 Sunday Oct 2018

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Human Behavior, Social Injustice, United States

≈ 39 Comments

Tags

Brett Kavanaugh, Christine Blasey Ford, Creation accounts in the Bible, Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), Equal rights for girls and women, International Day of the Girl Child, Sexual assault, Sexual predators, U.S. Supreme Court

Brett Kavanaugh sworn in to the U.S. Supreme Court – October 6, 2018
Photo Credit: The Press Democrat

Despite sexual assault allegations, on October 6, 2018, Brett Kavanaugh was sworn in to the U.S. Supreme Court. His contentious nomination process before the male-dominated Senate Committee hammered home the gnawing reality: Women have yet to achieve equal footing with men under our legal system.

To achieve what may have been a lifelong ambition, Kavanaugh exposed his “two spirited daughters” to the public bashing of his integrity. Has he used the sexual allegations – which he has denied with tears and anger – as a teaching moment for his ten- and thirteen-year old daughters? Has he considered the possibility that his daughters could one day suffer the same trauma as his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford?

Ford did not tell her parents what had happened that summer day while she was out with trusted friends. Like so many of us born female, she kept the sexual assault a secret. Continue reading →

The Souls of Poor Folk: A National Call for Moral Revival

15 Sunday Apr 2018

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Social Injustice, United States

≈ 39 Comments

Tags

A National Call for Moral Revival 2018, American Systemic Racism, Ecological Devastation in America, Institute for Policy Studies (USA), Poor People’s Campaign 2018, Poverty in America, The Souls of Poor Folk, The War Economy and Militarism in America

Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival
Photo Credit: Poor People’s Campaign

I’m finding it hard to stay abreast of all the upheaval triggered by our Twitter-in-Chief. His tweets and threats boggle my mind, create instability across our nation, and embolden our rivals and enemies overseas.

While our bombs turn the Middle East into rubble, people at the bottom rungs in America face their own hell. This month, the Institute for Policy Studies has published its empirical study, The Souls of Poor Folk, highlighting the complex issues that entangle our lives: systemic racism, persistent poverty, the war economy and militarism, and ecological devastation. Here are some of their key findings. Continue reading →

I come from a “shit-hole”

14 Sunday Jan 2018

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in People, Social Injustice, United States

≈ 87 Comments

Tags

El Salvador, Haiti, Immigrants in America, Javier Zamora, Koyote the Blind, Temporary Protected Status (TPS)

Wahoo Bay Beach – Haiti

It is so easy to disparage others when we are in a privileged position of wealth and power. In such positions, we can lose touch with our shared fragility as human beings. We can forget that the labor of millions of invisible human beings sustains our lives. Immersed in our comforts and luxuries, we can believe we belong to an invincible special breed.

In October 2017, I featured the work of the young immigrant Salvadoran poet, Javier Zamora, who holds a Temporary Protected Status (TPS) now up for review by our Congress. Following that post, another Salvadoran immigrant, who blogs under the name Koyote the Blind, started following my blog. Our president’s disparaging remarks about his country has struck a deep wound.

Ruins of Tazumal – pre-Columbian Mayan archeological site in Chalchuapa – El Salvador

In his blog post, “I come from a shit-hole,” on Thursday, January 11, he wrote:

I am Salvadoran, even if the term was imposed by Spain. I am American, even if the US thinks they own the name. I am güanaco, even if you think it’s an insult.

I am not Mexican. Mexicans call me “cerote”–a piece of turd.

Today, Trump agreed with them. Today, he said he didn’t understand why liberals want to bring people from those shit-hole countries.

I am a piece of turd from a shit-hole country in the backyard of Ronald Reagan.

Yet, I am here. And I come from the Land of the Jewel, Cuzcatlan, the last bastion of resistance.

I am here to stay, and to change this land, this entire continent, into what it truly is: the mother land in the process of awakening.

You may see in me a turd from a shit-hole country, but I see in you and me and all the true silver light of the empty mind, the freedom from the past, the glory of the New Sun that heralds the coming of the True Human Being. I am here to share that future with you, my reader, without hatred in my heart, without resentment, and without any names to hurl back at you.

You can read his complete post here.

Whether we live on the African continent, El Salvador, Haiti, Norway, or the United States of America, we are all human beings with short life spans in the grand scheme of death and rebirth of interconnected cycles of life on Planet Earth. What makes our insignificant lives meaningful is not our material trappings, but rather the way in which we touch the lives of others we meet along our journey. The greater our influence and power, the greater our responsibility to do good in the world.

Draining the Swamp

18 Sunday Dec 2016

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Social Injustice, United States

≈ 39 Comments

Tags

American politics, Lynching of African Americans, Make America White Again, Native American Genocide, Toxic Lake Okeechobee, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, Wounded Knee Massacre

Draining Toxic Lake Okeechobee – Florida – USA
Photo Credit: The Weather Channel (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Metaphors are important tools in a writer’s word-box. “Draining the swamp” is a powerful metaphor put to excellent use by our President-elect during his campaign for our nation’s top post. He has promised to rid our government of entrenched cronies who only serve their own self-interests and those of their masters and facilitators. We-the-people can drown in the swamp for all they care.

As our President-elect begins draining the swamp, he has skimmed only the surface scum and dead leaves and, based on his latest selections for his cabinet and other top administration posts, has made room for more toxic detritus.

The swamp extends across America. In some places, it’s dense and putrid with the carcasses upon which we have built our nation. Are we ready to drain the swamp? Some among us want to make America white again. When was that? Was that after we had decimated the Native Indian populations who inhabited these lands thousands of years before the white man’s arrival? Their carcasses rest at the bottom of the swamp.

Wounded Knee Massacre – North Dakota – December 29, 1890
Photo Credit: Wikipedia

What about the African slaves and their descendants whose forced labor built this nation? Their carcasses form another layer in the bottom of the swamp.

Lynching of African American in Omaha – Nebraska – 1919
Photo Credit: Daily Kos

What about the successive waves of black, brown, white, and yellow immigrants who labored under inhumane conditions to fuel our industrial revolution? Their carcasses intermingle below the surface of the swamp.

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire – New York City – March 25, 1911
Photo Credit: NYU/STERN Center for Business & Human Rights

It’s easy to skim the surface of the swamp of toxic algae and decaying vegetation. Are we ready to go deeper? Are we ready to drain the swamp?

Are we ready to face our barbarity and callousness towards those we have deemed a threat, worthless, inferior, or dispensable?

Are we ready to ratify that all men and women are created equal and deserve the same treatment and opportunities for their growth and prosperity?

Are we ready to let go of our selfish desires and work together to save ourselves from becoming yet another layer of the swamp?

Draining the swamp will be tough and soul-searching work. It will test the human capacity for openness, forgiveness, sharing, kindness, compassion, and love. It will require a collective effort.

Are you ready to join me in draining the swamp?

Racial Equality: The Impossible Dream

30 Sunday Nov 2014

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Human Behavior, Social Injustice, United States

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Ferguson/Missouri, Globalized capitalist economic system, Income and wealth inequality, Racial inequality, The 99 Percent, The Impossible Dream, The One Percent, White oppression

Hands Up Don’t Shoot – Justice for Mike Brown
Ferguson – Missouri – USA – November 2014
Photo Credit: Scott Olson / Getty Images

For millennia, humankind has been plagued with some form of inequality among its populations. As our societies grew, increased in complexity, and became globalized, so did the nature and degree of inequality.

Like a living human organism, inequality has a gender, race, ethnicity, and class that determine income and wealth disparities. To make matters worse, inequality dictates our access to a home, education, healthcare, and protection under our justice system.

Faced with racial inequality, the majority African-American community of Ferguson, Missouri, has received no justice for Mike Brown, an eighteen-year-old black male killed by a white policeman in August 2014. Continue reading →

Brett Kavanaugh sworn in to the U.S. Supreme Court – October 6, 2018 Photo Credit: The Press Democrat

Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival Photo Credit: Poor People’s Campaign

Wahoo Bay Beach – Haiti

Ruins of Tazumal – pre-Columbian Mayan archeological site in Chalchuapa – El Salvador

Draining Toxic Lake Okeechobee – Florida – USA Photo Credit: The Weather Channel (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Wounded Knee Massacre – North Dakota – December 29, 1890 Photo Credit: Wikipedia

Lynching of African American in Omaha – Nebraska – 1919 Photo Credit: Daily Kos

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire – New York City – March 25, 1911 Photo Credit: NYU/STERN Center for Business & Human Rights

Brett Kavanaugh sworn in to the U.S. Supreme Court – October 6, 2018
Photo Credit: The Press Democrat

Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival
Photo Credit: Poor People’s Campaign

Draining Toxic Lake Okeechobee – Florida – USA
Photo Credit: The Weather Channel (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Wounded Knee Massacre – North Dakota – December 29, 1890
Photo Credit: Wikipedia

Lynching of African American in Omaha – Nebraska – 1919
Photo Credit: Daily Kos

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire – New York City – March 25, 1911
Photo Credit: NYU/STERN Center for Business & Human Rights