Why I don’t want to go to Alabama
AND
Why I will be in Alabama
Last year, I was really excited to be part of the UBBT’s Alabama house building project. We raised money, did push ups, talked about it a lot. I was jazzed up to meet my new teammates and train, and do some wonderful work for people who were in desperate need. Hale County is one of the poorest counties in the US. The annual per capita income is something like $10000.00, most people are living on SSD or SSI at $6-800 per month, children graduate from high school with a 4th grade reading level, and can not always do multiplication and division. There was a tremendous amount of good to be done there. We raised $1600.00 and I got on a plane to Birmingham AL.
The ground in Alabama is seeped in racism, discrimination and hatred. If you listen you can hear the sounds of slavery. If you watch you can see the ghosts of downtrodden and oppressed people, of the rancor and hatred of man against man. The Civil Rights museum in Birmingham broke my heart. The 16th ST. Baptist church tore it out and stomped all over it. Greensboro, for all its bucolic beauty, created a headache and bellyache of epic proportions in me. The high schools are segregated and the “black” school has a facility that hasn’t seen an upgrade since the early sixties (that’s 40 years). The churches are segregated. Many of the people doing the “work” seem defeated by the futility of their task. Many of the people who are the recipients of the help don’t seem to want to help themselves. On top of all that – the food is bad and bad for you, the floor is hard as granite and the facilities are nightmarish. This year’s projects don’t really excite me and there are people in need right here in my backyard.
So, I wasn’t going. Uh huh, no way no how. I have been trying to come up with some reason why and there they are. THEN Martin Luther King Day came and the day after I asked a class of 95% white children who MLK was. The answers were appalling. “He freed the slaves,” was one. “He made it so everyone could vote,” was another – at least that one was close. These children had no concept of civil rights. Your rights and mine – OUR civil rights. The rights we afford each and every person in this country. The rights people died for in this country and the rights Mrs. Rosa Parks was denied until that day she stood up and took them back. The same rights every person in the world SHOULD be afforded – the right to live free of oppression and slavery. The inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And these school children in my backyard have no idea of the sacrifices innumerable men and women of every race, creed, and religion made so that in this country those rights would be made whole for everyone.
And here we are in 2007, and people are still living under the oppression of poverty, lack of reasonable sanitation, poor education, discrimination and yes, illegal segregation. And it isn’t just happening in Darfur, and Thailand, and many others – It is happening right here in our back yard. In the good ole USA -- home of the brave and land of the free. And that is wrong. It is wrong that it happens here, there or anywhere. And it affects me that it is and does happen. I am oppressed because one member of my human family is oppressed. And I am the oppressor because one member of my family is an oppressor. I am the victim and I am the perpetrator.
SO, I am going to Alabama again. I don’t want to go. I really really don’t want to go. But I must go. I must go to show the world that I, and many others, care about what happens to everyone. That it matters when one person is treated badly. That I can and will do what I can to make a difference --- Even if I have to go to Alabama, Darfur and or somewhere else to do it. And I will publicize my efforts in order to educate the rest of the world of the plight of our brothers and sisters.
For those of you reading this who is confused or not sure about what it is that
I am talking about – call me at 775-338-2412 and we can talk. For those of you reading this who is not going to Alabama, I hope I have touched you in some way to support this or other projects either financially or with your physical presence. For the rest of you---
SEE YOU IN GREENSBORO!!!!
Namaste
John
