Makes ya Wonder

I was born in October1941 and when Pearl Harbor was bombed, I obviously was not far from my mother. She tells me she was at her mother in law's house for dinner when they got the news. So, I don’t remember much of the war.  My uncle went to the New Hebrides, but I only remember his coming home with a pea coat for his sister, my mother.  My dad worked in the defense industry and his parents only had one child - my father, so my dad did not fight, nor did his father, my grandfather.  

Until  I became self aware, I lived a wonderful life being a free range kid in a small town, an ideal childhood and school experience all through the 50s until high school was over for me in 1959. I set off for Michigan State University, my first visit to a place where some of the people were different from the all white protestants who lived in my small town of Spring Lake, Michigan.

Mygod, there were people of different colors, people who wore strange beanies on their heads, had beards and wore their hair funny.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that these folks were treated differently whether they wanted to be or not. I learned what prejudice was. 

I could never figure out prejudice except it was used by large patriarchal institutions to gain and keep power and control.  If the population was given someone to hate, that population was easy to control and manipulate. Don't think so? Read "1984" and "Animal Farm." Or read history. See what Hitler did. See what organized religion has done from the Crusades to the Inquisition to the present. See what has happened to the public educational system with the dumbing down of students, so many of whom are drugged daily so they behave. Scary isn't it?

For reasons I still don’t know, I had problems with that. And at that moment, at 17 years old, social activism became a major cause in my life.

It started with me realizing that unfairness was no way to run a university, let alone a country or a world. I participated in varying acts of civil disobedience as I grew into my new role as a social activist.  I participated in sit ins, demonstrations, marches and even published my own alternative newspaper and distributed it off campus.

Of all the things I learned through the 60s and beyond, I found useful later in life after I became disabled, these were just lessons that I could use to still change things. 

And I do.

Times, they are a changin'

This was originally published on a friend's site: Sage Companions

Accept things like they are. Don't make waves. Don't draw attention to yourself. 
Hush. The teacher/minister/clerk/doctor/dentist wants you to be quiet and not interrupt.  Don't ask questions.

I hear that or a version of that all the time. Parents talking to their children, spouses talking to spouses, adult children to elderly parents. People who think they have authority speaking to people they perceive as not having any.

If it were not for resisting what is,
we would never change our lives for the better

In my lifetime we have seen women come from employable only in menial jobs to most any job they wish, albeit only at 77% of what men make. But we are working on that. When I finished undergrad school, an employer could say, "Sorry, we don't hire women for that." And not realize what he was saying. And we could do nothing about it. When I finished grad school things had not changed.That was 1969 and I was finished listening to that drivel

When I was an undergrad at Michigan State University women could not wear pants on campus. In Michigan where temps reach below zero in the winter. We had to dress for dinner. We had curfews. I mention that not to assess value to their standards, but to say that men undergrads had no dress rules or curfews. Women could not take technical courses like engineering and I wanted to be a civil engineer. Wasn't gonna happen.

My niece is a chemical engineer and doesn't even think it's unusual. Female doctors and dentists outnumber males doctors and dentists. It only took 30 years.

We fought, we resisted, we sat-in, we marched, we demanded and yes, we complained. We made noise. We were not quiet and did not accept things as they were.

And things changed

I have seen people of color exist as second class citizens, relegated to the back of the bus and not allowed to sit at a Woolworth lunch counter, stay in a motel of their choice or get more that a menial job.
We now have a US president who is a person of color.

We fought, we resisted, we sat-in, we marched, we demanded and yes, we complained. We made noise. We were not quiet and did not accept things as they were.

It took Harry Truman one signature and the military was integrated. That was 1948. In 1956, it took a landmark decision by the supreme court in Brown v the Board of Education to integrate the schools. Stonewall happened in NYC in 1969. We came out of our respective closets and are demanding equal rights.

We are still seeing conditions in the US that need changing. It's perfectly OK to hate homosexuals and shout it to the sky. (Written before June 26, 2015, but it's still OK to hate and be applauded.) You might even be applauded. Civil rights are not granted to 10% or more of our population. Entire churches are built around refusing this right and preaching hatred to their parishioners. And believe it or not, the electorate of the US is VOTING on civil rights for gay people. That may have happened in this country before, but not in my memory.*

It's just fine to hate our neighbors to our south and wish them anywhere but in our country of  100% immigrants except for our indigenous peoples. I'm not sure why our neighbors to the north are just fine. Could it be the color of their skin? Would be presidents are using that as a plank in their perverted platforms.

We will fight, resist, sit-in, march, demand and yes, complain. We will make noise. Will not be quiet and will not accept things as they are.

* Thanks to the efforts of thousands and thousands, look what happened on June 26, 2015.  The country changed. We made noise and the country changed.