Movement: A Change In Position

Movement: An Act of Moving: a change in position. The activities of a group of people to achieve a specific goal.

My day begins with the task to record and document what is going on in the movement. What movement? If you don't know that today is The National Day of Absence Against Poverty, Racism and War, where have you been? What have you been paying attention to? Are you still moaning over the stolen election of the 2004 Presidential Elections in the United States? Are you still upset over the lack of response to the crisis in the Gulf Coast? Do you know that there are people in Broward County in Florida are still without electricity since Hurricane Wilma? Do you ever wonder if the media will return to telling the stories of the struggles of the people in the Gulf Coast, or those who suffered the earthquake in Pakistan on October 8, 2005?

The New Orleans Zoo reopened this week. ABC covered it on their nightly news program. You proabably did not know that volunteers are being harrassed for participating with the organization Common Ground. Common Ground is a grassroots organization in Algiers, Louisiana providing food, clothing, rebuilding, medical and legal assistance to citizens who never left and are returning to the city. Did you know that attention to the Native American communities along the Gulf Coast has been little to none? FEMA did not know they existed! The Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw of Louisiana needs your help.

These stories are but incidents of many in a moment of time. When something else happens, the next disaster, the next flood, the next shooting, the next kidnapping of a white woman, we will all forget.

Let's not forget 20 million people have died since the first World Aids day 25 years ago.

Let's not forget that Black women account for two-thirds of all the HIV cases according to the Centers for Disease Control.

Let's not forget about that Stanley Tookie Williams is scheduled to be executed on December 13, 2005. If he is put to death, who will continue the work he has been doing from a jail cell? Who will convince gang members that life beyond the gang is still worth living?

Kenneth Lee Boyd is a 57-year-old veteran of the Vietnam War. He does not deny shooting his estranged wife and her father. If the governor of North Carolina does not grant him clemency, he will be the 1000th person in the United States put to death since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.

People are being disappeared and secretly imprisoned, tortured and put to death everyday by our government and other governments complicit in human rights abuses.

When a bomb is dropped in Iraq, real people die. Men, women and children are losing their lives on the battlefield. The battlefield is not some far off place in a field, but a home with photographs on the wall; where people used to eat, laugh, dance, work and love together. The battlefield is a grocery store. It is a school. The battlefield is seen in the eyes of a man running away with his baby in his arms, from the solider that shoots, because he is frightened for his life. The solider that continues to shoot, will do so because has lost touch with his own humanity.

Those troops are coming home eventually. They will come home with missing arms, eyes, hands, legs, and shattered hearts and impaired sanity. They will come home broken. They will come home and need so much.

I know this is a lot to think about. I know there is much to do. Don't get me wrong; this is not I pointing the finger at anyone. I have not done all I would like to do. All I know how to do is document. I write. I talk to people to hear their stories. Sometimes they allow me to tell their stories in their own words. I'm the one on the school bus who talks to young people when they start getting rowdy on the bus. I don't just ask them to be quite or to be considerate of other people; I ask them about their hopes and dreams. I ask them about themselves. It is amazing to feel the tension rise on the bus as some adults begin to fear I will be attacked or cursed out for minding other folks business. I'm doing the business I was put here to do. You should be there to feel the sense of relief and the lighter atmosphere on that bus when we begin to exchange ideas. I haven't been cursed out or attacked. You get what you expect.

Don't be afraid to move. Don't be afraid to change your position. Don't be afraid to develop a position. Stand. And remember you don’t have to stand all by yourself. A hand doesn’t work without the help of the fingers.


Here are some organizations/people that you may consider to help get you moving:

http://www.Troopsoutnow.org
http://www.millionsmoremovement.com
http://www.blackwomenshealth.org
http://www.fortunesociety.org
http://www.ifconews.org Pastors for Peace
http://www.biloxi-chitimacha.com

Melik Rahim, long time community activist,
Common Ground, New Orleans
504-368-6897

Peace begins with action.