The Greatest of these Is Love … (from Chapter 25: Allies, Coalitions, Transformation Workers, and Celebrities) (Two Five Zero 014)
From the Our Better Future book: Here’s What We’ll Do …
Such a network of love. From Rebecca Solnit’s brother to the People’s Puppets of Wall Street to Bread and Puppet to the local activists I know and their long efforts to sculpt the recalcitrant clay of their fellow citizens into a fighting force, or one marginally better attuned. Woody Guthrie, Utah Phillips, Cesar Chavez, Fred Hampton, Paul Krassner, and oh, so many others, all with a fierce love, a love for their fellow humans; to see them suffer treatment a little less ill a little less often. AOC, Rashida, Mondaire, Bernie, Winnie, Grace Lee Boggs …
And those who have signed over less of themselves but who possess and influence great resources (Emma Thompson, Mark Ruffalo, Matt Damon, Trevor Noah …) What I lose sight of is what the real intention behind all this is.
Maybe Revelations with Friends is less education and more revealing a landscape never suspected: We’re all in the wilderness alone, but with a nudge we discover so many on roads not so very different, maps we never suspected. (But some of us are looking at the stars …)
Is a critical mass near at hand? I hope; I’m counting on it. Not a general strike, not Hong Kong with millions in the street, but oh so many different initiatives. With this evolution: We discover we’re all fighting for the same thing. Intersectionality. All our grievances are connected. The 99%. The oligarchy. We support each other, materially, emotionally; love teaches us how.
PS Utah Phillips quotation reads: “Kids don’t have a little brother working in the coal mine, they don’t have a little sister coughing her lungs out in the looms of the big mill towns of the Northeast. Why? Because we organized; we broke the back of the sweatshops in this country; we have child labor laws. Those were not benevolent gifts from enlightened management. They were fought for, they were bled for, they were died for by working people, by people like us. Kids ought to know that. That’s why I sing these songs. That’s why I tell these stories, dammit. No root, no fruit!” (AmericansWhoTellTheTruth.org is worth checking out …)
