House Burning Down
[Note: I wrote this yesterday.]
“Well someone stepped from the crowd he was nineteen miles high
He shouts tired and disgusted so we paint red through the sky
I said the truth is straight ahead so don't burn yourself instead
Try to learn instead of burn, hear what I say, yeah, yeah”
-- Jimi Hendrix; House Burning Down
Last night, MSNBC was carrying live, non-stop, on-the-scene coverage of no riot, in apparent competition with CNN’s infamous no plane reporting. Other than law enforcement and journalists, the streets were as empty as any safe Geraldo has ever opened. That made for hour’s of compelling television, let me tell you.
There was at least one valid point made, however: actual riots get more attention from the media, than do peaceful protest marches.
While unfortunately true, this in and of itself suggests that there are no alternatives. Even many of the pictures with quotes from Martin Luther King found on “social media” could, in isolation, sound as if he believed exactly that. Yet, this is far, far from the truth. For King’s most successful non-violent campaigns -- the ones that reaped the most media attention -- were those in which Martin and his associates knew would be met with gross violence. That bridge in Selma is but one example.
These campaigns were always met, first by “officials” in local/state government calling King irresponsible, and attempting to blame the victims of the violence; followed by media attention that changed the general Americans’ perceptions. This pattern was so well established that in Florida and later Chicago, the officials took steps to keep the police from assaulting King and his people.
Equally important, as Martin had learned from his study of Gandhi, he and others willingly went to jail. Over and over. Again, it changed the public’s perception.
Our society faces a dozen crises today, which by no coincidence overlap with one another, that require this same type of commitment to non-violent confrontation. The willingness to accept suffering, to an extent that some of the symbolic efforts in recent years have purposely excluded -- which is not to dismiss those efforts as unimportant, but rather, to say that a higher level of commitment, and willingness to sacrifice, is also necessary.
Peace,
H2O Man
= new reply since forum marked as read
and thoughtful as always.
Thanks WaterMan 
