As I look out of the window of my hotel room I can see a balcony across the courtyard. In this moment, the metal slats running up the sides are an eerie reminder of pictures of the motel in Memphis where, not so many years ago, someone killed the preacher from Atlanta who changed the course of history enough that he allowed me to live in this moment.
Two things seem apparent to me as I sit alone in my room.
One - That whoever it was that really killed Dr. King, they were more than a few cards short of a deck. Pretty basic, pretty obvious, right? What I mean is that the person who shot the preacher with a dream didn’t realize that dreams aren’t like blood. The words and ideas of Dr. King did not drip to the pavement below like his blood did, they did not cease to flow from the mouths of freedom fighters like the blood ceased to flow through his veins. Ideas are both more fluid and less fluid than blood. They are able to be passed down, move like sinuous lines of consciousness through generations of people, decades of changing places and families. However, when the great thinker of ideas dies or is martyred, ideas solidify, they stop changing form as they do in a curious mind. Anyway, food for thought.
Two – When we were processing tonight, I decided to draw instead of write. Now, I am no sketch artist, it was not fantastic, merely functional. I drew a tree – it stands on a firm base but the trunk leans steeply to one side, and it reads “every single night the same arrangement.” On the leaves it reads “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to change, its not”. In the bottom left hand corner a sun shines up onto the trunk. Inside the sun it reads “’that the sins of a dark yesterday will be redeemed in the achievements of a bright tomorrow’”. Next to the tree, a pathetic excuse for a paperclip drawing reads “all of the strength and all of the courage”. So what do I mean by all this nonsense? I don’t know if you guys caught it, but I referenced Dr. Suess, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sarah McLachlan, and Martin Luther King jr in one drawing, because that’s how I do things (mixing my references: historical, pop cultural and… children’s literature-al?). Regardless, here’s what it all means. The tree is our country – it stands on a firm base of ideals (the Constitution/ Bill of Rights) but throughout history we as a nation spent much of our time disregarding our own beliefs (in particular regard to Native, African, and Japanese – Americans (at least that come to mind right now)) which is why the tree leans. The quote reflects what a foot soldier from the Children’s Marches told us today- that the more things change, the more they stay the same. The Lorax quote at the top (besides going great with trees) reflects the need for people to stand against injustice no matter how small, because if they don’t it will continue. The MLK quote in the sun, and the beams of the sun pushing against the tree mean a couple of things to me. As a member of many privileged groups, I carry around the history of oppression people like me have done to people who were like some of my friends. I cannot ignore these injustices or past oppressions or they might happen again. What I can do to keep myself from falling into guilt is to look to a “brighter tomorrow” to redeem the “sins of a dark yesterday.” All (haha, all, like it’s a small task) I have to do is create the “brighter tomorrow.” The sun beams against the tree aren’t strong (they are only made of light after all) but they symbolize the slow incremental change needed to straighten the tree out. The paperclip, worn as a symbol of resistance by anti-Nazi Norwegians salutes the fact that standing up takes great strength and courage. The full line from the song is “all of the strength and all of the courage come and lift me from this place. I know I can love you much better than this, oh my love, full of grace.” That whole thing would not fit on my tiny paperclip, but to me it says something really important, that we could all love each other better than we do right now, but it will take us strength and courage to get there.
I would like to make one final point before I take my long-awaited shower:
The tree cannot be retroactively straightened. That is, if the sunbeams (that’s us guys ) succeed, it will only be in straightening the future growth. The “sins of a dark yesterday” will always be with us, and we must always remember them. However, the work we do should help redeem them in the long-awaited “brighter tomorrow.”
Adios, amigos.
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