Historical Recollections, and Fear

Posted: 9th April 2008 6:02 ∞ Categories: Celebrities, News, Politics, Uplifting ∞ Tags: Financial, Friends and Friendlies, History, Links, Scary situations, Sleep, Special occasions, The Great Work (evolution) ∞ Comment RSS: RSS 2.0

I haven’t slept much in the past few days. I wake up within a few hours of going to bed and am unable to go back to sleep. It hasn’t been so bad – I’ve been getting around six hours sleep a day – until this morning. This morning, I slept two and a half hours, woke up scratching my ankles from the new outbreak of fleas in my carpet (I’ve put down borax), and immediately starting worrying about my bank account. What kind of day is it when a $300 overdraft seems like a relief after you’ve spent time mentally adding things up and concluded it’ll probably go as high as $450? heh. (Turns out some of the stuff I thought was still pending has already posted. Thank gods.) I don’t have any foreseeable income for another 25 days and even then it’ll only be $640. Am I scared? Oh you bet.

As I struggled with the panic that wants to wash over me, lying here in the bed wishing I was sleeping before my all-day appointment today (my alarm goes off in 4 hours), I had a random memory pop into my head. I realized that four five days ago it had been the anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and this reminded me of something that happened 20 years ago.

I lived in Athens, Georgia from September of 1986 through May of 1988, and in January of 1987, my friend Anna and I went to Cumming, in Forsyth County, to participate in a civil rights march. Forsyth County was (not sure about now) a big Klan county, with an active chapter of the infamous Ku Klux Klan. The county had a saying, that if you were black, not to let the sun set on your head. If you were black and still there after dark, your life was in very real danger. There had been some sort of demonstration that the KKK ‘crashed,’ resulting in the injury of a few anti-Down-Home-Southern-Boy (i.e. civil rights supporters). The Klan’s behavior sent a wildfire through the region. A few days later, another march was scheduled as a counter- demonstration. Nobody had an inkling of what was to come, though.

We got to Cumming early in the morning. There was a line of cars that would have rivaled Woodstock, and we had to park a considerable distance away and walk in. Walking past cars, school buses, chartered buses, etc for what had to be at least a mile, we finally arrived. The throng was impressive. We walked amongst the fringes of the gathering – there was no way to tell how many were there, because there were way too many to estimate – and sat down on a curb in a strip mall. It was the general starting point of the march. I sat down on the curb and burst into tears. The energy was profound and I had no ability at that time to shield myself from it. It just overwhelmed me.

Eventually, after some weird looks, I composed myself. The march began; I can’t remember what time it was. Anna and I were walking with a bishop or something; I can’t remember his rank or in what church now, but he had a tall headpiece that was very distinctive. We passed the counter-demonstrators. Wikipedia says in one paragraph that there were 5,000 counter-demonstrators, and in the next paragraph says “some 6,000.” I remember the figure as 1,300. (An article from the NYTimes, from the time.) *shrug* In any case, they were frightening. There were fully-robed Klansmen, and I think the one with the megaphone was some sort of lodge master or whatever they call them. I want to say Grand Master, but I may be deluded on that point. The guy with the megaphone, in any case, was speaking to the families that had turned out to support Forsyth County’s hatred. I was upset to see young men and women with their children in tow, teaching their kids how to hate just like mom and dad. It was horrible to me.

We marched for a long time. There was often singing. There were a lot of signs and so forth. We got to the end, finally (thank god it wasn’t hot), and listened to Coretta Scott King and Jesse Jackson speak. Then we went home. Words can never describe how the experience felt or what it was like. We were conscious of the importance of the event, the fundamental necessity, but we only had a vague idea of history being made. Many numbers passed through the crowd that day, each bigger than the last. Final estimate of the turn out was 20,000 civil rights supporters and a comparatively paltry 1,300 resident assholes. Ahem. I stand by my number, as Wikipedia cites no sources for theirs.

It is a day that I look back upon as the one time I really stood up for my principles. I wasn’t there for the WTO demonstration in Seattle; I’d already moved away by then. I have never done a gay pride parade, or a pagan pride parade, because those events are, in my opinion, counter- productive. (And I support equal rights for everyone. Vehemently.) Too many people set out to rub the bourgeoisie’s faces in the weirder aspects of counter culture, and this only makes the average sheep-like citizen more afraid. There’s nothing open and accepting. Golden rule and all that, folks. Annnyway, that’s an argument for another day.

I took a stand, and it counted for something. Anyone who refuses to vote because it can’t make a difference is contributing to the power of the Klan and the misguided people they influence, and other groups that live to steal our rights and keep us in fear. That would include the Republican Party, in my view. People need to get mad, and stay mad, and I do mean MAD – not just angry. Get mad, and by god preach it to your friends, and make them go with you and vote. If you don’t exercise a muscle, it withers. If you don’t exercise the rights that matter to you, they will go away. Don’t let anyone keep you in fear. If you cry out loudly, then the beacons will light around the world, and when you show up to demonstrate, courageously facing down your oppressors, you’ll discover that 20,000 people (or more!) were with you all the way.

Grassroots revolutions don’t advertise the presence of the individuals. The big numbers aren’t announced until it’s over. History isn’t planned. It just happens. Be a part of it, and do something you’ll be proud of.

ETA: If anyone has photos of the march, I’d love to see them. An extensive Google image search reveals a total of four images on one site, and that is IT. :-/ I am shocked. I can’t recall if Anna had a camera, but I know I did not, but I did make some photos. The bishop guy was a popular target for cameras.

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