Tony, Eddie and Harry

Funny, isn’t it, how someone’s thoughts can grab a person’s imagination, and stay with you forever? For the last few months I have been recalling the words of activist, author, TV host Tony Brown (Black Lies -- White Lies,  Tony Brown’s Journal respectively), Dr. Eddie Green, interim Superintendent of Detroit Public Schools (1996,) and Harry Belafonte (Singer, Actor, Activist).

I remember Brown’s analogy of Blacks as a harbinger for Whites, something that, until then, I had never considered. I paraphrase:

In the 1920s, Harlem, with its music and vibrant night life, was quite an attraction for rich Whites, who drank, danced and did hard drugs, confident in the confidentiality surrounding their activities. It was OK that drugs were there -- in the Black community.

Fast forward to the 1970s. The drugs are in Manhattan townhouses. Adults keep them fresh in their refrigerators. The more enlightened parents even share them with their kids. Drugs are available everywhere -- in schools, on street corners. They’re in my home town of Cheshire, Connecticut -- 99% white, 75% professionals -- in small farming communities throughout the wheat belt and in the bible belt, where it competes with white lightening and liquor stores.

In the 1960s, there was vocal outrage about the high incidence of out-of-wedlock births in the Black communities, especially among teenage girls. This was horrible, an indictment against the entire community. In the 1990s, out-of-wedlock births were commonplace in White communities, in Podunk, IA (my name, not his) and similar small town America.

We (Blacks) are a harbinger of the future, he pointed out. We’re a leading indicator of what’s coming, by about twenty years. He calls on Whites to pay attention.

I think about that a lot both because he was right and because his ‘truth’ holds to this day.

Remember the sad state of education in Black schools in almost all the decades of the 20th century. With or without integration -- in Knoxville, TN, in 2013, integration is virtually non-existent.

Remember the scourge of AIDS?

Remember poverty, homelessness, welfare… it all hit home there first, remains to this day and stays longer there than elsewhere. There’s a difference between situational poverty and generational poverty.

Today, when there is no more racism (hell-o?) or, more accurately, when class warfare prevails, where do those Whites find themselves? The pyramid has become a funnel, and anyone of any color is at risk to flow through the stem.

In 1996, Eddie Green was the guest speaker at the Troy, MI, Rotary Club. He began his opening remarks with this sentence: “On any given day in the City of Detroit, no education takes place.” He followed it with vivid descriptions any parent could understand.

“Children come to school hungry, their last meal was the day before in the cafeteria. Mondays are worse. Many children haven’t had a good meal since the previous Friday.

“On any given day in the City of Detroit, no education takes place. In winter, children arrive at school without jackets. It takes hours to get over the shivering. They are ill prepared to learn.

“On any given day in the City of Detroit, no education takes place, Squad cars converge at the corner adjacent to the school. A drug bust is going down. The school is in lockdown. The distraction is overwhelming.”

I remember his words well, and all the words that followed as he answered questions from the audience. I also remember what Tony Brown said, “We are a harbinger of the future. ” Their words resonate every year when the latest PISA scores are released and the US is something like 16th in reading, 19th in math, 25th in science. Does anyone remember when we were NUMBER ONE? Were we ever, really?

It is time to realize that the gap in wealth is crippling an entire nation and that the outcome was foretold by generations of acceptance of the wealth gap and the willing disenfranchisement of an entire segment of our population. He told us so.

Harry’s Song  -- Is It Different Now?

I was thrilled to enter the auditorium at the University of Tennessee Knoxville to spend An Evening with Harry Belafonte, as the event was billed. Like so many in the audience that night (older, white, financially comfortable), I remembered him most for his Calypso songs, (Day-O, Matilda, Island in the Sun). I knew nothing of his activism, his commitment to the civil rights movement because I had lived abroad as a service brat during some of those years. His record albums sold well at the Base Exchange in Sicily.

Imagine, a musical icon, still vibrant at eighty years, standing before an audience of old White folk and young African American college students at the campus. He started softly, reminding us of those days when we sang along with him to the sound of steel drums. He mentioned his daughter Sheri, an accomplished actress, with understandable pride. We settled in for a trip into the past.

Harry reflected on his days in the trenches with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Andy Young and so many others. He told about being ‘drafted’ by King because of his fame and popularity.

One particular remembrance pierced my brain and made an indelible impression. Harry, Andy Young and a number of their inner circle were meeting in a hotel room to talk strategy. Things were not going well. Opinions were many and agreement was hard to find. Tensions were heating up. Harry looked around the room for Martin, who was gazing out the window, away from the fray and lost in his own thoughts. Harry moved to his side and asked, “What are you thinking? Is something wrong?”

Martin looked at him, his features softened by the light through the window.

“I was just thinking,” he said quietly so as not to disturb the others. “Here we are, struggling to find a way to belong, a way to fight the injustice and create a life in this nation, and it occurs to me -- that we are fighting to integrate into a house afire.”

Imagine that. A nation in so much conflict with itself. conflict that goes well beyond race. There’s a war raging, in an obscure nation thousands of mile away, a country that most Americans couldn’t find on a map. There are draft resisters marching in the street, being beaten by cops, and their all Americans fighting Americans. Poverty and injustice were powerful issues even then.

Harry paused for a moment to let the image sink in. Then he said, in a low, almost comforting voice, “I asked him, ‘Martin, if the nation is a house afire, what should we do?’ And he answered, ’We must be the firemen.’”

Today, Americans are still in conflict with Americans. We are still a house afire. And, if we are to recover at all, some of us have to be the firemen. Someone has to enter the fray to protect those at risk. Someone has to assess the situations and make judgment calls. To do that, one must first have grounding in the basics of firefighting. In this environment, it means having a strong sense of values; a firm commitment to see the causes of the fires, understand what can be saved and what must be allowed to burn. It means having an idea of what can be ignored now so it can be resurrected later. And it means identifying the arsonists, calling them out and bringing them to account.

You may not have been around for the 1968 Olympics but Harry was. He spoke about them in his closing comments, as a message to the African American students.

In that year, the US was considered a shoo in for gold in the track and field relay race. Four women racers, all African American, had set records all over the world in the year leading up to the event. No other team was even close. Harry made a point to watch on television.

The gun sounds, they’re off. As expected the American takes the lead. As she approaches the second runner for the hand-off, a miscue takes place, a stumble, it’s not quite clear. Grabbing the baton but now behind, the second woman races to catch up. They’re still behind as the baton passes to the third member, then the fourth. The long and short of it, there is no gold medal this day. No gold, not even a bronze. All because the runner failed to pass the baton.

The room is quiet as Harry scans the audience, his eyes coming to rest on the students.

“ I have thought about that day many times since. I replay it in my mind from start to finish, and the outcome is always the same. But I see it in a different way today. I see it as a metaphor of our struggle. I see it as one of our failings as leaders in the fight for civil right, and human rights for all people.

“In all the time we spent marching, fighting for freedom and human rights, some of us going off to jail. In all the time we spent to earn the right for you to attend this university, to take degrees and earn the opportunities for jobs and brighter futures, in all this we forgot one thing. We forgot to pass the baton to you.

“So, when a Supreme Court steals the election and gives the presidency to the wrong man, where were you?

“When it is decided that corporations can replace democracy, where were you?”

As he spoke to his students, I could not help but internalize his questions and take them to heart. I raised two sons, and I thought I had done well. But these are heady times, where people cannot remain quiet. Yet they are, and so was I. I regret that.

I tell you this for two reasons.

First, to let you know that I am taking my place in line. I am stepping up to fix what’s wrong - to shine a light on the arsonists and demand an accounting.

Second, to make you aware in a formal way that I am passing the baton to you.

If you think that people working long hours, or limited hours, to support themselves and their families with the help of supplemental nutrition programs, is a disgrace upon the nation, take up a baton

If you think that children should not be left starving, with their only meal the one they get in the school cafeteria, take up a baton and speak out for them

If you think that the laws that say corporations are people are wrong, grab a microphone and speak out to change the system as only you can

If you believe that college students should not be saddled with debt in order to pay for their education, then organize, and march

The list could go on and on:

From wars that benefit the sword makers at the expense of the traumatized, the maimed and the dead -- and families on both sides of the unjustified conflicts, call your congressman and make sure the vets get paid, that their families get survivor benefits, that the VA get better at caring - and curing.

To global warming, fracking, unwarranted surveillance and more

My friends, it is time for you to join me to take up one or more challenges. What you attend to may not be what I attend to but there’s plenty of things that need fixing, so let’s get our teams together NOW, so 2014 lives large in our memories as the year it all began -- for us.

Thanks,

Joe Malgeri

PS: What do children eat during school breaks, like Christmas and Easter? I don't have an answer but I know it's an issue. David Morton wrote about it in a post at Chattanooga's www.nooga.com 

http://www.nooga.com/164789/the-holiday-gap-students-on-free-or-reduced-meal-plans/