The Civil Rights And Peace Movement

November 18, 2008

I am long overdue to begin writing about my experiences in what is quickly becoming the civil rights and peace movement of the 21st century. For me, the journey to my present involvement in activism was founded early in life.

The day that we here in the United States elected Barack Obama to be our first African American president was a day that I had pondered since my youth. I can still remember looking at the faces of our then former presidents and asking my mom why we had not had a black president. She told me that no one had tried to run for president who was black and I told her that they should. Now, over 20 years later, we have him! God bless America!

In the light of our country’s perceived acceptance of diversity, it is a true wonder that, in the very same election which gave us our first African American president, we here in California elected to remove the rights of homosexuals to marry. This is the first time in history that the people have voted to remove rights that had already been granted. This, for me, was the beginning of my journey as a peaceful dissenter, not because I care to ever be married to a man or a woman, but because I saw the civil rights that every American holds dear being disregarded for the sake of religious fervor and over an issue of the mere semantics of using the word “marriage” to describe the civil union between people of the same sex.

I originally became involved in rallies and protests against prop 8 because, one day when I was walking home from school, I saw protesters on the corner near my house and wanted to join them because I believed in their cause. I put my backpack down in my house, got something to eat and went back out to join them, but they had left by that time. Then, I searched on the internet to see if I could get hooked up with individuals who were protesting this prop that way. I went to the next rally and this is also when I became involved in peace rallies, something which I had longed to do since the very beginning of the war but lacked the knowledge of where to go to protest. As I became more involved in both the peace movement and the civil rights movement, I realized the potential magnitude of citizens united peacefully for a cause. I had often theorized about these things, but the reality of it all, in the midst of a multitude of peaceful protesters, was far greater than anything I had ever imagined!

I began to read things about Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. and I realized that peace is truly more powerful than war and violence. As the wisdom in Proverbs 25:21-22 goes, “If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink; for so you will heap coals of fire on his head, and the Lord will reward you.” If you return peace to those who give you violence, they are the ones who will bear the hot coals of shame upon their heads. This is what Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Jesus all taught and practiced and it is just as powerful today! I realized that the power behind the civil rights movement of the 60’s was in those multitudes that protested peacefully, not in the few who protested violently.

Another great strength of the movements during the 60’s was the strength of the youth. When it comes down to it, the youth of this country will have to live with the decisions of their elders for a lot longer than their elders will and so we should be the backbone of the movement, just as was the case in the 60’s. When I look around, I do see our youth involved some, but there are so many who are just content to live their lives and hope that other people make the right decisions and that other people fight for their rights. That has to end.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT:
Are we all so concerned with our immediate future that we refuse to stand up for our own rights? Are we only concerned with our own rights? Don’t we realize that if people are allowed to take away one right from one group, whether we agree with that decision or not, that the rescinding of rights might not stop there? Who’s rights are next? Do you have to be a gay person interested in marrying someone to protest the passing of prop 8? Would you have had to have been an African American during the 60’s to protest for African American rights? We are all in this together and as such, we cannot sit back and ignore this. It may be gays today, but tomorrow or next election, it could be any other minority. Minorities need the majority to help and not be silent, not on the basis of beliefs, but on the basis of being fellow human beings who also bleed red!!!