2/26/09

timelessness of refusing capital/boycotts

in light of all of this recent talk about boycotts and divestment from Israel (here at Wesleyan, at U of Rochester, Hampshire, etc),

i had one of those moments, which seems to be happening a lot lately, of feeling like history is so small, just a pinch between two fingers, tiny enough to hold in my hand, like history was just yesterday, like human society and oppression and resistance to oppression has actually changed very little (which for me isn't always a pessimistic thought, but instead is humbling and beautiful because it is completely daunting unless i quell my disbelief and the magnitude of such a weighty realization, am compelled, by the need to maintain meaning in my life, to once again believe in the indescribably sacred HUMANNESS that is actually...eternal.)

in 1895, ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTEEN YEARS AGO,
In The Red Record, a brilliantly constructed essay which clearly exposes the falsity and inconsistency of white justifications of racial violence (more specifically lynch mobs), Ida B. Wells suggests that to end lynch violence, her readers :

3d. Bring to the intelligent consideration of Southern
people the refusal of capital to invest where lawlessness and
mob violence hold sway.

you can tell me that a hundred and fourteen years is actually just a pinch of history, but given the so many things that have changed, i find simoultaneous sorrow (for the realities we feel the need to change) and warmth from the solidarity of a timeless humanness (see above) in the very sameness of this suggestion to today's struggles.

1 comment:

RB said...

this is so interesting to think about time past. i really at my heart think protesting is dead in terms of making "real" change (a phrase that seems very cheapened by obama) but anyway i think boycotting if anything on large scales can bring about shifts.