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It’s Time to Drop the Bomb!
(Part 2)
By Rufus Jones, Squire to the Oracle
The replies to my suggestion to Boycott Christmas has really stirred up some excitement but a few readers view it as a left-wing (socialist) plot. So ;et me expand my thinking while speaking to the some of comments.
First. I’m just an average American who tries to avoid prejudice, i.e., prejudge. I’m neither a socialist or a communist. I’m a Viet Nam vet with a disability who believes in socialized medicine as practiced by my V.A. doctors.
Second. It’s time that the source of the chaos in government be directly attacked. How many of you stood by when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled by in 2000 that its vote was the only one that counted. ‘We the People’ stood mute and thought, What can I do?
Let me set forth a few examples of what other Americans have done.
I wonder what went through John Brown’s mind when he fought back against tyranny. Hopefully, you remember that he was a believer in the equality of the races, Brown settled (1855) with five of his sons in Kansas to help win the state for freedom. He became "captain" of the colony on the Osawatomie River. The success of the proslavery forces, particularly their sack of Lawrence, aroused Brown, and in order "to cause a restraining fear" in 1856 he, with four of his sons and two other men, savagely murdered five proslavery men living on the banks of the Pottawatomie Creek.
While his deeds were extreme and did not go unpunished, he showed that one individual can have a profound impact when it comes to righting wrongs. If you doubt this consider that one-person army named Mahatma Ghandi.
Ghandi was a lawyer who dedicated his life to helping others. He is attributed with the“modern tradition of non-violent action for change” by the Dalai Lama. He worked towards, and succeeded in changing the Pass Laws in South Africa, which controlled the movements of blacks and others of mixed decent under the apartheid. Ghandi was never awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, although many believe he should have.
Ever heard of Fannie Lou Hamer? Known as the lady who was "sick and tired of being sick and tired," was born October 6, 1917, in Montgomery County, Mississippi. She was the granddaughter of slaves. Her family were sharecroppers - a position not that different from slavery. Hamer had 19 brothers and sisters. She was the youngest of the children.
In 1962, when Hamer was 44 years old, SNCC (Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee) volunteers came to town and held a voter registration meeting. She attended and was surprised to learn that African-Americans actually had a constitutional right to vote. When the SNCC members asked for volunteers to go to the courthouse to register to vote, Hamer was the first to raise her hand. This was a dangerous decision. She later reflected, "The only thing they could do to me was to kill me, and it seemed like they'd been trying to do that a little bit at a time ever since I could remember."1
Second. American history reveals a multitude of examples of people who became courageous in spite of their fears and outrages. They had their own opinion and strong verification of it. Unsung heroes are still many in number in our time, and the past century pictured not all of them in the books of History we have at the moment.
All of this is said to explain that, irrespective of your fear of government spies, the Boycott Christmas effort allows you to remain anonymous. There are no meetings, petitions, marches, sitting in, or rallies. There is no law currently on the books which compels you to go broke at Christmas. This is truly a silent boycott.
Finally, you did nothing when the Congress passed and the President signed the “Patriot Act”. You gave up your rights without a murmur. I wonder what your reaction would have been had they come for your cat or dog.
My question to you is, “What are you going to do grab the attention of wealthy and privileged own government?” I intend to Boycott Christmas.
1. In Mississippi she organized voter registration drives, including the "Freedom Ballot Campaign", a mock election, in 1963, and the "Freedom Summer" initiative in 1964. She was known to the volunteers of Freedom Summer - most of whom were young, white, and from northern states - as a motherly figure who believed that the civil rights effort should be multi-racial in nature.
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