[HCCN] Alice Walker: My heart is breaking

[Judith Robbins]

published today on
  http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11319.shtml


You will have no protection

-- Medgar Evers to Civil Rights Activists in Mississippi, shortly  
before he was assassinated, 12 June, 1963

My heart is breaking; but I do not mind.

For one thing, as soon as I wrote those words I was able to weep.  
Which I had not been able to do since learning of the attack by armed  
Israeli commandos on defenseless peace activists carrying aid to Gaza  
who tried to fend them off using chairs and sticks. I am thankful to  
know what it means to be good; I know that the people of the Freedom  
Flotilla are/were in some cases, some of the best people on earth.  
They have not stood silently by and watched the destruction of  
others, brutally, sustained, without offering themselves, weaponless  
except for their bodies, to the situation. I am thankful to have a  
long history of knowing people like this from my earliest years,  
beginning in my student days of marches and demonstrations: for  
peace, for non-separation among peoples, for justice for Women, for  
People of Color, for Cubans, for Animals, for Indians, and for Her,  
the planet.

I am weeping for the truth of Medgar's statement; so brave and so  
true. I weep for him gunned down in his carport, not far from where I  
would eventually live in Mississippi, with a box of t-shirts in his  
arms that said: "Jim Crow Must Go." Though trained in the United  
States Military under racist treatment one cringes to imagine, he  
remained a peaceful soldier in the army of liberation to the end. I  
weep and will always weep, even through the widest smiles, for the  
beautiful young wife, Myrlie Evers, he left behind, herself still  
strong and focused on the truth of struggle; and for their children,  
who lost their father to a fate they could not possibly, at the time,  
understand. I don't think any of us could imagine during that  
particular phase of the struggle for justice, that we risked losing  
not just our lives, which we were prepared to give, but also our  
children, who we were not.

Nothing protected Medgar, nor will anything protect any of us;  
nothing but our love for ourselves and for others whom we recognize  
unfailingly as also ourselves. Nothing can protect us but our lives.  
How we have lived them; what battles, with love and compassion our  
only shield, we have engaged. And yet, the moment of realizing we are  
truly alone, that in the ultimate crisis of our existence our  
government is not there for us, is one of shock. Especially if we  
have had the illusion of a system behind us to which we truly belong.  
Thankfully I have never had opportunity to have this illusion. And  
so, every peaceful witnessing, every non-violent confrontation has  
been a pure offering. I do not regret this at all.

When I was in Cairo last December to support CODEPINK's efforts to  
carry aid into Gaza I was unfortunately ill with the flu and could  
not offer very much. I lay in bed in the hotel room and listened to  
other activists report on what was happening around the city as Egypt  
refused entry to Gaza to the 1,400 people who had come for the  
accompanying Freedom march. I heard many distressing things, but only  
one made me feel, not exactly envy, but something close; it was that  
the French activists had shown up, en masse, in front of their  
embassy and that their ambassador had come out to talk to them and to  
try to make them comfortable as they set up camp outside the  
building. This small gesture of compassion for his country's  
activists in a strange land touched me profoundly, as I was touched  
decades ago when someone in John Kennedy's White House (maybe the  
cook) sent out cups of hot coffee to our line of freezing student and  
teacher demonstrators as we tried, with our signs and slogans and  
songs, to protect a vulnerable neighbor, Cuba.

Where have the Israelis put our friends? I thought about this all  
night. Those whom they assassinated on the ship and those they  
injured? Is "my" government capable of insisting on respect for their  
dead bodies? Can it demand that those who are injured but alive be  
treated with care? Not only with care, but the tenderness and honor  
they deserve? If it cannot do this, such a simple, decent thing, of  
what use is it to the protection and healing of the planet? I heard a  
spokesman for the United States opine at the United Nations (not an  
exact quote) that the Freedom Flotilla activists should have gone  
through other, more proper, channels, not been confrontational with  
their attempt to bring aid to the distressed. This is almost exactly  
what college administrators advised half a century ago when students  
were trying to bring down apartheid in the South and getting bullets,  
nooses, bombings and burnings for our efforts. I felt embarrassed (to  
the degree one can permit embarrassment by another) to be even  
vaguely represented by this man: a useless voice from the far past.  
One had hoped.

The Israeli spin on the massacre: that the commandos were under  
attack by the peace activists and that the whole thing was like "a  
lynching" of the armed attackers, reminds me of a Redd Foxx joke. I  
loved Redd Foxx, for all his vulgarity. A wife caught her husband in  
bed with another woman, flagrant, in the act, skin to skin. The  
husband said, probably through pants of aroused sexual exertion: All  
right, go ahead and believe your lying eyes! It would be fun, were it  
not tragic, to compare the various ways the Israeli government and  
our media will attempt to blame the victims of this unconscionable  
attack for their own imprisonment, wounds and deaths.

So what to do? Rosa Parks sat down in the front of the bus. Martin  
Luther King followed her act of courage with many of his own, and  
using his ringing, compassionate voice he aroused the people of  
Montgomery, Alabama to commit to a sustained boycott of the bus  
company; a company that refused to allow people of color to sit in  
the front of the bus, even if it was empty. It is time for us, en  
masse, to show up in front of our conscience, and sit down in the  
front of the only bus we have: our very lives.

What would that look like, be like, today, in this situation between  
Palestine and Israel? This "impasse" that has dragged on for decades.  
This "conflict" that would have ended in a week if humanity as a  
whole had acted in defense of justice everywhere on the globe. Which  
maybe we are learning! It would look like the granddaughter of Rosa  
Parks, the grandson of Martin Luther King. It would look like  
spending our money only where we can spend our lives in peace and  
happiness; freely sharing whatever we have with our friends.

It would be to support boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS)  
against Israel to End the Occupation of Gaza and the West Bank and by  
this effort begin to soothe the pain and attend the sorrows of a  
people wrongly treated for generations. This action would also remind  
Israel that we have seen it lose its way and have called to it, often  
with love, and we have not been heard. In fact, we have reached out  
to it only to encounter slander, insult and, too frequently, bodily  
harm.

Disengage, avoid, and withhold support from whatever abuses, degrades  
and humiliates humanity.

This we can do. We the people; who ultimately hold all the power. We  
the people, who must never forget to believe we can win.

We the people.

It has always been about us; as we watch governments come and go. It  
always will be.

Alice Walker is a poet, novelist, feminist and activist whose award- 
winning works have sold over ten million copies.
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