In advance of Indigenous Peoples Day (formerly known as Genocidal Maniac Day, observed in New England this year on Monday, October 9) I am reposting a cartoon from my inbox.
Hat tip to Judy Robbins for sharing this succinct and truthful cartoon about the stages of colonialism. It was created by Zig Zag / warriorpublications.wordpress.com / Nov 3, 2014 (and also shared via filmsforaction.org and Transcend Media Service).
I'll be celebrating Indigenous Peoples Day this year by canvassing against the KKK in locations where their flyers have been distributed recently in central Maine. This is one way I can use my white privilege, and I'm a little scared but also looking forward to it.
Going door to door in the whitest state in the nation -- one roiling with indignation over football players protesting racial injustice at the hands of police -- is likely to be an unforgettable experience.
I'll be writing here about what I learn from this experience.
One of the few things we can be thankful for about the Mandalay Bay massacre is that few if any children were slaughtered (unliked the Wounded Knee massacre). As the Las Vegas attack took place on outdoor concertgoers at 11pm, the innocent victims were mostly -- if not all -- adults.
But how innocent are any of us adults in this nation of violence we have built?
We built it on the bloodied soil we took violently from Native people living there when white people arrived.
We built it on the bloodied soil of enslaved Africans forced to labor or die.
We built it on the bloodied soil of every country we've bombed, invaded or occupied since and right up to the present day.
We keep building it on the stolen childhood of boys and girls glued to screens where they pretend to murder people to "win" their games.
My unpopular view: if you're not actively part of the solution, you're part of the problem of violence breeding violence.
Those who can't bring themselves to oppose the U.S. wars on brown people around the planet (because "terrorism" right?) could work for gun control here on the homefront.
