Sunday, June 22, 2008

Lilla Watson

I heard this quote for the first time tonight and it totally blew me away:

"If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is tied up with mine, then let us work together."
Lilla Watson, Aboriginal activist

I feel like that's it exactly.

The physical oppression of the coffee grower in Latin America it tied up with the mental colonization of the American mind that rushes to fuel up on $4 coffee without questioning where it came from nor why we have to be so amped up everyday.

The prisoner at Guantanamo is shackled by security forces but he is also tied to the shackles in our mind that fear to question and fear to throw our bodies against the machine that produces such horror.

So often we think of domination and oppression as out there, over there, other, without realizing, seeing, or feeling that its mirror image exists inside our own heads constraining what we think, feel, and do. I definitely DO NOT mean this in a postmodern, new age, The Secret, we-create our-own-reality-through-our-thoughts kind of way. What I'm saying is that in the first world, our bodies and minds are not as free as we think they are. We are often unable to see the chains that bind and limit us because we have internalized them and normalized them. But I think we feel the yearning for liberation pretty regularly.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Nice write .. good thought - I question alot and don't question enough at the same time , but - there is always truth and always question motive starting own is nice for me to say -nicer when remembered .Linnear thinking is not so good.