Posts Tagged ‘Alice Walker’
Alice Walker — Why I’m sailing to Gaza
Why am I going on the Freedom Flotilla II to Gaza? I ask myself this, even though the answer is: What else would I do? I am in my sixty-seventh year, having lived already a long and fruitful life, one with which I am content.
It seems to me that during this period of eldering it is good to reap the harvest of one’s understanding of what is important, and to share this, especially with the young. How are they to learn, otherwise?
Our boat, The Audacity of Hope, will be carrying letters to the people of Gaza. Letters expressing solidarity and love. That is all its cargo will consist of. If the Israeli military attacks us, it will be as if they attacked the mailman. This should go down hilariously in the annals of history. But if they insist on attacking us, wounding us, even murdering us, as they did some of the activists in the last flotilla, Freedom Flotilla I, what is to be done?
There is a scene in the movie “Gandhi” that is very moving to me: it is when the unarmed Indian protesters line up to confront the armed forces of the British Empire. The soldiers beat them unmercifully, but the Indians, their broken and dead lifted tenderly out of the fray, keep coming.
Alongside this image of brave followers of Gandhi there is for me an awareness of paying off a debt to the Jewish civil rights activists who faced death to come to the side of black people in the South in our time of need. I am especially indebted to Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman who heard our calls for help – our government then as now glacially slow in providing protection to non-violent protestors-and came to stand with us.
They got as far as the truncheons and bullets of a few “good ol’ boys’” of Neshoba County, Mississippi and were beaten and shot to death along with James Cheney, a young black man of formidable courage who died with them. So, even though our boat will be called The Audacity of Hope, it will fly the Goodman, Cheney, Schwerner flag in my own heart.
Bravo, Sister Walker. Glad to see you have the courage of your convictions.
I dearly hope you and your comrades-in-peace survive confrontation with an Israeli government that differs little in ideology and practice from the army of bigots I once faced less than 50 miles from the White House. Because a Black friend and I dared to sit at a lunch counter and order soft drinks side-by-side.
You face a greater danger, I guess. At that time, in the beginning of my involvement in American civil rights struggles, racist mobs and their cohorts in uniform were only killing a few of those who challenged their evil. I fear the Israeli government truly doesn’t care about how many they maim and kill to defend the arrogance of ethnic superiority and their quest for lebensraum.
