Something extraordinary is happening at this time, while you are alive. This is it. This is not a movie or a chapter in a book or a sheaf of photos that invoke nostalgia. This is now. It is not the 60’s with Marvin Gaye singing to us. This is not the 70’s with photos of Vietnam. This is not the 80’s with the unfolding of the Names Quilt. This is now. And though you may think the difference is that you are alive, there are other differences that mark this time as extraordinary.
With the events of April 28, 2012 how can it be denied that change is bubbling up in numbers that cannot be ignored. It is global, not only geographically but across the population, across issues, across borders. My preference is to award this to social media but that is a shallow interpretation. A more accurate account may be that a tribe of souls incarnated in the mid-fifties to usher in this new set of tools for us to unite, find one another, compare, realize our similarities and see clearly that those who hold power are a minority that travels dark alleys.
My observations all come from looking at the tactics. The groundswell of conversations have gotten so big that a whole new language is emerging that demonstrates the equality that is unfolding. The diversity of the issues and locations is eliminating one charismatic leader; both in need and effect. Possibly soon we won’t care so much who said it but, rather, what did it mean. Just as art survives the artist, truth must survive the speaker. Content will be tested by its longevity. Maybe it will collect like a rolling snowball or dilute like a game of telephone; but the truth which survives will have its own special force that is beyond a rarefied elitist set of voters in a Rotunda.
The founders of Wiki trust that given enough time and freedom of access, the truth shakes out. It is a big change, one that offers respect that we have a common intuition for knowing the difference between what sounds right and what sounds insincere, manipulated, even invented. There is something coalescing that has the same chant, tone, cadence; Arab Spring, Occupy, Slutwalk, Women Unite, Travon Martin protests, Keystone; people are finding what binds them in one simple phrase ~ Enough is Enough. (lets wish for ERA and Marriage Equality)
Try as any liberation activist might, to break the bands of convention and call for change, nothing has come close to the realized potential as the disenfranchised finally discovering that what they have in common isn’t blood, isn’t desire, isn’t oxygen but oppression. This is potent, profound, fecund. Stand by me, march with me, push my wheelchair. I don’t care what specific minority you currently represent, fact is you belong to all of the them if you find yourself saying, enough is enough.
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