Selma is a Battleship

March 12, 2015.

Too many important anniversaries and news stories have just happened for me to ignore!  Although I sit comfortably in Florida while escaping the cruel winter affecting most of North America, I feel uncomforable to pontificate, and weigh in on these various topics, however, living through last year actually left me with my PHD and the perspective to voice an opinion.

 I am referring to Selma, terrorism, and Ferguson, the Department of Justice, and lastly board games!

Selma -  made me Google the name of the Bridge where 'Bloody Sunday' took place, and I have to admit I was troubled by what I learned about Edmund Winston Pettus.  I had to think back to how in Ontario we renamed towns because of WWII and how we have this strategy to erase and pretend that the past wasn't really what it was.  Amelian Boynton Robinson, the lady beaten unconscious on the Pettus Bridge, on a Sunday, in the Bible Belt (unbelievable irony) attended the funeral of the Sherrif who refused to call in an ambulance, who even suggested, on tape, a disgusting option on how to clean up the problem at the time.  Some think that it is best to erace facts and rewrite textbooks.  Today I happened to catch an interview with John Ridley (the screenplay author "Twelve Years a Slave")  he was very clear in objecting to this trend.  We as a society are missing a teaching moment he said, and it seemed clear to me that he was right - the non-violence movement of the Civil Rights Movements of Dr. Martin Luther King has been missed by a whole generation.  Amelia B. Robinson who is 103 years old just said " Get off my shoulders and do something".   Without a civilized discussion, society cannot progress.  Violence will only lead to a victory for the most violent, it is naive to think that 'right and might' always go hand in hand.  How can young people identify an old problem and continue to press for change if they haven't learned from the past simply because they have not been taught the past and learned from history, how to make change happen?

The religious sanctioning of slavery, as was the reality of Christians in the South, should be a very important topic in every classroom today.  How can religion sanction atrocities?  This is the crisis we face with international terrorist who are defending Religious beliefs, hoping to receive 72 virgins in heaven.  These are important philosophical concepts that must be, in my opinion, out there, discussed in classrooms and institutions, so that the strongest voice does not hijack the topic and end up sanctioning slavery, or the oppression of women, or severing heads, all in the name of religion.   Again - the same concept "I am better than you.  My religion is better than yours. My skin colour is better than yours." You may add your 'betters' but this human frailt,  the belief that "I am Right" is to be taught and fought in schools.  How else could the Fraternity scandal have happened?  These were twenty something year old kids.  How did they not know that times have changes and that it is no longer acceptable to lynch and hang people and use the n word and think this is funny?  Natalie told me that she heard that that some fraternities had parties where they sprinkled cotton balls from the drug store and hired black kids to pick them up, and this was considered funny?  HUH?  Those kids missed something.  Society missed something.  How can you change the homes that these kids grew up in?  John Ridley said - its not what happens behind the glass of a bus - its what is happening right out in the open of daylight, that troubles him.  He is a success, he says because he is a product of change and took advantage of the opportuity to change.

Ferguson?  Would the prejudices continue if Martin Luther King's  non violence Civil Rights Movement be taught in every classroom over the past 20 years? 30 years? forty years?  Selma is 50 years old!!!  Would the white kids, learning about the movement, who choose police work as a career, behave like the people resigning now?  Are we really not wanting the same thing?

Department of Justice.  In my opinion, too little too late, they did not do enough to help black kids in jail.  Obama. He did not do enough to help black kids in jail.  You know how I know?  Cuz Greg, a 65 year old white business man was processed as a black man and was in jail with kids 18 to 30 years old for 10 days,  in Cook county Chicago and Tuscumbia Alabama, and he told me about the injustice he saw first hand.

And my last story is that Board games have become popular again.  Sales are up, and cafes are opening up to play games with people.  And that bring me to Battleship.  Did I mention I was Latvian?  My Dad and I would play battle ship.  He would pull out two sheets of graph paper.  He made  two  10 x 10 squares on his sheet and taught me to make my squares on my peice of paper, and we drew in out our ships, and away we went, playing Battleship!   Fifty years ago, the game probably cost us 2 cents if that!  Hahaha, I just learned that my apple laptop doesn't even have the cent symbol anymore.  And that is how I learned that you don't need a board game to have fun, you just need graph paper! ( and you have to be taught to make a 10x10 square).