What Martin Luther King Told Me When I Said His Dream Had Come True

I'm taking a break from writing from the list of prompts today.  I felt I had to at least attempt to write about something very different.

Today I attended a conference that was part of a series of events in Newcastle commemorating the occasion in 1967 when Doctor Martin Luther King was invited to the city to receive an honorary doctorate from Newcastle University.  While in the United Kingdom Doctor King received only one such honour and here in Newcastle we're proud that honouring the great civil rights campaigner is a part of our heritage.  Geordies have historically been proud to be a welcoming people and I am glad to live here.  Newcastle is also an official City of Sanctuary and this year is known as Freedom City.  There are racists here too of course, various social issues and we've got levels of economic disadvantages that are by no means the worst in Britain but which would be unknown to someone living in Guildford!

I was only able to make the first half of the conference unfortunately.  The second half looked very interesting and included talks about people's experiences both working with refugees and being a refugee.  I wanted to hear them but was getting pretty overwhelmed and anxious and ended up finding a quiet room that I possibly wasn't meant to be finding and hiding on the floor behind some chairs for a while before deciding that even if I did manage to get into the main hall again I wouldn't be able to take in anything that was said.  Sadly, I had to leave.

The main hall was an interesting place to hold the conference.  Because it was the place where Doctor King received his degree.  He made a speech too.  It's not as famous as "I have a dream ..." but it's worth listening to.  Fortunately it's available on YouTube.

He speaks of three major problems affecting people in 1967.

Racism, poverty, and war.

Fifty years later none of those problems have been solved.  Fifty years later there is still a need for people like MLK to speak out and act for justice.  Some of the battles today are different.  Some remain the same.  Some things have improved.  Unfortunately others have not.

During the first talk today I scribbled a few notes and thoughts.  They've formed the basis for a bit of free writing this afternoon.  I scrapped my first attempt because I could see it wouldn't work.  The second is entirely unpolished.  The form is not as I wanted but the idea is.  Perhaps one day I will return to it and change the form.

I want too to write about the churches one day.  About their involvement in civil rights both as a positive force and a negative one.  Many of the churches who fought for equality on racial grounds are the very same churches who fight against equality on grounds of sexuality and who preach against transgender rights too.  They say they're being Biblical.  They said the same in 1967 too even though there were Christians of that day telling them they were being very unbiblical, and some who even talked about all black people being cursed.  I could give you chapter and verse for that curse - at least, that's how they interpret it.  It's a sad thing too that so many churches are still totally segregated both in the UK and here in the UK.  There are white churches and black churches.  And never shall they meet together unless Songs of Praise is being filmed.  This segregation is rooted in a history of racism and oppression.  Jesus wept.

If you want to know more about the Freedom City events the website is http://freedomcity2017.com/


Free writing attempt number one:

They said we stand on the shoulders of giants.
They were wrong.
Today I caught a glimpse of a giant
Caught hold of his coat and asked him to lift me up.
He refused to carry me.
Told me to stand on my own feet, find my own strength
And become my own giant.

Today I walked in the footsteps of a hero
Until he turned to face me, held out his hand,
And pushed me away with his wisdom,
Saying "You see where the tracks in the sand finish?
That's the end of my journey,
Make it the beginning of your own."

Free writing attempt number two:

I bowed before the dreamer.
Fell prostrate before the prophet.
In ignorance I spoke:
"When you spoke out your dream
The whole world listened.
When you spoke out your vision
The whole world changed.
For justice you were matyred
But your dream came true.
In death was your victory.
In suffering you won."

He answered.  "Did I?
How can you bear to tell me such lies?
You think because we had a black president everything is renewed?
You think just because there are black men scattered
Irregularly in government that justice is borne out in the lives of all?
You think legislation has triumphed over hatred?
Whatever gave you those ideas?  Who gave such notions to you?
Just look around you again.
Look at my country, look at what we've become.
How can you say that I've won when I fought
For racial integration in the schools of America
And fifty years on they're more segregated than I ever dreamed?
How can you say the black man lives in the land of free
When our prisons are filled with my brothers
And our streets are unsafe.  When my people
Are stopped, searched, Tasered, brutalised and killed
By the government funded police forces?
How can you say we're all equal now
When my brothers live in greater poverty in a divide
That keeps on growing in ever despairing circles,
When many of us can't gain employment from the white bosses
And those of us who do end up still bottom of the pile
Working lives, underpaid and hungry in fast food restaurants?
How can you tell me my dream came true
When black and white still can't meet together in a house of God
And when the Ku Klux Klan still burns it's anti-Christian crosses
In hatred and its membership roll continues to blossom?
How dare you point to one black President and say I won
When he's gone, and racism rules in our nation again,
When every freedom that one black man achieved for us
May be wiped away as quickly as the tears that fall from my eyes today?
How can you say we all walk hand in hand when the normal response
To learning that the life of a black man matters
Is to say that all lives matter?  As if all lives are the same.
As if there is no privileged place for those of lighter skin.
And when my brothers and sisters continue to die young
And live their shortened years deprived of basic rights
You cannot tell me I no longer need to dream that dream."

I closed my ears and shook my head.
Placed my hand over his mouth.
I did not wish to listen to such words
When it was easier to rest in satisfaction
Easier to congratulate the fighters of the past
And turn my back on the fight of the present.
Anyway, that was his country not mine.
So what did it matter to me?
Why care if their justice has been trumped?

He threw my hand off, stared at me in anger.
"If you won't consider my nation, look at yours.
You think everything is perfect?  You damned fool.
Race relations acts, equality acts, every kind of act?
Do you fancifully fantasise that a mere piece of paper
Can change a million hearts?  You couldn't be more wrong.
See too how those acts are rarely enforced and impermanent.
They give out Human Rights and then take them away.
Look to the broken windows of the black family
On your own estate, how they were forced to flee.
Look to the insults you've seen on the street.
Take note for once and take action for the abused.
See how the Nazis gather even at your own freeom Monument
Under other names but full of the same hate.
Remember how many people clicked that they liked the
Fascists and racists of Britain First
Shared their ravings, spread the word at exponential speed.
See how your own government promises justice
And then turns away from it as soon as they can.
How the welcome for refugees becomes a slammed door.
Remember how many millions still buy papers
Unashamed, boasting of the racist lies on the cover.
See how many of my brothers are in your own prisons,
How many are deprived in so called freedom.
If that isn't enough to convince you, consider this:
See how many black people you can see here today.

And I looked.  He was right.
Fifty years before we had honoured him.
He'd stood on that same spot and we said we loved him.
Proclaimed him Doctor Martin Luther King.
I looked at the walls, the portraits staring down at the dreamer
I saw the ten white men in their robes.
And the one white women.
I looked too and I saw more women,
The inspiring women of the North East
Among their faces I tried to find some colour
A women I could point to as a sign of the Doctor's victory.
There was none to be found in those portraits of whitewashed inspiration.
Doctor Martin Luther King.
Alone of his colour.
As alone now as he ever was.

I bowed once more before the dreamer.
In revealed anguish I wept.
Asked what I could do.
He lifted me up, embraced me tightly
Saying "Be a brother to my brother,
A sister to my sisters."
Then he turned to the white walls and shouted.

"I still have a dream.
We shall overcome.
Some day."

Don't You Dare Sing That Song Young Woman. God Hates Ecology.

Here's the next prompt from the daily list I've been writing from.

41. What You Don’t Know: Write about a secret you’ve kept from someone else or how you feel when you know someone is keeping a secret from you.

Nope!  I'm not doing that one.  Not today.  If there's anyone else who doesn't want to write from that prompt today we could get together.  We could form a new Rebel Alliance and defeat the Empire of legalism.

One of the early exercises in a book I have is to write something solely in commands, imperatives.  I can't remember what else it says but the gist of it has stayed in my head.  This morning the exercise came back to me and with it a fragment of a song I used to sing as a child.

I had an American book of folk protest songs.  Some were political, others environmental.  Unfortunately I no longer have the book.  In that book I learned names like Pete Seeger, Malvina Reynolds, Woody Guthrie, and Joan Baez.   Later I heard them sing too, on old records.  I bought a second American book of folk protest songs too which I still own, put together by Pete Seeger.  It was there I learned L'Internationale and used to sing it with dreadful pronunciation in several languages.

The first book contained a song by Malvina Reynolds, written in 1970.  Much of it was written as imperative commands encouraging listeners to behave in a more environmentally friendly manner.  It's at least twenty-five years since I last sang the song but could still remember a few lines and, part way through writing, I wanted to incorporate them into this post.  I have to admit I'll never obey the first line of the song.

I could only find one mention of the song online.  Nancy Schimmel, the daughter of Malvina Reynolds, kept a blog for a while devoted to her life and work.  The words to the song are in one post.  I find that Nancy wrote it, not Malvina.  I'll link to the post at the bottom of this one.  Glad to have found it.  There's a link to a site containing lyrics to all of Malvina's songs.  And there are links there to some amazing resources.  Among them is a site with pdf files of Broadside which was a "magazine of topical songs."  It's a brilliant treasure trove and I think if I allowed myself I could spend many days exploring it and taking up my own guitar again, learning more of the songs of the 1960s folk revival.  Here, for instance is issue #20 which contains perhaps the most famous song by Malvina Reynolds, Little Boxes.  The issue begins with Bob Dylan's Masters of War.  There's some talking blues too and an inspiring version of Wayfaring Stranger. 

On to my writing.  Written freely with just a pause to stick those lyrics in.  It's not all written as imperative commands.  There are two characters in this.  Only one would force obedience and conformity.

Pete Seeger's banjo.  Image taken from here.

Don't you dare sing that song again.
Put down your guitar at once.
Don't make me block my ears.
Don't you dare make me come over there and block your mouth.
Stop it!  Stop it now!
Throw away that wretched book.
Close your eyes.
Don't look at the cover, at the horrible face of that old folk singer.
Remove it from my sight.
Traitor to your race, close it again.
Close it now you hear or you won't be welcome here again.
Turn back to the truth of religion.
Repent of listening to the ideas they've brainwashed with you.
Preach it like you used to.
Tell the world of the evils of folk.
Teach about the evil words and deeds of Woody Guthrie.
Make placards to protest when the heirs of Pete Seeger come to town.
I'm pleading with you, return to truth.
Don't make me cry please.
Stop turning the pages.
Stop searching for that song.
And paint out that false slogan you've painted on your guitar.
Repaint the Bible verse that you used to be proud to carry with you.
Try not to hate your mother so much.
Listen to her when she tells you what's good for you.
PUT DOWN THAT PLECTRUM AT ONCE YOUNG LADY!
Come back please.
Draw back from the precarious ledge you're standing on.
Remove yourself from Satan's clutches.
Destroy his works, his words, his lies.
Stamp out ecology.  Let Jesus save the world as he promised.
Throw out the disgusting theory of, I can hardly say it, climate change.
Rebuke the teachers of evolution.
Put yourself in sackcloth and ashes and
Destroy any notion that there is freedom in the cesspit of the world.
Young lady, put it down or you'll not be welcome under my roof.
Don't make me hate what you've become.
Remember The Bible.
Remember the way God touched you in the camp.
Don't try to tell me that Pastor Eric touched you too.
Don't you tell such despicable untruths about that lovely man.
Remember how you used to say that Jesus was your force field.
Remember how cute we said you were.
Think about how God was raising you up into a beautiful woman.

LISTEN TO ME.  Please.

 

In tears, I strummed the first chord.
Through the noise of my sobbing I began to sing.

Don’t use a tissue, sniff instead,

Don’t use a napkin, use a piece of bread,

Don’t flush the toilet every time you pee,

Do your bit for ecology.

Stop it.  Stop it.  For God's sake stop it.
Oh Jesus forgive me for my blasphemy.
Oh Jesus forgive me for raising a child of the devil.
Have mercy on her, she doesn't know what she's doing.
Help me to love her, a sinner.
Help me to hate her sin, her environmentalism.
Jesus Guide me.
Jesus show me your plan.
Help me to be strong when I cast her out as you command.
Never let me waver.

Get out of my house child.
Don't come back until you've learned submission to The Bible.
Watch me and see how much you've hurt me.
No, don't take the book with you.
Don't take the guitar either.
Leave them here so I can burn them.
Get out you socialist!


I left.  A friend took me in.
She lent me a guitar.  She had the same book as me.
She had many books.
A warm bed too and the best hot chocolate.
Mum called hot chocolate decadent,
A distraction from the work of the Kingdom.
My friend called it a taste of heaven.

I sang with my friend.
We smiled.
I cried too about my life.
She called me strong and held me tight.
Then I knew I could persevere, learn true freedom.

And then, the following Saturday, I sang that song again.
On the steps of the city hall I sang.
I sang of freedom too, of hope.
I sang of the power we have to change our world.
The people cheered.

Except for a few who stood where I once stood.
They brought placards.  Bigger than ours.

Repent!
Hate socialism!
Hate environmentalism!
Turn from the lies of science!
Love the sinner, hate the sin!

They looked so angry, so much sadness in their eyes.
They looked lost.
I had once been as lost as them,
Fundamentalists, terrified in case they ever wavered.

And there among them, my mother.
She too, one of the angry, the lost.
I caught her eye as I led my songs.
No pride there.
Just a mix of regret and hate.

I turned away from her
Into the embrace of freedom
And the warmth of inclusive love.

I prayed for her too that one day she might learn the truth.
It was for that same freedom Christ came
And for love Jesus walked among us.


As promised, here's that blog post with the lyrics of the song.

If you're wondering.  I bought some 2017 calendars very cheaply in a Christian bookshop in Bolton.  I plan one day to wreck them for my own purposes.  One page of one is a simple image and the words "Jesus is my force field."  Really.  Honest.  It does say that.  Photographic proof will be provided on request.

The Future Of The NHS. Tonight It Is More Important Than A Cup of Tea

The next prompt in the list at thinkwritten is this:

39. Coffee & Tea: Surely you drink one or the other or know someone who does- write about it!

Ooh, I could really use a cup of tea right now.  Okay, okay, a mug of tea.  Don't you start getting pedantic on me or I won't bother making you one.  It's true.  Some tea would be a suitably calming addition to this moment.  I'm not getting up and putting the kettle on though.  Swore I wouldn't.  Not until I'd written about my drug of choice.  Tea.

I love my tea.  My kitchen would testify to this fact if my kitchen had the ability to stand up in court and speak.  Instead I'll just say that my wife would testify.  My child would testify.  And anyone who knows me well would testify too.  If the Tory government introduced a law making it illegal to dislike tea and I was charged as an anti-tea agitator I could easily win my case against the Crown.  Just you try it Teresa May.  I dare you!  On second thoughts don't.  Please don't.  Not only would it be a very stupid law, even more stupid than selling off parts of the National Health Service to private companies, there are those around me who don't like the taste of tea.  I may think them strange but I pass no moral judgement on these creatures who have been known to call my drinking habit disgusting.

And if you are going to flog off the NHS Mrs May, why throw it in the path of companies from the USA?  That's hardly going to save any money is it?  What are you thinking woman!  Have you seen how much private companies charge for health care over there?  Have you seen how worried poor people and disabled people currently are at the changes the new regime there is trying to introduce?  Let's be thankful for what we have in the UK.  And let's properly fund the NHS.  I know it's expensive but over all it's much cheaper than those Americans have to pay.  Let's give it an eight percent rise in funding each year to cope with the demands of an ageing population and the growth in medical technology.

The people of Britain are worth it.  Heck, half of us voted to leave the EU and one of the major arguments for leaving was the amount of money that would (supposedly) be saved by leaving and channeled straight into health care.  Our foreign secretary, master of the undiplomatic gaffe but you can get away with anything in politics with a bad haircut, stood in front of a big bus didn't he?  Were we lied to?  Make your own mind up.

Tea.  I'm meant to be writing about my beloved tea, not about my beloved NHS.  My family do not have a lot of money.  Without the NHS we would be struggling to pay for our health care.  As part of my necessary treatment for different issues I am prescribed various medications.  One of them costs over a pound a tablet.  I wish it didn't and I wish cheaper medicine helped me like this one does.  I've tried most of them.  They don't.  We'd find it hard to pay for that.  Another medicine I have to take would cost me well over three-hundred pounds for a private prescription every twelve weeks.  I'd love to cost the NHS nothing at all.  I really would.  But unfortunately I need these things.

Without the NHS - or other national government appointed "free at the point of delivery" health care what would we have done when my mother was ill with cancer? Four times.  What would have happened for my dad when he got ill?  What would happen to you, to your friends and family if there was no NHS and you weren't rich enough to pay for private care?  Sometimes I'm not sure if those currently in power in our country think about such questions enough.  We have a cabinet of privileged millionaires.  Without an NHS they don't personally suffer.  We just have to hope that they can't cope with the pain of needlessly allowing others to suffer.  We have to hope they might decide that giving someone a hip operation before they're in a wheelchair and in excruciating pain (moderate pain isn't enough to get you help under recent proposals) is a better use of cash than renewing the weapons of mass destruction in our arsenal - weapons we signed international treaties against.

At the weekend there was a protest in Newcastle.  A thousand people marched.  Most stayed around for at least part of a rally at which ten people gave short speeches and Bethany Elen Coyle sang songs.  She's sick.  I heard that a young person who joined the rally said so.  As a compliment of course.  We marched and rallied about the NHS, in particular about the NHS Sustainability and Transformation Plans that are proposed by our government.  The government says the STPs will revitalise the NHS.  NHS workers, users, and campaigners say that the opposite is the case and the NHS will be further weakened, if not walked further down a path to a terrible destruction.  It's a cost cutting exercise.  £22 billion cut by 2020.

Yes.  Cut.  None of that £350 million a week extra.  Roughly £350 million a week less.  I wonder how many of those voting for Brexit voted that way to stand for our NHS.  I wonder how many of them now stand with those campaigning.  And I wonder, as others have, how to get them involved more in the campaigns.  I think in order to do that the campaigning has to be unabashedly positive.  It must stand FOR the NHS rather than against people.  And I do know I've moaned about people and parties here.  If the Labour party or the Lib Dems were pushing the same policies I'd moan about them too.  Like it or not, no change will ever come by emailing Jeremy Corbyn.  At least not until the next General Election, should he win it.

The people marching and rallying were mainly the white liberal elite.  Yet the future of the NHS affects every one of us.  I looked out at the people listening to speeches.  After the march I decided for reasons unknown to myself not to follow the marchers but to climb the steps at Grey's Monument and stand nearer the speakers.  From there I could see everyone and I took pictures.  I felt proud to be among those gathered, honoured to be in a city where so many people come and stand for a cause.

And yet:  I have to wonder.  Almost everyone in that crowd was white.  Where were the faces of people of colour?  That's not a criticism.  It's just a wondering why those communities among us have not been reached with the message and how come they have not been galvanised into action.  The NHS belongs to them too.  I wonder too what the proportion was of Guardian readers to readers of The Sun.  Just how white middle-class liberal elite was that crowd of good people?  Because everyone is affected by STPs and cuts.  Everyone.  Somehow a campaign must be inclusive if it is to be truly powerful.

After the rally I attended a public meeting where questions like those above were asked.  The meeting was about one thing only:  Where do we go from here to build the campaign for the sake of the NHS and all of us who benefit from it?  One thousand people marched.  Twenty attended that meeting.  I was one and I had only gone to listen and learn and my head was wrecked by that stage so I left early.  Yeah, autism makes it costly for me to attend rallies.  Twenty.  Out of a thousand.  In the end it's easy to walk through the streets in a crowd on a dry Saturday lunchtime.  It's harder to do more.

I was there but I don't say that out of pride.  It's the first time in a long while I've been one of the twenty.  I cannot yet hold up my hands and say I am anything like the activist I want to be.  I fall short.  Far short.  And this year I'd like to find some ways to fall less short.  To be of use in some way beyond being a number on a street every now and again.

As for the NHS.  I believe together we can save her.  Before me I have a piece of paper handed to me before the march.  It was printed by a campaigning group called Keep Our NHS Public.  They tell me of some things I can do.  You could do them too.  Or the first of them at least.  The sheet says this:

Find out what's happening locally and join a local group.  See the KONP website, www.keepournhspublic.com

There's also a Facebook page and group should you wish to like one and join the other.  There are also regional groups and pages.   That's easy.  I've just done that thing.

The KONP are pressing for (from the paper again)

• Full funding of the NHS - to at least EU average levels.  We spend 75% of the EU average per head on healthcare.  How can we expect our NHS to be the best in the world if it's not properly funded?
• No changes to be made without sound evidence being gathered and consent obtained from both medical professionals and the patients.
• Support for the NHS Bill to restore the NHS.  That's due to get its second reading in a couple of weeks.

The STP plans are very worrying and most of us don't know anything whatsoever about them.  I didn't know either.  This is not about fighting a political party.  It's not about chanting that Jeremy Hunt has got to go, and just what would be the point of him going?  It's not about breaking down Teresa May.  No.  It's about fighting to regain a health service that's the envy of the world.  While that entails fighting government policies and by necessity involves taking the debate to politicians the fight must be positive not negative.

None of this is meant to make you feel bad for not acting.  Or feel good for acting.  It's not meant to evoke guilt or pride in me either.  I am though forced again to ask myself questions.  What can I do?  A very serious question because with my mental health being so variable I have to be careful not to head down laudable paths that will reduce me to a blubbering lump of no use to anyone.  Then there's that other question.  Where can I do?  Should I be fighting for the NHS or for other issues?  Instead or in addition.

I do not know.  I mean to find out.

This was meant to be a post about tea.  Perhaps that will get written tomorrow.  It's late now.  Too late for my promised drink.  I didn't mean to splurge out something heartfelt about the NHS.  I didn't mean to turn political on you after recent posts about teddy bear wars, jigsaw puzzles and a woman condemned as a witch.  Sometimes the free writing goes where it goes and I just follow.  Perhaps tonight it's gone in a direction worth travelling.

Fun fact:  www.keepournhspublic.com is caught by the Open Office spell checker.  As an alternative it suggests pro-Republican.


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