The Rain Comes Down and We Consider Revolution

January 18, 2010 Martin Luther King Day

The rain comes down in great loud sheets this morning as I stretch on my living room floor. Lady Sparkles watches me from her chosen place near the front door as Martin Luther King’s voice magically flows from the radio and fills the room and my mind. It is his anti-Vietnam War speech.

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, will make violent revolution inevitable.”

King quotes John F. Kennedy’s 1962 prediction. It has become our reality. We exist in the present as our past’s future. Our governments make violent revolution. They pull the triggers and drop the bombs everyday.

Do we not have the strength, the courage, the creativity, the compassion to make choices for peaceful revolution? What does it take? Why is the U.S. Government engaged in murdering people all over the world? The journalist Allan Nairn says that the Obama military machine that spans the world is set on “kill.” Obama is not changing the setting. Why? Why is our vision so obscured? Can we be this stupid?

Now the wind whips huge wet drops in a maelstrom against the houses, roses, cars, earth, everything that exists and the kumquat tree waves its arms crazily scraping against the window as if to crack it open and come inside where it’s safe.

I cannot imagine what it’s like to be an unsafe citizen of Haiti now after the huge quake in the earth and the continuous political aftershocks that are Haiti’s history since 1804 when they were the first black republic to declare their independence. I cannot imagine what it’s like to be a citizen of Afghanistan seeing the U.S. military murdering people. I cannot imagine what it’s like to be a citizen of Iraq and watch the destruction of civilization, familiy and friends. I cannot imagine what it's like to be a citizen anywhere in the world where a foreign country is occupying my land.

I am a citizen of the world and my U.S. government is occupying Iraq, Afghanistan, and indirectly Gaza.

I cannot imagine what it will take for my congress people to say no to killing. I cannot imagine what it will take for all of us, citizens of the U.S., to say no to killing.

Is the first step to acknowledge that corporations control our government? Or, is the first step to acknowledge that all individuals have a voice, that we must use it, and we must say no to killing?

I look out at the storm and consider that perhaps it doesn't matter what's first. Just that we take a determined step toward peaceful revolution. And keep stepping.