Long ago Fredrick Douglass a runaway “slave. wrote . . . “power concedes nothing without struggle. The struggle may be moral or it may be physical or it may be moral and physical but struggle it must be. Power concedes nothing without struggle, it never has and it never will.”
As a young man I looked at death square in the face more than once and laughed, indeed scoffed- it held no sway over my sight or soul. Issues of truth and justice have a way of separating the talkers from those who march, perhaps in “silence,” but march nonetheless.
Recently I wrote there is no greater crime than to steal the smile from a child’s face- that is unless you are the accomplice who sits back and watches in silence as her joy is overcome with despair and unforgivable loss and does nothing about it.
It is simply not enough to see evil and hatred and argue over its shape. It exists. It occupies the seats of power and halls of “justice.” It is also no stranger to those that claim the inheritance of freedom but commit mayhem in their empty pursuit of it. It is the well defined battle of our time. Who can say today with honesty “I did not know?”
For the passive among us that think that its enough to identify those people, places and things that would steal our breathe and wish it away, I wish you luck. For those among us that find romance in the grand empty wander in search of a dream to dream while engulfed all the while by a deadly nightmare I wish you well. Life is all too short. There are those who take and those who give- its that simple. Take your pick.
caged but undaunted 