The peace of the Lamb with the Lion (Oh say, can you see?)

There is no peace between the lamb and the lion.

The lion will always feel hunger, and feast, nurture cubs, and prosper on lamb.

This becomes the lion’s nature.

The lion may grow greedy on the ease of his feed.

Wallowing on his back in the sun, him belly full o’ greed.

For the lion, none of this is the slaughter of the lambs.

🎵Them belly full but we HUNgry.

Black people were born into the American caste system hangry! 

White people, on the flip side, were granted freedom to feed themselves, and

Gain capital if they agreed to cooperate – actively or passively -with the system of hate.

Many men did, many were coerced with the promises and benefits and power of whiteness.

Hunger and anger easily fester into animality, hell and hate – none of which leads to liberation. If we were determined to be free, merely mastering the masters’ tools could not be our fate. We have had to craft a culture of resistance… based on love. This is the antithesis of the Greed, Anger and Stupidity that fuels hate. In our resistance, we have forged the ‘strength to love’ ourselves, in spite of the ‘birth of the nation’. Humanists of all hues always find a way.

Early that winter after Emmett Till was executed and his Mississippi killers acquitted, the radical Mrs. Rosa Parks refused to continue to go along with riding Jim Crow in Alabama, and in so doing gave Dr. King his final cue. Down one summer from up north, apparently young Till had made some form of pass at a white woman in a shop in town. He crossed Jim Crow, for which he had to be promptly sacrificed. 

Apparently, Mamie Till had sent out a powerful signal that summer by leaving the casket open for all to view her son’s dehumanized corpse – an honor killing, quite scripted and business as usual by that point in our nation’s still hopeful nascent democracy. Ms. Till resisted. She’d crossed a line by balling her fist, then pointing her accusing finger squarely at Jim Crow – that’s who’d snatched, brutally tortured, mutilated and murdered her boy. The lions had fed. “Dar he,” Till’s uncle, Moses Wright, said standing in court, pointing to the men who’d dragged the boy from his house, never to be seen alive again. They could no longer cooperate with a corrupt and deadly system.

Reading Rosa Parks’ cue, King rallied his congregation, and 

Agitated the local community, and

Called for a boycott, 

Not a storming of the state capital, which still sits just a stone’s throw from his church.

Teach-ins, sit-ins, rallies and marches followed.

They called them rioters-n-things just they do today.

Roaring, shouting, chanting, singing: We! Shall! Overcome (period).

They were met with guns and bayonets on bridges,

At schools, white parents mobbed Black children trying to make their way.

Now, Miss Betsy pays for her kids to go to private schools and ignores the public ones.

We were singing the blues for Mister Charlie.

This blues train was a just stop along long revolutionary tracks that have deep underground roots.

We’re talking ‘bout a revolution!

Bayard Rustin taught Martin Luther King the power and techniques of non-violent civil resistance. By 1959, MLK had assumed the rhetoric and role of Fredrick Douglas, and began

fellowshipping with Dalits while studying how Gandhi-ji had spearheaded a non-violent imperial defeat, which decolonized, yet ultimately, further splintered the sub-continent. Such solidarity still stands between oppressed and progressive peoples everywhere.

King’s call to conscience and action grew…the lambs bellowed out for solidarity.

King’s movement joined hands with people of all races, religions, all faiths, and 

They marched arm-n-arm with the humanists among sinners, senators, students and sanitary workers, and 

Gave the president the language of emancipation, and

Then Dr. King advocated against war,

Just as poor and Black soldiers were being disproportionately deployed to die on the front line.

They say that’s what got him shot-n-killed to death…

A casualty among many.

There are people around the world today singing “

GAS fuels hate!

This is why we can’t wait!

Progressives peacefully demonstrate to affirm our shared belief in humanism,

In spite our CONstitution’s original ill-fate.

Love is the true heart of patriotism.

Peace is what our actions illustrate.

So, get up and sing your blues today because #BLM:

🎵Get up! Stand-up!/Stand-up for your rights!/Get up! stand up!/Don’t give up the fight! [repeat infinitely]