▲ Political and social life in the United States seems to be entering one of its darkest times. Resistance is deep within the nation, in art and beauty. In a historic textile strike a motto emerged from a song: bread for everyone and roses toowhich could maintain hope today.YouTube photo
“H.
oh a crack, a crack in all. This is how the light comes in”, is a fragment of the song Anthemby Leonard Cohen, and at the dawn of a political and social era that promises to be among the darkest in the modern history of the United States, the fissures are essential to be able to shed some light on this American dusk.
And given the invitation of this last election for the ugliest and most barbaric to come out, an immediate antidote is required. The adults about to take the reins of this country are dedicated to scaring children and harming the most vulnerable. They propose raiding and separating immigrant families, persecuting their political opponents, annulling the basic rights of women and minorities, reducing poor public assistance, privatizing public education, banning some books, reversing regulations and measures to protect public health, the environment, and the list goes on.
An initial antidote, although it cannot immediately cure this infection of evil in American political and social life, is beauty and the invitation to all that is most noble. Therefore, there is nothing more essential and urgent than art at this juncture. It is not the efficient response, nor the most pragmatic nor can it stop bullets and bombs and hate crimes, but it is the instantaneous memory of what has to be and deserves to be defended, what rescues the conscience of the human being, and which is be a human
Studs Terkel, the legendary interviewer, tells how immediately after World War II in the devastation of Germany and Austria, with people leaving the rubble and going months without enough food, one of the most important things was to gather the musicians who survived and to play, as soon as possible, both for themselves and for those who lived through the collective nightmare of years, Mozart. The bread was the most urgent thing, but also the beauty.
In the historic textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, a slogan and song emerged that summarized the demands of the workers – almost all of whom were immigrants – that was understood in all their languages: bread for everyone, and roses too (https://youtu.be/D6hIMsd6BlQ).
In one of the greatest acts of defiance against the invaders who came to occupy the United States without permission from the natives, in Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in 1890, hundreds of Sioux Indians, fed up with the oppression of the American colonizers that included prohibition of their rites and cultural expressions, they confronted the federal troops without weapons, and began to dance. That dance was perceived as such a dangerous act that they were massacred.
We shall overcomethe anthem of the great civil rights movement led by African Americans in the 1950s and 1960s, was created by Pete Seeger and Guy Carawan in the mountains of Tennessee at the Highlander Center popular education and training school, where it was heard by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr; It became part of the sound route of the social struggles of this and other countries (https://youtu.be/Sr56EOhKwmk?si=oL8ayEUMqEXiyvGd).
In 1999, the first day of the World Trade Organization summit in Seattle had to be cancelled, while ministers from around the world and the host himself, President Bill Clinton, decided not to leave their hotels to go to the convention center. . The threat was thousands of anti-neoliberal protesters who non-violently occupied all the roads leading to the convention center with massive dances; music was selected at every corner, from rap and reggae to rock & roll and more.
The resistance to injustice, the insistence on dignity and repudiation of the inhuman, and to continue singing, dancing, drawing, acting despite everything, is deep in every country, including this one. Here it is expressed in blues, jazz, tap, gospel and rock, folk, hip hop, murals and graphic art, in the gifts that each wave of immigrants bring to enrich this country. All those lights are the antidote and will pass through the cracks, once again.
Leonard Cohen. Anthem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8-BT6y_wYg
