The Song Remains the Same (Part One)
The Song Remains The Same.
Elizabeth is a woman determined and destined, time and again, to be among the few to stand up. To speak up. To demand their voice be heard. Through the loss of friends and fights she’s had a core developed while broke, a single mother and just trying to get a handle on the world twenty years ago.
We’ve been in the failure mode of American democracy under the watch of neo-fascist provocateurs. The mess is evident to everyone, especially the ones denying it. Even ‘The poorly educated’; Trump’s favorite class of person. We are in the midst of attacks on the education system which might have stopped the rest of this story from every taking place had they taken place in 2005.
Whether successful or not, there’s certain to be irreparable damage done. This is merely another in a long series of erosive actions perpetrated by Republican administrations. The dumbing down of America has been happening for decades. Since slavery was the law of the land. Keeping slaves ignorant to their plight was just a standard measure.
Elizabeth went to a school, however, with a rich history of resisting the tyranny of white domination and conditioning. She walked possibly the most storied halls no one knows about. Formative is an understatement.
Berea College.
Berea was founded in the mid 1800’s under the principles of coeducation and racial integration. A radical policy, radically before its time. Their own website says what needs to be said in order to understand why this is such a meaningful place.
“Berea’s commitment to interracial education was overturned in 1904 by the Kentucky Legislature’s passage of the Day Law, which prohibited education of black and white students together. When the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Day Law, Berea set aside funds to assist in the establishment of Lincoln Institute, a school located near Louisville, for black students. When the Day Law was amended in 1950 to allow integration above the high school level, Berea was the first college in Kentucky to reopen its doors to black students.” - (Early History - Berea College)
The college, as I understand it, has a deep past in pushing back against the academic sphere regarding ignorant rejection and ridicule of Black history. One would certainly come away with that perception from their website.
However, by the time Elizabeth came to be at the school it had changed considerably. Once a beacon of equality, now treading water with a yacht on its back. Rising salaries and elitist isolation leads many schools to become irrelevant. A school isn’t its halls. It’s the professors. The leadership. It’s the climate behind the books.
When that climate is hostile, learning and innovation are stifled. We give so little credit to the stress created by disruption and discord within spaces for learning. The damage caused by that stress. The ultimate results of leaving people floundering and in debt without a useful education.
Activism can be just as transformative. Restoration of institutions and our world is possible but it requires dedication to a set of values we talk about but ignore.
Equal protection, equal opportunity, fidelity to the truth, fidelity to history.
I’m sure there are more but the point is these values are eroded by corrupting forces and must be rebuilt. It’s largely a question of will. Allowing the status quo is often a recipe for stunning collapse.
One of the biggest reasons Republicans don’t like Universities is because creativity and cooperation is the real machine that kills fascists. Wherever someone is open to the truth and given a place to thrive, fascism isn’t. She was successful around the time of Occupy Wallstreet in convincing the college president to take a pay cut and raise the campus minimum wage. It was possible to make positive change.
Elizabeth went on to be amongst the few and initial people protesting the Ferguson Police Department. Scraping together anything that could be had, foraging from trash and liberating things from dumpsters behind the college or organizing for donations became life.
During Furguson she tended to children searching for any scrap of meaning or any kind of explanation for what had happened. Made signs, talked, drew on the sidewalk and spoke of the soul of America. Truth, justice, the big things in life. No doubt painful and formative.
“They shot Mike, Mike and I saw him dead in the street.” - Elizabeth recalls the children speaking in disbelief and horror as a matter of fact.
And from that a protest grew. Chalk outlines denoting all the people having been gunned down by police.
Elizabeth pulls inspiration to fight today from the many instances where she’s seen injustice and depraved mistreatment of humans. For her the fight is personal, existential and about being of service to her community and her world.
End of part one. Join me soon for part two.
❤️