I quoted Meher Baba on his 40 year silence in a diary earlier today:
"Man’s inability to live God’s words makes the Avatar’s teaching a mockery. Instead of practicing the compassion he taught, man has waged wars in his name. Instead of living the humility, purity, and truth of his words, man has given way to hatred, greed, and violence. Because man has been deaf to the principles and precepts laid down by God in the past, in this present Avataric form, I observe silence."

40 years ago Martin Luther King tried teaching his people they had the power in their own hands - the 10th most economically powerful country if they worked together. He was silenced by a bullet, but his words and inspiration live on. 60 years ago Mahatma Gandhi taught his people they had the power in their own hands but that they could live together in peace. He was silenced by a bullet, but his words and inspiration live on. But in many ways we fall short of what they might have hoped. Despite all our wealth, all our change, all our technology, we're as weak and as divided and as scared as before, full of so many excuses and so little clarity and compassion in action, as a people and as a nation.

I proposed earlier, and propose again, that tomorrow we silence our keyboards and think how the world could be in 40 years - what we will have passed on, and what the Promised Land that King saw but couldn't enter will look like, what ideals we're share, how can live together, how we can work with our differences.

And then I propose that the day after we start on that 40 years of work, the 40 years across the desert, whether with words or in silence, but in a way that gets us closer, moves us further down the path, will make whoever's around in 2048 proud. And with that I start.

Actually, what MLK said that Digby quotes.

Shots ring out

 In movies we always get characters with Christ-like premonitions of their death. Sometimes in real life old people sense their time has come. But for a man not yet 40 to say the things he did the last day gives an eerie feeling. "Because I've been to the mountaintop.... And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land! And so I'm happy, tonight." Or his last words, "Ben, make sure you play Take My Hand, Precious Lord in the meeting tonight. Play it real pretty."

I look at the picture of the cheap motel where he was staying, one where most touring bands would complain about. The year after Rev. Ike bought Loew's Theater and "in 1968, the Nation of Islam purchased a massive four-story, sixty thousand square foot building that served as the newspaper printing plant, cold storage, and tractor-truck storage." Yet here was the man leading  the nation's Civil Rights movement for much of the previous 15 years, staying in a rinky dink hotel even while knowing his life was in danger, focused on his cause and his people.

Digby pointed out another part of King's speech, in which he says, "Now, we are poor people. Individually, we are poor when you compare us with white society in America. We are poor. Never stop and forget that collectively -- that means all of us together -- collectively we are richer than all the nations in the world, with the exception of nine. Did you ever think about that? ... the American Negro collectively is richer than most nations of the world. We have an annual income of more than thirty billion dollars a year, which is more than all of the exports of the United States, and more than the national budget of Canada. Did you know that? That's power right there, if we know how to pool it." I wonder how he would take it 40 years later, looking at the wealth of black movie and TV entertainers, sports stars, business men and women, politicians, musicians and singers - Oprah Winfrey alone would rank around the 150th nation, Robert Johnson would rank around 175. And what would King's amazement be to hear people waiting for government to cure problems of education and jobs and drugs and poverty and opportunity, to see Democrats paralyzed by Republicans. King didn't like waiting and he didn't like hopelessness. Perhaps he would act like Moses after seeing the Promised Land, coming down from the mountain and seeing the Golden Calf, smashing it and the stones of the covenant given by God. Perhaps he'd find another way. But I don't think he'd be pleased. Even in his lifetime, he didn't stop to mull limitations - he saw racial issues leading to economic issues and domestic problems reflected in the world's wars and poverty. Malcolm X said he never drove by the speedometer - he drove by his watch. Time was the challenge then, time was what was running out.

And what would Martin Luther King have said to his fellow Americans now, that in 40 more years of being on top had come no closer to wisdom, only to panic and fear. To his America that still saw the world in terms of influences and threats and still no closer to seeing it as proud and humbled people of similar yearnings but different voices. As an ignorant and petty crowd scratching for food in the desert and worshiping to false daemons of want and envy and divisiveness and exclusion when we're awash with wealth and excess, could be bathing in the River Jordan yet looking back at the desert and frozen like Lot's wife, still trapped in a slave's mentality, a poor person's mentality, a victim or pauper's mentality, held transfixed by our corrupt and imperfect past.

One of my favorite inspirations is Meher Baba, who took up silence in 1925 and kept it until his death in 1969, explaining "Man’s inability to live God’s words makes the Avatar’s teaching a mockery. Instead of practicing the compassion he taught, man has waged wars in his name. Instead of living the humility, purity, and truth of his words, man has given way to hatred, greed, and violence. Because man has been deaf to the principles and precepts laid down by God in the past, in this present Avataric form, I observe silence."

Perhaps as a way of memorial, tomorrow we can put down our blogging keyboards and remember MLK and ourselves with a day of silence, recognizing that the goal of the struggle is not about wandering in the desert, it's about reaching the Promised Land. It's not about the different roles we play and our different beliefs and the different paths we follow - it's about where they all come together and we each fit in, where there's respect and opportunity and basic resolution of the problems that divide us and lead to inequity. Perhaps we can stop for a moment to think not about June or November, but about April 4, 2048, forty years from now, where we'll be, what we'll have accomplished, what we'll be like as a people and as a world. Between the bullet and the sound of the ambulance lies the awful silence of what could have been and what still can.

Wow. A site called "Stop Running For President And Make Me a Sandwich" has 38,000 members. I have trouble reaching 11 recommendations (ok, 10 plus my own) when I write what I think is a good post).

So here, said better than I could (and written twice in case the web editor screws it up).

Outing Misogyny
<a href="http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2008/03/30/why-calling-out-misogyny-matters/">Why Outing Misogyny Matters</a>

Following word that Hillary Clinton had folded her campaign early this morning, Barack Obama at the urging of his minister effectively rejecting and renouncing his campaign as well, noting "It's more important that we be united come November than to seek partisan advantage at a time like this." Surrounded by children on their knees in the parking lot searching for superdelegates, Obama struck a poised demeanor, attempting to put a good face on the developments. "Of course people in the community will be disappointed - they really were expecting me to be The One. But quite frankly, it's a weight off my shoulders - I was never quite sure if I was one of them or not. I guess now we'll never know." Asked if he had discussed his move with Ms. Clinton, he obliquely responded, "let's just say her people and my people worked it out." Aides confirmed that there had been something of a bawdy get together the night before, with rumors of lap dancing and gangsta riffing, but in a break from less amiable moments in weeks gone past, campaign advisers maintained a solid wall of silence with an occasional "A3 B4N, ILU" popping up on a staffer's Blackberry. Asked if there were any other considerations that might have led to his decision, Obama replied "Not really. Well, the Commander In Chief thing probably  freaked me a little - I can hardly handle a pop gun much less a...", giving the street sign for AK-47. Asked what he planned on doing now that his summer was freed up, Obama answered, "Obviously there's a lot of healing to do. I was figuring I'd get a cooler and inflatable raft and hang out a bit on Lake Victoria with Grams and the kids, but mostly I've got my sights on another book - to tell you the truth all these crowds get on my nerves, and I'd rather be in front of a computer doing a rewrite than most anything." In one of Washington's worst kept secrets, Obama has been thought to be working on a sequel to his well-received first work, titling it "Dreams of My Second Cousin Once Removed", though reporters have been at a loss to find out who this might be.

Outside the convention center where Obama made his announcement, both Al Gore and Joe Lieberman were spotted by security guards trying to sneak past the cordons, Gore in earth tones and Lieberman sporting a newly printed "Democrat 4Evuh" sticker over his customary flag lapel pin. In a conference call scheduled for this afternoon, party chairman Howard Dean is expected to reaffirm his 50-state strategy, noting that "We're a party of ideals, not individuals". When asked earlier how they could take on McCain without actually fielding a candidate, Dean responded, "They've been fighting a faceless enemy for the last 5 years and haven't done too damn well, if you noticed, so now it's time to take a page from the Al Qaeda playbook."

To show what a good sport I am, and to show DF that I'm not addicted to Identity Politics (why exactly pointing out sexism tosses me into the identity basket I still haven't figured out, but what the hey), I'm labelling this "Blue Stained Dress Monday"!!!

Who knows, maybe we'll do shots, maybe we'll just pal around, maybe we'll party like it's 1995. But every Monday we'll meet those kool kidz on the bus, bring 'em a bag of bagels, and let them know how much we appreciate them protecting the Fourth Estate, because let's not kidz ourselvez, that Fourth Estate is us. We've got the power. So you know what to do, just click <a href="http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2008/03/congratulations-abc-news.html">Blue Stained Dress</a>.

Oh, and as usual, don't forget to tip the bartender, don't drive drunk and click Recommend on the way out the door.