Hi Everyone - feel free to share here inspirational resources that might help us become more aware of our biases and expand our understanding of diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice. I'd like to share one of my favorite Maya Angelou poems, Still I Rise.
STILL I RISE
by Maya Angelou
for me it's the film, "The Power of One". This is not an exageratation I've seen it like over 50 times in my lifetime. The synopis is: The Power of One is an intriguing story of a young English boy named Peekay and his passion for changing the world. Growing up he suffered as the only English boy in an Afrikaans school. Soon orphaned, he was placed in the care of a German national named Professor von Vollensteen (a.k.a. "Doc"), a friend of his grandfather. Doc develops Peekay's piano talent and Peekay becomes "assistant gardener" in Doc's cactus garden. It is not long after WWII begins that Doc is placed in prison for failure to register with the English government as a foreigner. Peekay makes frequent visits and meets Geel Piet, an inmate, who teaches him to box. Geel Piet spreads the myth of the Rainmaker, the one who brings peace to all of the tribes. Peekay is cast in the light of this myth. After the war Peekay attends an English private school where he continues to box. He meets a young girl, Maria, with whom he falls in love. Her father, Professor Daniel Marais, is a leader of the Nationalist Party of South Africa. The two fight to teach the natives English as Peekay's popularity grows via the myth. Peekay loses focus until he sees the success of his language school among the tribes. Daniel Marais comes to stop Peekay's English classes and Maria is killed during the fight. He and Guideon Duma continue the work in hopes of building a better future for Africa."
As well it was the first to introduce me to the beautiful music of the Afrikiners. The music was done by Hans Zimmer. THe song Sensenini was one that hit me always in the heart. https://youtu.be/JkvW1nNrFro and the lyrics are:
Senzenina
Sono sethu ubumnyama
Abulale[ni] afe wonke
Mayibuye iAfrika
The translation:
What have we done
Our crime is to be poor, our crime is to be black
Let Africa come back
I hope this helps a little
the storyline was written by .—Greg Brunson and used from the Storyline of the IMDB website.
Thank you, Ana and Deva:
Ana -- I like Ben Harper's version of this poem turned into a song (and Ben Harper in general)! How could we not love someone who names his band 'The Innocent Criminals'?! 😊
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vgzdkZe4ig
I like to start my day off with affirmations and 1 inspirational song today was "Believe for it" by Cece Winans. It's a beautiful and powerful song it moves me each time I hear it.
@tyrinrogersgmail-com Thank you Harold! I haven't listened to the Winans since I was in college working at a record store on the westside of Chicago. Cece's 2021 live version of this just got me choked up 🥲
I need to share this book I'm in the middle of, "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness" by Michelle Alexander. What a revelatory history of how we arrived at where we are with mass incarceration...the data/numbers are infuriating. I feel this, among Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and so many others, should be required reading for all high school students to learn the true history of the "free world". It will anger you and fire you up and show you why Ahimsa is all the more necessary for us to practice as students and teachers.
Find it here on Amazon (description below):
Seldom does a book have the impact of Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow. Since it was first published in 2010, it has been cited in judicial decisions and has been adopted in campus-wide and community-wide reads; it helped inspire the creation of the Marshall Project and the new $100 million Art for Justice Fund; it has been the winner of numerous prizes, including the prestigious NAACP Image Award; and it has spent nearly 250 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.
Most important of all, it has spawned a whole generation of criminal justice reform activists and organizations motivated by Michelle Alexander's unforgettable argument that "we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it." As the Birmingham News proclaimed, it is "undoubtedly the most important book published in this century about the U.S."
Now, ten years after it was first published, The New Press is proud to issue a tenth-anniversary edition with a new preface by Michelle Alexander that discusses the impact the book has had and the state of the criminal justice reform movement today.