Day 323: February 2nd, 2021

Black History Month

Imagine: When some people have to run a 100 yard dash with sandbags on their legs, the fact that no one is allowed to have a head start does not make the race fair.

Spirit of the universe,

We are awestruck by the astonishing variety

of peoples and cultures in this world who enrich us every day

Let us celebrate this amazing universe of brothers and sisters by ever-widening

our circles of friendship and solidarity

Let us embrace and understand those who differ most from us

until our knowledge of love is made perfect.

Let us embrace that divine spark that enlivens each of us

until we embrace the glow of humanity that lights the world.

Understanding that that light is a sign of our radical kinship with every living person.

(Black farmers are struggling... they have neither equality nor equity)

I've been trying to understand the concept of equity and the difference between Equality and Equity. I found this illustration which really helps:

Equity vs. Equality

Equity involves trying to understand and give people what they need to enjoy full, healthy lives.

Equality, in contrast, aims to ensure that everyone gets the same things in order to enjoy full, healthy lives. Like equity, equality aims to promote fairness and justice, but it can only work if everyone starts from the same place and needs the same things.

“Equality of opportunity is not enough. Unless we create an environment where everyone is guaranteed some minimum capabilities through some guarantee of minimum income, education, and healthcare, we cannot say that we have fair competition. ― Ha-Joon Chang, 23 Things They Don't Tell You about Capitalism

Tomorrow: How Black farmers are addressing issues of equity.

POEM

“We the People”

by Amanda Gorman, The U.S. Youth Poet Laureate

We the people live in a less than perfect union

That accuses the vulnerable and never the top class and race

When children are ‘illegal’ and intolerance bans humans

I wonder who ‘we the people’ are in the first place

‘We the people’ meant All Lives Matter, but are white lives living a coincidence

When if you’re not male or pale you get destroyed for demonstrating dissidence?

When the color of his skin gives a killer assumed innocence?

But still we will rise up, advocate and activate, with the peoples’ diligence

Let’s speak names to we the people

So they are not lost in executive orders’ lines

Protect them from prick of tweet, pen, bullet, or steeple

Sturdy our spines to keep making signs and reading the signs

It’s hectic, apocalyptic, there’s skeptics, but we can be united.

For what makes America great is diversity and democracy reignited

In excitement they call for an indictment but I think 4 years are far too farsighted

What can the enlightened do NOW for the blighted so wrongs are righted?

We the people are brave enough to love this country’s creed

We the people love this country enough to question its misdeeds

We the people question enough to build upon this foundation

We the people erect an improved hilltop of a nation

Indivisible by where we come from, or who we are born

We the people are those who let freedom ring

So that no matter how we love, talk, pray, or mourn

This America too is ours to build and ours to sing

SONGS

The Living Proof Mary Blige

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTu9QpAfAM4

One Love - Elle Varner

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px9ZRnuo7Go

Freedom (Theme from Panther 1995)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCWQXgL2hyg