My Grassroots- Our Big Challenge is the People's Spirit of Helplessness.
Power corrupts, absolutely, but so does powerlessness.
Today I feel incredibly hopeful that we can turn things around. I was born in 1952, the daughter of a farmer. I lived almost all my life in Missouri. I grew up in poverty. My mother became disabled when I was 9, so I had to run the household, take care of my mother and myself and do all the work around the house and take care of the livestock so Dad could work 12 hour days. My dream was to go to college and become a vet. No one in my family had ever gone to college. When I started school, I began to realize that I was different than the other kids. It wasn't until third grade that I realized I was poor, because at that point I started being called names like "white trash." I never before heard that phrase. I was making straight A's through he third grade. The only complaint my teachers had about me was that I talked too much. In the fourth grade, things began to shift for me when a teacher moved me into the lower class and told me to forget about college, that I was stupid. From then on, I made C's and D's. It was like that message that I was stupid, that I didn't count, I took in. In the ninth grade, we moved and my father started working at Ford Motor Co. I decided I wanted to make good grades and overnight I started making A's. I did win a scholarship but unfortunately, because of financial reasons, I never did get that chance to go to college. It did not ruin the quality of my life.
I had been raised to believe in equality, and believing that everyone was the same. And yet once I got out on my own and went to work I began to see how things weren't equal at all. I came to know that racism and bigotry were a huge part of they way things worked. My mother, I should tell you, was a Baptist who was always singing hymns. She was four-plus crazy but very progressive for her time. When I was about six, I remember her registering to vote. We walked into this teeny little store. It was wintertime, and so all the farmers were in there. There was a black woman ahead of her registering to vote, and she was reading this piece of the Constitution because she had to take the test. When it was my mother's turn she said, "I need to take the test." They said, "Oh, you don't have to." Because she was white, see. And my mother said, "No, if she has to, I have to." So I come from a history of parents who taught me that things SHOULD be equal.
Getting out into the world, I realized that that wasn't true at all. When I first got involved in the women's movement and civil rights I realized that as a low income person, I spoke differently than most of the middle-class leaders I came across. As a result, I was overlooked as a possible leader or having anything to offer. Even when I would volunteer to do things or offer to go out in the community and speak about issues, I was always discouraged because people felt I didn't speak right by their definition. I never felt like I belonged. I always felt left out. I'd work my behind off to get other less educated and low income people into those organizations, they would soon drop out for the same reason. That's when I began to realize that we had to do something different if we were really going to win, to really make change.
I met a woman named Jerry Banks who was a powerful civil rights leader who had worked for the NAACP. When I met her she was damn near 90 years-old, and she began to give me guidance. I would come in and say, "Oh Jerry, they didn't like me in that meeting." She'd say, "Of course not. What do you expect? Next time you go, you'll do this and that." She was tough and wonderful. Jerry taught me to register people to vote and started me reading about the issues that affected their lives. Talk about change! We got people to register to vote that had never voted in their lives. They didn't vote because they had become "enlightened." They voted because they started to link things together. Go beyond their own back yard. Jerry taught me that if it's just self-interest, we'll never be able to really change what needs to happen. If it's the environment in my backyard, I might clean that up, but it's not going to change what's happening to the ozone layer. Or I might change one politician in my community by registering people, but it's not going to change what the president does.
I think low-income people are very politically sophisticated when they have the information. People understand how the government uses money and that half their tax dollars are going to military, but they don't know how to act on it. That's what we have to bring people together to look at: how could we begin to make a difference?
Communities are very discouraged. People feel hopeless and despairing. As a result of organizing and making changes in small community, people began to believe that they can really make a difference. More importantly, other communities began to see what can be done. I'm talking about all generations. Our smallest organizer going door-to-door was five years old when she started. And we had people in their nineties who were going to vote for the first time in their lives.
I used to cry for a couple hours before I'd had to speak in front of a group of middle-class liberals. I was very frightened and felt that I didn't have anything to say that was worthwhile. The first time I ever spoke publicly was in Springfield Mo. Jerry had been asked to speak but was to ill at the time so she sent me. I was very nervous. Finally, when I got up and spoke, because I spoke from my heart and my feelings, despite the fact that I didn't have perfect grammar, people heard me, and they were able to understand what I had to say. When I finished, I got a standing ovation. The older man who preceded me said, "I am honored be on the platform with you." At the end of it, one young man stood up. He said, "What you had to say was very important, but I think you would be more effective if you learned to speak proper grammar." My first thought was to feel bad about myself. And then I said to him, "I speck perfect grammar for my community. You would have a hard time communicating in my neighborhood. People wouldn't understand you." That's what we have to understand, that it's not about one grammar being better than another or one language better than another.
A lot of us think you have to have millions of people ready for real change to happen. I know that a small group of people can make significant change for everyone. I tell people I think we have a fifty-fifty chance for there to be a human race here in a hundred years. They think that's being pessimistic. No, I say, that's being optimistic, because it implies that any one of us might be the grain of sand which will tip the scales in the right direction.
Today I feel incredibly hopeful that we can turn things around. I was born in 1952, the daughter of a farmer. I lived almost all my life in Missouri. I grew up in poverty. My mother became disabled when I was 9, so I had to run the household, take care of my mother and myself and do all the work around the house and take care of the livestock so Dad could work 12 hour days. My dream was to go to college and become a vet. No one in my family had ever gone to college. When I started school, I began to realize that I was different than the other kids. It wasn't until third grade that I realized I was poor, because at that point I started being called names like "white trash." I never before heard that phrase. I was making straight A's through he third grade. The only complaint my teachers had about me was that I talked too much. In the fourth grade, things began to shift for me when a teacher moved me into the lower class and told me to forget about college, that I was stupid. From then on, I made C's and D's. It was like that message that I was stupid, that I didn't count, I took in. In the ninth grade, we moved and my father started working at Ford Motor Co. I decided I wanted to make good grades and overnight I started making A's. I did win a scholarship but unfortunately, because of financial reasons, I never did get that chance to go to college. It did not ruin the quality of my life.
I had been raised to believe in equality, and believing that everyone was the same. And yet once I got out on my own and went to work I began to see how things weren't equal at all. I came to know that racism and bigotry were a huge part of they way things worked. My mother, I should tell you, was a Baptist who was always singing hymns. She was four-plus crazy but very progressive for her time. When I was about six, I remember her registering to vote. We walked into this teeny little store. It was wintertime, and so all the farmers were in there. There was a black woman ahead of her registering to vote, and she was reading this piece of the Constitution because she had to take the test. When it was my mother's turn she said, "I need to take the test." They said, "Oh, you don't have to." Because she was white, see. And my mother said, "No, if she has to, I have to." So I come from a history of parents who taught me that things SHOULD be equal.
Getting out into the world, I realized that that wasn't true at all. When I first got involved in the women's movement and civil rights I realized that as a low income person, I spoke differently than most of the middle-class leaders I came across. As a result, I was overlooked as a possible leader or having anything to offer. Even when I would volunteer to do things or offer to go out in the community and speak about issues, I was always discouraged because people felt I didn't speak right by their definition. I never felt like I belonged. I always felt left out. I'd work my behind off to get other less educated and low income people into those organizations, they would soon drop out for the same reason. That's when I began to realize that we had to do something different if we were really going to win, to really make change.
I met a woman named Jerry Banks who was a powerful civil rights leader who had worked for the NAACP. When I met her she was damn near 90 years-old, and she began to give me guidance. I would come in and say, "Oh Jerry, they didn't like me in that meeting." She'd say, "Of course not. What do you expect? Next time you go, you'll do this and that." She was tough and wonderful. Jerry taught me to register people to vote and started me reading about the issues that affected their lives. Talk about change! We got people to register to vote that had never voted in their lives. They didn't vote because they had become "enlightened." They voted because they started to link things together. Go beyond their own back yard. Jerry taught me that if it's just self-interest, we'll never be able to really change what needs to happen. If it's the environment in my backyard, I might clean that up, but it's not going to change what's happening to the ozone layer. Or I might change one politician in my community by registering people, but it's not going to change what the president does.
I think low-income people are very politically sophisticated when they have the information. People understand how the government uses money and that half their tax dollars are going to military, but they don't know how to act on it. That's what we have to bring people together to look at: how could we begin to make a difference?
Communities are very discouraged. People feel hopeless and despairing. As a result of organizing and making changes in small community, people began to believe that they can really make a difference. More importantly, other communities began to see what can be done. I'm talking about all generations. Our smallest organizer going door-to-door was five years old when she started. And we had people in their nineties who were going to vote for the first time in their lives.
I used to cry for a couple hours before I'd had to speak in front of a group of middle-class liberals. I was very frightened and felt that I didn't have anything to say that was worthwhile. The first time I ever spoke publicly was in Springfield Mo. Jerry had been asked to speak but was to ill at the time so she sent me. I was very nervous. Finally, when I got up and spoke, because I spoke from my heart and my feelings, despite the fact that I didn't have perfect grammar, people heard me, and they were able to understand what I had to say. When I finished, I got a standing ovation. The older man who preceded me said, "I am honored be on the platform with you." At the end of it, one young man stood up. He said, "What you had to say was very important, but I think you would be more effective if you learned to speak proper grammar." My first thought was to feel bad about myself. And then I said to him, "I speck perfect grammar for my community. You would have a hard time communicating in my neighborhood. People wouldn't understand you." That's what we have to understand, that it's not about one grammar being better than another or one language better than another.
A lot of us think you have to have millions of people ready for real change to happen. I know that a small group of people can make significant change for everyone. I tell people I think we have a fifty-fifty chance for there to be a human race here in a hundred years. They think that's being pessimistic. No, I say, that's being optimistic, because it implies that any one of us might be the grain of sand which will tip the scales in the right direction.
Posted by Missouri Mule | 10:24 AM |
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