"There are a million ways to make a better world."

My friend Kathy Moran died a couple years ago at fifty-nine (my current age...). I inherited from her this phrase:

"There are a million ways to make a better world."

I. In Order to Rise...

The local Star Tribune published a good article yesterday about my boss and the store's recovery in the aftermath of the police murder of George Floyd: www.startribune.com/wisdom-empathy-help-put-back-together-a-looted-minneapolis-thrift-store/571060902/#7 

Funny how expressive a half-hidden face can be. Here BB at the meeting I skipped because I wasn't feeling well):

My favorite quote addresses something important---the reason people smashed up their own neighborhood (leaving aside those who just want to see the world burn):

"Although he was dismayed when he found the store in shambles, he also understood how people would feel after witnessing an act Bugg compared to 'somebody being lynched,'
why they’d be enraged when the officers weren’t immediately charged.

After years of feeling their voices weren’t being heard, he said, 'people were mad and wanted to communicate their frustrations.'”

BELOW: New mural in response to the uprisings after the murder:
In order to rise from its own ashes a phoenix must first burn
--by #CreativesAfterCurfew, a loosely organized group of artists

II. Be Prepared

I've heard people condemn the violent destruction of property in response to police violence.
I condemn violence against people. But in self-defense, don't we wish German Jews (and their allies) had rioted farther and wider in the 1930s? 
. . . That more slave uprisings like Nat Turner's in the antebellum US South had taken place, and succeeded?
Yes? No?

I have my reservations about the American Revolution, but we Americans celebrate the extreme violence that led to independence every Fourth of July. Independence for white colonists, that is.

"African-Americans [mostly] supported the British, because often the British offered freedom in exchange for fighting — and the British, I might add, kept their end of the deal."
--www.humanities.org/blog/terrorism-fake-news-american-revolution

I used to think that oppression and despair for people of color arose more from poverty and class than race, per se. Then Obama got elected, and I saw how wrong I was. 
Poverty and class matter, yes, (and race is intertwined with those), but there is no doubt race stands alone. At the thrift store, I see that clear as day.

Also, I didn't realize for a long time how much time and work it takes to prepare and organize people into a nonviolent movement. A wounded, frightened, and angry populace responding to a murder is not going to spontaneously act all together nonviolently.

Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. studied long, of course, before they brought people together into a movement.
I really got that when I read the autobiography of Myles Horton, The Long Haul. Horton founded in 1932 of the Highlander Folk School for training people working for democratic and social justice change, originally to unionize workers in Appalachia––and later for Civil Rights everywhere.

I hadn't realized Rosa Parks had gone to a training at the school before she refused to give up her bus seat. 

She was prepared.

Here's a quote from the PDF of the chapter "Charisma" in The Long Haul [link to chapter]:

III. A Silver Lining for Everybody
 
I don't know if a nonviolent movement is starting to coalesce here, but I hope so... It needs nurturing, but I see seeds of it here at 38th & Chicago, the murder site, where there is "room for everybody".

As I was biking past the other day, I saw an artist I know--one who helped create the mural on the thrift store last year. I asked for and received permission to take a picture and share it.

This slogan "Abolish Police" used to sound like the lunatic fringe, but the City Council is currently looking at ways to take apart and re-form the police department, which is riddled with corruption.
I posted this photo on the store's FB and it got almost 40 likes (a good amount for our little page), and--this surprised me--no objections.

Here's final quote of the article about my boss:

“I see the silver lining in this — people coming together, white, black, Chinese, Hmong,” Bugg said. “I wish it was like this all the time.”

Yes. Wishing won't do it though, as I know he knows. We need to plan strategically. This is not my forte. (ohgono--committees) 

We do who we are. 
I'm okay with what I've done in the past couple weeks––mostly personal stuff, like giving people masks I made. Cooking lasagna for coworkers. Posting photos online of the hopeful stuff, while acknowledging the disturbing. Writing, thinking, reading, and talking about what's going on.
Even prayer––it could be called lovingkindness practice: calling people into my mind and calling up in myself a compassionate response. (NOT ALWAYS EASY!)
It's a kind of preparation.

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There are a million ways to make a better world.

Let us do some.