London Speech
by Ron Ridenour / March 7th, 2012
This speech has been unusually difficult for me to prepare, because I am so angry with the whole world, and most of the people in it, including many of the victims of oppression. I will explain underway. I try to speak my talks and not read them, but this topic is too complex for me to rely on my spontaneity, so I have chosen to write it, and then rewrite it, and end up still angry.
by Ron Ridenour / March 7th, 2012
This speech has been unusually difficult for me to prepare, because I am so angry with the whole world, and most of the people in it, including many of the victims of oppression. I will explain underway. I try to speak my talks and not read them, but this topic is too complex for me to rely on my spontaneity, so I have chosen to write it, and then rewrite it, and end up still angry.Why did I, a white westerner get involved in this crazy world of Sinhalese and Tamils? I knew nothing about Sri Lanka until the end of the internal war, May 2009. I was asked by the Latin American Friendship Association in Tamil Nadu, India to look into it, because they knew of my work with Cuba and the Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of our America (ALBA).
I am rooted in Martin Luther King’s premise: “Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere”.
I got involved in solidarity with your people’s struggle because you have been so brutally treated, and because of the moral principle of solidarity with the oppressed, the struggle for justice.
In the land of my birth, The Devil’s Own Country, I experienced similar injustice committed against the native peoples and the black people as Tamils suffer. In the 1960-70s, I joined with millions of brothers and sisters of all colors to fight racism, to struggle for equal rights, for education and health care for all, the basic right to vote, and to assist the Vietnamese-Cambodians-Laotians win back their countries from the invading Yankees. We did help end the war in favor of the invaded peoples, and black people did achieve most equal rights.
But now, decades later, the world still looks as bad or even worse.
I recently read Under My Skin, Doris Lessing’s first volume of her autobiography. She wrote this nearly 20 years ago when in her 70s. I quote from a passage on page 282 that took place during World War II or soon afterwards:
“We took it for granted that when the working class – or the blacks or any other disadvantaged people – took power, they would be inspired by only the purest and most disinterested ideals.”
What do we have in the world today so long afterwards?(Full article …)
