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Reggie
Joined: Nov 14, 2001
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Province/State: Ontario
City: Peterborough
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To fight or not to fight?
December 9, 2003 - 11:27 AM
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What do you do when you are suffering, hungry and homeless in your own country? Who do you turn to, when those in authority either simply do not care or care only enough to host a meeting and talk about the terrible situation that you are in and how someone else should stop the situation? How long should one tolerate the abuse and torture you and your fellow man get, before you stop those you know are causing the suffering? Should I first die and be another statistics to be mentioned in the redundant and useless 'diplomatic' talks or should I at least die as a man - fighting for rights and those of my family?
These and millions more questions run in the mind of those who end up in wars. When you have tried elections, demonstrations and meetings...all of which have failed, causing more harm than good. What else does a man have to do...than fight? When the whole world knows you have been robbed, abused and tormented - yet they stand there and talk, whom should you turn to for assistance than yourself? Zimbabwe is crying out for help right now and everyone hears but does not care, except the people of Zimbabwe.
I guess a good example...or let me just say an example of the situation right now in Zimbabwe is like this. "
PROBLEM - Your father that you so dearly adore and want to be like, turns on you and your mother. He rapes your sister, beats you, and abuses your mother. Everyone is starved while he eats and feeds himself and his friends while you watch.
FAILED SOLUTIONS - Your call 911 and you are told, "your father is someone of great authority so I'm sorry but our hands are tired."
Since he is of authority you call the press, but since your father owns the press they can't print anything.
You think of running away, but you need a visa to stay in the shelters and its freezing outside. If you try to go to the shelter and explain the situation, they will bring you back and report to your father that your had run away. Then imagine the repercussions of that?
You cry out to your neighbours but all they can do is ask your father to stop. If he tells them everything is all right, they say, "Well don't visit our house until we see some change". How does that help the family? Wouldn't the father be more angry and just abuse the family more, since he has no where to go? Anyway he still has his cable, his cars and he can send his friends to go shopping for his food.
REMEMBER- In all this we focus on the father, and forget that his family is trapped and suffering each day that we ignore. There new born baby, is starving, needs medical attention and once to go to school but the mother can not afford to pay for the children she loves. The whole family is helpless, and the neighbours nod their heads with disapproval but carry own their way to work.
HELP - Last week a family was helped that was in a similar situation. The only difference was that, the mother was rich and the helpers wanted to control her riches. And the father had been a constant threat to the neighbourhood (so they say; though everyone knows he was a treat to ONLY the Evans, another rich family). He family though, that we are talking about is poor, and there is no immediate financial gain, except the children who where once the brightest in the school and had the potential of one day helping the community as doctors and farmers.
QUESTIONS - What do you think the family should do? Should they continue to suffer and think the neighbours will help? Should they continue to suffer because the father says there is nothing wrong? Thankfully, the mother friends sometimes bring food with them as gifts, but is that all they can do?
I could go on and on and on, but I would only bore you, since as I said, you do not gain any immediate financial gain. I would be rather shocked if at all you had read to this very sentence. One thing though i do know is the even patience has its limits and peace sometimes means suffering quietly. So then family asks themselves, should we be like all those other families that fight every time, or should we suffer quietly and pray that someone has the interest to help them out.
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Michael Newton-McLaughlin
Joined: Dec 2, 2001
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Gender & Age: Male, 26
Country: United States
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Re: To fight or not to fight?
December 9, 2003 - 07:34 AM
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<<What>>
Reggie- long time no talk to! I have tried eamiling you a few times. Please, please, send me an email, I miss talking to you!
To address your post (I did read the whole thing, you seemed very frustrated, as I would be..)
My answer is in part the same question you and I have talked about before - what can we individually do to eliminate those conditions? Even in the US, abject poverty and conditions that you listed exist in the affluence in the U.S. We have designer health insurance, designer pooper scoopers and diets for our damn dogs and cats! It makes me sick sometimes! Not because they exist, but because at the same time we have such.. wealth in so many places, there exists such... suffering.
So what should someone do in the position you describe? I don't really know. I would like to believe I would fight.. but fight who? The most you could hope for, here in the US on an individual level, is to kill a cop or something.. and that will just land you on death row. It takes cohesion. It takes forceful resistance... sometimes violence maybe. I do not know, it relates directly to my post here: (http://www.takingitglobal.org/discuss/showthread.html?s=&threadid=4775)
- when is it ok to fight back? When do you become a terrorist rather than someone fighting back in self defense? The line is never really clear. When I see posts like yours Reggie, I often feel a duality of anger and sadness... like I could cry and scream in rage at the same time. In many ways, I by myself am powerless. With a dedicated group of people, however, I am part of a group with power. The only thing I think to truly be wary of.. is who your leader is. So often, revolutions or social movements have been lead by those who do the same thing they rallied to fight against. Maybe it is just what happens.. I do not know.
My answer, then, is that I would prepare a lot of documentation on who I, and my family was, why I was doing what I was doing.... send my story to as many international orgnizations as possible... and then fight back. But, this assumes one has the ability and money to send post and orchestrate that type of affair. At the end of it all.. I do not know what to do when it comes to what you are saying. We all seem to be on our own paths, trying to 'get ahead' and survive while leaving others in the dust, to die. I keep wishing that movements of peace could work a lot better... but man.. at some point peace and democracy are just words when you're trying to live... and a gun becomes the reality.
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