Some time ago one of the Kulture Klatch writings talks about gay marriage. That writing could leave the impression that I encourage gay marriage. I do and I don't. I do because it's a choice, and I encourage the right to choose. I don't because it's complicity with structures that continue to institutionalize oppression. Whatever truth is manifested by my life, the same has not ever been legitimized by the Big House. I am not welcome there.
I remember the night of a fundraising dinner for a foundation that consists of the children of very wealthy massas who live in very big houses. These children have broken from the strictures of their class and use their money to fund a wide variety of community organizations, the kind that scrap for every dollar and over and over make the miracle of the fishes and loaves. The speakers include people from the neighborhoods who do everything they can where they live to save lives, create change, manifest dreams. There are also luminaries such as Joan Baez and Alice Walker.
Surprisingly Harry Belafonte is there. I first hear him in the sixties and this lesbian is sitting there in the eighties listening to him again. In the first moments I'm adjusting myself in a time warp. When we are all one in the sixties seems like a long time ago. In the seventies separate groups partition into various branches of the liberation movements such as Student Liberation, Black Liberation, Black Power, Black Panther, Women's Liberation, Gay Liberation, and Lesbian Nation. These all evolve from the Civil Rights Movement in which "Freedom" is the power word.
Harry Belafonte is a radical man of the sixties Civil Rights Movement. He begins his speech by recounting the changes that have occurred since then: how many Black mayors, government representatives, fire chiefs there are now. I have no idea where he's going with this statistical accounting. I'm looking for the fire, some glimmer of the radical. He drifts into a story from the Civil Rights Movement.
There's a night when Martin Luther King, Harry and some others eat supper together. Martin is quiet all through the meal. Afterwards a group of them remain and gather to drink cognac and smoke cigars. Harry makes note of King's quiet and inquires as to the reason for it. The Reverend Dr. King responds that there's a disturbing thought that sticks with him. He considers all the work they're doing to get into the big house, and the thought occurs now that they're running into a house that's burning down.
I think of the houses that do burn down in the seventies with the bodies of radical groups buried in the ashes. Houses are surrounded by scores of SWAT cops and federal agents who enter shooting. Showing warrants, knocking on the door are unused formalities. These days are the beginning of the police tactic to shoot so many tear gas canisters into a building that it's set on fire. It's easier. The inhabitants will either come out and often be shot, or burn to death in the fire.
The power of the message rises as Harry chants a litany of causes, freedoms, rights and failure, massacre, genocide. Each one is followed by the same refrain: we go to them for… and they don't get it done; we go to them for… and they don't get it done. They don't get it done; why do we still keep going to them.
In the year 2006, it still is not done. We go to the churches for our dignity and they do not get it done. We go to the legislatures for our rights, they do not get it done. We go to the nations for our lives and they do not get it done. We go to the White House for our invitation and they do not get it done. We still keep going into a house that is burning down. It is still not done. There is nothing inside worth saving. Freedom is already out on the lawn and it stands inside each one of us. Let the house burn down to the ground. As we build anew, Freedom will sing.
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