05 Mar I Went to Flint, Drank the Water, and Saw the Future of Civil Rights
Photo-Courtesy of @Janelle Monae on Instagram via @kymmicee (twitter)
Beautifully written, it’s extensive but, worth the read! How we all can get up and too, forget the privileges we’ve taken for granted by not living a FLINT life. However, this can happen anywhere. Wake Up! (in my Lawrence Fishburne voice from School Daze). We have work to do! (P.s. The horrible comments left by many just continue to illustrate just how far we must go in this country called Merica’ to seek true justice and equal rights for people of color in this country).
“I’ve never been very good at giving speeches,” Stevie Wonder said to the crowd. “Before coming here today, I had a lot of things on my mind. A lot of things that you don’t have to see to understand. We are in a very troublesome time in the world. A time in which a man can get life in prison for stealing 50 cents. And another man killed four human beings and is freed. A time in which a man can get 12 years in prison for possession of marijuana and another who can kill four students at Kent State and come out free. What kind of shit is that?”
This was on December 10, 1971, at the John Sinclair Freedom Rally in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It was a protest and a concert, with activists, members of Hollywood, and musicians present, all there to sing songs and make speeches on behalf of a man (Sinclair, a white anti-racism activist from Flint, Michigan) who was imprisoned for having two joints on his person. After the speech, Stevie — seething with disgust at the government and the laws and inequality — went into an impassioned version of “Heaven Help Us All.”
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.