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The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race

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Kevin Young

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“Nature-deficit disorder describes the human costs of alienation from nature, among them: diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties, and higher rates of physical and emotional illness. This disorder can be detected in individuals, families, and communities.”

NatureNature And ManNature Deficit Disorder
Book:Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder
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“Searching for Love in Everything We are so much like these rocks I think to myself One morning While passing a sea of black, gray, and white Pebbles All different shapes, sizes, colors They drift past one another On land or in oceans All while we collide, we crash Gracefully or without the intention of even finding one another Is it messy or beautiful? Our choice or fate? We all have a home We all have a story And perhaps we are found In the waves that rush Where over time we lose our sharp edges And the water All-knowing Smooths us out Reminding us to be gentle with ourselves Perhaps the boulders basking in the light On land carry similar knowledge And, like us Maybe they love watching the clouds in the day And even more the stars at night Maybe all of life ponders the change the earth makes as we constantly gain and lose sight As we try to follow a path to love this life There must be love to go around In all places In all things Isn’t all of it a greater message for the love present in this world? They were here before us And will remain long after Perhaps one day Long after Love will exist For and within Everything”

Love Quotes And SayingsNature S BeautyEmotional QuotesNature And ManLet Love LeadSoft And Kind
Book:Loving this Life
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“There is no longer any denying that this country is in the throes of a historic national crisis. Its ramifications are so vast and frightening that even now, shocked into numbness and disbelief, the American people have not yet fully grasped what is happening to them. The grim data are clear enough and still coming in. Since this summer began, thirty of our cities, big and small, have been wracked by racial dis-order; scores of citizens, almost all of them black, have been killed, thousands injured, and even more arrested. Property damage has exceeded a billion dollars; total income loss is incalculable. As a people, we are not unaccustomed to violence. Frontier lawlessness, Southern vigilante-ism, Chicago gangsterism : these are images and themes embedded in the American tradition. We have only just lost a President to an assassin's bullet. But, having escaped the bombs of two world wars, we are not familiar with the horror of burned-out buildings, smoking rubble, tanks in our streets, the blasts of Molotov cocktails, the ring of snipers' bullets from rooftops. Today we look at sections of Detroit and think of war-torn Berlin. We see rampaging, looting mobs and think of the unstable politics of underdeveloped countries. A nation's identity has been overturned. In our own history we can find no precedent in this century for the massive destruction the past three years have brought to our cities—no precedent since the Civil War. But the greatest toll is not in property damage or even in lives lost. Nor is the greatest danger that the violence will go on in-definitely, any more than the Civil War did. It is that the aftermath of that war will be repeated, that as in the Compromise of 1877 the country will turn its back on the Negro, on the root causes of his discontent, on its own democratic future.”

AmericaRaceDemocracyRacismCivil RightsAfrican AmericansBlacksRiotsCrisesCivil Unrest
Book:Down the Line: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin
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“There exists today a dangerous relationship between the extreme left and the extreme right, and between black rage and white fear. The confrontation tactics of the one evoke a reactionary response from the other. When the would-be revolutionaries of the new left manhandle professors, occupy buildings, and destroy property, the right wins new adherents. When sincere but misdirected young black people engage in violence in the name of justice, they are strengthening those very forces which in the past have inflicted violence and injustice upon the Negro community. Such acts of protest may be cathartic, may appear to be bold and militant; but let us be very clear--their primary effect is to bring about a political reaction. These acts have set loose a wave of panic in this country, and opportunistic right-wing demagogues understand the nature of that panic and are building their political futures upon it. These demagogues do not believe in meeting the black community's urgent needs for income and education. Indeed, social justice, by removing the cause of social unrest, would threaten the very base of fear upon which they stand. Their program is the billy club and their staunchest ally the police arm of the state. They believe in repression. The lessons of these recent developments should be clear. An assault upon our democratic institutions will not reform them but destroy them. Violence will lead to more violence, not to social justice. And the fundamental tragedy is that the absence of justice will provoke more people to engage in violent acts. We must find a way out of this vicious cycle.”

PoliticsRaceViolenceRacismAfrican AmericansBlacksRace RelationsCivil Unrest
Book:Down the Line: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin
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