...is that it takes individual and collective action to change the world. I'm presenting to youth twice this week about it. Here's the outline of our time together.
Opening
- Ago, Ame
- Call
and response request to speak from the Akan language of West Africa.
- I
respect you and I am grateful for your time and attention. It’s going to
take us all to make this a worthwhile 30 minutes. Please participate. Call and response will be the rhythm of
our time together.
- Call: Describe the current state of the world
in three words or less. Snap if you
see any words or phrases that came to mind? 3
participant responses.
- Opening Spoken Word: We are in a world of trouble
- We are in a world of trouble/war reins
supreme in the middle east/blood pours down the drains of city
streets/human beings are called aliens on their own planet/refugees cry pleas
for a piece of piece/hate runs hot in the hands of college students paint
swastikas with feces/and cold in the hearts of people turned commodities
of the incarceration industry/we are in a world of trouble/our earth is
swollen with the waste of insatiable consumption/and as we wade through
distraction/bitter in the bliss of detached connection/the world awaits
our fingertips/with a mood change at a channel switch/and consequence it
has come to this/we are desensitized and comfortably numb/while death and
destruction run amok among our young/we are in a world of trouble.
- But
today I am encouraged because I’m looking at the future. And you should be encouraged because the
future is up to you. There was a
time when in America when, as children my mother and father, and some of
your grandparents, couldn’t use public restrooms, pools, and had to sit
in the back of the bus simply because of the color of their skin. America isn’t perfect, but it there
were hard fought battles to get this far. We do have a long way to go,
but the only way we will get there is together. It can be done.
- Framing: 60 years ago, there was a little old
lady who was tired after work and refused to give up her seat for a young
man, as was the law in what was called the Jim Crow south. Her action led to
the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
- Call: Who was this little old lady? 3 participant responses.
- Presenter Reflection:
Rosa Parks wasn’t a little old lady, she was 40 and she wasn’t simply tired after work. She had headed the Youth Division of
the Montgomery NAACP branch for years.
She was an activist and a community organizer, and was prepared to
face the consequences of her brave act.
- Call: Who is James Blake? 3 participant responses.
- Presenter Reflection: James Blake was the bus driver who
ordered Rosa Parks to give up her seat, then called his supervisor who
called the police. He always maintained that he wasn’t a bad man, just a
city employee doing his job.
From Individual to Collective
- Call: Ask for one volunteer to stand
and read each definition.
- Individual
Agency = some power you posses as an individual. Ask for examples.
- Collective
Agency = power formed when individuals join together. Ask for examples.
- Presenter Reflection:
It took many acts of individual and collective agency to make
the Civil Rights Movement because Jim Crow segregation was made of many
acts individual and collective agency.
- Call: What made Rosa Parks decision to use her
individual agency to not give up her seat difficult? What empowered her individual agency in
that moment? 3 participant Responses.
- Presenter Reflection:
- Rosa
Parks used her individual agency when she put her safety on the line in
refusing to leave her seat on a Montgomery bus. It was the collective agency of the
NAACP that helped her know that she’d have bail, a ride home, and the
organized support of people across Montgomery.
- Call:
What made James Blake’s decision to call his supervisor more
challenging? What empowered his
choice? 3 participant Responses.
- Presenter Reflection: James Blake was a city employee doing
his job. If the Montgomery bus boycott had been directed at him, all about
getting him fired, if people would have picketed his house, would anything
have changed? James Blake
wasn’t the target of the Montgomery Bus Boycott because his individual
action was empowered by the collective power of Jim Crow laws.
- “Eyes on the Prize” clip (Slide 10) and responses: Prepare the students for the images. It is important for us to witness to understand how far we have come as America, to know the terror people faced to get us here, and how future change is possible. Ask students to write down their responses or to identify examples of individual and collective agency from the video.
- Presenter Reflection:
Moment of silence for all the people who suffered, died, and
rose up to make change.
- Identify
the collective agency of people singing, clapping, and marching together
to prepare to face police batons, fire hoses, and attack dogs.
- In civil
rights non-violence training, organizers were very deliberate about the
way they used singing. These were some
of the stated reasons for singing:
- Creating
unity
- Easing
fear
- Communicating
message
- Setting
rhythm (for pickets & marches)…”
Closing
·
From a Raindrop
to a Storm
- Presenter Reflection: Each
person’s daily choices can have important impacts. And how every choice, no matter how
small, changes the world for better or worse.
- Song: Combination of
the last lines of Star Spangled
Banner and Lift Every Voice and
Sing pose a final call and response, question and answer I’d like to leave you
with.
for the land of the free and the home of the brave?
– Star Spangled
Banner
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun
Let us march on till victory is won.
– Lift Every Voice and Sing
[1] Jim Crow is the
name given to the American set of laws designed to keep wealth, political
power, social dignity and full citizenship out of the hands of Black people and
in the hands of white people. Government institutions, including police and
courts, enforced those laws along with terrorist social groups such as the Ku
Klux Klan.
[2] The Montgomery Bus Boycott was the coordinated action
of everyday citizens who refused to ride public buses and instead provide each
other rides to work, church, and grocery stores. They refused to pay bus fare until the Jim
Crow laws forcing black citizens to give up their seats to white citizens was
overturned.
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