The Shot Heard Round the World

The Shot Heard Round the World
Originally uploaded by AnomalousNYC.

"Whatever my individual desires were to be free, I was not alone. There were many others who felt the same way." --Rosa Parks

"The first principle of non-violent action is that of non-cooperation with everything humiliating." -- Mahatma Gandhi

A mugshot photograph of Rosa Parks, taken by an unknown deputy in the Montgomery Alabama police station on the day of her arrest for refusing to give up her seat on the local bus to a white person. The photo, along with dozens of others from the Civil Rights struggles there, was discovered last year in a police storage room and was put on Display in Montgomery in July 2004. Image recolored and slightly altered by me.

I hope you will look, and look, as I have. A fascinating moment, and an image of monumental importance. The flash of that bulb was a pivotal moment, not only in American history, but in that as yet unwritten history of the better world we are all still struggling to create.

Rosa is the patron saint of good timing, a classic case of the right gesture by the right person in the right place at the right moment. But before her there were others and after, right up to this very day, there continue to be others. Blacks in this country continue to be treated as disposable Americans, as we have seen illustrated with excrutiating clarity in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

I hope everyone will remember that there are thousands of Rosa Parks all over the world. People are refusing to take the back seat on the bus in Palestine and everywhere else. Unlike Rosa Parks, they are often simply murdered or imprisoned for their disobedience, and their stories never make their way to us.

Right now, largely unreported by the media, tens of thousands of Palestinians and hundreds of Israelis are waging a major grassroots nonviolent campaign of resistance to the construction of Israel's ethnic incarceration Wall. Palestinian farmers, workers, mothers, and students, together with Israeli and international volunteers, are braving teargas, beatings, bullets, arrest, and even death to block the construction of the Wall with their bodies. Civil rights and Human rights struggles like theirs are takign place in every corner of the earth.

When you think of Rosa - and you should think of her - think of all the others you will never know, the innumerable invisible millions who with gestures of resistance and defiance both great and small stand up daily against humiliation, debasement, racism, subjugation.

There is surely some of her in you - please remember to say thank you.

Uploaded by AnomalousNYC on 2 Nov '05, 7.39am PST.