I was lazy last night and really lazy tonight. There's so much on the Internet and it's so easy to go through pages quickly, but it's another matter altogether to process the information and to try to say something sensible about it.

I guess today I was trying to put what happened Greenwood Oklahoma--the Tulsa Riots--into context, to figure out a way of wrting about them. The Watts Riot of 1965 came to mind en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_riots and then tried to figure how that fit into the story in any way. And then oddly I thought of the Wall Street Bombing of 1920 which doesn't have anything to do with Black history on the face of it, but it's so easy to look things up en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall...et_bombing

I'm not religious, a Quaker or anything like that, but I do deplore violence. I'm a bit of a hot head, at least no stranger to anger. I also don't want to hurt anyone. So I guess part of what makes me, well, me, is trying to join up these two parts of myself.

I was at a protest outside an event where a spokesperson for the government of the Sudan was speaking. A fellow I know, who's a Southern Sudanese was there.

The conflicts in Sudan are rather difficult to follow. There was a long civil war, basically a north/south conflict that lasted for 20 years or more. My friend is a refugee from that conflict. A very tentative peace was made. But the western region of Darfur felt they were getting screwed after the peace arrangements over north/south were being resolved--Urg, it's hard to make this short. One of the ways that the civil war was portrayed was Arab versus African. This was so confusing to Americans because in the pictures everyone looks the same, that is Arab Sudanese don't look like Lebanese to us. But generally in the south many were Christian or followers of Animist religions whereas the people in the north were Muslim who controlled the government. In Darfur it's still the government who is behind the militias driving people from their land and causing terrible destruction, but the overwhelming majority--over 90%--of the people in Darfur are Muslim too.

Okay, so the program where the Sudan government could make their case was sponsored in part by black American Muslims who find common cause with the government of Sudan. The protest outside was small, maybe 35--50 people and well behaved. Most of the attendees simply ignored us, but a few were confrontational. The calm and reasonable replies my friend from the Sudan made just amazed me. I would have blown a gasket if I'd try to engage the hecklers.

That's way too long a digression, but I admire my friend so much, not just because of his cool but his many accomplishments. But it is that cool I always notice. I know he feels passionately, that anger swells in him too. But he's able to balance and master his movements so as not to perpetuate violence. Yet he confronts injustice forcefully!

It's not the picture I chose, but the second picture on this page www.africanamericans.com/WattsRiots.htm shows Bayard Rustin and Martin King in Watts during the riots. There's something in the way Rustin is laboring a drag on a cigarette and the look on King's face that makes me Imagine that "holy f***k" was running around in their minds the whole time. The riots ocurred a week after the Voting Rights Act passed.

Back to the Wall Street bombing, it was an act of terrorism. Anarchists were probably to blame, and took the blame, but they never actually figured out who did the bombing. One of the ideas of some of the Anarchists of the day was "propaganda by the deed" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prop...y_the_deed and the idea had Americans devoted to it. The short version is to make the masses rise up by fomenting some catastrophy.

I haven't read enough to know whether any of the Black Power adherents were following this anarchist doctrine of propaganda by the deed, but their reasoning seems similar. My politics lean left. A freind of mine said "It's not so much that I'm a leftist, I just can't stand what the radical right stands for" and that captures my feelings pretty well. So when I began reading John McWhorter's take on the Watts riots as in this Washington Post piece www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...03.html I took notice that he's affiliated with The Manhattan Institute a rightist-think tank www.manhattan-institute.org/html...r.htm I can certainly see where McWhorter would be popular with the right, but he's a very serious thinker and his ideas not easily dismissed. Here's an essay on affirmative action in college admissions www.edge.org/documents/a.../edge45.html I come down generally in favor of such programs, but his arguments are good ones for the other side. The short take on his views of Watts is that the black community got burned by people acting out rebellion for it's own sake.

Via a post at Nathan Zuckerman's blog where he's blogging the TED (Technology, Entertainment Design) Conference www.ted.com/ in Silicon Valley is a short take on Nat Irvin www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/ Zuckerman writes:

"His key idea is the vision of a new society where a black culture is emerging around people who are not just surviving, but thriving. These new leaders, over the past few decades, will become anew urban tribe of competitive, critical thinkers and meme spreaders."

McWhorter makes a related point noting that most black people in America are not poor. Irvin makes the point (I can't find the link) that marches and much of the direct non-violent actions of the past generation Civil Rights leaders won't work anymore, unless the march is over something that specifically targets the black community against all others. The political landscape has changed. But I'm afraid we haven't seen the last of riots, it's an American traditon; this link provides a very good and brief history of race riots www.findarticles.com/p/artic...19101006

The history of non-violent resistence is very important, but I agree with Irvin's point that the tactics which were used effectively in the past aren't immediately applicable to today's social landscape. I'm sure I have differences with McWhorter's take on things, I'll have to find out more, nevertheless it would seem that the riots, and the Watts riot his Washington Post piece references had little redeeming value; the fallout was almost entirely negative, just as he suggests.

Both as a personal matter, that is wanting to do no harm, and also living in a time when terrorism is becoming more prevelant, I very drawn to the problem of taking action against the injustices that make me so angry in ways that actually tend towards peace and justice. Rustin was a life-long adherent of non-violence. He abhorred the violence of the Watts Riots, but would not condem the rioters. Not quite sure what to make of that, and perhaps it was a bit similar ot the situation which Gandhi found himself in near the end of his life with Hindu and Muslim violence exploding all around him. It's good to look towards history, but all of us are faced with composing our lives now and in the present. The problem of violence is daunting.