William Lloyd Garrison, passionate abolitionist and father of the weekly Liberator, penned that line just before the Civil War began. Looking back, Garrison was a demigod of powerful prose, a spokesman for a generation of heroes that defeated evil in America (well, not really, but it helped a little). At the time, Garrison faced a lot of criticism--both in the North and South. The country obviously wasn't convinced abolition was the right ticket, and even the start of the war was justified by political violations and not moral ones. But, thanks to a disgusting, bloody war, Garrison and his impassioned resistance seem like the perfect prescription for America's racial sickness.
So now it's time to tie this to Occupy Wall Street. I'm really tired of reading whiny posts on facebook criticizing the dirty hippies in lower Manhattan. The problem is that those complaining have also whined about THE MAN and probably agree with the Occupy Wall Street manifesto. Complainers just have a problem with the occupation itself, in that it seems powerless and misguided. Most of us don't think that disrupting daily life and garnering press attention will have any positive effects. But what else is there to do? Garrison couldn't have won the war himself. It also took poor John Brown to start the war with his sad march to Virginia. We can speculate to exhaustion about the inevitability of the war. Maybe there was a non-violent way to abolition. But the way it happened, a call to arms was the key to victory.
So, take the time to read the manifesto. If you don't want to be a John Brown and sleep in the park, be a Garrison. Or be a Grant! Then we'll just have to wait for our own Lincoln to show up.
i was going to make this in gimp, but Ron English beat me to it.
LIKE!
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