I was checking out MoveOn.com’s The Daily Share and came across three of the most moving pieces that I have seen in years. What made them interesting is that the were each moving for a different reason and in a different way.
The first was a piece of video of a little girl, maybe six or seven giving a report in class and just as she was finishing she looked across the room at an opening door, did a huge double take and screamed “Daddy!” She then raced across the room and was lifted into the arms of her father, a soldier returning from active duty who had obviously come straight to the school to get his daughter. The girl sobbed her joy as she was held by Dad. The caption of the short film is “Reasons why we shouldn’t go to war,” or something like that. Sure it was corny but it was damned effective.
The second piece is just a photo of a sign in what looks like a vehicle window. The sign says “New Company Policy: We are Not Hiring Until Obama Is Gone.” This sign says it all for Right Wing patriotism and for any sense of responsibility or fealty to our country. It says, screw America and all Americans. Who cares what happens to the country or its people as long as we get our way. Unfortunately the photographer didn’t include the name of the company so that we all could boycott the products made by people who hate America.
The third piece was a video of a twelve year-old Canadian girl, Severn Cullis-Suzuki, making a speech at the UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. This lovely child accuses the adults of the world of failing to act as its shepherds so that children like her can have a future, but she does it with such calm dignity and self assurance that the message was most assuredly driven home to those at the conference. The piece struck me on two levels. One is that of a child having to tell adults what they should already know, but even more I was struck by what a wasteful species we belong to, one that has wasted fully one half of is potential since the beginning of time, by its subjugation of all its female members. If this girl had been born in Afghanistan instead of Canada her obvious talent and intelligence would have been completely wasted. This is an even bigger crime than what we as a species are doing to our planet.
How did we get ourselves into this position? How does mankind waste the vast reserves of intelligence, talent and human fortitude that their women bring to the species? Well it probably started with male ego but it was certainly advanced by organized religion, the most efficient tool to subjugate both men and women ever invented by man. I will not get into a discussion of the relative plusses and minuses of religion here, suffice it to say that without the existence of organized religion, and I cannot imagine our species allowing this diabolical tool of power to not exist, women would now hold a much more important place in the world we inhabit.