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1961,
the year when Barack Obama was born.
the Freedom Riders
are campaigning for local minor rights:
equality in the buses in the USA Southern States,
and so
doing they contribute to having the unthinkable come true: the election
of a Black
to the USA Presidency 47 years later.
In local,
limited actions huge far-off outcomes originate.
You should
never despair of your frailty ever being successful.
 In 1961 in the USA, in the Southern States
there are buses for white people and buses for black people. White and
black protesters strive to denounce the racial discrimination, an
unbearable situation for people to be in as well as a stupid economical
policy. They think of riding by bus in mixed (black and white) groups
of 15 or 30 riders. They hope that by travelling in sizeable
numbers they can both call the public's attention to the
horrors of racism, which is even more harmful since it has become
reflex, and keep the racist police and justice at bay. They
are wrong on the latter point. A lot of the Freedom Riders end their
rides in prison.
Those Freedom Riders are regarded by folks around them as
foolish and even blameful as the Arès Pilgrims will be regarded by
their own folks a few decades later, but this is what bringing about
changes costs, what changing the world
(Rev of Arès 28/7) costs.
Here
are excerps of a statement by Margaret Leonard, now a 67-year-old lady,
a Freedom Rider jailed in 1961 in Parchman, maybe the harshest
penitentiary in Alabama, only because she dared to belong in those
mixed groups of riders in Greyhound buses.
"From 1960 to 1970 campaigning in Civil Rights
Movements was hard. I wasn't battered, but others were. I might not be
battered, because I got myself arrested when the campaign was
drawing to a close. The prison time, however, was very hard to me
emotionally. I've kept memories deeply, firmly fixed in my mind,
memories of my release from Parchman. All those arms stretched towards
me
through the cell bars along the corridors. A lengthy row of white and
black arms.
"People used to be scared. They were scared of
showing their hope of a new order of real justice. They weren't scared
of dying, but they were scared of people pointing accusing fingers at
them and scared of being laid off. My mother lost her job right after
I'd been jailed.
"I think that we helped make the world much
better.
Clearly the USA today is better than it was in bygone days. I wish my
parents and my sister had lived long enough to see it."
What
did frail Miss Margaret demonstrate in 1961?
The
courage to be free
from any prejudice
(Rev of Arès
10/10),
free to be a man of the coming
time (Rev of Arès 30/13),
in short,
the
courage to be
as we understand the Creator when he says I am (Rev of Arès ii/1).
You
can't be an Arès Pilgrim unless you too have got the courage to be,
to be a Freedom Rider of sorts, with spiritual freedom
in prospect (Rev of
Arès 10/10), different from the social freedom once sought
by
the no less heroic
(Rev of Arès xxxv/4-12) 1961 Freedom Riders, but you are even
more firmly resolved to change the world (28/7).
Besides,
your courage to be is much easier to show nowadays.
You
are missionaries in a country where
you certainly can be still pointed at by accusing fingers, but you no
longer lay yourself open to a loss of job or imprisonment because of
your faith.
Your mission is today much less
dificult thanks to the courage to be of heroes
who like
Margaret
Leonard, from stage to stage and from century to century have cleansed
the world of a lot of prejudices, of egoistic and discriminating habits
and of authoritative interests.
You do not believe, just as
the Creator does not believe, that the system of Adam
outside Eden
(Rév
d'Arès vii/7-9), the world's current system, can restore
mankind to the happiness for which it was given spiritual Life
through
Adam inside Eden (vii/5-6).
You
want to inspire the world to enter unto
penitence in
order to break Adam's uninterrupted stagnating
state
of spiritual barrenness (Rev of Arès 14/1), Adam
who so far has never ceased to let the noise enter
his head like sand (vii/5),
heavy, barren sand, which ballasts him and keeps
him from ascending towards the Heights
(36/14) of happiness.
You want no more than to inspire the world to
recover Life
(Rev of Arès
24/5).
This is why you've got courage to
be.
You're going to be successful.
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