I always loved the song Imagine by John Lennon. It is a brilliant effort to show how easy it is to deconstruct as well as reconstruct the world we live in, making it something much more whole, complete, just and beyond livable.
Imagine
Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people living for today
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace, you
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people sharing all the world, you
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will be as one
Let me be clear: I love John Lennon. I (like many) went along with him on his spiritual and political ride - not personally, I was just a kid when he was doing his thing but I was a fan and I was in Central Park the night he died singing "all we are saying is give peace a chance" over and over and over for hours. I don't know what time we stopped singing but at the conclusion of whatever that public mourning was I hugged like 20 people around me and walked home - slowly, somewhat empty.
I wanted to start here because I wanted to ask: what if we lived in a world where security force agents of the United States government were convicted for murdering African American males? Now, we are not sure what that means in terms of actual punishment because sentencing will take some time and the devil is indeed in the details but what if we lived in such a world? I ask because we have not lived in that world and the reality of it is Lennonesque in its implications. If we pull on that threat/take that pill/step through that door step, we then end up at the first line of the song. With conviction, you can then dream of punishment but that is not Lennonesque. I would prefer to dream of love. With love, you can then dream of equality and from there you can dream of unity. This is the dream of those who are living now. This is the dream of those who are coming to age in the current period and that is joyous.
But, many of us are not quite there (or here). Many of us were born and raised in the United States where it never occurred to us that a jury would/could convict a state agent for murder of an African American. There is a sadness to that fact. What kind of world is it when that is your expectation? What kind of baseline illegality and illegitimacy needed to exist for us to not expect acknowledgement or justice? How (if at all) does one get over that? And, what do you do when your population is filled with people who remember what has and has not happened, some who don't care as well as some who only know what now appears to be justice? These are the questions we must now address.
Cue Lennon.
Imagine
Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people living for today
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace, you
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people sharing all the world, you
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will be as one
Let me be clear: I love John Lennon. I (like many) went along with him on his spiritual and political ride - not personally, I was just a kid when he was doing his thing but I was a fan and I was in Central Park the night he died singing "all we are saying is give peace a chance" over and over and over for hours. I don't know what time we stopped singing but at the conclusion of whatever that public mourning was I hugged like 20 people around me and walked home - slowly, somewhat empty.
I wanted to start here because I wanted to ask: what if we lived in a world where security force agents of the United States government were convicted for murdering African American males? Now, we are not sure what that means in terms of actual punishment because sentencing will take some time and the devil is indeed in the details but what if we lived in such a world? I ask because we have not lived in that world and the reality of it is Lennonesque in its implications. If we pull on that threat/take that pill/step through that door step, we then end up at the first line of the song. With conviction, you can then dream of punishment but that is not Lennonesque. I would prefer to dream of love. With love, you can then dream of equality and from there you can dream of unity. This is the dream of those who are living now. This is the dream of those who are coming to age in the current period and that is joyous.
But, many of us are not quite there (or here). Many of us were born and raised in the United States where it never occurred to us that a jury would/could convict a state agent for murder of an African American. There is a sadness to that fact. What kind of world is it when that is your expectation? What kind of baseline illegality and illegitimacy needed to exist for us to not expect acknowledgement or justice? How (if at all) does one get over that? And, what do you do when your population is filled with people who remember what has and has not happened, some who don't care as well as some who only know what now appears to be justice? These are the questions we must now address.
Cue Lennon.
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