The above photo taken by Koran Addo in St. Louis is the centerpiece of a blog by Shaun King at Daily Kos today. King asks, “What does the photo mean to you? What connects with you most about it?”
The Kossacks had some excellent responses, but the photo is so good that there is a lot more to be said. Two main thoughts immediately came into my own mind on seeing it.
The first thought that came to my mind was that this is a magnificent little boy and that “they” will see it, too, but would want to shoot him with their precious, powerful, state-of-the-art, automatic weapons. There is something about sheer, pure, simple humanity that drives them crazy.
And my second thought that immediately followed was of a passage at the end of Abraham Johannes Muste's essay “Of Holy Disobedience” that goes as follows:
Precisely on
that day when the individual appears to be utterly hopeless, to 'have
no choice,' when the aim of the 'system' is to convince him that he
is helpless as an individual and that the only way to meet
regimentation is by regimentation, there is absolutely no hope save
in going back to the beginning. The human being, the child of God,
must assert his humanity and sonship again. He must exercise the
choice which no longer is accorded him by society, which, 'naked,
weaponless, armourless, without shield or spear, but only with naked
hands and open eyes,' he must create again. He must understand that
this naked human being is the one real thing in the face of
the machines and the mechanized institutions of our age. He, by the
grace of God, is the seed of all the human life there will be on
earth, though he may have to die to make that harvest possible.
Please write your own response to the photo in the comment box below and let me know what you think.
No comments:
Post a Comment