Rallying cries for unity and action flutter through social media like a windswept newspaper, tossed and tumbled in various directions, until dispersed, flattened. Clarion calls which weeks later grow silent as middle class global citizens return to their average lives. An hour ago I read that world leaders pledged to join the march in Paris today. Good for these diplomats who have chosen to participate, better for the organizers who want media attention, which they'll receive until the press, at least in the U.S., will return to other newer or more immediate stories. Why am I so cynical? Anyone who has read my earlier blogs would answer its because I've been there. People's Climate March, September 21, 2014.
Yes, constructive dialogue and empirical results--suspension of Keystone Pipeline, cessation of dumping waste in the Great Barrier Reef; China's resolution to restrict carbon-based emissions--have occurred since the climate marches. Still, like that mythical creature Hydra, with every climate victory there are other challenges that directly or indirectly affect what we marched for last year: none more threatening than terrorism and the subsequent squelching of free speech.
Countries, with few exceptions, have a singularity of mind. Whether they be developed, developing or impoverished each nation puts its interests first before the world's. Censorship exists in the West and the East; it grows in leaps and bounds (and I argue press restrictions fan the flames of terrorism). Peacemakers wish to believe that like an innocent flower all we need is to love one another and all will be well. Realists see, on the other hand, that because citizens struggle to live their everyday lives, they have little energy left to join the initiative for peace or free expression or clean air. Well, folks, it's time to find that energy! Use any peaceful means available. Grab your neighbors and links hands, yell, write protests in stone, or help those who can't help themselves make a statement. For if participating countries are limited to those with the power and money, we're looking at a rose that has lost its petals.
The European Union and the United States share similar dissension of their "members" as to what is best for the whole, let alone their parts. To ask these power brokers, and their Eastern allies to become one force against the terrorism plaguing our world wouldn't be enough. For how can the West fight a conflict which is home-grown?
Two dangling petals without the support of the whole will quickly fall to the ground. No, to achieve any hope for our world's people, their children and generations to come, even the smallest, sympathetic nation would need to participate. To give the reins to the West to eradicate terrorism would be to give these countries omnipotence and thereby assign impotence to countries elsewhere.
Every citizen who desires peace can't remain quiet any longer. All ethnicities, creeds, races, will march in spirit with the French people this morning. However, empathy is not enough. No, we must show solidarity through our actions. To conquer this brutal blight, terrorism, we have to suffocate it, eliminate the root causes for its existence--poverty and ignorance. Rally, as a rose blooming so robustly that its thorns are hidden and then cut, for all may share its beauty!
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