Tag: Sweet Honey in the Rock

Notes After Charlottesville

EllaBaker
Ella Baker portrait by Robert Shetterly. Courtesy of Americans Who Tell the Truth. Found here by Small Stones.

The Ella Baker Center is re-publicizing this post from 2013: Ella’s Song: “We Who Believe in Freedom Cannot Rest Until it Comes”.

We found the words of the post comforting. As the author notes,

The song is an anthem, a meditation on the ultimate lesson of the freedom fight passed down generationally by Ms. Ella herself that is meant to be spoken boldly out loud or under one’s breath as the situation demands to empower both purpose and resolve.

Here is a video of the Sweet Honey performance:

We are also proud to share the news that some of Ézé’s pictures from this past weekend are helping folks understand the hatefulness of the white supremacists. (We featured his work and words here).

Here’s one of his pictures that’s been picked up by the AP. The man pictured is accused of killing Heather Heyer, the protester who died.

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Ézé is on Instagram here. Below is a screen grab of another of his photos from the past weekend.

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Finally, here’s a recent article from The Atlantic: Why the Charlottesville Marchers Were Obsessed With Jews. While the hatred is multi-faceted, so, too, is the pushback.

With love from us to you.

Friday Music: Second Line Blues

Fridays are music day. Here’s Sweet Honey in the Rock paying tribute to lives taken by violence in Second Line Blues.

From Sweet Honey’s webpage:

The “Second Line Blues” song reflects the current state of gun violence, the senseless loss of life, mass murders, and police brutality in our communities. It pays homage to many who are known and unknown including Emmett Till, Freddie Gray, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Clementa Pinckney, Tywanza Sanders, Amadou Diallo, Sandra Bland, Walter Scott, Susie Jackson, Sean Bell, Tamir Rice, Ethel Lance, Cynthia Hurd, Eric Garner, Myra Thompson, Daniel Simmons, and the mass killings in Sandy Hook, Columbine, Virginia Tech and many more. It is written and performed by founding member, Louise Robinson. It is inspired by the New Orleans tradition of funeral procession. The first line of the band is the procession and the second line of the procession consists of the mourners.

And a classic by Sam Cooke, “A Change is Gonna Come”. More about its history here from the New Yorker.