Opinion Page

Food for though: General awareness of the world
2 of 2 in a series

By Kelsey Cole

If there is one thing, one moral that we all should abide by is not to allow our lives to make mockeries of our values.

This was the statement strongly expressed and encouraged by recent guest speaker Bill Ayers to an audience of uninterested, spiteful and genuinely inquiring minds.

  In regards to this two-piece column, I felt it fit right in. I hope to elaborate upon this idea of living a life that truly agrees with a person’s morals and values by addressing it to the issue I brought to light in my previous column: awareness of the world around us.

 In this segment, I will take it to the next level: taking action in consideration to the world’s travesties.

In a book I received from the speaker entitled “Letters from Young Activists,” I found a quote that particularly spoke out to me. Activist Ismail Khalidi explained to his parents that “when the lies and the injustice have me pinned to the salty concrete, cracked and at a loss for words, I listen and then I speak.”

This meaning, - when the shady lies of our government, top leaders or influential guardians - covers up the injustice felt in our world, we should listen—listen to the pleas of hurt and to the call to action pronounced by the people unwilling to tolerate wrongdoing. Only until we turn our ignorant bliss into enlightened understanding can we help advance our society for the better.

There are so many injustices in the world that it’s hard not to be aware.             There is the AIDS epidemic in Africa that, according to The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, killed three million people in 2003 with young people ages 15-24 constituting 42%.

There is the cruelty ravaged by the School of the Americas (SOA) students in Latin America. The SOA is a combat training school located in Fort Benning,, Georgia that has trained over 60,000 Latin Americans since its opening in 1946. The graduates use the skills they have learned to “wage a war against their own people,” according to the School of the Americas Watch organization.

"Hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans have been tortured, raped, assassinated, ‘disappeared’, massacred, and forced into refuge by those trained.”

There is the plight the American public school system finds itself in, with a total of 191 schools in Chicago alone failing the standards set forth by the “No Child Left Behind” Act. There is  continued discrimination in the U.S. against people who are not white males.

As I said in my past column, this sense of listening and awareness helps to bring us out of a state of ignorant inaction that we know achieves nothing. By being aware, we can therefore take the next steps into action to better the cause.

Actions involve everything from donations to protests to sit-ins to walk-outs to letters to speeches. There are a number of legitimate organizations that accept donations for AIDS treatment and prevention. There is a group on campus that recently went to protest the SOA in Georgia and is hoping to attend the next protest with even more participants from campus. You can become a teacher or get involved in the public schooling system to help reform the most valuable asset we covet in America: education for all.

Push for nondiscrimination in the workplace, in school and in society through disbanding stereotypes and advocating tolerance.

And there is always the power of words. Explain to others what you know. Evoke awareness to spark action in others. Educate your peers. It is quite rewarding.

The myriad troubles of the world may seem overwhelming and impossible to mend, but by continually resisting the terrorism of the weak, we are preventing future plans of the powerful by showing them that they will not cause injustice without a fight and will ultimately lose to the justice sought by the people willing to stand up for the good of human kind. If we continue to put up this unmovable force and continue to act against those causing strife then they shall be the ones who will be forced to change their ways.

Power to the people? Indeedy-do.