I've been finishing the final details in preparation for tomorrow's activity I will be doing to encourage Orlando Health to be more culturally competent. I have all my ducks in a row so to speak - support materials printed in case any one wants to ask in depth questions about the difference between what Orlando Health currently promotes as its cultural competence and what really defines cultural competence. I have all my other printed materials in order as well to collect paper petitions and promote the online petition. And of course, I have finished my very visual display that will show all who see me all of the other voices that have come forward thus far in this movement.
But, the focus here this early morning is to share with you a few powerful quotes that have kept me fueled this evening. The quotes come from a fantastic book, Voices of a People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove. Enjoy...
"If there is no struggle there is no progress...This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both." - Frederick Douglass (inside front cover past table of contents)
"(T)he plantation owner came, and said, 'Frannie Lou...If you don't go down and withdraw your registration, you will have to leave...because we are not ready for that in Mississippi' And I addressed him and told him and said, 'I didn't try to register you. I tried to register for myself." - Fannie Lou Hamer (p. 24) This was given as part of her testimony in 1964 in regard to her right to register to vote and the apparent oppressive nature of the plantation owner for whom she was a share cropper.
"Whenever injustices have been remedied, wars halted, women and blacks and Native Americans given their due, it has been because "unimportant" people spoke up, organized, protested, and brought democracy to life." (p. 24)
I hope tomorrow (that being Saturday) I am an unimportant person.
Thanks for reading.
Alan L. Bounville
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