Today as I read the blog from browardmemory.blogspot.com about the early history of the gay rights movement in Ft. Lauderdale in the 1970s, I realized this kind of dialogue helps to enlighten a new generation of humans. Read the comments (all uplifting) under that blog, and you will see what I mean. Yes, all we have is "today", and yet a look at where we've come from opens your eyes to the real-life struggles of others, and it just might inspire you to join in the movement for better humans.
On that note, I invite you to contribute YOUR memories of a time in your life you were exposed to a new way of seeing the world, or an event in history you lived through that changed your life, for better or worse. Something like this:
As a young teenager in the 1960s, I was of course in the middle of a massive counter-culture surge. All kinds of human rights issues were gaining momentum, including protests over the Vietnam War, Women's Rights, The Sexual Revolution, the Gay Rights movement. I witnessed the 1967 race riot in my Grandmother's city of Detroit during a family holiday there. It made no sense to me. In fact, it was the inspiration for me to join a program where my mostly all-white Pilgrim High School bused volunteers after school hours, to an elementary school in the heart of South Providence (a Rhode Island ghetto at that time) to become mentors and tutors to the mainly black students there. In the news, over 200 cities across the United States in the Summer of 1967 were plagued with violence between blacks and whites. Groups like The Black Panthers made headlines for their promotion of violence as a means of protest, prompting even more fear & loathing among the goverment, the public, and the disparaged minorities of the time.
Details may follow...
Peace
