In small places, close to home

Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home—so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighbourhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works.

Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.
Eleanor Roosevelt, from her remarks known as "The Great Question", delivered at the United Nations in New York on March 27, 1958.

This quote was a little hard to track down, but I found this in Kathryn Kish Sklar’s essay in Revisiting the Origins of Human Rights: "Roosevelt's remarks were extemporaneous and no document of them survives… [She] was speaking at the UN on the occasion of presenting a pamphlet co-authored with Ethel Philips, In Your Hands: a Guide for Community Action (New York: Church Peace Union, 1958).”

My garden is the Third Precinct

“No military force can end terrorism, just as firefighters can’t end fire and cops can’t end crime. But there are ways to build a resilient society. ‘It can’t be on a government contract that says In six months, show us these results,” Skinner said. ‘It has to be I live here. This is my job forever.” He compared his situation to that of Voltaire’s Candide, who, after enduring a litany of absurd horrors in a society plagued by fanaticism and incompetence, concludes that the only truly worthwhile activity is tending his garden. “Except my garden is the Third Precinct,” Skinner said.
The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, New Yorker, May 7, 2018, by Ben Taub. The article is a profile of Patrick Skinner, a former CIA operative turned local police officer.
“The spirits will always be looking at the digital and asking ‘how can we be friends’?”
—

Saun Angeles Penangke, New Zealand digital forum (video), 2018

From the conference website: Shaun Angeles Penangke is a Kungarakany and Arrernte man who grew up in the central desert lands of his mother in Mparntwe, Alice Springs. He belongs to a long lineage of Kwatye-kenhe (Rainmaker) and Yerrampe (Honey ant) families whose traditional country is centred on Apmere Ayampe and Apmere Alkwepetye, both located north of Mparntwe.

Shaun is the Artwe-kenhe (Men’s) Collection Researcher at the Strehlow Research Centre, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory [Australia].

Jamokes

obama jamokes.png

Here’s the interesting thing that happens when you’re president, or when you go through the experience of being president.

So, you start off, you know, you’re a community organizer and you’re struggling to try to get people to recognize each other’s common interests and you’re trying to get some project done in a small community. You start thinking, ok, you know what? This alderman’s a knucklehead. They’re resistant to doing the right thing, and so I need to get more knowledge, more power, more influence, so that I can really have an impact.

And so you go to the state legislature, and you look around and you say well, these jamokes. Not all of them, but I’m just saying, you start getting that sense of…this is just like dealing with the alderman. So, nah, I gotta do something different.

Then you go to the U.S. Senate and you’re looking around and you’re like…awww man.

And then when you’re president, you’re sitting in these international meetings, and it’s like the G20 and you got all these world leaders, and it’s the same people. Which is really interesting. Same dynamics. It’s just that there’s a bigger spotlight, there’s a bigger stage.

But I’m only partly joking about that.

The nature of human dynamics does not change from level to level.

…The way power works at every level, at the United Nations or in your neighborhood, is, do you have a community that stands behind what you stand for? And if you do you’ll have more power. And if you don’t, you won’t.

Obama at Obama Foundation Summit, via @nowthisnews, November 2018

Thirty-eighth and Bulloch

“We write these strategic white papers, saying things like ‘Get the local Sunni population on our side.’ Cool. Got it. But, then, if I say, ‘Get the people who live at Thirty-eighth and Bulloch on our side,’ you realize, man, that’s fucking hard—and it’s just a city block. It sounds so stupid when you apply the rhetoric over here. Who’s the leader of the white community in Live Oak neighborhood? Or the poor community? ‘Leader of the Iraqi community.’ What the fuck does that mean?”
Patrick Skinner, a former CIA operative turned Savanna, Georgia police officer, as quoted in The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, New Yorker, May 7, 2018, by Ben Taub