...the righteous appeal to the understanding and the heart--with this we can withstand the most fiery of all the darts of perdition itself.
Frederick Douglass
January 4, 2021 - January 8, 2021
This week began with the election of two senators from Georgia whose race and ethnicities mark the beginning of historic new chapters in representation and inclusion. The week then turned towards critical legislative convenings in the capitol that were interrupted by tumultuous and ultimately deadly events. The stunning developments of this week underscore both the deep promise and vulnerability of democracy. They underscore and make plain yet again the significant divisions and dueling perspectives that shape our collective and individual experiences of democracy and justice and that also fuel protest, presence and violence in the public sphere.
175 years ago, in January of 1846, Frederick Douglass was in Scotland and he wrote to Francis Jackson, a white abolitionist colleague and the then-president of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society who had witnessed Douglass' historic first formal antislavery speech on Nantucket in 1841. Writing from Dundee, Douglass told his friend that he "had a view the other day of what are called the Grampion mountains that divide east Scotland from the west. I was told that here the ancient crowned heads use[d] to meet, contend and struggle in deadly conflict for supremacy, causing those grand old hills to run blood, each warming cold ste[e]l in the others heart." "Thank God," Douglass declared, "liberty is no longer to be contended for and gained by instruments of death. A higher, a nobler, a mightier than carnal weapon is placed into our hands--one which hurls defiance at all the improvements of carnal warfare. It is the righteous appeal to the understanding and the heart--with this we can withstand the most fiery of all the darts of perdition itself."
Our CSRD programming is informed by the past and by the present. We work with our ASU and community partners to develop programming and opportunities for meaningful and transformative engagement. Together, we aspire to achieve substantial and inspiring movement towards the future. We hope that you will join us in the months ahead for programming that is informed by what Douglass so powerfully imagined nearly two centuries ago as a new year began.
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https://blog.apaonline.org/2020/02/18/frederick-douglass-and-the-transfo...