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Courageous Bystanders
“The measure of a civilization is not in the courage of its soldiers, but of its bystanders.” — Jack McDevitt
“The people who stopped and raised their voices on May 25 2020 were a bouquet of humanity… old, young, men and women, black and white. A man from the neighborhood just walking to get a drink. A child going to buy a snack with her cousin. An off-duty firefighter on her way to a community garden. Brave young women — teenagers — who pressed record on their cellphones.
……..
Yehuda Bauer: “Time has come to strengthen …(the Ten Commandments ) by three additional ones, which we ought to adopt and commit ourselves to: thou shall not be a perpetrator; thou shall not be a victim; and thou shall never, but never, be a bystander.”
Howard Zinn spent a lifetime calling us out of our learned sense of passivity, “Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders…and millions have been killed because of this obedience…Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves… (and) the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem.”
