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Frozen Violence
WHEN VIOLENCE IS “FROZEN”.
Slavery was not nonviolent. Slavery was violence so complete that it was embodied in every institution in the land. White churches found a scripture they could use to justify slavery and held up the abomination as the will of God. As Mark Twain put it, “There was no place in the land where the seeker could not find some small budding sign of pity for the slave. No place in all the land but one — the pulpit. It yielded last; it always does.”
There is a reason why the “pro-life” movement has unleashed so much violence in the land. Men who would dominate women, and the women who have submitted to them, agree women should live their lives under the thumb of a patriarchal church and state. Too often, the pro-life movement is nowhere to be found after school shootings, or when corporate monopolies leave infants without formula….
I believe it was Jesse Jackson who I first heard describing generational poverty as “frozen violence.” It is ironic, then, to hear efforts to protect the structures of economic injustice described as “keeping the peace.”
Herman Hesse described frozen violence very well when he wrote, “We kill at every step, not only in wars, riots and executions. We kill when we close our eyes to poverty, suffering and shame. In the same way all disrespect for life, all hard-heartedness, all indifference, all…
