There is a profound scripture that states if the present place is too small for you, carve out a place in the high country and journey there. I cannot find the scripture. I know, however, it has lingered with me for a long, long time. I miss Rev. Dr. Charlotte. She would have located it with ease.
Small towns and villages where everybody knows your name can be comforting, nurturing, and a place of tremendous growth and vitality. The small town of my childhood, Liberty, MO, was certainly such a place. Our teachers – Miss Bradley; Miss Kerford; Miss Mack; Miss Ferguson and principal; Mr. Gantt – dedicated themselves to preparing their students to live beyond of our segregated school and larger society. Not all small places are too small. Many people thrive there and in other small places. My childhood friend, Shelton Ponder, is a member of the city council as well as an artist. Albert Byrd is on the Board of Education. Theresa Byrd is involved in juvenile justice. They and others have transformed Garrison Elementary school into a Center for African American Culture. They have found liberty sufficient in Liberty, Mo. But if that place makes you feel small trapped, insignificant, I suggest it is time for you to high tail it up toward high country and carve out a space and place there.
My Aunt Frankie was the first of the two parents and the youngest of the ten children to feel the rumblings of marching orders to the high country. She could not abide any longer the misery of her social location or perceive a future in the share cropping system of Mississippi, a system, sanctified by the KKK, White Citizen Council, voter fraud, exploitation, and almost nonexistent education. Such conditions gave birth to the Great Migration, an awesome example of people finding a place too small and leaving those places by the masses.
The Great Migration, sometimes known as the Great Northward Migration or the Black Migration, was the movement of six million African Americans out of the rural Southern United States to the urban Northeast, Midwest, and West between 1910 and 1970. It was substantially caused by poor economic and social conditions due to prevalent racial segregation and discrimination in the Southern states where Jim Crow laws were upheld. In particular, continued lynchings motivated a portion of the migrants, to vest their hopes in place the vision of their eyes but not beyond the hunger of their hearts. As African American, my father had not left in search for social reprieve. Certainly, my father would not have received the educational, ministerial, and community leadership opportunities that are part of his legacy as African Americans had he not left in searched for social reprieve. Whether cognizant or not, Aunt Frankie had been conscientized. To be conscientized means to be educated about an issue. In this case, it is not merely an idea but a way of life. She did not have to accept her present circumstances. In the words of Dr. Marian Wright Edelman: “Your boat’s too small.” Millions of Black people left the South making the journey to urban areas of the North, West, and Midwest. Leaving the South was also an economic boycott, draining the South of financial resources that undercut the economy of the South.
Olive Schreiner - Old Mother Duck:
Such women are, in truth, like a good old mother duck, who, having for years led her ducklings to the same pond, when that pond has been drained and nothing is left but baked mud, will still persist in bringing her younglings down to it, and walks about with flapping wings and anxious quack, trying to induce them to enter it. But the ducklings, with fresh young instincts, hear far off the delicious drippings from the new dam which has been built higher up to catch the water, and they smell the chickweed and the long grass that is growing up beside it; and absolutely refuse to disport themselves on the baked mud or to pretend to seek for worms where no worms are. And they leave the ancient mother quacking beside her pond and set out to seek new pastures perhaps to lose themselves upon the way? —perhaps to find them? To the old mother one is inclined to say, “Ah, good old mother duck, can you not see the world has changed? You cannot bring the water back into the dried-up pond! Mayhap it was better and pleasanter when it was there, but it has gone forever; and would you and yours swim again, it must be in other waters."
We often feel there are no alternatives to our exploitive economic system. There are many alternatives, and one is viewed in this trailer.
Going to higher ground is more than physical. It is also spiritual. It entails an enlargement of vision and one’s possibilities. It means becoming a fuller self, more grounded, and more enthusiastic about life.
Others include:
Some cooperatives in the United States include CHS Inc., Dairy Farmers of America, Black Star Co-op Pub and Brewery, and Equal Exchange.
Examples of cooperatives
CHS Inc. A top-producing cooperative based in Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota
Dairy Farmers of America: A top-producing cooperative based in Kansas City, Kansas
Black Star Co-op Pub and Brewery: A workers cooperative
Equal Exchange: A worker cooperative
Isthmus Engineering & Manufacturing: A workers’ cooperative
Weaver Street Market: A workers’ cooperative
Select Machine, Inc: A workers’ cooperative
South Mountain Company: A workers’ cooperative
Types of cooperatives
Consumer cooperatives: Owned by consumers and managed democratically.
Credit unions: Serve the middle class, including underserved communities.
Worker cooperatives: Owned and controlled by their employees.
Other facts about cooperatives
The first recognized cooperative in the U.S. was a mutual fire insurance company founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1752
The USDA estimates that there are at least 30,000 cooperatives in the United States
Cooperatives provide more than $700 billion to the U.S. economy.
Allies included on our journey include:
Pacific School of Religion
Interfaith Movement for Humanity
National Council of Elders
KPFA Radio
The Guardian
Heather Richardson
Genesis
Each one of you/us Ally
Pacific Lutheran University
Oswald McCall
Bishop Budde’s sermon
We also find strength in John’s vision while exiled on the Isle of Patmos.
Revelation 21:1-5 (James Moffat Translation)
1 Then I saw the new heaven and the new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away; and the sea is no more. 2 And I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, descending from God out of heaven, already like a bride arrayed for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice out of the throne, crying, "Lo, God's dwelling-place is with humans; with humanity shall he live. They shall be his people, and God will himself be with them: 4 he will wipe every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more — no more wailing or crying or pain, for the first things have passed away." 5 Then he who was seated on the throne said, "Lo, I make all things new." And he said, "Write this: 'these words are trustworthy and genuine.'" 6 Then he said, "All is over! I am the alpha and the omega, the First and the Last. I will let the thirsty drink of the fountain of the water of Life without price. 7
This is spiritual. It is a shift in consciousness, an enlargement of life, and a grandness of the soul.