This year’s Blog Action Day (BAD) theme is “Inequality” and thousands of bloggers and different organizations from around the world will be writing about it for the 7th annual Blog Action Day on October 16, 2014. Every year Blog Action Day raises awareness about a specific theme and it is always a learning experience for me and all of the participants. This year is no different.
I’ve been taking part in Blog Action Day since the first one back in 2007
and I’m happy to continue this tradition. I read about the theme that was
selected a few months ago and I was thinking about it when I recently gave a speech
about the famous Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “I have a dream” speech. I briefly
thought about recording myself doing a version of that speech and making it
part of my efforts for this year’s theme, but I decided to put that on the back
burner for the moment so that I can do an article that is still timely and relevant.
What got me originally thinking about Dr. King’s famous speech was driving
in my car one day with my family I heard part of this speech through our car’s
speakers, but I was quickly surprised to hear that the speech had been put to
dance music and was now a popular pop song in Germany (maybe other parts of Europe
for that matter, but I can’t say at this moment). While I was listening to the
song, I was thinking how cool is this that a big message from the 60’s was
being picked up and taken by a new generation. I don’t know what will happen
with this song and what the impact will be but the possibilities are endless,
when you consider the inspirational and motivation aspects and what effect that
they can have on people and incorporating this into a popular song has that
much more possibility to spread the message.
One point of my speech was the torch of Dr. King and his message in the
60’s being picked up by another generation and made a new.
In his famous speech delivered at the Lincoln Memorial in August 1963 (now more that 51 years ago), Dr. King says “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a
nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the
content of their character.“ Doesn’t this speak to
parents everywhere, we all want a better world for our children? Dr. King’s
speech hits on civil rights, discrimination, and inequality. I think that if
were giving the speech on Blog Action Day (October 16, 2014) he would probably
mention the following things as well.
- People are often treated unfairly because they’re older or younger
- People are chastised because of who they love
- Society today is a lot more polarized with people not willing to
listen to other people with different beliefs
- Religious toleration is at an all-time low
- People are unwilling to consider new information that might conflict
with their personal dogma
- College education (and education in general) has become so expensive
that it becomes more and more out of reach
- Women and African Americans tend to earn a lot less for the same work
as white males
- Money has long be a divider, but today we’re living in the time of the
1%. Add to this the statistic that the world’s richest 85 people own as
much as 3.5 billion people of the world’s poorest people was a big topic
of conversation at Davos earlier this year (Richard Fuentes mentions this here)
- He might even have a few other things to add
Duncan Green, Senior Strategic Advisor at Oxfam wrote an interesting
article about inequality.
He tells about a few years ago when he was promoting a book of his “From
Poverty to Power” in the U.S. and he had to replace “redistribution” with “rebalancing”,
because it had become so politically loaded in the U.S. Unfortunately, this is
not the only word that has had its former meaning hijacked only to put images
in people’s minds that will almost stop any positive discussion and turn it
into a heated political discussion where many people will immediately tune you
out. Sadly, there are many topics that we can hardly have a sane conversation
about any more.
Mr. Green mentions that inequality should not just be equated with income
(or money) but views it as “the division of the world into haves and have nots
is at its root about power” and the gap between those that have it and those
that don’t. He also suggested that we need to be better telling the story of
inequality and where the fight has been and is being won. You can think about
the abolition of slavery and women getting the right to vote. When we claim to
profess and embrace Democracy in much of the world, then we should stop
ignoring inequality and so much of the world’s population.
When I think about "Inequality" today, I realize that it means so much more than ability to vote, be hired for a job, eat in a restaurant, or to sit wherever you like on the bus. I encourage you to have a look around the Blog Action Day website, to look around the web to see
what people are doing for Blog Action Day 2014, you can also look for #BAD2014,
#Bad14, BlogAction14, #inequality, and Blog Action Day as hashtags and
keywords. There are some good ideas of how you can participate at the Blog
Action Day website,
which also links to conversations that they’ve had with some of the sponsors of
this year’s event (like Oxfam, All Together Now, and Global Voices).
The Future is not yet written,
Let's build it together!
Darryl
Darryl
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