“We Are The World” Still Matters!
If History Is Written By the Victors Then So Should Be The Healing
Netflix’s new documentary, The Greatest Night In Pop, strikes a chord (pun intended) as it celebrates an aspect of our world that seems to be missing these days - Grace! Sadly, though, the documentary focuses on the gift and the givers (none were paid) more than it pays attention to the reason for their giving: stopping the genocidal disease and starvation rampant on the continent of Africa. A strange twist given the activist icon Harry Belafonte’s appearance and Sir Bob Geldof’s inspirational reminder for why they were all there.
Which for me lessens the enormity of the gift given by some of the most notable names in music history, the recording of “We Are The World” (written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie, and produced by Quincy Jones and Michael Omartian). Very little is said about the over $80 million (about $222 million in today’s dollars) raised for humanitarian causes, ninety percent to African relief and ten percent for U.S. hunger and homeless programs, wikipedia.org. Nor do we see the impact these stars had on the lives of people in need. For me, those are the stories the world needs. Now more than ever!
They Want Our Rhythm Not Our Blues
Similarly, what’s missing these days is knowing that without Grace we are less than human. Or, as fictional Spock (Star Trek) learned from his mother in The Voyage Home (1986) — Being human is to affirm and care for the few, even if that means overshadowing the interests of the many.
Grace is also the lesson Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has forgotten. Their assertion that the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel was the country’s 9/11 (2001), when terrorists killed 2,977 people and injured thousands on U.S. soil. More, the ploy is a self-serving use of the grief many will “Never Forget” to justify Israel’s right to defend itself as reason for the destruction of Gaza and the killing of over thirty thousand Palestinians, including over 13,913, savethechildren.org.uk. And abdicates any responsibility for Hamas’ attacks on Israel. Which we know not to be true.
The same narcissistic use of grief drives responses to “Black Lives Matter” asserting “White Lives Matter,” “Police Lives Matter,” “Gay Lives Matter,” “All Lives Matter,” etc. The grief and pain in seeing another Black man, George Floyd, murdered by police is denied breadth by sentiments that undermines Grace by arguing “why them and not me.”
Which is the same narcissism we see at play when former president Trump compares having to answer the eighty-eight criminal charges against him, and his already settled sex abuse case, to Nelson Mandela’s twenty-seven year incarceration for leading opposition to South Africa’s oppressive and brutal apartheid system.
An Absence Of Grace Makes Us Forget Grief That’s Not Our Own
Why have we forgotten what the Congolese people suffered between 1880 and 1920 under King Leopold III’s genocidal reign of terror. For no more than imperialistic gain and self enrichment, rubber production principally, the U.S., Portugal, France, Germany, and England stood by silently as people were dismembered while alive; women were kidnapped, raped and starved unless their men met harvest quotas, and an estimated ten million Congolese were murdered. Where’s their “Never Again?”
Or, why do we “Never Forget” the Indian Removal Act (May 28, 1830) that led to, in the winter of 1831, the Choctaw becoming the first Nation expelled from their ancestral lands. Over 2500 died trying to make the 500 hundred mile journey. When 15,000 Creeks were force marched in 1836 to Oklahoma 3500 did not survive. And though by 1838 about 2,000 Cherokees had left their Georgia homeland for Indian Territory because all did not leave, seven thousand troops were sent to march the remaining tribal members the more than 1,200 miles to Indian Territory. More than 5,000 Cherokee died as a result of that journey. One of the Choctaw leaders who, to an Alabama newspaper, named their plight a “trail of tears and death.“
“History is written by the victors.” — Winston Churchill
Al fin - We Are The (Fragmented) World
President Madison long ago feared the republic (U.S.) was vulnerable to “mob rule.” Deconstructionist activism organized by special interests to spur a dominant culture towards a finite belief system: that economic interests demand democratic values be negated by authoritarian rule. Their target, egalitarian democratic values of diversity, equity and inclusion, proves time and again to be a divisive platform for a dominant culture steeped in Manifest Destiny, genocide, slavery and imperialism.
Thus, instead of Grace, what we see are well funded intentionally organized efforts whose goals are policy shifts, education reforms, and the redesign of legal frameworks focused on reordering access to wealth and resources. Madison knew the carrot, just not the fix!
What The Greatest Night In Pop misses by not giving us images of those suffering or the remedies the funds raised gave, it does convey quite ably the perseverant commitment Grace often requires. More, we learn that only by Grace is the world is healed. For many times, the needs of the few define the worth of the many.
