Tell your friends to pull up.
Why the average person should care about fighting global injustices and world peace.
In her President’s Award acceptance speech at the 2020 NAACP Image Awards, Rihanna gave this clarion call:
“I’m lucky I was able to start the Clara Lionel Foundation in 2012,” she said.
“If there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that we can only fix this world together. We can’t do it divided. I can’t emphasize that enough.”
With the raging wars in today's world, and me having come of age to understand social injustices and evil, greedy strong-man willing to sacrifice innocent lives in the name of political and profit expediency, I question the role I have to play or am already playing in alleviating or exacerbating the existing problems.
See, history is marred with stories of solidarity that aided the destruction of oppressive systems like apartheid, imperialism and the Black Lives Matter movement et al. It is no secret that we’re stronger together. And, being born in Zimbabwe, I understand the politics of resistance even outside the context of war. This reality of my birthplace and that of international solidarity are nightmares of my desensitivity seeping in.
It is often said that ‘you might not be interested in politics but politics is interested in you.’ For many of us, what is happening around the world is far from our day-to-day musings. It’s by the way. We relegate the problems of the world occurring around us to the immediate victims. But, to what end?
“The: if it is your problem, then it’s not mine,” continues Rihanna in her speech. “ It’s a woman’s problem. It’s a black people's problem. It’s a poor people problem.”
The it-is-a-who-problem list is long, you can insert just about any conflict there. Because, as Rihanna further shares, we have friends, acquaintances, partners, and followers, from vast walks of life and they wish to break bread with us as do we. Therefore, it is their problem too. Not only because the world is more connected than ever and hence I feel I should care about the political conflicts that are beyond my individual means to resolve, but because there seems to be nothing else better to do with our lives than making the world we’re already inhabiting a better place. There’s nothing better than to heal the world.
I don’t wish to speak from a position of moral high ground or sound more knowledgeable than anyone else because I am not. For the average Jack and Jill, maybe that’s the starting point: to seek the truth about what is happening around us. If not the truth, then seek to shun desensitization. Sadly though, the truth is sometimes that which the few powerful elites prescribe, and that’s the dangerous nature of our world. However, life, especially innocent life, but life in general is precious. And if we’re to choose anything, the unjust treatment of lives that deserve better all over the world should be condemned unapologetically. That truth deserves no silence. It deserves solidarity.
“So...,” echoes Rihanna in the conclusion of her speech, “when we are marching, and protesting and posting about the Michael Brown Juniors and the Tatiana Jeffersons of the world, tell your friends to pull up.”
That is my sentiment. On social media; when the hashtags fly, in the streets when the protests commence, in the boardrooms, in conversations with friends, wherever and whenever I feel I have to pull up. And maybe you should too.
The world is polarized and split at heart, but it doesn’t have to be. Criminals, even when clad in fancy immaculate suits, should not be allowed to dictate the order of the world.
So, again, PULL UP. I’ll too.