Have you ever wondered how change takes place? All it
takes is the desire and belief that you can change one portion of your
world.
A recent example would be the 2,000 Nigerian women who
occupied a major Chevron-Texaco oil facility in Escravos last month.
Their political act? They sat down. They simply sat on the facility’s
airstrips, helicopter pads, and docks to demand jobs for their husbands
and sons. They demanded the roads, water service, and electricity that
had been promised to them for mining the oil beneath their homes – but
were never given to them.
Day after day the women sat, unarmed, deliberately
slowing down the work of one of the world’s largest companies. No doubt
they told each other story after story to keep up their courage. They
must have told stories about their children, stories about men, stories
about their childhood, and stories about their dreams for the future in
order to keep each other strong. In the end, who won? The power of 2,000
women can move mountains – and multinational oil companies.
There is also the case of the Mothers of the Plazo de
Mayo. During the early 1980s, the military in Argentina killed thousands
and thousands of people. Tortured and killed them; buried them in mass
graves. The disappeared included children who were rounded up along with
their parents. And children born to women soon to be killed in more than
200 secret detention centers throughout the country. Many of the new
orphans were given to childless couples in good standing with the
military junta.
But these children did not truly disappear. Someone gave
their names to the world at large. Someone could not and would not
forget them – their grandparents, who longed to hold their grandchildren
again and see their lost children in their grandchildren’s eyes. So one
day a week at noon, the grandmothers would dress in black and go to the
Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, where they walked in silent protest for
news and records about their children and grandchildren. Their powerful
statement was heard across the world.
Finally, there is the story of an American prisoner
named Clarendon Gideon, who felt that he was unjustly convicted of
burglary. Gideon had requested an attorney to represent him at his
trial. But in the 1950s, the law only allowed those who were illiterate
and/or charged with a capital crime to be assigned an attorney. Gideon
embarked on a mission. On his own, he wrote brief after brief, and his
tenacity won for all of us the right to have a public defender when we
are charged with a felony. In 1963, when Clarence Gideon finally got his
retrial, it turned out that he was right. His state-appointed attorney
was able to prove to the jury that he was innocent after all.
Do you feel that you are too insignificant to alter the
course of human events? Remember that the truly powerless could and did
change the world
