In loving, living memory, John Melançon 1928 – 2007
Status
Recent blog posts
- How to kill a popular government institution with us since the founding of the country before everyone's eyes
- Evil Neighbor Blues
- My grandfather is doing fantastic
- Update on Housing Demolotions in Bangalore, India
- In which the hospital attempts to fulfill my grandfather's death wish
- Update on Alfred Natkin from Cape Cod Hospital
- Doing What One Can Do
- Proposition 37 Million Dollars
- Andrew Judson Grice (1969-2012)
- Peasants and migrant workers rising up, organizing, and even winning in repressive China
Front-paged Notes
Journal
User login
Search
Syndicate
On benefiting from racism
Tue, 2006/07/04 - 8:38pm — Benjamin Melançon
in the same place where he spotted the misspelling of deodorant in deodorant soap
Dad said he must have been 18, 19 when he applied. Talked in the room outside the office with an eager, bright, young black man while waiting for the interview.
He left, happy-- probably told 'we'll call you.'
I went in, and was given the job on the spot.
And I knew-- I knew I got the job because I was white.
I think about that all the time.
still can bring tears to my eyes if I keep thinking about it
This was also the place where another worker, older than Dad, kept bugging him and bugging him.
Until dad "hauled off and whacked the guy"
A good friend of mine, a very good friend, he was weird too, saw the world differently also, said he heard the other people telling the guy Dad hit to forget about it, don't mess with him "He's crazy."
"I'm crazy? I'm begging him not to bug me and he won't stop and I'm crazy."
The other thing that stays with me is the scenes of deprivation and misery in Latin America
play in front of my eyes like a movie
I make a living doing web design and development with a great team
The Agaric Design Collective
I'm trying to make possible a worldwide nonviolent revolution for justice, liberty, and making more good things doable.
People Who Give a Damn
Created and maintained by
Favorite Quotations
We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.