{"id":2801,"date":"2014-12-21T19:13:02","date_gmt":"2014-12-22T02:13:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thegatheringcincinnati.org\/?p=2801"},"modified":"2014-12-21T19:13:02","modified_gmt":"2014-12-22T02:13:02","slug":"december-21-2014-holiday-stories-kwanzaa-values","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/2014\/12\/21\/december-21-2014-holiday-stories-kwanzaa-values\/","title":{"rendered":"December 21, 2014, "Holiday Stories: Kwanzaa Values""},"content":{"rendered":"

(c) Doug Slagle, Minister to the Gathering, UCC, All Rights Reserved\"kwanzaa01\"<\/a><\/p>\n

To download and listen to the message, please click here. \u00a0To read the message, please see below.<\/p>\n\n

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In 1989, Spike Lee released perhaps his best movie, one entitled \u201cDo the Right Thing.\u201d\u00a0 While controversial at the time, the movie has since been acclaimed by numerous movie critics as one of the 100 best films ever made.\u00a0 It was extended the rare honor of being accepted into the Smithsonian Museum\u2019s National Film archives of historically landmark movies.\u00a0 Spike Lee was nominated for an Academy award for the screenplay. \u00a0 Recently, the film has been further praised for describing in that film events and issues eerily similar to those in the recent killing of young black men.<\/p>\n

Spike Lee plays a character in the film named Mookie, who works as a pizza deliveryman.\u00a0 Mookie works for Sal, who is of Italian descent, and who owns a pizzeria which is the center of life in the predominantly African-American New York neighborhood of Bedford Stuyvessant.\u00a0 Sal has two sons, Pino who intensely dislikes blacks, and Vito who is a friend of Mookie.\u00a0 The two sons represent the twin poles of white attitudes toward African-Americans.<\/p>\n

The story takes place on one of the hottest days of the year. \u00a0 The heat adds to a simmering tension in the neighborhood which gradually builds from small confrontations, to a race tinged argument between Pino and Mookie, to a racial killing and mass protest.<\/p>\n

One of the film characters, a man named Buggin\u2019 Out, challenges Sal the pizzeria owner, about a Wall of Fame inside his restaurant which displays pictures of famous men – mostly Italians but noticeably lacking anyone of color.\u00a0 Buggin\u2019 Out demands that Sal include on the wall photos of Martin Luther King, Jr. and other famous blacks since the pizzeria is in the middle of a black neighborhood. \u00a0 This issue becomes the spark that ignites racial conflict.\u00a0 Sal refuses the request claiming that as owner of the restaurant, he can depict anyone he wants.\u00a0 Buggin\u2019 Out quickly tries to start a boycott against Sal and enlists both Radio Raheem and Smiley to join him.<\/p>\n

Tensions continue to rise in the community with several small provocations until Radio Raheem confronts Sal about his racist attitudes all while his boombox loudly blares.\u00a0 Sal becomes enraged, calls Raheem the \u201cn\u201d word multiple times and smashes the boombox to pieces.<\/p>\n

With Sal\u2019s blatant racial epithets, a fight ensues.\u00a0 Many come to Raheem\u2019s defense including Mookie.\u00a0 Pino and Sal confront them along with several white customers.\u00a0 The fight spills onto the street and the police are called.\u00a0 They arrive and a white officer places Raheem into a chokehold even though Sal is fighting too.\u00a0 Raheem is literally pulled into the air in a chokehold as his feet twitch and reach for the ground.\u00a0 He goes limp and is thrown to the ground.\u00a0 The police look on impassively.\u00a0 A police officer thinks he is faking and brutally kicks him but it is soon clear Raheem is dead.<\/p>\n

At Raheem\u2019s death, the crowd turns on Sal and his sons.\u00a0 Mookie, however, picks up a trash can and throws it through the restaurant\u2019s front window.\u00a0 It is later clear that Mookie\u2019s action was intended to divert the crowd away from attacking Sal.\u00a0 The protesters, however, cheer Mookie\u2019s action and start a fire.\u00a0 The restaurant is soon engulfed.\u00a0 The police arrest most of the protesters.\u00a0 Once the crowd has been arrested and dispersed, Smiley, the mentally challenged man, walks into the burned out restaurant and hangs a picture of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcom X on the Wall of Fame.\u00a0 The film ends with Sal and Mookie warily reconciling.\u00a0 There is a fade to black as two quotes fill the screen – one from Martin Luther King, Jr. and the other from Malcom X.<\/p>\n

King\u2019s quote is one of his most famous:\u00a0 \u201cThe old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n

Malcom X\u2019s quote offers a contrasting view:\u00a0 \u201cThere are plenty of bad people in America and the bad ones are the ones who seem to have all the power and be in those positions to block things that you and I need.\u00a0 Because this is the situation, you and I have to preserve the right to do what is necessary to bring an end to it, and that doesn’t mean that I advocate violence, but at the same time I am not against using violence in self-defense.\u00a0 I don’t even call it violence when it’s self-defense, I call it intelligence.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n

Viewers are left with the troubling question of just what constitutes \u201cdoing the right thing.\u201d\u00a0 Turn the other cheek, OR intelligent self-defense in reaction to institutional white violence?\u00a0 Let\u2019s watch the chokehold scene from the movie and compare it to video footage of what happened to Eric Garner this past summer.<\/p>\n