Page 21 - Liberating Liberals V2

Liberating Liberals
An example of this inhibiting power was a War Resisters League (WRL) meeting I attended in New York nine months before the 9/11 attacks. The WRL office was a dilapidated 1,500 square-foot room in a run-down building perched precariously on a small island between two busy four-lane streets. Then I traveled to south Manhattan’s financial district — an economic capital of planet Earth. It boasts hundreds of millions of square feet of fifty-story, glistening marble palaces anchored to dozens of top-dollar
city blocks. I knew that these beautiful skyscrapers camouflaged major contributors to resource wars, ecological devastation and labor abuse. How much human and ecological bone meal is symbolically buried in each pristine marble block?
On the other hand, these same skyscrapers helped create a living standard that has elevated human happiness to unimagined heights for many. They bankrolled productive efficiencies that made the First World a cornucopia of ever changing miraculous consumption. Now even much of the Third World is reaping its many blessings and curses.
How could I argue with these immensities when arriving from the ever so humble WRL dwelling? Then I remembered M.L. King’s even more humble SCLC office in Atlanta which helped generate
much of the immense Civil Rights power needed to desegregate America. Wall Street’s gleaming towers began to look a little bit more like Hollywood facades
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