Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Youth Connecting Despair Across the Globe

This is an excerpt from a discussion that took place on Democracy Now this morning with Amy Goodman interviewing several writers, academics and activist on France's current unrest.

The following is a quote/perspectives shared by Julia Wright, activist in France and daughter of famed American writers Richard Wright. Here Wright is reflecting on the words of a young man weeks before the fires began:

Wright states:..."And I still feel eerie, because as I work with youth, 20 years -- 20 days before that happened, I asked one of the youths who's very gifted to write a statement on how he felt.

Could I read the first five lines of that statement?

AMY GOODMAN: Yes. Go ahead.

JULIA WRIGHT: "I am 20 years old, and I don't want to survive here. From death row to the prison of Abu Ghraib, from Baghdad to New Orleans, from Chicago's Southside to the French hoods, here, over there where you are, chaos. We're no political spinners. We're just voices, live from the street where we live, where we become wise, where we are duty-bound to take control out of respect for those who are prevented from setting foot in it. That very street I visualize without peace stones."

This is a 20-year-old. He wrote this on the first of October. The two kids burned to death on the 28th of October. And the suburbs have been burning since.

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