LIKE ROSA

Mike has written a lot of important letters. But today's letter is a very important one indeed.

It's a letter about praxis.

I mean, theory is all fine and dandy and discussions are great, but you also got to practise what you believe in. Otherwise, it's senseless. You got to act ON YOUR OWN against an unbearable situation WHATEVER THE CONSEQUENCES AND WHOEVER FOLLOWS, and NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU ARE FOLLOWED OR NOT.

The point is to act according to your conscience - no more, no less.

Without flattering myself, I do it all the time, and so I immediately sent Mike a letter narrating my latest action. Here it is :




Dear Mike,

Must we obey unjust laws because they are the law or must we break unjust laws because they are unjust ?

In your latest letter, you answer by the latter without hesitation, when you glorify one person’s stand in the face of overwhelming injustice and the imperative necessity to take such persons as inspirations and role models. Then you ask us to “put a stop to an injustice you see, not allowing it to continue for one more second,” and tell you what we did.

Well, I am part of an online community which was what it was – turbulent, not perfect – but still, relatively democratic. I mean that no one really decided of what was right, what was wrong, and who was better than the others. It remained this way, until it was hi-jacked by one of these playground bullies who can be so dangerous, especially when they have their own special thugs and their trail of ass-kissers.

And so it came to pass that said hooligan (who calls himself left-wing) had a rift with a Bush supporter. What he defended was democratic indeed (no special treatment for natives over non-natives), and what his opponent defended was less democratic indeed (citizens should be the government's first priority over non citizens).

But, to get his point across, the bully used all of his personal power and influence to crush this long respected peaceful, civil intellectual with methods of self-righteous terror clearly aiming at destroying the influence and credibility of this person, as he had done before with others, including me, who had dared oppose him, or just think and behave otherwise.

I defended the Republican, whose opinions I strongly dislike, without hesitation. I defended, not his views, but his right to hold them without losing his claim to belonging to the human race. I defended civility, democracy and debate. And I endeavored to do it so as to show everyone that it was no ordinary feud like there are so many in online boards, but something where core values were at stake.

And should you ask yourself if I did it because I had been personally crushed, belittled and discredited by the blowhard and his thugs – yes, I did it because I had been personally crushed, belittled and discredited by the blowhard and his thugs. Everyone is partly oppressor and partly underdog, but we always have the choice with identification. There’s nothing like connecting to the underdog in you to fight injustice.

Rosa Parks has always been the main symbol for that message, because she was black, she was a woman, she was the weakest and loneliest thing you could think of, but still she was oppressed, conscious, able to stand together and unable to take outrage. And so I told this bully : "No. I'm sorry. I've had enough. I'm not going to take it anymore."

Now you may think that this is not a real matter of law. I don’t. What is more legal than the affirmation of right against might, more democratic than limiting the undue power and influence of a single man ?

Now you may think that real life fights are more serious. I don’t. Yes, it all happened online, and after all, these are only message boards. Still, there are no places that are better than others to say : "No. I'm sorry. I've had enough. I'm not going to take it anymore." At least that’s what I think.

Yours respectfully.