IS the Civil Rights Movement DEAD?!

Following on from my last post asking is SOCIALISM Dead!? And also last January Vinyl is not Dead! - referring to the Vinyl Music production industry in Jamaica

After January 15th Martin Luther King Day this year I thought about Civil Rights? And I asked myself… is the Civil Rights movement dead?! Or has it just receded into a diminished state, in hibernation perhaps, being forced into hiding? After so many of the Movements leadership have been systematically disenfranchised of their rights to protest and to advocate for something better.

Have the Civil Rights leaders that have been persistently discouraged, or had their lives disrupted or even worse had their lives completely dismantled and been abused, have they given up the fight for equality? Is it that they have become tired of fighting for the liberation of us all, when so many times there are those who have chosen to 'sell out' for a chance to live a successful life without any interest in what happens to the rest of "us"?

Has the idea of collectively fighting for or, advocating, activating our social, civil rights become unfashionable? Or worse has this become such a bad idea that it would seem like madness to even try to change things at all! There has been some mild attempts to highlight the race issue and repeated racist attacks, with the "Black Lives Matter" campaign. Every so often we will see the people wearing t-shirts, hashtags and the stories on social media. But who owns social media and is this the appropriate forum for social or civil rights activism to be truly effective.

The other issue of concern is that it now seems far more important or fashionable at least, to be advocating and accepting the rights of persons to express their rights to sexual freedom. To chose to explore different variations of sexual orientation or preference. And even to chose which Gender to identify with, to accept persons choosing to change sex or to identify themselves in whichever definition they chose in terms of gender identity. Still after more than 70 years since the Civil rights movement, there is still a lack of acceptance of equal rights where it relates to race and cultural identity?!

It has been actually since the 1940s 'Reconstruction' era that the Civil Rights movement started, although it wasn't until the late 1950s and 60s that the movement achieved any prominence. It was in 1936 that Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia gave his famous speech to the League of Nations and Bob Marley repeated some of the words in his speech is his song entitled 'War' in 1976, forty years later! After all of these years are we to accept that we still don't have any rights equally guaranteed to all without regard for race! And in 2024 we are still living in a constant state of conflict with War going on in the east and west!"