Blog 7
These people are doing great work to preserve Emmet Till's legacy. A sign commemorating a part of Till's death was shot full of bullet holes. These people are advocating for the sign to be put back up. In the process, they are comparing the sign with a confederate memorial. I think they are trying to draw a contrast between this pillar dedicated to Confederate dead still standing and yet this sign dedicated to the beginning of the Civil Rights movement being bullet-ridden. I think this is important because it preserves Emmet Till's legacy. While it is just one sign, it is still important to protect it so that Emmet Till is not forgotten. I think this work is important for Mississippi broadly because it protects crucial history, and educates people on the civil rights movement. I don't think this is important specifically to me, though.
This guy, Dave Tell, is also doing good work. He has been researching civil rights commemoration, and has found some disturbing stories. Many cities and towns are redirecting money from refurbishing or up-keeping these sites to other purposes, such as businesses. I think this is important because he is basically uncovering corruption, which is never good. If he can expose this corruption where he finds it, perhaps some protests or something could convince these cities and towns to stop redirecting this money and the commemoration sites could be upkept. This is important because these sites are really important for remembering the civil rights movement. This could be important to me because the city where I live might someday have this corruption. Perhaps Dave's efforts could discourage this from happening in the first place.
Considering the space I talked about was my job as a dishwasher, I don't think I really want to upkeep that legacy actually. Doing manual labor for a wage not much above the minimum isn't really something you want to particularly remember. The one thing I do want to never forget is the people that I have met. I have met some very decent people, and if I could I would like to perhaps visit them again from time to time when I get another job.
The only way I can think of that my job in a restaurant would have a useful legacy would be sympathy for people who work there. I now know what it is like to work at a job like this. I think it is useful to have at least experienced part of what it would be like to be in poverty and have to work overtime at a dead-end job just to stay alive. I fortunately will probably never be in that situation, but I have a taste of the experience. In a weird way it's kind of motivation to not drop out of college.
Comments
Post a Comment