Millions of Little Teaspoons

[Chuck Freeman]

“I think the world is going to be saved by millions of small things. Too many things can go wrong when they get big.”

Now there’s a mouthful of truth times 6.7 billion! The sage is Pete Seeger at his 90th birthday celebration last weekend.

One of the most tempting cynicisms in life is, “I’m just one person, I can’t do much of anything.”

Bruce Springsteen headlined the concert honoring Seeger. He strummed his guitar before performing and mused.

“As Pete and I traveled to Washington for President Obama’s inaugural celebration, he told me the entire story of ‘We Shall Overcome,’ how it moved from a labor movement song and, with Pete’s inspiration, had been adopted by the civil rights movement.

And that day, as we sang ‘This Land Is Your Land,’ I looked at Pete. The first black president of the United States was seated to his right. And I thought of the incredible journey that Pete had taken. You know, my own growing up in the ’60s, a town scarred by race rioting, made that moment nearly unbelievable. And Pete had thirty extra years of struggle and real activism on his belt. He was so happy that day. It was like, Pete, you outlasted the bastards, man.”

The other end of cynicism is the American fiction that change happens by the courageous passion of one lone person. This is not to undermine Pete Seeger’s 60 years of dedication to equality and justice. Nor is it to deny the fortitude of that singular soul who claims cosmic authority and says “no more.” It takes the postered faces and the faceless millions.

A new report by Amnesty International says China has intensified its crackdown on activists and particularly lawyers. Li Jinsong’s law firm has defended some of China's most high-profile dissidents.

Li has been threatened, harassed and beaten. Three years ago, he and three other colleagues were brutally assaulted as they traveled to a local court to defend another lawyer. No one but local court officials knew they would be traveling that day, and despite repeated calls, local police never came to investigate.


Li says he is willing to sacrifice himself for the law. "If China's legal system is a skyscraper, it should be 100 stories. But it's not finished; we've only built 30 or 40 stories. If we're standing high up in the building, and I get knocked to the ground and killed by corrupt officials and their friends, at least the 30 or 40 stories we've built will still exist."

Pete Seeger plumbed the everlasting truth this way.

"I honestly believe that the future is going to be millions of little things saving us. I imagine a big seesaw, and one end of this seesaw is on the ground with a basket half-full of big rocks in it.

The other end of the seesaw is up in the air. It’s got a basket one-quarter full of sand. And some of us got teaspoons, and we’re trying to fill it up with sand.

A lot of people are laughing at us, and they say, “Ah, people like you have been trying to do that for thousands of years, and it’s leaking out as fast as you’re putting it in.”

But we keep saying, “We’re getting more people with teaspoons all the time. “One of these years, you’ll see that whole seesaw go zooop in the other direction.” And people will say, “Gee, how did it happen so suddenly?”

The lyrical refrain hums, “Us and all our little teaspoons.”

[Vicky Dill]

Had we all been teaspooning these last ten years, perhaps we would not see the misery, unemployment and underemployment we are seeing today. I think about Lech Walesa, Mandela, the lone protester in Tiananmen Square where unknown hundreds were slaughtered, and others who protested the so-called "free market miracles" (Naomi Klein's term) that have led to physical and economic massacres. I only hope we can steady the seesaw of our democracy quickly, under Obama's leadership, so that fewer people suffer or slide off the playing field.