Beloved Community and Okinawan Karate

Hahaha. You ever heard those two words go together? Maybe. I haven't. But that's what I been thinkin' about recently.

I just got an email update from a friend in Detroit. She told me about the housing cooperative they are building on Field St. in East Detroit. It is exciting stuff and it is the reason I went to Detroit in the first place. My friend also gave a speech recently (read it on her blog here), quoting from Grace Lee Boggs:

“And unless we want to live in terror for the rest of our lives [think of the fear that drove George Zimmerman], we need to change our view about acquiring things.” The antidote to consumption is creation. The antidote to violence is interconnection. The antidote to fear is community. “Beloved community,” Grace says, “is the essence of the next American revolution.”

My thoughts exactly. And I'm thinking about Personal Safety. I'm thinking about in the meantime. I'm thinking about the people who don't give a f--- about "beloved community" and would rather make a quick deal on the street. I'm thinking about the ones who have a mean streak. Who got no respect for the boundaries of other human beings and who use their weapons to scare others into submission. I believe that there are hella more good people in this world than bad, but who then will respond to the bad? Who will respond to the violence? We need a new kind of "police officer". Not even like the old kind. I went to a documentary screening about the Zapatistas in Mexico the other day and found out that there are like community "police" in their communities. That they are proficient in hand-to-hand combat. That they carry machetes. I think about my upcoming work with Kid Power. I think about my hoped for volunteering and participation with the Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP). I think about my jujutsu training with Sensei Mike at the dojo. I'm thinking about all of that and I'm thinking, "how can I be of service to this beloved community?" And I see those things as being like getting qualified in that, you know? Not that I need a name tag or a certificate or a title to qualify me. But that I need training in those things in order to know how they work and how they can be implemented into whatever particular situation. This is me dreaming big now. Maybe it's not right to associate the karate of my ancestors with Beloved Community, but I think they go together like peanut butter and jelly. Okinawan karate should be (I agree with Sensei Nagamine) an art of peace. Therefore, I think, how do we practice it as such? How do we manifest it as such?  This is the real, honest reason I got involved with karate in the first place 6 years ago; I wanted to acquire a real skill that I could use in defense of some vague notion of "community" (that's such an abused term).

In retrospect, I realize that I may not have really been ready to receive such skill (demon's hand). And I'm only just now beginning to get a better understanding of what that community looks like and how my training connects with that.

Elbow SMASH!
- Hiji Até