Welcome to our February Circles of Courageous Commons posts dedicated to courageous citizens and truth-telling that is not always loud, but more often it is steady like a heart beat, the flutter of the birds wing, or as steadfast as the moon and the sun.
At Circles of Courageous Commons, we hold a shared commitment to inclusion, justice, courage, and the common good. As we post vignettes, poems, prose, and other works of art we consider the courage it takes to share the strokes of color, the vision, the words, and the melodies that bolster our lives in both the good and the bad times.
Robert Shetterly is a person who seeks truth, extracts stories, and gives us all a gift with paint and prose. We are inspired by his art and stories of courageous citizens.
Earlier in the month we looked to the courageous Audre Lorde who asked these questions in relationship to being silent: “What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence?”
Robert is not silent. Consider his artwork and stories as an entrance to find the words you do not yet have, to wonder about what you need to say, to explore the tyrannies you swallow. Together let us ponder how we can break the silence and live as our truest and most authentic selves.
February Truth Teller
Robert Shetterly
“Our job is to learn the courage of history so we can resist and change it.” Robert Shetterly
Excerpt from Artist Statement 2022 - read full essay at this link and view all 280 portraits at this link
… Twenty years ago I felt that creating AWTT was like making a whistle stop tour across America, crisscrossing the heartland from coast to coast, traveling forward and backward in time, picking up courageous citizens as we chugged along, each posing for a portrait in the dining car, then urged out onto the platform of the caboose to shout rousing truths to people lining the tracks as we slowed through towns and cities, past schools and colleges, libraries and union halls….
… Honest identity has to be about remembering, about reconciling in the presence of the truth rather than in the shadows outside it. It would seem that truly exceptional people would choose to take a long gaze in the mirror. At the close of the George W. Bush administration, one of Barack Obama’s first acts was to declare that he would not seek any legal accountability for the crimes committed by Bush and his cronies, among them lying to the American people, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and torture. Obama was choosing forgetting over remembering, the comfortable stupor of amnesia over the tough rule of law. He chose to paint the mirror black. When the powerful choose to forget, they dismiss the value of the lives of all the people harmed by the injustice. In order for us to maintain our innocence and political equilibrium, we erase what we did. This is not the same as saying, “The past is the past, let’s move on.” It’s saying, “The past never happened. All those people who were victims of our behavior are collateral damage to our entitlement, martyrs for our righteous cause. The greatness of America absolves us from counting and naming them.”
Those injustices didn’t just happen once and disappear. They were woven into systems of dominance and profit, a social and economic legacy that continues today. That’s the true history and there’s no point calling ourselves Americans if we don’t include the experience of all Americans and those harmed by Americans, the experience lived and the experience suffered.
Imagine that you’ve decided to undertake a vision quest into your national identity, a long trek through unfamiliar long-denied territory. On the horizon you see steep mountains, jagged, with high treacherous peaks. Smartly, you decide to go into your local, official history guide shop and purchase a map. You kneel down by the trail and spread out the map. You’re surprised to see no mountain range mapped in. Should you be relieved? If the mountains are not on the map, maybe they don’t exist? No, you’re smarter than that. You return to the guide shop and say, “This must be the wrong map. There’s no mountain range.” The politician behind the counter sighs and says, “Oh, we left out the mountains because the way through is tricky and challenging; it might give you the wrong idea about what a beneficent country this is. Better to walk in circles on this side of the mountains.”
But we know if you want to call yourself an American, you need to traverse those mountains. It’s hard. It’s uncomfortable. Infuriating. It’s dark and sad. It’s humbling. Makes you feel guilty for events you feel you can do nothing about. It’s also exhilarating. Inspiring and wondrous. The mountains are full of caves. You’ll find Jefferson Davis living in one, John Wilkes Booth in another. You’ll stumble into Frederick Douglass and Jane Addams. Then, the Georges–General Custer and George Wallace. But also John Brown. You’ll find Richard Nixon and Martin Luther King, Jr., Ronald Reagan and Daniel Ellsberg, Caesar Chavez and Grace Lee Boggs, Ella Baker, and Barbara Johns…
… The question at the heart of AWTT is simple: Do we want to construct our identities from complex truths or from easy and flattering untruths? An identity shaped by complex truths is as humbling as it is freeing. Then we can see the world as it is and shoulder the necessary responsibilities. Voltaire is famous for saying, “Anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” I am exhausted by living in a country that justifies the atrocities it commits as the epitome of patriotism. Let’s ennoble ourselves by insisting on believing in the justice and hard work of our own ideals. Let’s commit citizenship for the common good.
When I was a teenager, I read for the first time about Jainism, a religion practiced by millions of people in India. Jains believe in extreme non-violence. What particularly caught my attention was their habit, which seemed laughable and obsessive, of sweeping the ground before them as they walked. To injure a single tiny ant or little beetle was to injure the soul of a creature equal to themselves. We Americans knew how silly that was! We casually step on ants and beetles with no consequence–or so we thought. Today, as we reel from the cascade of species extinctions, Jainism appears the far more sensible relationship to Nature. Moreover, we have been in the habit of sweeping, too–not in front of us to avoid harming other creatures, but behind us so we don’t remember. For twenty years it has been the mission of Americans Who Tell the Truth to teach responsibility for the injustices we create and provide role models for how to remedy them for a just society.
— Robert Shetterly retrieved from the Americans Who Tell the Truth webpage at this link
Invitation: “… you need to traverse those mountains.”
Whitman was the first portrait that Robert painted when this project began.
Portrait used with permission from Americans Who Tell the Truth, a project by Robert Shetterly. All images and text are copyrighted.
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Systemic racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia is what I think of as Robert Shetterly writes about how injustices get "woven into systems of dominance and profit, a social and economic legacy that continues today. That’s the true history and there’s no point calling ourselves Americans if we don’t include the experience of all Americans and those harmed by Americans, the experience lived and the experience suffered." And, I would add bias against the poor, immigrants and those of non-Christian religions.
We are so lucky to walk the planet with Rob Shetterly. Thank you for the wisdom in this collaboration. What a gift for circles of courageous commons.