Back To The Future: Al Letson’s Manifesto on Diversity

From the website Transom, Al Letson, host of the NPR show State of the Re:Union writes this manifesto for the Megopolis Festival that takes place June 5-7, in Oakland, California.

Long before I started working on State of the Re:Union (SOTRU), poet Sekou Sundiata, told me ‘one of the biggest issues in America is the country’s collective amnesia’. Our ability to forget whatever didn’t work in the narrative of these United States. We consume the world, and if the bones stick in our craw we spit them out and fly away. In some ways that might be our biggest strength as Americans, the ability to move on; to put one foot in front of the other and face the future. On the surface, it may seem admirable, but moving on without cleaning up just leaves devastation in its wake. Sekou went on to say ‘Our selective memory in essence has broken time’ — we live only in the present and the acceptable past. Much of Sekou’s life revolved around reclaiming our collective memory.

Read the full essay.