Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Helen Keller - A Woman with Vision

 “Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow.”

Helen Keller was born June 27 1880 in Alabama and was  able to see and hear just fine  until she was about one and a half years old when she became sick with some type of illness. What that particular illness was is not known. However, it is thought that it might have been scarlet fever or meningitis. Whatever the case, after she recovered her health, unfortunately, she now couldn’t hear or see. She died on June 1, 1968 in her sleep.  Four years before her death, President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded Keller with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. One year later, she was elected to the National Women’s Hall of Fame.

“So long as I confine my activities to social service and the blind, they compliment me extravagantly, calling me 'arch priestess of the sightless,' 'wonder woman,' and a 'modern miracle.' But when it comes to a discussion of poverty, and I maintain that it is the result of wrong economics—that the industrial system under which we live is at the root of much of the physical deafness and blindness in the world—that is a different matter! It is laudable to give aid to the handicapped. Superficial charities make smooth the way of the prosperous; but to advocate that all human beings should have leisure and comfort, the decencies and refinements of life, is a Utopian dream, and one who seriously contemplates its realization indeed must be deaf, dumb, and blind.” — Helen Keller

Helen Keller worked throughout her long life to achieve social justice; she was an integral part of many social movements in the 20th century. Yet today, she is remembered chiefly as a child who overcame the obstacles of being deaf and blind largely through the efforts of her teacher, Annie Sullivan.  According to  books, Helen should be remembered for two things after she grew up: her “courage” and her “work with the blind and deaf.” Of course, both are true. But few of the many books mention her work as a socialist and her advocacy for people with disabilities. As Keller wrote in 1913, “The way to help the blind is to understand, correct, remove the incapacities and inequalities of our entire civilization.”

 She wrote in 1912. “Why in this land of great wealth is there great poverty? Why do children toil in the mills while thousands of men cannot get work, why do women who do nothing have thousands of dollars to spend?”

“The few own the many because they possess the means of livlihood of all...The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the speculators, and for the exploiters of labor...The majority of mankind is ground down by industrial oppression in order that the small remnant may live in ease”

Helen Keller was an activist against war.
“I look upon the whole world as my fatherland, and every war has to me a horror of a family feud. I look upon true patriotism as the brotherhood of man and the service of all to all. The only fighting that saves is the one that helps the world toward liberty, justice and an abundant life for all...What have you to fight for? National independence? That means the masters' independence. The laws that send you to jail when you demand better living conditions? The flag? Does it wave over a country where you are free and have a home, or does it rather symbolize a country that meets you with clenched fists when you strike for better wages and shorter hours? Will you fight for your masters' religion which teaches you to obey them even when they tell you to kill one another?”

In another article she explains “Every modern war has had its root in exploitation. The Civil War was fought to decide whether to slaveholders of the South or the capitalists of the North should exploit the West. The Spanish-American War decided that the United States should exploit Cuba and the Philippines. The South African War decided that the British should exploit the diamond mines. The Russo-Japanese War decided that Japan should exploit Korea. The present war is to decide who shall exploit the Balkans, Turkey, Persia, Egypt, India, China, Africa. And we are whetting our sword to scare the victors into sharing the spoils with us. Now, the workers are not interested in the spoils; they will not get any of them anyway.”

Keller had been a member of the Socialist Party of America but later joined the Industrial Workers of the World. “ I sympathize with the IWWs. Their cause is my cause. While they are threatened and imprisoned, I am manacled. If they are denied a living wage, I too am defrauded. While they are industrial slaves, I cannot be free. My hunger is not satisfied while they are unfed. I cannot enjoy the good things of life that come to me while they are hindered and neglected.”

But like many other radicals and activists, because of the Russian Revolution and its apparent but forlorn hopeit appeared to offer the working class she became a defender of the Bolsheviks and Lenin. The FBI file reports describe her friendship and sympathies with the American Communist Party and its front organisations

Helen Keller's fight to overcome her disabilities made her life an inspiration for millions of people. Her story is taught in schools around the world. In October 2009 a statue of Keller and Sullivan was unveiled in Washington Senator Mitch McConnell said at the unveiling ceremony. "The story of Helen Keller inspires us all." But which story would that be ?

“I have visited sweatshops, factories, crowded slums of New York and Washington. Of course I could not see the squalor; but if I could not see it, I could smell it.”

No comments: