Did art help free enslaved individuals?

Art may have helped free individuals who were property, by acting in community

Tracy Chevalier’s The Last Runaway show’s how different interpretations of art, and even sometimes silence, helped free enslaved people. She portrays the self-discipline and quiet determination of a young Quaker girl, in difficult times, working to be part of a helping community while caught in an individualistic household.

I often wonder how individualists are formed, and how one comes to be a communitarian in the midst of an individualistic society. There are myriad ways that a person can come to value community, myriad motivations, religious, secular, pragmatic, but that one values community over individual priorities, no matter what that valuing stems from, means that one will sacrifice personal desires for the good of the community. This is a value which experience shows me is little understood in American society today, particularly in the younger segments of our society. How do we come back to living the values of Duty, Honor, and Loyalty, and helping one another to live out a sense of honor in the tradition of Gandhi, Dr. King, Rabbi Hillel, the Sufi mystics, all of those who valued loving and inclusive community, from La Convivencia to Communes, but in a healthy and fully inclusive way that can stretch to encompass all of society, rather than a small group. How do we open the door to real and full, safe, secure yet honest dialogue?

A fellow bloger shows how art can build community and change economies today:

http://theloniouslegend.blogspot.fr/2014/09/interview-with-reggie-r-bythewood.html#gpluscomments

We who build community look to the Constitution to find ways, in keeping with the property system, to ensure that every person in this country has a safe home, however small, in which to live.

Shira Destinie
Gregorian Date: Friday, 5 September, 2014
MEOW Date : Tuesday, 5 September, 12014 H.E. (Holocene Era, aka Human Era)

About ShiraHoloceneEraDest

Shira Destinie Jones Landrac is a published poet and academic author, former Washington DC Tour Guide, founder of SHIR Tours Community Cooperation Tours, and freelance writer and educator. She has organized community events such as film discussions, multi-ethnic song events, and cooperative presentations. She now lives in France, and continues to work for community cooperation and health for all. She is on LinkedIn and on Academia.edu LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/univhealthcareshirad and Academia.Edu: http://bath.academia.edu/DestinieLandrac
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