Week 1 of 13 Weeks of Rebellion. September 6, 2013 will be the next one shot-"We'll Go Together"
So now is the time, more than ever, for those who truly value all the principles of democracy, especially including dissent, to be the most forceful in speaking up, standing up and speaking out.
Jim Hightower
Inspiriation from this passage:
I stand there, feeling broken and small, thousands of eyes trained on me. There's a long pause. Then, from somewhere in the crowd, someone whistles Rue's four-note mocking-jay tune. The one that signaled the end of the workday in the orchards. The one that meant safety in the arena. By the end of the tune, I have found the whistler, a wizened old man in a faded red shirt and overalls. His eyes meet mine.
What happens next is not an accident. It is too well executed to be spontaneous, because it happens in complete unison. Every person in the crowd presses the three middle fingers of their left hand against their lips and extends them to me. It's our sign from District 12, the last good-bye I gave Rue in the arena.
Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins.
I listen to his words, the way he talks about our tributes—the way he respects their deaths, and the way he acknowledges that he would not have made it without them. Rue and Thresh, he wants us to know that their deaths meant something to him. But in all my years of listening to the Games, of watching Victors come home—from the very first Hunger Games, I've only seen this kind of openness and honesty once
"It can in no way replace your losses, but as a token of our thanks we'd like for each of the tribute's families from District Eleven to receive one month of our winnings every year for the rest of our lives."
The crowd murmurs in shock, and I have to admit, I'm a bit shocked myself. But this is the boy who loves the girl that captured our hearts. For the first time, a Victor seems almost human upon coming home.
Something passes across her face, something broken and fleeting. I see her lips move and she rushes forward—reminding me, reminding us all that she rushed forward first to save her sister Prim from the Games.
"Wait!" She cries out, "Wait, please."
There is hesitation on her face, but she finally continues. The words spills out before they can be censored, "I want to give my thanks to the tributes of District Eleven." She pauses and everyone hangs on her words, "I only ever spoke to Thresh one time. Just long enough for him to spare my life. I didn't know him, but I always respected him. For his power. For his refusal to play the Games on anyone's terms but his own. The Careers wanted him to team up with them from the beginning, but he wouldn't do it. I respected him for that."
Her eyes sweep the crowd, and you can't help but feel the power of it. Maybe she doesn't know it yet, the kind of presence she brings. When she talks, it's like you have to stop to listen—as if her words silence your own, as if her voice is your voice. She doesn't follow the Capitol's line of politics, she speaks from her heart—from our heart, the heart of her people.
Because we are her people, ever since she won. Ever since she laid Rue to rest with those flowers, she has been ours—our Mockingjay. A pressure builds inside my chest, of pride, of pain as she continues on.
"But I feel as if I did know Rue, and she'll always be with me. Everything beautiful brings her to mind. I see her in the yellow flowers that grow in the Meadow by my house. I see her in the mockingjays that sing in the trees. But most of all, I see her in my sister, Prim. Thank you for your children," her voice is breaking, but she lifts her chin in defiance of it. "And thank you all for the bread."
The power of her word ripples through me. I have seen seventy-four hunger games, and seventy-five victors. They have commanded their presence through fear, through popularity, but never—no one ever has done anything like this.
Her words seep in through your ears and into your heart, the genuineness of the words, the emotion behind them. She is truly grateful. This is the girl, knowingly or not, that has fueled our dissent. She held a hand full of berries before the Capitol and showed them that she would die as her own person, that she wouldn't play their games if Peeta and she couldn't both live.
And somehow, she'd called their bluff—the only Victor ever.
As she stands there, I feel those emotions flowing through my body, and I have a terrible urge to do something, anything to honour her—to make our people not forget this moment ever. Just a simple sign of respect, and of dissent.
I let out the shrill whistle of Rue's call as planned, remember the child whistling it at quitting time. A child gone way too soon…like a piece of sunshine taken from District Eleven forever. I press the three middle fingers of my left hands to my lip and hold them up.
But I am not alone.
We move as if we are all of one brain. Maybe, we are now. Because something is terribly wrong, and there is no sense in standing back anymore. I've lived eighty-one years keeping my head down.
I see the panic on her face. She thinks that it's her fault as the Peacekeepers rush out. She may have started it, but it's really our fault. Our fault that we didn't do something sooner. Their hands clamp down on my arms as they drag me to the front, as people applaud
her.
She's swept away into the building, and then I see her turn back. I don't know why she does it.
I want to tell her thank you, that I'm not afraid. I want to tell her that I'm the one who should be sorry, I should have fought against them before this. It should never have come to her—she's been braver than us all.
The gun rises and as it comes up, I stare down the barrel. I'm not afraid. I've been dying a little everyday since the Games, now maybe…just maybe my death, the death of one little old man can mean something. Maybe I can atone for seventy-four years of games looking the other way and thanking my lucky stars it wasn't me. But it was someone—someone's daughter, someone's son, someone's lover, someone's someone…
And none of them should have died, not one.
I see him pull the slack on the trigger, and I close my eyes to remember the children we've lost, the bright futures we let slip away because we did nothing.
And I hope that this small act of dissent might be enough.