The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #135753   Message #3102600
Posted By: InOBU
25-Feb-11 - 09:52 AM
Thread Name: Big Fat Gypsy Weddings
Subject: RE: Big Fat Gypsy Weddings
Jim is right, in my estimation. Here in the US, Romanichal folks, Pavees and Vlax Romany people are thrown together in "Gypsy" boat. It doesn't matter if you are nomadic and "in the rhelem" or a settled lawyer (not me - a Romany lawyer driven from the profession because of his mother's living her spiritual beliefs, in Romaniya...) - you are subject to loss of your basic rights as a US citizen. When working towards a unified Romany responce, I often told friends in these communities that as long as it is one boat when it comes to discrimination, we should all row together.

It is more than just Traveller nomadism. In the Americas, US, Canada etc. nomadic origional nations are stripped of rights everyday. Settled people believe they have the right to exclude those whose culture is less agressive. There is no more agressive stance on earth than to claim sole ownership over that which all beings were given, the resourse of the earth.

Just as Thomas Jefferson wrote that England held him in the "bonds of slavery" because of a tax to end slavery through the control of sugar (not tea) while he ignored the humans he litterally had chained to his plow and his land, settled people with their massive stocks of weapons of war, with their armed police, with their walls and laws of exclusion, claim that the nomadic people are violent and dangerous. Well, there's lots of roads to the truth, and if that is your world view, and you wish to be a little bit more well rounded, spend some time in an Innu hunting camp, travel with a herding society, walk into a night club in New York with Romany "Gypsies" and find out that the public accomodation laws don't apply to you suddunly, and perhaps your view of the truth may be shaken a little if not broken all together.
All the best, to all
Lorcan