Description
ANNOUNCEMENT
Who and When: As of January 1, 2022, the group known as “All Means ALL” located at www.AllMeansALLSymbol.org
What: Declare their intention to take over and re-assign the meaning of a now defunct Unicode character U+20B3: known as the Austral, (₳) and adopt and adapt the character as the symbol for the driving idea behind a social movement known as All Means ALL. The symbol is the letter A with an extra horizontal bar, suggesting an A with an equal sign. The concept we are endowing the Austral with is derived from the words of the American Declaration of Independence “We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal”.
Today if that document were being written it might be phrased “We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all people are created equal”, or perhaps “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that we are all born equal”. Regardless, this aspirational ideal of that document, of everyone being created equal, has never been the reality on the ground. If we are knowledgeable and fair, we know that ‘white privilege” is certainly real and that certain groups, because of their ethnic differences, have suffered and may continue to suffer the indignities of a second class type of citizenship.
The United States of America was created as a place for freedom from tyranny, both political and cultural. It was a place that because of the history and the times certainly favored Europeans and generally at the time of its revolution saw its citizenry as primarily British subjects wishing to be free of the Crown.
We’ve come a long way. Today we are a multi-ethnic society and resemble in part a democracy. But too many of our problems are offshoots or rooted directly, in the ways of American racial justice history.
It is a normal human trait to see things with a beginning and end and a resolution of some degree. We frame things like this as a means of understanding the import and impact. But this framing often belies the reality that what may appear to be an ending and resolution is more often simply a one-sided retreat to fight another day. Especially in areas of human interaction between different peoples. Is a long standing, literally ancient grudge one ethnic group has against another neighboring group terribly different than one group of peoples having a racial prejudice against an entire other group of people simply on that basis of their ‘race’
Americans see the Civil War in such a frame, that its end brought resolution. The reality was that within a few years, for most African+American citizens, they were slaves by a different name under a code of law called Jim Crow that continued for more than a hundred years after the Civil War.
We as a people see the Civil Rights Act as a monument to guaranteeing primarily African+Americans equality under the law and in the voting booth, but judicial interpretations have undermined its purpose and political gerrymandering has cheated them of their one-person-one-vote guarantee.
With the rise of nationalism organizations, cloaking themselves in false patriotism and even worse, religion, the values we hold true and dear are at risk. These nationalism beliefs are used to justify un-American philosophies and lull good people into beliefs that attack the very foundations of their nation.
We believe that it has become necessary to stand up and be counted as to where you stand as an American. If you believe that America is a symbol of freedom and justice, a place for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and that at its core it is a place that still holds the ideal of every American being created equal and equal under the law, then you stand with us. Please indicate your feelings by using the ₳ symbol in your social media profiles and anywhere visual you can place it.
You may have, as we do, great feelings of patriotism stirred in your very being when you sing the Star Spangled Banner or hear the words ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all of us are created equal’. Even so, you recognize the reality that America is a successful multi-ethnic society in large part, yet certainly has not overcome the flaws born of an earlier history of not seeing all humans as one race. Those flaws are being exploited by the enemies of freedom both foreign and domestic. Today, the tolerance of those flaws is a self-inflicted aggravation of those ancient unhealed wounds. They are an infection in the body politic of our nation, sapping our very spirit with the cognitive dissonance of racism in the land of the free. For let us be clear, Racism is un-American.
Today we face enemies that can easily confuse with misinformation and their projections of their own ideas and actions onto those they oppose. A large percentage of what can be called white people want a form of nationalism that excludes other not like them. But their percentage is not a majority.
Most white Americans are truly patriotic believers in America as a shining city on the hill where people from everywhere have gone and found freedom and the opportunity to build a life of liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And many white Americans are either immigrants or of the first few generations of immigrant offspring and they certainly believe in an America that is the land of opportunity for all of its peoples. And when you add to those white American believers all of the non-white citizens of our nation you quickly find a great New American Majority on the side of Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for ALL Americans.
It is in this spirit that we are taking over a now defunct monetary symbol (The austral was the legal tender of the Argentine Republic from June 15, 1985 until December 31, 1991, when it was transitioned to the convertible peso. The symbol is no longer used.) and repurposing it for use by all who stand with us, a symbol of equality for all, freedom for all, a symbol that says in America, All Means ALL. If you believe this as we do, then put the ₳ symbol wherever you go, and whenever you identify yourself in social circumstances. Let’s make the ₳ symbol and the concept of All Means ALL go viral in America. We are the New American Majority.
www.AllMeansALLsymbol.org