SHALL WE DINE?
Saturday, July 08, 2017
By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman
As has been aptly observed by military commanders “AN ARMY MARCHES ON ITS STOMACH. “
There must be a vast supportive infrastructure infusing, suffusing the armed command with energy, vitality, supplies, information, support, arms, munitions, reinforcements, and competent command.
As the root, leaves, inner tree structure is to the fruit, so is the “army” to its broad base, its byproduct.
Such an analogy held sway in Montgomery, Alabama, during the 381-day Montgomery Improvement Association’s (MIA) historic bus boycott. There was a vast organizational infrastructure backing this 1955-1956, insurgency by black consumers against segregation of city buses against its predominantly black patrons. Blessedly, history met then-26 years-old, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. there to accept competent command by default of the already well-organized MIA. Black college-trained females led this indispensable background effort of organized resistance to “Jim Crow,” just as another black female “Mrs. Rosa Parks,” the local NAACP secretary, and an AME CHURCH mother was its symbolic public face.
These infrastructure principles are true if the “army” is violent or nonviolent. A pharaoh in ancient Egypt recounted in stelae how well he had fed his thousands of skilled work men, in constructing his pyramids.
The point is this: adhocracy, or temporary measures, must be supplanted by bureaucracy, to overcome.
The army must be fed with bread, meat, melons, beans, peas, potatoes, greens, corn, bacon, coffee, etc. The better it is fed the better it fights. The less it is fed the less it fights. If it is not fed, it cannot fight at all. What is true for the army is true for a human body, being, itself, an ‘army” of one. Feed it right, feed it well, with good food, good information, good fellowship, good aspirations, good associations and love.
AN ARMY MARCHES ON ITS STOMACH—yours, mine, everyone’s —in order to march. Shall we dine?
Saturday, July 8, 2017
SHALL WE DINE?
SHALL WE DINE?
Saturday, July 08, 2017
By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman
As has been aptly observed by military commanders “AN ARMY MARCHES ON ITS STOMACH. “
There must be a vast supportive infrastructure infusing, suffusing the armed command with energy, vitality, supplies, information, support, arms, munitions, reinforcements, and competent command.
As the root, leaves, inner tree structure is to the fruit, so is the “army” to its broad base, its byproduct.
Such an analogy held sway in Montgomery, Alabama, during the 381-day Montgomery Improvement Association’s (MIA) historic bus boycott. There was a vast organizational infrastructure backing this 1955-1956, insurgency by black consumers against segregation of city buses against its predominantly black patrons. Blessedly, history met then-26 years-old, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. there to accept competent command by default of the already well-organized MIA. Black college-trained females led this indispensable background effort of organized resistance to “Jim Crow,” just as another black female “Mrs. Rosa Parks,” the local NAACP secretary, and an AME CHURCH mother was its symbolic public face.
These infrastructure principles are true if the “army” is violent or nonviolent. A pharaoh in ancient Egypt recounted in stelae how well he had fed his thousands of skilled work men, in constructing his pyramids.
The point is this: adhocracy, or temporary measures, must be supplanted by bureaucracy, to overcome.
The army must be fed with bread, meat, melons, beans, peas, potatoes, greens, corn, bacon, coffee, etc. The better it is fed the better it fights. The less it is fed the less it fights. If it is not fed, it cannot fight at all. What is true for the army is true for a human body, being, itself, an ‘army” of one. Feed it right, feed it well, with good food, good information, good fellowship, good aspirations, good associations and love.
AN ARMY MARCHES ON ITS STOMACH—yours, mine, everyone’s —in order to march. Shall we dine?