Politics and Punditry

George Bailey and I Changed the World

A prompt in this month’s NaBloPloMo challenge involves writing about collective service actions and whether you feel you have changed the world. The actual challenge (for tomorrow, but who is looking at the calendar anyway) is:

Margaret Mead said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” Have you ever felt as if you changed the world?

It’s a Wonderful Life immediately popped into my mind’s eye upon reading this prompt. While I am an anthropologist and could have talked about Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, and their daughter Mary Catherine Bateson and social and systems theory ad infinitum, the film says it all and that is one of the reasons it has become an American classic.
The sum of the parts is much greater than the whole. There is a connectivity between people, and elements in any system, that is more than just what the people bring to the situation. It is elusive and we never know exactly what that added complexity, energy, whatever, really is.

How did my dancing with Alice Walker change the world?

For George Bailey in the Capra movie, we see that small, incidental changes can change the course of the lives of the people involved and extend far beyond to the character and well-being of whole communities. Donna Reed and Jimmy Stewart were just playing characters in a screen play, but we all want to believe that the equivalent of breaking a window in an abandoned house can nudge the universe just a little bit toward the wish we make as the glass breaks.
The ubiquitous human belief in serendipity, synchronicity, and magical thinking all relate to the feeling that people experience from time to time that something beyond ourselves is influencing our behaviors or encounters. I believe that when we feel these things we are actually perceiving a change at other levels of our biological and cultural systems that impinge upon the perceptual levels and processes of which we are normally aware.
For anyone who wants to read about such things without delving into bio-semiotic literature, metaphysics, or systems theory literature, dependent upon what explanatory systems you prefer, I recommend reading The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, if you are not already familiar with it, as his coverage of how little nudges can trigger massive cultural change presents the phenomena in a clear and engaging manner.
So all this is lead up to the huge, “Yes.” I have to utter in response to the blogging prompt. My simple existence on this planet has changed the world in ways I will never know. Some of my efforts have changed things in ways I like, some of them have backfired.
For example, one of the ways I have changed things, with the efforts of others, is in the peace actions in which I participated as a member of CodePink. While I haven’t been active for a couple of years, I know that I helped bring the group to Arizona in 2004 and that the women I worked with back then have dramatically impacted the peace movement at a state and national level. I didn’t do that much, but they did, and I was the link. Might it have happened another way, sure. But I look at Secretary of State John Kerry acknowledging the presence and validity of CodePink Co-founder Medea Benjamin’s protests at the hearings today on Capital Hill and I know that many women from all over the country came together to get the message out that there is a quite sizable percentage of Americans who believe as much effort should be expended in planning peace as we expend in planning for and creating war.

50 Years Later: A New Nonviolent Movement for Voting Rights and Jobs

Blogging & Writing, Late Boomer, Spirituality & Thought

The 50th Anniversary gather and march in honor of The March on Washington for Jobs and Justice this weekend was inspiring and moving!
I cried when I saw Emmett Till’s cousin standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial with the parents of Trayvon Martin.
My heart connected to Myrlie Evers-Williams, widow of slain activist Medgar Evers. What an amazingly articulate and strong woman for someone of her age, 80! “Stand Our Ground – Aint’ I a Woman? – Strength of a Tree – This is Our Country…” I will not forget her words. She spoke to me, as a woman. Watch and listen to her. Well worth your time.

John Lewis! The only living speaker from the 1963 rally to return to the podium 50 years later.
We have another fight. 50 years late:. We cannot wait we cannot be patient. We all live in the same house. I am not going to stand by and let the Supreme Court take the right to vote away from us. Push and pull and make America what America should be. Listen to him:

Al Sharpton at the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington. Just do yourself a favor and watch it!

“When they ask us for our photo ID, take out a photo of Medgar Evers, of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner, of Viola Liuzzo…” Rev. Al isn’t talking about voting fraud, he is talking about those who gave their lives for the right to vote.

Where Do You Get Your News When You Travel?

Blogging & Writing, Information and Tech

Presuming you do not read it, because most people no longer read, where do you get your news when you travel?
One of the biggest inconveniences I experience when I travel is attempting to get, not unbiased, but equally biased, televised political-oriented news coverage. The majority of basic cable offerings, which is what most hotels offer, do not include MSNBC in their channel line-up. I have as yet to find a basic cable line-up that does not include FOX.
I like to tune in to Rachel Maddow’s evening news show if it is at all possible. I was quite shocked when I checked in to the Sheraton Towers Chicago, the conference hotel for #BlogHer13, and was limited to Fox and CNN products for news coverage while there. Some people say CNN is liberal, but as a person on the left side of the political spectrum, I assure you that I am often offended by the bias inherent in most of CNN’s coverage of a “mainstream view” that mimics the purported middle ground that is a moderate conservative viewpoint.
I equate the lack of news data from across the political spectrum with the lack of access to unprocessed, unpackaged, food stuffs which are known as food deserts. Unfortunately the term “news desert” has come to narrowly apply to the lack of local news. I believe a better definition of news desert is a place where there is a lack of easy access to a whole data, or data from all types of sources.

file0001218341421 — Can you purchase fresh produce within an
easy walk’s distance from your home? What about unprocessed news?

There are food deserts where the only access to groceries within an easily reachable distance on foot or by public transportation is from a food “mart” where a produce section, if you are very lucky, will be a refrigerated case with plastic-wrapped salad in a plastic container that has an expiration date stamped on the label, so a shopper can tell if it has been on the shelf for more than 5 days.
Unequal access to any basic component of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” disturbs me. Nutritious food and basic information are two of the most important building blocks of democracy. Full bellies and access to the information you need to make sound decisions are essential to maintaining a democracy and working toward equality.
If the upper economic slice of the population does not have access to a full complement of news information when traveling, that means that all the people with that same basic cable service that the hotel provides do not have access to anything but
So what am I doing about this? Just bitching? Nope, I am sending a copy of this article to the Sheraton where I stayed. It will be interesting to see what sort of a reply I receive, if I receive one. I will let you know.
But in the meantime I would like to know, do you have access to full spectrum news through TV ?

Children Tasered, Sometimes to Death

Uncategorized

Tasers were introduced as an alternative to shooting someone with bullets because their use can be lethal but is less lethal than bullets. Tasers are less likely to kill the person tased than shooting that person with bullets from a gun.
Less likely, but still a lethal tool for stopping someone from an action that calls for the use of lethal force.
What makes the use of lethal force appropriate to stop and apprehend:

a young girl who is naked in public and obviously in a mentally compromised situation
a young graffiti artist who had painted a single letter on an abandoned building
a peaceful protester on the steps of a public building

Nothing. Nothing makes any of these criminal behaviors by police acceptable. The militarization of police personnel and the expanding tolerance of police acting as judges, juries and executioners as they respond to civil disturbances must end.
We must not allow the use of excessive force, brutality, and execution to become accepted security or policing behaviors. Children are routinely tasered by security staff, rent-a-cops. Neither must we allow the police to decide which laws are worthy of their enforcement efforts.
We must not allow… That is right WE…

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. (Preamble of the Constitution of the United States of America.)

So my dear readers, write to your local, state and national representatives and let them know that the expanding police state must be abolished. Here is the link for contacting your reps.

Then I recommend you go and watch a movie this weekend. Enjoy yourself. Go see: Elysium, it is the best offering out there this week.

From Ashes I Rise

Uncategorized

I started writing this post a few days ago on Ash Wednesday. We are now into the season of Lent. I don't know exactly what that means for Catholics. I'm not Catholic. I'm not exactly a NONE either. What's a NONE? It is a term derived from when a person checks “None of the Above” when asked to check a box on a form to denote your religion. I just discovered the term on Ash Wednesday when I zipped off to check out the blog of a solo RVer. I want to be her when I grow up, except I want the RV to be a solar powered electric powered RV.

I've written previously in other places, if you follow my writing, about being unwittingly indoctrinated as a child into a sort of secular Anabaptist mindset. I've also mentioned that I have Amish mitochondrial DNA. Because of these givens in my life I never had much of an acquaintance with Lent. The notion seemed sort of contrarian to me. It is Spring where I live, even where Spring will not sproing for several weeks, the midpoint of Winter's transition into Spring has passed. Agrarian practices that shaped our still observed calendar require the preparation of the farmstead and homestead for birthing and planting. Now is a traditional time for strategizing about how to sustain life by carefully planned growth. Perhaps that is what Lent is all about way down deep. I don't know. What I do know is that I have thought a great deal about consciously structuring my life, Catholicism, the farse that is quickly becoming the way of at least one half of the political machine in Washington, D.C., and how women can be the savior of all of the world that is touched by any one of these topics.

The problem I am facing is that I pay attention… to too many things, and allow far too many of these things to which I pay attention to touch my psyche. I suspect that many women do this, and some men too. The fact is, in my humble opinion, some of the human population has to be wired to anticipate, integrate, and yes, sometimes even worry. We wouldn't have made it this far unless some of us obcess about what might be.

Because I have experienced episodes of depression throughout my lifetime, my analytic nature can mistake the valid anticipation I experience when paying attention to and assessing patterns and trends in society. I can ramp up to the over-thinking called worry and on rare occasions progress to despair totally apart from anything related to a imbalance I have which my physician and I successfully treat with an SSRI medication.

Being aware of how fucked up the world is can lead to a depressed state. This rational reaction to distinct trajectories of cultural processes in the world is probably distinct from the ongoing depression I have experienced since I was a preteen.

The last couple weeks have found me poundering whether the funk I've been in is depression or disillusionment. After very serious reflection, I have determined that I am disillusioned.

Government is totally disfunctional: obstruction, vengeance, and greedy corruption when we need to be addressing downright un-American ever-widening hierarchical class structure. Democracy is in danger if we don't outmaneuver the evil, mega-rich, corporatist ass-hats who are attempting to overthrow our Representative Democracy, which, though flawed, is the best form of mega-government around because it allows us to evolve.

And I've also been assessing what has happened since I first marched with CODEPINK Women for Peace in late Winter of 2003 as the Bush administration's relentless, irrational drumbeat toward war with Iraq got closer and closer to their goal. I'm going to do a Linky Tool's Blog Hop for March 8th, 2013, International Women's Day and the anniversary of the day when CODEPINK first marched. I marched with them that day.

The changes these Koch-Adelson-Murdoch loving greedy bastards have supported are Un-American and I will do everything in my power to avoid supporting them. I tend to support the viewpoint that says that energy used to work against something actually supports that something because energy is energy period. The only time I have deviated from this is when I participated in protests as a CODEPINK member and that was because information was being suppressed and taking it to the street was necessary to get the information out about the lies told to get us into the Iraq War. Information is neither pro or con, it just is. I'm very glad Hubris was aired last evening. It is very important we do not forget what happened in this fabricated and unfinanced war. The Bush Tax cuts also deserve this type of review. Deregulation,the war and the tax cuts created the financial mess we are in now, and that the same party that promoted all these debacles now wants the poor, working poor and the middle class to pay for their follies. I am viscerably disturbed by this.

One other thing that makes me physically queasy is that people are all abuzz about the abdication of the head an archaic 4th Century construction that solidified political and military control by incorporating religious control into oppressive rule and building empire. The man abdicating his supreme rule was a member of Hitler youth and as a Cardinal he was the ultimate authority over pedaphile priests who were enabled to rape children time and again by church orchestrated moves from place to place. With the war on women raging, and the crimes perpetrated by the Church in covering up child rape by priests, I wonder how any woman can call herself Catholic.

So forgive my lack of cheery or technical posts in the past few days. I've been thinking about stuff, more stuff, and even more stuff. It makes me sad… which is very distinct from depression.

We Are All Guilty When Any Child Is Shot Dead

Creekside Commentary, hand guns, school, child shootings,

The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting is ugly, heinous, heart wrenching, wrong and totally unforgivable. Babies shot dead in their classrooms. There are no words to describe the wash of emotion surging through me at this moment. We as adults, parents, citizens tolerate this violence or we would end it, contain it, and prevent it.

Young white children in the Connecticut suburbs killed en masse rightly creates outrage. But the first report found in a quick search whose numbers I trust, one by the Children’s Defense Fund, shows that thousands upon thousands of children are shot dead in America every year.

In 2008, 2,947 children and teens died from guns in the United States and 2,793 died in 2009 for a total of 5,740—one child or teen every three hours, eight every day, 55 every week for two years.

Taking a 30-year snapshot when child gun death and injury data collection began,116,385 children and teens were killed by firearms between 1979 and 2009—enough to fill 4,655 public school classrooms of 25 students each. Since 1979, America has lost nearly three times as many children and teens to gunfire as the number of U.S. military personnel killed in action during the Vietnam War, and over 23 times the number of U.S. military personnel killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan (5,013).

55 children every week! That is twice the number of today’s shooting every single freaking week.

We are all to blame. Each and every one of us allows this to go on when we do not promote discussions about violence, when we teach – often by inaction and silence – that “the other” exists. We are all guilty when we allow reality tv that promotes stupidity, personal celebrity, and snarky disregard of others to blast out in our homes. We are all guilty when overlook the violent video games are played by our older kids, and we allow or overlook our significant others to view exploitation porn. We are all guilty if we allow our churches to promote any attitude that differentiates ourselves as chosen and better or apart from others. We are guilty if we isolate ourselves and our families rather than to embrace everyone and build community.

We are all guilty of killing these children and the adults who did all they could to protect them.

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