Events

We Are Here, We Are Here

Let’s talk about our part
My heart touches your heart
Let’s talk about, let’s talk about living
Had enough of dying, not what we all about
Let’s do more giving
Do more forgiving, yeah
Our souls were brought together so that we could love each other

“We Are Here” (by Alicia Keys, 2014, Listen here)

The 3rd Annual Global Citizens Festival in New York City’s Central Park is underway right now. If you haven’t heard, it’s a presentation of the Global Poverty Project which is committed to ending world poverty by 2030.

The Project’s goals aim to redouble the efforts and financial support of governments, corporations, and individuals in the areas of of education, vaccination, and sanitation and water. You couldn’t buy a tickets to hear Alicia Key’s, JayZ, No Doubt, and other headliners. You joined the movement by registering as a Global Citizen and then did something concrete to help end poverty. More than 80% of today’s attendees are these activists.

Prime Minister of India, Narenda Modi, speaking to the Festival on behalf of 800,000 young people in India committed to improve sanitation and drinking water, joined with representatives from Scandanavian countries, Denmark and Norway, and Caterpillar Foundation in leading the way towards increasing financial commitments and hands-on aid to areas of extreme poverty. But, just like these lucky concert-goers, you can do your own part.

If you are not here, you can tune in at globalcitizen.org/festival or to MSNBC on television, right now. If you missed Alicia Keys singing this song, we’re highlighting it here. Just consider what is taking place today.

Alicia Keyes Flickr/creative commons

Alicia Keyes
Flickr/creative commons

We are united more than ever before, singing along with Alicia: “Right now it don’t make sense,” “Our souls are brought together so that we could love each other.” We can help heal this world by working together. It’s within our reach, but we have to reach.

Almost half of the world, over 3 billion people, live in poverty. Fourteen children die every minute of every day due to poverty, hunger, and preventable diseases.

What will you do today to make a difference? Start by singing along with Alicia.

We are here
We are here for all of us
We are here for all of us
That’s why we are here, why we are here
We are here

Bombs over Baghdad, tryna get something we ain’t never had
Let’s start with a good dad
So real but it’s so sad
And while we burnin’ this incense, we gon’ pray for the innocent
Cause right now it don’t make sense
Right now it don’t make sense
Let’s talk about Chi town
Let’s talk about Gaza
Let’s talk about, let’s talk about Israel
Cause right now it is real
Let’s talk about, let’s talk Nigeria
In a mass hysteria, yeah
Our souls are brought together so that we could love each other
Brother,

We are here
We are here for all of us
We are here for all of us
That’s why we are here, why we are here
We are here

No guns made in Harlem, but yet crime is a problem
He wanna shine, they wanna rob him
Single mother, where they come from?
How we gonna save the nation, with no support for education
Cause right now it don’t make sense
Right now it don’t make sense
Let’s talk about our part
My heart touch your heart
Let’s talk about, let’s talk about living
Had enough of dying, not what we all about
Let’s do more giving
Do more forgiving, yeah
Our souls were brought together so that we could love each other
Sister,

We are here
We are here for all of us
We are here for all of us
That’s why we are here, why we are here
We are here
We are here for all of us
We are here for all of us
That’s why we are here, why we are here
We are here
Oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh
Oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh
Oh, oh

Oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
Oh, oh

We are here (oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh)
We are here for all of us (oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh)
(oh, oh)
We are here for all of us (oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh)
(oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh)
that’s why we are here, why we are here (oh, oh)

Cause we are here
We are here for all of us
We are here for all of us
That’s why we are here, why we are here
We are, here
We are here for all of us
We are here for all of us
That’s why we are here,
Why we are here

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Stop, hey, what’s that sound?

(photo by Chris Boland) Stephen Stills / Crosby, Stills and Nash - Glastonbury - 2009 Flickr/creative commons

(photo by Chris Boland)
Stephen Stills / Crosby, Stills and Nash – Glastonbury – 2009
Flickr/creative commons

Stop, hey, what’s that sound?
Everybody look. What’s goin’ down?
(“What It’s Worth” chorus, 1966, lyrics or listen)

This song was written in 1966 by Stephen Stills of Crosby, Sills, & Nash fame. They recorded it and performed it thousands of times although it was first performed by Buffalo Springfield that year. The song quickly became an anthem for all those working on numerous fronts of the global struggle for human rights (in the 60s that meant the end of war and environmental protection). This song is still ranked #63 on Rolling Stone’s list of the The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, by the way.

The song’s universal appeal was practically instant even though it was actually inspired by local Los Angeles rock fans protesting the imposition of a 10 PM curfew on the entertainment area on Sunset Boulevard, known as the Sunset Strip — you know, to keep the ruckus down. At the time, Buffalo Springfield and other bands were performing there at places like Whiskey A Go Go and Pandora’s Box. But its origins didn’t matter because it struck a chord, a truth, something that everyone on the planet could recognize.

There’s somethin’ happenin’ here
What it is ain’t exactly clear
There’s a man with a gun, over there
Tellin’ me I got to beware
(“What It’s Worth” first verse, 1966, lyrics or listen)

The young anti-war counter-cuture that emerged following the end of World War II embraced many Crosby, Sills, & Nash’s songs, but “What It’s Worth” was unique in that it so well described the educational challenges inherent in any struggle for any cause, from peace and the environment to immigration/voting/equality/human-rights, etc., even to lift an unjust curfew.

There’s battle lines bein’ drawn
Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong
Young people speakin’ their minds, once again
Gettin’ so much resistance from behind
(“What It’s Worth” second verse, 1966, lyrics or listen)

Take for example our recent and highly successful People’s Climate March, with a follow-up Flood Wall Street sit-in quite publicly demanding corporate environmental responsibility. And, many of us are encouraged by this week’s Climate Summit at the United Nations and the specific commitments outlined by President Obama. Taken together, all three of these events can perhaps lift spirits but their impact in conveying the urgency of this issue will only be measured by how fast and how hard we work, redoubling our efforts to educate our family members, work mates, and community — everyone in our sphere of influence.

H M Cotterill Flickr/creative commons

H M Cotterill
Flickr/creative commons

As we pointed out last week with this photo, time is the only commodity that can’t be recycled, so we have to do everything today to make the world a better place. Once, having envisioned a perfected future, there exists an imperative, an obligation, to materialize that vision.

Protests, rallies, meetings, summits, pamphlets, posters, banners, and speeches will only take us so far. Surely these are useful in recruiting new allies to any cause, but what will really harness the power of all the people, or at least a healthy majority, to not budge until change comes about?

Capturing the planet-at-large will require the most creative explosion of public engagement and education that we have ever seen, an expression of non-violent civil disobedience on a global scale.

Central to this effort must be the fact that climate change is already upon us. Therefore, we must move away from the elemental proof or disapproval of its causes — a never ending battle with the naysayers, a red herring. We are long over that debate.

The destruction of ocean habitats, the rising sea levels, the increasing scarcity and privatization of water, and much more, are factual realities that we are being forced to reckon with, and this can only be done through worldwide harmony. The alternative is death. People arguing against protecting our environment are akin to those in some parts of this country who will not put out your house fire unless your taxes are up to date. They don’t look at the big picture, either on purpose or because they are incapable of normal cogitation.

One of the things everyone in the world does understand, however, is the power of money, what gets spent on what, and what are the expressed priorities at any given point. We have to encourage the growth of financial divestment coalitions already in existence among universities, pension funds, venture capitalists, foundations, and corporate boards of directors. We must draw them away from technologies that have no future such as fossil fuels, the meat industry, and the privatization of water resources, and away from state regimes that hurt their population. While we cringe when we see corporations use their newly assigned personal rights to take away the rights of others (limiting their female employees’s personal birth control choices, for example), we must also recognize that without people, without customers, there are no corporations. We hold a mighty power to shape corporations by using global non-violent civil disobedience to both raise awareness/educate and reap new commitments to the people’s issues by getting powerful entities to champion our cause.

We are beginning to see this happen, and our duty is to hurry along this process. Time is all we have.

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 For more on how progress happens, click here.

Salutes and More Salutes

 

Naysayers who think that big marches don’t bring about real change fail to understand there is a pluralistic revolution already underway that will change the world whether they like it or not, divesting the world away from corporate rape of the world’s natural resources. (9/22/14)

People's Climate March New York City  September 21, 2014

People’s Climate March
New York City
September 21, 2014

People's Climate March New York City September 21, 2014 regram from @_sarahwilson_

People’s Climate March
New York City
September 21, 2014
regram from @_sarahwilson_

We have had time now to fully appreciate the impact of Sunday’s unprecedented People’s Climate March (400,000 souls in New York City, and millions in other American cities and in more than 160 countries), and to witness on Monday the hugely successful follow-up Flood Wall Street sit-in to demand corporate environmental responsibility. More than 3,000 protesters literally flooded Wall Street, without a city permit no less, shutting down a 10-block area despite police interference. All were trained in non-violent civil disobedience, volunteering to be arrested (100 were arrested and then all were released).

We had a big ruckus and showed ourselves to each other as a force ready and able to move forward on this uphill battle. And it is uphill, make no mistake, consider Exhibit A, if you will . . .

“I mean think about it, if your ice cube melts in your glass it doesn’t overflow, it’s displacement.”

This grade-school, startling, ignorant statement comes out of the US Congress, courtesy of Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) who sits, ironically and sadly, on our tax-payer funded House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. (Worth a watch: Jon Stewart skewering Stockman and similarly ignorant Republican brethren also serving on this committee.)

But, now for some good news.

This stupidity on display is a national embarrassment, yes, but it also gives us hope that we are closer, than ever before, to turning the corner of worldwide awareness of environmental issues. The more convincing the science, the more people stand up to share the voices and skills to educate others, and the more desperate the stupid climate-deniers become in putting their stumbling and bad thinking is on display to be widely ridiculed and more quickly repudiated by larger and larger numbers of people.

As we celebrate the sheer numbers of boots on the ground in the last 2 days, we are a witness to progress: the greatest number of people in history are today mobilized to do something to save our planet, whether in their own community or on the world stage.

But that’s not all, folks. Corporations are beginning to agree with us that non-renewable energy is a very, very bad idea. A fast-growing corporate divestment movement has now firmly attached itself to the cause, underscoring environmentalists’s demands with money. This is a very good thing, emblematic of true progress.

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Information: How you can divest from the fuel economy.

More about the mechanics and built-in ecology of progress here.

 

Salutes!

Quick salute to record 400,000 People’s Climate Marchers who turned out, yesterday. More about that, tomorrow, with an Op-Ed on what’s gone down today in Lower Manhattan many of these activists showed up to Flood Wall Street calling for corporate environmental responsibility. Naysayers who think that big marches don’t bring about real change fail to understand there is a pluralistic revolution already underway that will change the world whether they like it or not, divesting the world away from corporate rape of the world’s natural resources.

Future Feminist by Melissa Brewer Flickr/creative commons

Future Feminist by Melissa Brewer
Flickr/creative commons

Today, we are pausing to give kudos to our United Nation Good Will Ambassador, actress and activist Emma Watson, for defining feminism for a new generation.

. . . [F]eminism by definition is: “The belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities. It is the theory of the political, economic and social equality of the sexes.

… Men—I would like to take this opportunity to extend your formal invitation. Gender equality is your issue too.

We don’t often talk about men being imprisoned by gender stereotypes but I can see that that they are and that when they are free, things will change for women as a natural consequence.

… I want men to take up this mantle. So their daughters, sisters and mothers can be free from prejudice but also so that their sons have permission to be vulnerable and human too—reclaim those parts of themselves they abandoned and in doing so be a more true and complete version of themselves.

As we’ve opined before, many people (especially young people, especially those of all ages who resist progress) misunderstand or just miss altogether this central truth of feminism which Ms. Watson has just so eloquently stated. Feminism is and always was an all peoples movement, and it’s been on the advance for a long time now.
We are all standing on the shoulders of those far-thinking, any-gendered soldiers who saw the future (our only collective future, peace). True feminists go to work each day to enrich the present by upstepping progress in any way possible, and always across gender gender divides, despite disinformation of radical feminists. Those of us around when feminism first emerged recognize it as a philosophy that builds on all older philosophies that hold the potential to save the world by bringing about universal plurality and peace.

Men had, and have, a lot to gain once they back away from the precipice of hyper-masculinity, something forced on little boys, practically at birth. We have highlighted how this overriding male privilege, machismo and masculine extremism, has led directly to today’s misogynistic rape culture. This hyper-masculinity has no peaceful end. It doesn’t drive good works. Instead it maintains a vicious and constant competition with other men to be the most extremely hyper-masculine among one’s peers beginning with the repression (and conquest) of all women and all (in their opinion) less masculine men, making them trophies, conquests, less than human. To the extent that this overpowering man-centric point-of-view disappears from the halls of power, within corporations, governments, and religious hierarchies, people-centric solutions emerge. Gradually, old coercive, inhumane systems are replaced by entirely voluntary, humane associations in part built upon everything that is good and salvageable we find around us.

Hospice care is an example of an existing human partnership worth maintaining. The idea of hospice care, where dying patients receive palliative care with dignity, was conceived in the 11th century and has remained an welcome and useful association, surpassing what any corporation or government could conceive or control.

Two good examples of the transition of leaving bad systems behind us and creating better ways of doing things are the military and reproductive rights. In the United States, mostly poor young people are not given the choice to go to college or serve in the military. If they want to go to college, the military gladly pays but with an awful codicil: you have to be willing to fill a body bag on behalf of your government’s wrong-headed, greed-motivated, big budget, militaristic pursuit of world domination. Instead, how about a Green Army that is called upon to full diplomatic philanthropy, disaster relief, and environmental clean-up?

Confining a woman’s abortion and birth control decisions in the hands our government’s old white men is driven by their hatred and fear of women’s power. As an issue it has to be removed from public discourse and remain solely with a woman, her family, and her doctor.

Learn more about this formula for progress, here. And salute all people and groups of people who have the means and the courage to speak truth.

 

 

Climate March This Sunday, Be Counted!

Takver Flickr/creative commons

Takver
Flickr/creative commons

. . . [T]he largest rally for an environmental cause in US history is happening this Sunday, September 21, in Manhattan. More than 100,000 people are planning to join a historic march for climate action two days before President Obama and world leaders attend a Climate Summit at the United Nations. (The Nation’s “The People’s Climate Weekend: A Guide)

There may only a few people left who haven’t heard about this weekend’s momentous People’s Climate March, taking place in New York City and other major cities across the world. If you haven’t signed up to participate directly or otherwise support this effort, there are numerous portals to sign in (here, here, and on Facebook, for example).

Organizers say it is impossible to predict how many people could show up. But 1,400 “partner organizations” have signed on, ranging from small groups to international coalitions. In addition, students have mobilized marchers at more than 300 college campuses, and more than 2,700 climate events in 158 countries are planned to coincide with the New York march, including rallies in Delhi, Jakarta, London, Melbourne and Rio de Janeiro. (New York Times)

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon this week announced he would be marching with us. Companies are joining the marchers as well. Patagonia is closing all four of its NYC locations so that employees can participate.

It happens that Naomi Klein’s much anticipated book, This Changes Everything, is also being launched this weekend. It is a must read for everyone, not just those deeply concerned about the environment but all those who wish to reverse once and for all the power brokers stranglehold that values profit over people.

Klein exposes the myths that are clouding the climate debate.

 We have been told the market will save us, when in fact the addiction to profit and growth is digging us in deeper every day. We have been told it’s impossible to get off fossil fuels when in fact we know exactly how to do it—it just requires breaking every rule in the “free-market” playbook: reining in corporate power, rebuilding local economies, and reclaiming our democracies.

We have also been told that humanity is too greedy and selfish to rise to this challenge. In fact, all around the world, the fight for the next economy and against reckless extraction is already succeeding in ways both surprising and inspiring.

Climate change, Klein argues, is a civilizational wake-up call, a powerful message delivered in the language of fires, floods, storms, and droughts. Confronting it is no longer about changing the light bulbs. It’s about changing the world—before the world changes so drastically that no one is safe. 

Either we leap—or we sink.

You can get live updates of events as they unfold this weekend by signing up here.

Also, there is a fresh call to action for an entire week in Washington, DC, starting on November 1, in part to demand that our country’s Federal Energy Regulation Commission stop letting big industry call the shots at everyone else’s expense. You can get started here.

Since its inception VenusPlusX has joined others for a complete remaking of our world starting with universal plurality so that all voices are heard and respected and finally drown out the greedy who reap profit from the pain of others, the singular obstacle to peace.

Show your support in some way this weekend, and consider this: Solidarity devoted to reclaiming our planet and nursing it back to its prior state of health can be the fulcrum that transforms our global economy and rescues our inherent human rights from those who wish to enslave us.

H M Cotterill Flickr/creative commons

H M Cotterill
Flickr/creative commons

TODAY: Actions You Can Take to Assure Net Neutrality

Courtesy of Free Press

Courtesy of Free Press

We may be experiencing the last few days when we can be sure that the Internet will remain free from the control of mega-corporations at the expense of the little guy. Sites such as Comcast and AT&T could be getting fast lanes, the cost of which would be borne by you the consumer. Other websites, the ones you love, would be relegated to die on the vine in slow lanes.

But there are things you can do over the next few days to make the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reclassifies broadband providers as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act.

Tomorrow there will be a world-wide “slowdown” for websites large and small to urge end-users like you to take action in the next few days by submitting comments up until midnight (EST) this Monday, September 15. If you want the Internet to remain the global free marketplace of ideas it has always been, where those without a voice are guaranteed a chance to be heard, then please do one or more of these things.

Besides tomorrow’s slowdown, you can call for net neutrality by . . .

Don’t sit on your hands.

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FreePress.net and savetheinternet.com, thank you for all your work!

 

 

Take Action On Wednesday for Net Neutrality

battleforthenet

One of the most consequential decisions Washington is set to make in 2014 won’t come out of the White House, Congress, or any of the nation’s boardrooms, but rather from a nondescript federal building along the city’s southwest waterfront. It’s here, in the offices of the Federal Communications Commission, that the fate of the Internet will be decided. (via The Huffingnton Post)

A court ruling earlier this year throwing out earlier rules led the Federal Trade Commission (FCC) to vote 3-2 to debate the issue again, a time to put all the issues on the table but not without risk. If these new rules are approved, media mega-corporations such as Comcast and Verizon will be able to offer fast lanes to certain clients, such as Netflix, all at the consumer’s expense of course. This would leave smaller companies, the non-profit sector, and individuals stuck in slow lanes, withering.

Defenders of net neutrality want the Internet to remain the free international marketplace of ideas it is, where everyone has the same opportunity to be heard. Many of us  flooded the FCC with hundreds of thousands of messages during the public comment period on these draft rules. More background: here, here, and here.

Now, frighteningly, this epic decision is now in the hands of two FCC commissioners, both women, both Democrats, but our fate is still very much in doubt. Chair Tom Wheeler has come out in favor of net neutrality although the fact that he has entertained this draft proposal is somehow at odds with that position. The Republicans, both men, on the commission are going to vote with the mega-corporations, of course.

A day of action for this Wednesday, September 10, is planned and everyone can take part. At battleforthenet.com you can find out how you can participate directly in this Internet Slowdown campaign. The site is the product of several well-respected net neutrality advocacy organizations.

All day on Wednesday, websites big and small will display the notorious symbol of dysfunction, the dreaded spinning wheel of death, to promote users to content the FCC, Congress, and the White House. (This will be a display, only, not actually affecting any website.)

Over 100 tech companies, including Google and Amazon, came together last spring to oppose these proposed new rules . . . warn[ing] of a “grave threat to the Internet.” Most of these companies have pledged to participate on Wednesday, and hopefully they will.

Whether you a small website or a big Internet company, or if you just have a blog, you can get the code. If you have a mobile app, send a push notification. On social media, change your avatar to a spinning wheel of death, or freely share some of battleforthenet.com’s cool images.

All the tools to do this are at battleforthenet.com, including a Citizen’s Petition and software to make a banner. It’s all about prompting as many people as possible to flood political decision-makers to fight off yet another assault by big business.

Even if you only have a Facebook account you can participate. If you have clout, use it! By working together in coalition we can succeed, and help end the domination of corporations over people.

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Support Tomorrow’s WalkOuts To Raise Wages

Photo by  Steve Rhodes Flickr/creative commons

Photo by
Steve Rhodes
Flickr/creative commons

Home healthcare workers are joining fast food workers, tomorrow, for walkouts in over 100 cities across America. You can help by coming out to support these actions against mega corporations such as McDonalds and Walmart who enslave workers with poverty wages and stolen wages.

Fast-food workers often have to rely on food stamps to feed their families. This means that the corporations they work for freely rely on your tax dollars to pick up the slack.

These companies also notoriously steal workers’ wages by such practices as making workers wait around before starting their shifts to maintain efficiency ratios and/or routinely requiring extra unpaid hours by workers to clean at the conclusion of their shift.

Conservatives argue that the market should determine wages based on productivity but fail to understand that if that were so the minimum wage would actually be $22/hour in 2014.

Income inequality hurts both the rich and the poor and it is time for everyone to pay more attention to these issues.

Join a walkout tomorrow. You will be glad you did.

 

Stay Informed. Stay Active.

Light Brigading Flickr/creative commons

Light Brigading
Flickr/creative commons

We speculate that unlike the consciousness raising on gun control following the Newtown Massacre, which petered out along partisan lines since the National Rifle Association owns most of the U.S. Congress, this singular event in Ferguson will succeed in merging the message with the messenger at just the right moment. It has brought about a laser-focus on the rotten mass of shameful, bankrupt, coercive, and inhumane systems, forcing elected officials, conservative and liberal alike, to say, wait a damn minute.

 “The eyes of the nation and the world are watching Ferguson right now. The world is watching because the issues raised by the shooting of Michael Brown predate this incident. This is something that has a history to it and the history simmers beneath the surface in more communities than just Ferguson.” — Attorney General Eric Holder

Politicians can ignore these issues now, at their peril, but we will continue to pose the epic questions:

How will we end this country’s war on brown and black men, especially young men?

How will we demilitarize our police forces?

How will interfere with the scourge of mass incarceration?

How will we end our outsourcing to for-profit prison industry and the for-profit probation system?

We have to keep reminding ourselves that ALL of this is connected to greed and the money (including your tax dollars) that elites accumulate from the pain of others. The War on Drugs later upstepped by the War on Terror placed immense pressure for more arrests. Brown and black men have been the primary targets and the easiest targets. We pay for your senators, congressmen, and prosecutors to entertain for-profit prison industry lobbyists pushing for longer and stiffer sentences to increase their corporate bottom line. We penalize debtors further by putting them into for-profit probation programs at once increasing the original debt on a weekly basis and the likelihood of jail time for things like an overdue water bill.

More Americans have become aware that their hard earned tax dollars finance the military-style firepower we’ve seen on display in Ferguson. Add to that the local police’s sad rendition of how trained military personnel actually behave with these arms and equipment that has put all public safety at risk.

People united have all the power to stop all of this.

[Regarding a similar shooting in 1943 . . . ] The shooting, the funeral and the riot, taking place so close together, led Baldwin to realize that we must always hold in our minds two opposite ideas. The first is that “injustice is commonplace” in our world. But the second is that we cannot be complacent. We “must never … accept these injustices as commonplace but must fight them with all [our] strength. This fight begins … in the heart.” (via Laila Lalami’s ‘This Fight Begins In The Heart’: Reading James Baldwin As Ferguson Seethes)

Stay informed. Stay active.

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Also see:

Love Pierces Hate

by Rafee Jewell Flickr/cretaive commons

by Rafee Jewell
Flickr/cretaive commons

 

After a week of writing about the senseless murder of Michael Brown, a young, unarmed African-Americn in Ferguson, Missouri, by a white policeman, I’ve spent the last few days reading posts we have written over the past few years, and those from other authors, condemning racism. It’s become a meditation on the racism upon which this country was founded.

Fear of other did not begin with America. Fear of something different than yourself springs from caveman DNA, and it is only the gradual grasp of Love, in your intellect and in actuality of the Love you express, that raises anyone above the primitive. When we evolve as individuals, and as a mass of humanity, to be able to reject fear as a way of life, the earth and its people tick closer to a world built on Love. This is a world where every child is born with its personal autonomy intact, where governments, corporations, religious hierarchies, or local custom do not rob us of mutual equality. This is the age of universal plurality, the only pathway to Peace, the only future that applies to all people.

Organized religion has done the most to retard this evolution away from the primitive. From the earliest shamans, humans have been exploited by greedy (and lazy) interlopers presuming to come between us and the reality of love, something we can actually feel flow into, through, and out of our own bodies.

To the extent that our successes or our happiness sits atop the exploitation of others, the love in our lives is an illusion, a mental appetizer only of what could be. Every decision we make is a personal moral question. There is no morality greater than one person, despite what religious hierarchies and others would have you believe. No decision is based on what others think or tell you because if you just quiet your mind for a moment you know exactly what each decision is and where it will lead. At that moment you know whether you are choosing love over hate, mutual support over exclusion, purpose over failure. It is not only our intellect or even our heart that guides us, although they are helpful. It is recognition of the underlying and inescapable ecology of Love, Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. Consciously or unconsciously we understand in our gut that love has a future and that hate dies on the vine, however long that might take.

The founders of Amerika, and everyone since, sprung from a white supremacist point of view. First up? The eradication of the non-white natives. Next? The ruthless exploitation of black people brought to this country against their will, permanently indentured to the whim of their white owners. Now? Closing our borders selectively because white people fear that we are fast becoming a blended brown nation.

Every white person, individually and collectively, knows they are consciously choosing hate or at least something short of Love, whenever and wherever they are unwilling to give up the systemic exploitation and enslavement of those they consider “other.”

The only future for white people in this country is to embrace Love of their fellows by silencing the haters. We have to call the haters out in capital letters, on a daily basis. The legacy of Michael Brown and his family is giving this country an ideal platform to recognize this country’s racists roots, and to make amends by finding ways to make things right.

“Not everything that is faced can be chaged;
but nothing can be changed until it is faced
James Baldwin (1924 – 1987)
American novelist, essayist, playwright,
poet, and social critic