Month: November 2014

Categories
gratitude Reflections water

Thanksgiving

Racism. Police brutality. Global warming. Never ending war. Students kidnapped and most likely killed. Refugees drowning in the mediterranean while looking for some hope of a future. Austerity. Rise of fascism and religious fundamentalism. State and corporate surveillance. Rape. Homophobia and transphobia and the violence that often accompanies it. Indiscriminate suppression of dissent. The list of news that can, and do, depress us and infuriate us seems to have no end. And today is thanksgiving in the USA, a day when we are supposed to give thanks for what we have, a day with its own very ugly history and context. Finding gratitude in the midst of all this can be, at best, a challenge.

Yet, it is precisely in the midst of all this that we need to remind ourselves what we are grateful for, otherwise we can just fall into a permanent state of cynicism, resentment, fear and anger. While these are understandable emotions and especially fear and anger can help motivate us to work for change, I generally find them not very good places in which to establish permanent residence.

A few months ago I was talking with a friend who is doing a lot of work in support of political prisoners, frankly an area where good news is not the norm. As we were talking about the stress and tension that she felt we walked outside under the night sky. Away from lights we looked up to see the stars and the milky way. We fell silent for a moment appreciative of the beauty above us and around us. It is at times like this that I am reminded that despite all the ugliness that we might encounter, it is beauty that is the norm in our universe. At times this beauty is hidden from us. Often we forget to look for it or fail to recognize it. And some times, like that night, we need to step deeper into the darkness in order to find it. But it is always there, always around us, always waiting to welcome us, to remind us that we don’t struggle because of the ugliness of the world but because of its beauty.

So today, like everyday, I am grateful for the beauty of the world. I am grateful for this earth and all that she provides for us. I am grateful for the indigenous peoples who welcomed the strange newcomers on their land and shared with them its beauty and its bounty. I am grateful for the indigenous peoples who fought and continue to fight and resist those who didn’t show gratitude in response but tried to conquer, exploit, control and own beauty and land and people as if they are not the gifts of the world but commodities to be used. I am grateful for all those, past, present and future, here and everywhere, who continue to fight and resist oppression, domination and exploitation and work to bring forward a world where everyone is free. I am grateful for the artists, the writers, the poets, the musicians in our midst who remind us what it means to be human. I am grateful for the workers who have built everything that we get to use in our daily lives. I am grateful for the farmers and all the people who make sure that we have food. I am grateful for the healers and the teachers amongst us. I am grateful for all the people who history has ignored or forgotten but who contributed in their own small and significant way towards a better world for future generations. I am grateful for my parents and their parents and all of my ancestors who made it possible for me to exist today. I am grateful for my kids, my family, my friends, my coworkers, and all my fellow travelers in this fascinating journey of ours.

And I am grateful for the sea and the night sky for never failing to remind me that beauty is all around us.

Categories
power & privilege Reflections

Non-violence

If you are truly interested in non-violence then you will ask and expect it from everyone. The government, the community, the police, the national guard, the KKK, the protesters. But if you are only asking for non-violence from the protesters and are ok with violence on the part of the state then it isn’t non-violence you really want. It is obedience.

Categories
quotes

“Your silence will not protect you”

“In becoming forcibly and essentially aware of my mortality, and of what I wished and wanted for my life, however short it might be, priorities and omissions became strongly etched in a merciless light, and what I most regretted were my silences. Of what had I ever been afraid? To question or to speak as I believed could have meant pain, or death. But we all hurt in so many different ways, all the time, and pain will either change or end. Death, on the other hand, is the final silence. And that might be coming quickly now, without regard for whether I had ever spoken what needed to be said, or had only betrayed myself into small silences, while I planned someday to speak, or waited for someone else’s words.
I was going to die, if not sooner then later, whether or not I had ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you.”

Audre Lorde

Categories
power & privilege Reflections

Violence is the answer of the State

As we listen to Obama’s and others’ predictable platitudes about “staying peaceful” and how violence is not the answer and all that, please remember this: Violence is ALWAYS the answer when it is the State that is delivering it and it is ALWAYS denounced by the power structures when it is directed against them.

Categories
power & privilege Reflections

Legalized injustice

Obama: “We need to accept that this decision was the grand jury’s to make.”

100 years ago would he had said the same thing about the Dred Scott v. Sandford decision, that we need to accept that it was the supreme court’s to make?

Legalized injustice is still injustice and it must never be accepted.

Categories
Reflections

Armistice Day

The “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month” was set aside to commemorate the end of hostilities on the western front of the “war to end all wars.” As we now find ourselves in the midst of “perpetual war” let us take a moment to remember all those who have lost their lives fighting to end war and bring about a world that we can be proud to pass on to our children, not only the ones in uniform but also the war resisters, the ones who fought for human rights, for dignity, for better working conditions, to end racism and oppression, to stop ecological degradation, to defend their lands, to end slavery, to stop rape and torture, the ones who fought for food, healthcare, housing and education for all, all the ones who stood up for what they believed and made the ultimate sacrifice so that everyone may be free.

Let us also remember the ones who survived the battlefields but couldn’t survive the world and could find no other way to end the perpetual war in their heads and hearts but by their own hands. Let us remember the ones in prisons, in mental institutions, in drug rehab centers, under bridges, on street corners, in shelters and soup lines.

And after we take a moment of silence to remember our fallen veterans, comrades and friends let us truly honor them by vowing, again, to not be silent in the face of oppression, by picking up their torch and continuing their fight for a world where everyone is free.

Categories
Reflections

Election’s aftermath

So, I thought I was done with election commentary but I have now endured through more than enough posts and comments by folks who are expressing their anger at the election results by effectively blaming generic non-voters for bringing about the end of the world and other such calamities.

Ok, I get it. Last night didn’t look very good. You are angry, frustrated, scared, pissed off. But before you lay the blame on those who didn’t vote let me propose some blame candidates who I think should be given (much) higher priority for how things turned out:

  • The Koch Brothers.
  • Supreme Court Judges Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Kennedy who unleashed Citizens United and unlimited corporate money upon us.
  • Citizens United and other such groups who keep raising and spending untold millions of dollars to shape election outcomes
  • Ongoing voter suppression efforts such as voter ID laws, purging voter rolls, etc that make it harder or impossible for some people to vote
  • Mass media outlets that bombard people with misinformation, disinformation or just plainly no information at all.
  • Media personalities who get famous and wealthy by fear-mongering and appealing to base emotions while lying and scapegoating
  • Broader social and political forces which promote a sense of alienation, disempowerment and disconnection from the political process
  • Candidates and campaign managers and the shitty campaigns that some of them run
  • The people who actually voted against your candidate or issue
  • ISIS and Ebola. Oh, wait, no, they are not really to blame for any of this
  • The Koch Brothers (there are two of them I don’t won’t one of them to feel left out)
  • Add your own here (I am quite sure I am forgetting some)

My point here is not that people don’t bear responsibility for their individual actions and choices, but that there are some really large forces out there which wield a tremendous amount of power. If you truly believe that individual citizens hold as much power as the Koch Brothers and Citizens United and Americans for Prosperity and their ilk then you need to do a little bit more reading and thinking about why things are the way they are. If you really think that all we need to do is get more people to vote and then everything will be fine then you should seriously ponder more the nature of power and how it is exercised.

Again, I get it. You are angry, frustrated, scared, pissed off. So am I. But blaming anonymous citizens for what they might not have done is not going to get us very far (and definitely not in the direction we want and need to go). So let’s stop with the throwing blame at others and maybe start talking with each other. And listening. And then let’s work to figure out how we are going to get ourselves out of this mess and build, for ourselves, the world we want and deserve. And no, we can’t just find some better candidate and vote for them to do it. This is our world and our responsibility. We don’t get to take a pass on this.

Categories
Reflections

Election hangover recap

Election hangover recap. A few silver linings. Minimum wage hikes won in several places. Not exactly the revolution but a few more dollars in the pockets of hard working families is definitely something to feel good about. The lunatic fringe (i.e. you are a person deserving the full protection of the government from conception till the moment you are born, at which time we throw you to the wolves) got sent packing, again, in Colorado.
On most other fronts the billionaire capitalists have seem to have carried the day. Big shocker there. Then again there is a part of me that wants to go on a rooftop and shout:
“Hey America, I know that most of the time you are only given a choice between voting for “Billionaires for Capitalism” and “Capitalists for Billionaires”. But if you are going to vote for a capitalist billionaire, couldn’t you at least pick the ones who, you know, understand science? I am not expecting that they will really fix the problem but they might buy us some time? So that maybe there is still a planet worth living on for our grandchildren? Is that too much to ask for?”
Apparently it is.
So this is what we have folks. Now, can we let go of the should have/shouldn’t have voted pissing match we find ourselves in and get down to real work? Because the ballot box, even when it goes a lot more our way than it did last night, will not grant us the world we want and deserve. We have to build that one ourselves.
See you out there.

Categories
Reflections

Tis the season (for radicals to argue)

Tis the season for radicals to argue about elections again so here are some more thoughts that have emerged from conversations in the last couple of days.

I consider myself an anarchist (or at least one who aspires to anarchist ideals and practices, I have a long way to go from saying I live up to them). I usually vote, at least on referenda and such, less often on people, but I rarely make the question of whether i vote or not into a big deal (and I don’t vote as an anarchist per se). I agree that most of the time the choices that we are offered on a ballot are lousy at best and very rarely do they give us an option on something that will make a substantive difference, especially in the long term. Most of the time I find myself voting against some crazy ass proposal being pushed by some lunatics (i.e. Amendment 67 in Colorado this time around). So I don’t argue that we should not vote. But we also need to be very alert of how the ballot box is used to perpetrate an illusion of choice where there is no substantive difference in the choices that we are given. Most of the time we are offered our pick of A. spaghetti with tomato sauce or B. macaroni with cheese (those of you in San Francisco may also see a vegan gluten-free choice as well).
The few times when there is something on the ballot that is truly progressive (although rarely radical) it is almost always because of protracted social struggles and mobilizations. The ballot then becomes the last act in a (very) long history of actions. And in those cases voting becomes a critical component in “sealing” the action. For me, if we sincerely believe in “diversity of tactics” and “by any means necessary” as core principles which inform our strategies and our struggles then we must be willing to consider the ballot box as a potentially valid strategy, but always only as a part of a lot of other work. To outrightly reject the ballot box as a potential strategy under any and all circumstances seems as naive and shortsighted as the outright endorsement of voting as a means of bringing about true social change.
I would love then to see us engage in a deeper and more contextualized conversation as to if, when, and how the ballot box can be an effective tool in our social struggles, rather than this generic “VOTE” “DON’T VOTE” shouting match that we so often find ourselves in.