We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

For Edward Snowden: Letter to a Wound

Click here to access article by Vijay Prashad from CounterPunch.
Thousands such as yourself are sucked into the system, promised free dinners and expensive houses, afforded the electric proximity to power as an elixir against ethics. What they did not understand is that people like you who have such capability in your fingertips are also afforded a brain, and that the brain is an unreliable servant. .... You are not alone. There are many like you who are equally unmoored from the work that you have been doing for the world disorder.