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

Friday, September 30, 2011

The Best Among Us

Click here to access article by Chris Hedges from OpEd News. 
There are no excuses left. Either you join the revolt taking place on Wall Street and in the financial districts of other cities across the country or you stand on the wrong side of history. Either you obstruct, in the only form left to us, which is civil disobedience, the plundering by the criminal class on Wall Street and accelerated destruction of the ecosystem that sustains the human species, or become the passive enabler of a monstrous evil. Either you taste, feel and smell the intoxication of freedom and revolt or sink into the miasma of despair and apathy. Either you are a rebel or a slave.
Very few people can express this better than Chris Hedges! 

It's up to us, people. If you are waiting for a "leader" to lead the way, then all is lost. You and I and our neighbors must take initiative to create a better world. There is no alternative to a better world. Well, if we do nothing, there is one: a world that is a living nightmare:
...disemboweling every last social service program funded by the taxpayers, from education to Social Security, because they want that money themselves. Let the sick die. Let the poor go hungry. Let families be tossed in the street. Let the unemployed rot. Let children in the inner city or rural wastelands learn nothing and live in misery and fear. Let the students finish school with no jobs and no prospects of jobs. Let the prison system, the largest in the industrial world, expand to swallow up all potential dissenters. Let torture continue. Let teachers, police, firefighters, postal employees and social workers join the ranks of the unemployed. Let the roads, bridges, dams, levees, power grids, rail lines, subways, bus services, schools and libraries crumble or close. Let the rising temperatures of the planet, the freak weather patterns, the hurricanes, the droughts, the flooding, the tornadoes, the melting polar ice caps, the poisoned water systems, the polluted air increase until the species dies.
People all across our country are saying, "I'm mad as hell, and I ain't gonna take it anymore!" See this website for coverage of many courageous people doing just that. No, you will not see these many protests covered on mainstream corporate media. They don't want you to know about it. (They prefer to cover Tea Party events.) They want you to continue to feel helpless and cynical. But, it's really happening. For example, in San Francisco:





Perhaps what we need is a regional union like they have in the UK and Ireland comprised of workers across the US and Canada.