I'm Not Male, I'm Not Jewish & I'm Not American...

... but I'll take with pride, the association a Twitter follower made with Saul Alinksy...

This is who Saul Alinsky was: Saul Alinsky - Life and Work

and this is some of what he said in his 1946 "Reveille for Radicals":

"... A People’s Organization is a conflict group, [and] this must be openly and fully recognized.  It's sole reason in coming into being is to wage war against all evils which cause suffering and unhappiness.  A People’s Organization is the banding together of large numbers of men and women to fight for those rights which insure a decent way of life. . .

A People’s Organization is dedicated to an eternal war.  It is a war against poverty, misery, delinquency, disease, injustice, hopelessness, despair, and unhappiness. They are basically the same issues for which nations have gone to war in almost every generation. . . War is not an intellectual debate, and in the war against social evils there are no rules of fair play. . .

A People’s Organization lives in a world of hard reality.  It lives in the midst of smashing forces, dashing struggles, sweeping cross-currents, ripping passions, conflict, confusion, seeming chaos, the hot and the cold, the squalor and the drama, which people prosaically refer to as life and students describe as 'society'..."

 

 

Newt Gingrich doesn't like Saul Alinsky... how sad... too bad!

 

"A Warrior...

 
... accepts that we can never know
what will happen to us next"

Say this to yourself...

Several times...

Notice how it feels in your body...

BREATHE... 


BREATHE... 


BREATHE...

PS:   Dorli Rainey, the grandmother who was maced by members of the Seattle Police Department, is a long time activist, former schoolteacher, and school board member who has become the face of the Occupy movement by virtue of one picture and a life of activism. 

 

Born in Austria, Rainey came to the U.S. in 1956 following her work as a technical translator in the U.S. Army in Europe. She describes herself as an "all-around troublemaker."

 

"I believe change begins in the streets, and all citizens have the power to make a difference," she writes in her blog. "Together we can make our voices heard in the ivory towers of government”. 

 

In addition to supporting Occupy Seattle, she is a member of Women in the Black an international network who "stand in silent vigil, calling for peace, justice and non-violent solutions to conflict." 

 

Rainey has been called "a role model among activists that walks the walk."

 

 

Occupation...

"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil OBEDIENCE. 

Our problem is the numbers of people all over the world who have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their governments and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience. 

Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. 

Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, (and) the grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem."

~ Howard Zinn

My fellow activists in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the UK and everywhere...

I recommend that we all put our different foci aside temporarily, and concentrate on replicating what is going on in New York right now...  in cities all over the world!

After all - everything that we are working to change, stems from the oligarchy that has its power base (in the US) divided between Wall Street and the Capitol...

 

 

 

Political and Social Apathy... What's Your Excuse?

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn't a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

- Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller

“Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.”

 - Frederick Douglass

State of the Nation: Insanity Rules...

According to the US Census Bureau, as of July 2009 the US population stood at 307,006,550 people.

Wikipedia says the US population numbers 310,722,000.

It's generally accepted that the true unemployed/underemployed rate is running as high as 25%...

That means there are approximately 77,500,000 people in this country who are out of work, or not working sufficiently to meet their needs, or who have given up looking for work.

77 MILLION people (and their partners, families, communities) losing, or in danger of losing, their homes, not having enough food, without medical care, no transport... millions of children living with day-to-day survival issues...

Food insecurity in the U.S. hovering at record levels

 

Just to give you a sense of the enormity of that number - that's the population of 3.5 New Zealands, or one-and-a-bit United Kingdoms, or two Kenyas...     

Countries by Population

In the richest country on the planet... and that's why we need to keep giving tax cuts to the rich and not fund education and health care fully... 

Make sense to you???   No, not to me either...

Summing It All Up In 2min:40sec

One version of current reality...

This is all being done in our names - and apparently we all agreed to this...

I don't remember anyone asking me if I wanted this... did anyone ask you?

And here is the reality for those on the ground:

And I kinda feel I have earned the right to post pacifist comments.   I really understand the issue.   I spent 18 years as a military wife, watching grown men get excited about spending taxpayer money on more elaborate, efficient tools and machines for killing people, and my elder son is serving in the New Zealand Army...