On the discourse between latinos, hispanos, chicanos, or whatever you have chosen to call us, and the rest of the people in the United States of America.

First of all, let me explain to you that America is not a country. This is a fight that I have been engaged in since I first came to the US and was told by a racist parent in my elementary school in Florida, that America didn't want me here, and that I should go back to my country. I explained to her as politely as I could that I had been born in America, as Cuba was a part of the American continent, and she promptly spit on my face. It was not a wonderful beginning to my residence here. In my next year I won the school spelling bee, but the week before I had been told by my homeroom teacher that I would never succeed because a) I spoke a second-rate language and b) I came from a third-rate culture. These two experiences, the first of many, made me decide that I would never lose my original language and culture. So when I taught Spanish at the elementary, high school and college level, when I shared my knowledge of history and geography with my students, when I practiced law and represented clients, whether Spanish-speaking or Haitians or people who spoke other languages, I always provided translations. There were no automatic translators in those days, and although I acknowledge that they serve as a tool, as a professional translator and interpreter I find their use by companies and government agencies as the sole means to address my people to be lazy and offensive. We speak a beautiful language, as all languages are beautiful; don't relegate it to an automatic robotic construct for the sake of expediency. Yes, you are the current seat of Empire, but all things, good and bad, come to an end. In my work as an advocate in the courts helping immigrants and people of color and all of the voiceless in this country, including homeless brothers and sisters and the elderly (and I suppose, having turned 67 last month, I could start adding myself to that group), I have always insisted on what Flaubert called 'le mot juste,' the exact, appropriate, perfect word. My paternal Sephardic grandfather, who spoke eight languages perfectly, always told me to keep studying languages because I would find the word I needed to express a feeling or concept, 'le mot juste,' in one of those languages. He was completely correct. We are engaged in a terrible fight to the death in these current elections that constantly bring back to me the words of Abraham Lincoln in his address at Gettysburg. "Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war." These elections are, to me, a great civil war. The discourse among us all is harsh and divisive, except for one candidate, who has refused and continues to refuse to engage in the low tactics of his adversaries. I don't know that we will be able to endure; as we have seen with candidate Trump's casual rhetoric of violence, violence only begets more violence; only love trumps violence. And that brings me back to my point: the general attitude in these United States, or US America for short, that the only opinions that matter are those of white, English-speaking people. That those of us (latinos, hispanic, chicanos) who will soon constitute a majority in the United States are not worthy of equal representation. That the language we speak, and the cultures we bring to the pot, are less important. I say all cultures are important, and the first nations here did not speak English, were not white, and had to undergo genocide, depredation, violence and abuse that continue to the present time; their languages and cultures are important and worthy of equal representation. That the original languages and cultures of the African slave ancestors, who also continue to experience rape, state and individual violence, are important and worthy of equal representation. All of us bring our special flavors and cultures to the pot; we are all important and worthy of equal representation. I am using the word America during my work to elect Bernie Sanders because it would take too long to change your understanding of how offensive your use of that word is to the rest of us, the Guatemalans and Bolivians, the Canadians and the Mexicans, the Cubans and Puerto Ricans and Dominicans and Colombians and Salvadoreans and Honduras, to name just a few of us Americans. But when the electoral process is over, I will continue to demand of all people of good will, and my experience has been that there are many of you out there, willing to learn, willing to take back this nation from the hands of those who would destroy it, that they give up the appellation of America and American, unless you mean to include the rest of us in the discourse, by proper respect and equal representation.

God bless the whole world, no exceptions.

Panem et circenses, bread and circuses

Decimus Junius Juvenalis, better known as Juvenal, an ancient Roman writer who lived in the 1st and 2nd centuries A.D., wrote bitter satires about the Rome of his time. Bread and circuses, "panem et circenses" in Latin, referred to the free distribution of food and violent gladiator contests held in the Coliseum, as well as the chariot races of the Circus Maximum. It points to a period during the decline of the Roman Empire when Romans had lost the capacity to rule themselves, distracted by mindless entertainment provided by a dictatorial sham of a government.

We are living, in the decline of the “Pax Americana,’ (surely a satirical term coined by those who would involve us in ever more war and police actions throughout the planet), in a time of mindless entertainment and personal pleasure. As in those times deplored by Juvenal, we bow to authority without a second thought, with no concern for ethics or for the consequences of our imperial arrogance on the world before us and beyond us. We seek, and our government provides, short-term solutions to long-term problems, and in the end, we pay the price.

One of the basic strains in the ‘music’ that makes up our common undertaking is the war against labor. Workers fought and died to make the eight hour work day a staple. Through the long years of corporate-paid thugs breaking up protest and killing activists, the gains of the labor movement heralded an unprecedented time of workers' rights in this country and throughout the world. Because of the Haymarket affair in Chicago during the 1860's, when workers throughout the country held a general strike and were beaten and killed to prevent their joint organization, the greater part of the world celebrates Labor Day on May 1st. Every other country celebrates International Working Woman’s Day on March 8th, again because of the activities of working women, especially young immigrant girls, in New York and other places, seeking an end to employer abuse.

But in our video-game and giant entertainment world (panem et circenses), when more and more people are coming out of schools ‘functionally illiterate,” we have little time for the concerns or protection of labor, or for the lessons of history. Employers then and now fund and engage in atrocities. After all, then, cheap labor was available in the next boatload of desperate immigrants. These days we can always play the immigration tag game. Years later, families such as the Bush family would fund Nazi atrocities. But the populace, engrossed in its games, fails to notice how workers' hard-won right to bargain is suppressed, here and abroad, how capital, unfettered and frontier-less, now rules the world, whereas workers have gone back to subsistence mode.

Alas, after a hard day at work and play, the people must sleep.

Read at your own peril, Part II (Love is the most subversive force on the planet)

"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a Communist." Archbishop Hélder Pessoa Câmara, Brazil.

Yesterday was busy and lovely and exhausting; we started at the food container at about 8:40 in the morning, it was so cold I was sorry I gave away most of my gloves when I moved to the Bay area from the Poconos, and we had lovely milk, and a shipment of beans that will be downloaded by our volunteers in time for next Saturday. About nine families, including an older Asian woman who walked many blocks with a shopping cart to get to us, and got lost, and came when we had already closed so we reopened to give her food.

I am always amazed at the ongoing work of our people, including all the volunteers, the groups such as the South Hayward Parish, which runs this particular food pantry, and which has been giving out food and clothing and support for over thirty years, for in this 'rich' country there are always people who fall through the cracks, who need food in order to feed their families, it was the SHP that started our "No Room for Racism" vigils on Fridays, we are now doing them every other week, and it is in these vigils that I began to get to know my beloved compañero Jim. We had a vigil with children on the 31st day of December, I could not think of a better way to end 2010 so we took grandchildren, including two lovely Guatemalan children that I consider as my own, and stood at the intersection of Mission, Jackson and Foothill while trucks and cars honked in support, No room for racism, bigotry, homophobia, hatred, violence... Love is the most subversive force in the universe, the true harbinger of that universal dream we dream, a most revolutionary concept.



Later in the day we spent a couple of hours at the Southern Alameda's Gray Panthers, and then went to visit one of my 'sons' who is suffering not only from the pain of a work-related lumbar hernia but from the fact that the worker's comp carrier has stopped compensation payments so he can neither work nor support his family, and then I sat in on a meeting of a health-related group, working to bring Single-Payer Universal Health Insurance to California...

I came home to a sad story: a building in Oakland caught fire and three people died, and two others who are in the hospital are being released and have no place to go... they need clothing and food and beds. In a more caring environment, there would be a place they could turn to, an agency that would automatically provide.

And then there is the story of Walmart's "Love, Earth" Jewelry Line not living up to his promises, which you can read here: http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/2011-01-06/news/walmart-s-love-earth-jewelry-line-doesn-t-live-up-to-green-promises/
Unquestionably, when all you worry about is the 'bottom line,' which seems to be the enshrined first principle of this particular empire, you become nothing but a bottom feeder...

But it's a new year in a fairly new century, and I am in love with a man and a planet, and I say, let us dream on, and while we are dreaming, and praying, let us continue to 'move our feet.'

A todos mis hermanos y hermanas,

Feliz año, happy new year, y que viva la revolución.

Silvia Antonia Brandon y Pérez
Presente

Read at your own peril, Part I

I just came back from the food container where we give out food on Wednesday and Saturday mornings. Today there were eight families, with various amounts of children, and one lone grandmother who came with her grandson, and who is obviously having a hard time with her mind. Although I did not ask, she has worn hands, not from age but from work, but now that her mind wonders and she totters on aging feet, the food we give her probably keeps her from dying of malnutrition, although today we had no oatmeal or beans, only 'light' tuna and canned corn and peaches, some white rice and pasta... no milk or juice for the weary hungry.

I came home and had one of those 'bleeding heart' moments of sobbing while I was putting my own fresh fruit and vegetables into the juicer. Last weekend when I went to my daughter's baby showers in Los Angeles, part of the reason we took longer to get there was the hordes of people pouring into and out of malls around the LA area, shopping 'till they drop... On days like today, as a proud and 'ornery Spic, I fully understand the word 'bleeding heart' because my heart does bleed, and I feel powerless and hopeless, but then the 'ornery part takes over and I am enraged that in this society of plenty (at least, the top percentile has more than they could use in untold generations...) we throw away people in this way.

I am learning Tagalog and converse with our families in Spanish or Tagalog, sometimes in slow English; one of my vices, besides a love of language, is an endless curiosity about the human condition and the human animal. We have all sorts of families come to supplement meager pantries with our even meager offerings; many of them have small children who will gladly drink the juice we distribute, when we have juice, which is not always. In Hayward most families have retrenched as the jobs have disappeared; for any of the Fox news pundits who have announced the end of the 'recession,' I would agree only because what we have is a depression that is darker and wearier and colder and more bitter than anything I have seen in my years in these benighted States of Corruption.

I am feeling better now; rage always does that for me. I am thinking of all the fat cats out there talking about deportation and about 'illegal aliens,' and about the 'greedy seniors' who refuse to give up their paltry social security benefits. If the rest of us, the ones who are not fat cats, lived in any other country, we would be out there blocking the streets, demanding an end to the impunity of the rich who have stolen their way right into their next Rolls Royce or Mercedes Benz, or whatever is their fancy, who throw parties in their million dollar homes where the help is all 'illegal' so they can be paid shit wages while the rich drink Dom Perignon and munch on the best imported caviar.

If I were younger, I might start a revolution. We sure as hell could use one. And somewhere, perhaps on this blog itself, is my essay on Revolution as the true spirit of Christmas... Of course, that particular revolutionary rabble-rouser was put to death by his people because he was advocating a change that most people were unwilling to accept. Yes, if you own two coats, give one of them up for your soul...
Today we would create a fake proceeding, accuse him of some squalid crime and perhaps even send him away to faraway Guantanamo or to some country where 'interrogation' techniques are not frowned upon...

This is part I, more to come, but if I don't get back before the 31st rolls around, may you have a revolutionary new year. I can't think of anything better to wish you all...

Silvia

The School of the Américas Watch

On November 17th I traveled to Georgia to participate in this year's vigil, and came back disturbed by the repressive over-presence of the police and soldier apparatus, the obvious 'overkill' as in the arrest of passersby and the dubious harsh treatment of these individuals by the local judge and authorities, but every year I travel there I also come back renewed by the bravery and courage of so many of our 'victims' who come here to witness to the struggle, taking a chance that when they return they will be detained, tortured, murdered... sometimes with their families at risk as well. I remember particularly the brave Honduras lawyer who has been working in resistance of the US sponsored coup, and who has been getting phone calls about his family, and his family as well getting phone calls about his own safety... the brave young man from Honduras who told us about the death of students for the simple act of speaking out against repression... This year I got to spend time with a priest from my beloved República Dominicana, which I've always considered my second homeland (I have many... there are Puerto Rico and México too), who is now working with Haitian victims of the many terrible events, of which the presence of the UN's MINUSTAH and US soldiers is not the least of these events. He told me about the wonderful work Cuban's doctors, hand-in-hand with Venezuela, have been doing there, even before the first earthquake...

I have always said that loyalty is one of the highest virtues, but I have written songs and poems about solidarity, solidaridad, and the SOAW and meeting people such as the tireless fighters for a new world are about solidaridad, which is the first virtue, because all it means is love, love and the willingness to put your body in front of your ideals.

Father Louis Vitale again crossed the gates and pleaded nolo contendere, for which he was once again sentenced to six months in jail... He is an inspiration, and I hope I have his strength when I become a prisoner of conscience.

Here in his own words, an excerpt of a letter he wrote when he was sentenced to jail from October 2007 to March 2008 for prayerfully and nonviolently protesting torture training at Ft. Huachuca, Arizona.

The cell door clangs shut. Now I am alone. But instead of trying to escape this solitude, I enter it deeply: This is where I am. Here in this empty cell I have begun to experience prison in the way James W. Douglass in Resistance and Contemplation describes it: not as “an interlude in a white middle class existence, but as a stage of the way redefining the nature of my life.” (James W. Douglass, Resistance and Contemplation: The Way of Liberation, p. 172). I have sensed this transformation, little by little. These days are a journey into a new freedom and a slow transformation of being and identity: an invitation to enter one’s truest self, and to follow the road of prayer and nonviolent witness wherever it will lead.

I am in this little hermitage in the presence of God, in the presence of the Christ who gave his life for the healing and well-being of all. I am also in the presence of the vast cloud of witnesses, some of whom are represented in the icons that have multiplied in this cell, gifts sent to me from people everywhere: Oscar Romero, Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day, Steven Biko, the martyrs of El Salvador, John XXIII. All those who have given their lives to fashion a more human world. At the same time I experience a deep connection with my fellow prisoners and with those outside these prison walls, including those who have sent me many letters and expressions of prayer and support.

In my little, empty cell, I experience a growing awareness of the communion of saints — and of the possibility of a world where the vast chasm of violence and injustice enforced by torture and war is bridged and transformed.

Rachel Corrie

Last week (March 16th) was the 7th anniversary of the murder of Rachel Corrie, a 23 year-old peace activist crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer while she was protecting a Palestinian home from demolition. The Caterpillar bulldozer just ran over her; no action has ever been taken to compensate the girl's parents or to condemn her cold-blooded murder.

I met relatives of Rachel at one of the many peace marches I attended a few years ago, either in DC or Boston. They spoke about Rachel's work, about the family's unsuccessful attempts to get vindication...

On the anniversary of her death, this year, there was a street-naming ceremony in a West Bank street in Ramallah. Although I am sure she always believed, in her heart, that the bulldozer would stop, she made that final sacrifice for her beliefs. And her family had sued Israel and was attending a trial that same week... but in the meantime, her killers have gone free, and even though she was a citizen of the United States, entitled to all the protections under the law, we remain silent.

Today I found an interview she gave two days before her murder: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3JI-axaRF4

The Golden Rule

The Golden Rule
“That which is hateful to you do not do to another ... the rest (of the Torah) is all commentary, now go study.”

- Rabbi Hillel

If you want to revisit the demolition of whole cities by the Führer, just watch the Israelis tear down homes in the occupied territories. Watch people killed, wounded, jailed for marching for peace. Watch wholesale terror by the State of Israel.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a recent AIPAC conference waxed eloquent about Jerusalem, and about the building that was going on there 3000 years ago. If this is acceptable reasoning, then we need to give back all the land we took over from the native inhabitants, both in the US and throughout the world. We need to give back California, Nevada, Florida, Arizona, etc. etc. ad infinitum and most certainly ad nauseam, to the Mexicans, and give back Guantánamo to the Cubans.

In the meantime, we make harsh noises and then take them back, looking like nothing better than cheap whores before the master pimp. How dare the US and the EU stand behind the continuing outrages going on in the occupied territory? (But then again, we are occupying territories all over the planet, Iraq and Afghanistan being the latest on the list...)

The UN Human Rights Council passed 3 resolutions condemning Israel, but of course, they were opposed by the US and the EU. Oh, for an end to pusillanimous hypocrisy.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1158708.html

Back at the ranch, the right wing basket-case gun-toting crew is threatening anyone that does not agree with their view of the world... One 'gentleman' is urging folks to break windows, to throw bricks through them, and further urging his listeners to clean their rifles... So people who voted for health care reform have been threatened, their families have been threatened, but no one is picking these guys up and putting them away...

O brave new world that has such people in it...

The US and Israel, rogue terrorist states... Go pack that in your peace pipe and smoke it.

FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, ethical and social justice issues, etc., which constitutes a ‘fair use’ under Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law.

Resigning from the human race

http://www.hiddenfromhistory.org/

To say that I was sickened as I heard this report today (this is a former priest, who uncovered deliberate and well-hidden genocide, particularly of young children, as young as 2 years old, on the part of the Canadian government (the Mounties were the enforcers) and the various churches... This was in the late 19th and up to the middle of the 20th century; Christian mission schools 'educated' these children and killed them, exposed them to TB, raped them... hundreds of thousands of innocent young children... There is a documentary that I want to buy; it is going to be difficult to watch... And by the way, besides the fact that these aboriginal inhabitants of the Canadian lands were there to begin with, they were said to be incapable of owning land... they were just 'holding it' from the rightful owners (i.e. the invaders and colonizers). This may still be the law in Canada... Boycott the f...ing Olympic games!

Then I was listening to Nora Barrows-Friedman writing from Hebron, occupied West Bank, about Israeli military abducting young boys, beating them until they required treatment for internal bleeding... while holding the parents at gunpoint so they couldn't defend their child... http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11120.shtml

And earlier, or the night before, a special on torture, where a US high official (can't recall which one... it's all a blur... I was sitting on the couch with tears and rage and a total inability to comprehend...) asked whether it was necessary (as Cheney continues to maintain, unrepentant - which is the position of the Israelis and of the Canadians...) to crush or threaten to crush the testicles of a young boy whose father was being questioned... and I don't know what it is that we are, I can't say what we have become, because obviously we did it, again and again, and continue to do it to this day... I don't know of any animal other than the human animal that does these things...

Oh, I forgot... there is a common element... it's called greed. In Canada, they were trying to clear the land of 'aboriginals' so they could log to their heart's content. In Palestine, idem. And why, pray tell, are we in Iraq, Afghanistan, or any of the other places we have invaded in the past, either through our own acts and deeds or those of 'allies' that have no commissions of inquiry to respond to?

To Mr. Obama, to everyone in his administration: It has to be repudiated. With regard to Israel, you can't keep saying that the ties between our country and theirs are unbreakable. They are committing unspeakable genocide. To Canada, own up and pay up. To France, with regard to Haiti, the same. And the list goes on.

Silvia, physically tired from difficult physical training, and emotionally exhausted from 'human' doings... I can't do this anymore. I want to emigrate to Jupiter or to Pluto... I don't want to be a part of this execrable human race...

The endless specter of torture

Link TV had yet another program on torture... Every time a torture exposé comes on I promise myself I won't watch this time, because it sickens me, makes me feel exposed and vulnerable and very very angry at the same time, as though I am somehow lacking because I let this go on, although I have been ranting about it for years and years, and it was the subject of some of my songs when I had gigs, in Crawford, Texas, and in DC and in the Poconos, and nothing came of it, none of my impassioned pleas for impeachment, indictment and imprisonment...

Here in this very bitácora are writings on torture, on the moral imperative of a nation that is governed by the rule of law, but we have decided to omit or disregard the reckoning, as if such horrors could ever be forgotten, never mind that we saw Japanese soldiers put to death for waterboarding during the 2nd World War, but ah, always different rules for the new Empire, even though the Emperor has no clothes...

http://www.linktv.org/programs/torture-on-trial

http://www.linktv.org/programs/blueprint-for-accountability-working-the-dark-side

El día internacional de la mujer/International Women's Day

El día internacional de la mujer se celebra a través del mundo, si bien poca gente en los Estados Unidos lo conoce o celebra. Conmemoramos, entre otras cosas, la muerte de más de 146 obreras jóvenes en el fatídico fuego de la fábrica Triangle Waist que ocurrió en marzo de 1911. Sin embargo, los datos que nos proporciona la historia indican que esta celebración representa la historia de miles de mujeres (y hombres) en la lucha por mejores condiciones laborales y por el derecho a "pan y paz" o a "pan y rosas." No olvidemos nunca la huelga sexual de Lysistrata en la Grecia de antaño para terminar con una guerra, o a las mujeres de París marchando durante la revolución francesa exigiendo el derecho al voto, gritando a lo largo de su protesta, libertad, igualdad y fraternidad.

El 8 de marzo del 1857, obreras de fábricas textiles y de ropa declararon una protesta y huelga general en la ciudad de Nueva York en contra de salarios bajos y condiciones pésimas de trabajo. Buscaban que se les redujeran las horas de trabajo a 10 horas diarias, que se les pagara la misma cantidad que a los hombres, y que se les permitiera tiempo para amamantar a sus hijos. Fueron atacadas por la policía y obligadas a terminar la marcha, pero dos años después, también en marzo, establecieron su primer sindicato.

Hubo más protestas otros 8 de marzo en otros años. Por ejemplo, en 1908, 15,000 mujeres marcharon a través de la ciudad de Nueva York exigiendo menos horas de trabajo, mejor paga, y el derecho al voto. Ahora bien, el primer Día Internacional de la Mujer se celebró el 28 de febrero de 1908 en los Estados Unidos, luego de una declaración al respecto por parte del Partido Socialista Norteamericano.
En 1910, la primera conferencia internacional de mujeres fue celebrada en Copenhague por la Internacional Socialista, y en esa conferencia se estableció la celebración de un Día Internacional de la Mujer, en reconocimiento al movimiento global por el voto y los derechos de la mujer. A la conferencia asistieron más de 100 delegadas de 17 países, y la propuesta de que se instituyera un día internacional de celebración tuvo aprobación unánime.

En 1911, este día fue celebrado por más de un millón de mujeres y hombres en Austria, Dinamarca, Alemania y Suiza. Las alemanas habían escogido la fecha del 19 de marzo porque en esa fecha en el 1848, el rey pruso les había prometido a las mujeres el derecho al voto.

En marzo del 1911 ocurrió el fuego en la fábrica Triangle Waist. La firma Triangle Waist era típica de las fábricas o talleres explotadores de sus obreros en aquellos tiempos. A los obreros se les tenía encerrados como animales y se les obligaba a trabajar largas horas bajo condiciones peligrosas y poco sanitarias. En el 1909, ya había ocurrido un incidente en esa fábrica que provocó que los 400 trabajadores, en su mayor parte muchachas, se marcharan del trabajo en protesta. La Liga Sindical de Mujeres, una asociación progresista de mujeres blancas de clase media, había ayudado a las jóvenes obreras a formar piquetes y a protegerse de los criminales anti-laborales y de la provocación de la misma policía. En una reunión histórica en Cooper Union, miles de obreras textiles de fábricas a lo largo de la ciudad de Nueva York siguieron el llamado de la joven Clara Lemlich de que había que llevar a cabo una huelga general. Al final de la huelga se llegó a un acuerdo que estableció uno de los primeros sistemas de querellas contra los patronos. Pero muchas de las fábricas y talleres en la ciudad no tenían sindicatos laborales, porque en su mayoría empleaban a inmigrantes.

El sábado 25 de marzo de 1911, empezó un fuego en los pisos superiores del edificio Asch, en la ciudad de Nueva York, donde estaba localizada la fábrica Triangle Waist Factory. En pocos minutos el fuego en la fábrica había sido causa de la muerte de 146 chicas. Las puertas estaban cerradas con candados para que las chicas no pudieran irse antes de la hora de salida. Muchas chicas saltaron del noveno piso, para morir desbaratadas sobre las aceras de la gran ciudad. Esta tragedia cambió para siempre las condiciones laborales en la ciudad de Nueva York. Las chicas tenían entre 15 y 23 años, y eran en su mayoría inmigrantes italianas, alemanas, rusas e irlandesas. El edificio solamente tenía una escalera de incendio. Y no hay duda de que las puertas de salida estaban selladas con candados. Los dueños del edificio, Blanck y Harris, fueron declarados no culpables en un juicio que se les hizo por asesinato. Años después le pagaron $75 por cabeza a 23 de las familias de muchachas muertas que habían puesto una demanda civil.

A partir de este fuego, todas las celebraciones del día internacional de la mujer han incluído una conmemoración de las víctimas del fuego, muertes que realmente no tuvieron razón de ser, y que indican de nuevo que la avaricia conlleva resultados fatales. En 1975, las Naciones Unidas se unió a la causa, y ahora la celebración cuenta con su apoyo. Es de suma importancia este día para recordar todo lo que ha ocurrido, las luchas, las dificultades, los logros y victorias, y para poder determinar todo lo que aún tenemos que hacer antes de que nos podamos considerar como parte de un mundo justo y cuerdo.

El 2005 fue el año de la celebración de Pekín + 10. En el año 1995 en Pekín, las naciones miembros de la Comisión sobre el Estado de la Mujer de las Naciones Unidas se reunieron para crear pautas que permitieran medir el grado de progreso en cuanto al logro de la igualdad sexual. En Pekín +5, en el 2000, se reunieron de nuevo para revisar dichos logros y explorar las estrategias necesarias para acelerar el proceso de igualdad. En 2005 se celebró Pekín + 10 y las mismas naciones se reunieron en la ciudad de Nueva York para continuar la discusión, discutir el progreso y el trabajo que queda por hacer en asuntos como los derechos humanos, la violencia contra las mujeres y niñas, la salud, el trabajo sin paga, la pobreza y la diversidad de la mujer. El gobierno norteamericano, aislado por otros países, acordó finalmente firmar la Plataforma de Pekín y retirar una enmienda que había propuesto con relación al derecho de la mujer a servicios reproductivos. Esta es una victoria para la mujer a través de nuestro malherido planeta.

El Día Internacional de la Mujer es la historia de todas las mujeres en la lucha por una participación equitativa en la sociedad. En estos momentos en que más y más mujeres, tanto en los Estados Unidos como en otros países, viven en un estado cada vez mayor de pobreza, y continúan sufriendo de condiciones laborales de desigualdad, de discriminación sexual, de crímenes de violencia dirigidos específicamente contra la mujer, tenemos que unirnos como un ser indivisible para lograr que todos los habitantes de este planeta, sin importar su sexo, tengan los mismos derechos y tengan voz y voto en todo lo que les concierne.

El místico inglés John Donne dice muy bien que ningún hombre (o mujer) es una isla, sino parte del continente, y que la muerte de cualquier hombre o mujer nos disminuye, porque estamos envueltos con la humanidad, y por lo tanto, nunca preguntemos por quién tañen las campanas: tañen por cada uno de nosotros.
Silvia Antonia Brandon y Pérez
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Women's Day is celebrated throughout the world, and commemorates, among other things, the death of over 146 young female workers in the Triangle Waist Factory Fire of March, 1911. But historical data makes clear that this celebration is very much the story of the work of thousands of women (and men) attempting to obtain better working conditions and the right to "bread and peace," or "bread and roses." Let us never forget the sexual strike instigated by Lysistrata in ancient Grece in order to end war, or Parisian women's march on Versailles to demand women's right to vote during the French Revolution, to the call of liberty, equality and fraternity.

On the 8th of March, 1857, women from clothing and textile factories held a protest and general strike in New York City against low wages and poor working conditions. They sought a reduction of the working day to ten hours, equal pay for work done, and time off to breast feed their young. They were attacked and made to disperse by the police, but two years later, also in March, they established their first labor union.

More protests followed on March 8 in other years, including 1908 when 15,000 women marched through New York City demanding shorter hours, better pay and voting rights. However, the first IWD was observed on February 28th, 1908 in the US following a declaration by the Socialist Party of America.

In 1910, the first international women's conference was held in Copenhagen by the Socialist International and an International Women's Day established, intended to honor a global movement for women's rights and suffrage. The conference had over 100 women delegates from 17 countries, and the proposal for an international day of delebration was greeted with unanimous approval.

In 1911, IWD was celebrated by over a million women and men in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland. The date of March 19th was chosen by German participants because the Prussian King had promised the vote to women on that date in 1848.
In March of 1911 the Triangle Waist Factory Fire occurred. The Triangle Waist Company was typical of sweatshops of the day, in which workers were herded together and forced to work long hours under unsanitary and dangerous conditions. In 1909, an incident at the Triangle Factory had caused a walkout of its 400 employees. The Women's Trade Union League, a progressive association of middle class white women, had helped the young women workers picket and fence off thugs and police provocation. At a historic meeting at Cooper Union, thousands of garment workers from all over the city followed young Clara Lemlich's call for a general strike. A historic agreement was reached which established a grievance system. But many sweatshops, employing immigrant workers, were not unionized.

On Saturday, March 25, 1911, a fire broke out on the top floors of the Asch Building, where the Triangle Waist Factory was located, and within minutes the factory, locked by the owners so the women could not leave work, had claimed the lives of 146 girls. Girls jumping out of 9th floor windows to their death and the final carnage changed working conditions in New York forever.
The girls were mostly Italian, German, Russian and Irish immigrants, ages 15 to 23. The building had only one fire escape and there is no question that the doors leading out of the factory had been locked by the owners of the factory, who were later acquitted in a criminal trial for the death of the women.
All subsequent IWD celebrations commemorate the senseless death of these young girls. It was made official by the United Nations in 1975. It is vitally important as a day to remember all that has taken place, the struggles, the victories, as well as to take stock of all that must still take place before we can consider ourselves part of a sane, just world.

2005 marked the celebration of Beijing +10. In 1995 in Beijing, member nations of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women met to come up with guidelines for measuring progress on achieving gender equality. At Beijing +5, in 2000, they met again to review achievements and explore strategies to accelerate action. Beijing +10 in 2005 brought together the same member nations in New York to continue the discussion, to discuss progress and the work yet to be done in areas such as human rights, violence against females, health, unpaid work, poverty and women's diversity. Our government, after being isolated by other member countries, finally agreed to sign the Beijing Platform and to withdraw an amendment it had required concerning women's rights to reproductive health services. This is a victory for women throughout our beleaguered planet.

Thus, International Women's Day is the story of all women in the struggle for equal participation in society. At a time when more and more women, in the United States and other countries, live increasingly in poverty, and continue to suffer from unequal working conditions, from sexual discrimination and crimes of violence specifically directed at women, we must all stand together to bring about equal rights and an equal voice to all inhabitants of this planet, no matter their gender. We could rephrase Donne's meditation to include women: No man is an island, entire of itself; every (wo)man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. (...) Any (wo)man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in (wo)mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

It's the economy, stupid...

I am having a hard time believing that one-twelfth of 2010 is almost gone... Just before Christmas I bought a used leather couch from someone who was moving, actually, a loveseat, in good condition, and I had an old, once wonderful couch that my two cats had shredded (not the couch per se but the arm rests) so I was trying to figure out how I would get the old couch out, and get rid of it. The landlord wants these broken up with an ax so they can fit into the garbage container... otherwise he gets charged for removal. Anyway, a young friend who heard me talking about it said he had a neighbor with a bunch of children and others living in her apartment, because people have been losing their jobs and moving in together, and he thought she could use the couch!

I felt good and bad about my couch going to someone else, because even though it had been a very good couch, the arm rests looked terrible, but within a half hour someone from the woman's apartment came over and they loaded the couch away, and were very happy because the people who were sleeping on the floor would now have a comfortable couch to sleep in! One woman's castoffs is another woman's treasure, particularly in this economy...

Now today a neighbor visited; I have been helping her with a problem with Bank of America (one of their new ways of stealing money from their depositors... they 'sell' life insurance to people who would never buy it, and deduct outrageous monthly fees directly from their depositors' accounts... no policy is ever sent to the depositor, and it's an automatic deduction so people don't always realize for a while that their money is being taken...) This particular woman earns a pittance, and when she found out that she had been paying for $100,000 in life insurance... she joked that had she known this she might have killed him for the insurance!. Today she wanted to know if I could help her file her tax return; she has a 7 month-old baby who was happily gurgling away while she explained the situation, and a 14 year-old, and last year her common-law husband and she made, between the two of them, before taxes, $19,000. So I wondered if any of the people I hear talking about the economy and complaining about Obama's 'outrageous' 'socialist' measures could survive, a whole family of four or five (there is another daughter also...) on $19,000 before taxes...

We are doing health care rallies to get health care reform approved, and I don't understand how anyone can argue about this! I haven't had health care since 1995. I go to a dentist in Mexico, and although I use mostly alternative health care (chiropractors and acupuncturists, juicing and vitamins and meditation) it's a bit of a time bomb, were something to happen...

Health care is a fundamental human right, no different from the right to food and shelter and speech. And we are the only industrialized nation that has no health care policy covering all its citizens.

Revolution as the true spirit of Christmas

Christmas, navidad, natividad, the nativity, the birth of a powerful and holy being. You do not have to be Christian to acknowledge that the Jesus whose birth Christians celebrate at this time of year was a powerful and holy being, one who worked throughout his short life to ‘revolutionize’ the times, worlds without end. He came to enforce perennial principles, such as truth and love and beauty and yes, peace. As any revolutionary, he threatened the status quo, threatened the ‘business as usual’ of the time, because with his every word, he demanded a fundamental change, not in perennial principles but in the way they are conceived, understood, acted upon. For this, as with so many others who threaten ‘business as usual,’ he was imprisoned, tortured, and horribly put to death. Shades of Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib.

Often the simple way of seeing things is truly the best way. Then as now, the custom was to use simple words but to paint and clothe them in different fashions, what we call today, the spin or framing of issues. Thus, you could take a word such as peace and wage war ‘for’ peace. You could say that all men are created equal and then use that lofty principle to ensure unequal treatment based on race, nationality, gender, or even sexual preference. In the name of universal love, you could spread hatred far and wide.

The concepts were there, as Plato saw them, lofty and supreme, but it is what was done and what continues to be done with them that Jesus wanted to change; he wanted to ‘revolvere’ which is the Latin for revolve from which the term revolution issues; to turn something on its axis and bring it back to the starting point. He called for a change in paradigm, meaning, a fundamental change in how something is seen or visualized.

As I write this on December 23rd, millions go about shopping for gifts that they may celebrate a holy day honoring the birth of a man who was born in poverty and spent most of his life preaching with no recognition, no congressional seat, no official status or university doctoral dissertations. Millions more will die today and tomorrow and on Christmas day and on the day after that, including many new born babes, because they will lack the wherewithal to sustain life while others will exchange frequently meaningless gifts and engage in an orgy of food and celebration. In the US, some will jeopardize their continued existence, mortage payments, health, in the frenzy to have a “merry Christmas.”

For all who want truth, peace, love and justice for all, let us consider the spirit of this man of Galilee and what it is that he spoke about, what he represented. We have pallid representations of the things he said, for they were taken down by human messengers and translated, and things are frequently lost in translation, but we can glean even from the imperfect renderings the true message.

In one of his most famous speeches, which has become known as the Sermon on the Mount, he blesses those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled, and those who are persecuted for righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. He blesses the merciful who shall obtain mercy and the peacemakers who shall be called sons and daughters of God.

We are living in dire times, when more than ever we need the strength to seek righteousness, mercy, and peace. A time when, lacking leaders who stand firm on principles, we must be our own leaders. Jesus said that he had come to fulfill the law, eternal law, that which cannot be clothed or framed or disguised. It is time that we demand that the law, without spin or framing, be fulfilled to its last jot and tittle. That we demand an end to death, and torture, to war and the profiteering from war, to poverty in all its guises, and that we seek to secure the just punishment of all those who have broken the law. That we ask, as he asked, for true revolution. For only then may we be called the children of Spirit.

A thoughtful and revolutionary holiday to each and all of you, my brethren.


Main Entry: rev•o•lu•tion
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English revolucioun, from Middle French revolution, from Late Latin revolution-, revolutio, from Latin revolvere to revolve
1 a (1) : the action by a celestial body of going round in an orbit or elliptical course; also : apparent movement of such a body round the earth (2) : the time taken by a celestial body to make a complete round in its orbit (3) : the rotation of a celestial body on its axis b : completion of a course (as of years); also : the period made by the regular succession of a measure of time or by a succession of similar events c (1) : a progressive motion of a body around an axis so that any line of the body parallel to the axis returns to its initial position while remaining parallel to the axis in transit and usually at a constant distance from it (2) : motion of any figure about a center or axis (3) : ROTATION 1b
2 a : a sudden, radical, or complete change b : a fundamental change in political organization; especially : the overthrow or renunciation of one government or ruler and the substitution of another by the governed c : activity or movement designed to effect fundamental changes in the socioeconomic situation d : a fundamental change in the way of thinking about or visualizing something : a change of paradigm e : a changeover in use or preference especially in technology

Libertad

El jueves salí de California para asistir de nuevo a la protesta masiva contra la Escuela de Asesinos en el Fuerte Benning, en Georgia, EEUU. De viernes a domingo fui intérprete voluntaria para víctimas de la tortura, personas cuyos seres queridos han sido asesinados en sus diferentes países, y todo a manos de soldados y oficiales entrenados en este fuerte por el ejército norteamericano. A través de todos los testimonios, difíciles de dar, escuchar e interpretar, se me ocurre que lo esencial es la libertad. Es esa libertad de poder ser 'humano' en el sentido más amplio de la palabra; libertad que se infringe a diario a nombre del poderoso caballero don Dinero...

Escuchando a un joven de Etiopía que había salido hace muy poco, meses solamente, de un centro de tortura en su país, donde fue torturado una y otra vez por meses y meses por haber ayudado en las urnas, escucharlo dar su testimonio mientras sollozaba, y yo le trataba de interpretar el testimonio roto y ensangrentado a un sacerdote colombiano que también fue torturado, por su trabajo por los pobres de la tierra, como dijera mi gran apóstol José Martí, comencé a escribir lo que tal vez es un himno... Tal vez le añada música...

Libertad

Soy incorruptible.
He nacido en las entrañas
de la vida,
y me nutro del aliento y de la sangre,
la sonrisa y la esperanza
de los seres de la tierra.
LIBERTAD

Soy indestructible.
Ni con golpes ni torturas,
ni con muertes ni prisiones,
sigo andado, siempre erguida,
cual bandera enarbolada,
siempre viva.
LIBERTAD

Soy amada y soy temible;
soy la libre incorruptible,
la esperanza ineludible,
libertad inquebrantable,
la esperanza del pasado,
luz brillante en horizonte
libertad, hoy y mañana,
soy tu madre, padre, hermana.

Libertad, dilo en voz alta,
libertad, piénsalo adentro,
en la sangre, las entrañas,
en testículo y ovario,
en la célula preciosa,
libertad, amada, amante.
¡LIBERTAD!

Luego venía recordando tanto testimonio triste... la valerosa Nerys, del Salvador, torturada en su octavo mes de embarazo, y tirada en una fosa común. Estuvo en coma por 6 meses; su crimen era que alfabetizaba a los niños indígenas... Conoció y trabajó con el santo de las Américas, el arzobispo Romero...

Mi patria fue títere de los EEUU hasta que Fulgencio Batista salió huyendo... Fuimos invadidos una y otra vez... Teníamos siempre que cumplir con los deseos del amo... Batista, apoyado por dólares, tenía su sarta de esbirros y torturadores... Recuerdo cuando empezaron a salir aquellas víctimas de la tortura, en enero de 1959.... Y luego viví en la República Dominicana cuando EEUU invadió a partir del golpe de estado contra el legítimo presidente, el Dr. Juan Bosch... Vi mucha hambre y miseria en Santo Domingo, mucho racismo, parecidos al racismo de mi patria, y el hambre y la miseria de mi patria...

Y no es que no tenga cosas que criticarle al gobierno revolucionario, pero no hay gobierno (en este caso, dictadura) sin problemas, y más con el monstruo a 90 millas... Lo dijo Martí: He vivido dentro del monstruo, y le conozco las entrañas. Lo dijo en otra forma Lorca, años después... en el barrio en el que vivo actualmente, los centroamericanos y mexicanos viven vidas difíciles, siempre sujetos al arresto y maltrato por la migra...

El viernes por la noche los que hablaban eran chicos y chicas que trabajaban recogiendo tomates en Immolakee, Florida; nos hablaron de la esclavitud, personas obligadas a trabajar bajo amenaza de muerte en los campos, por centavos... Y eso me recordó el trabajo que hice durante dos semanas cuando el desastre de Nueva Orleans... Estuve ayudando a llevar comida a un campamento para refugiados... En el medio del trabajo se me acercó un policía local a pedirme botellas de agua para su ciudad, no en Nueva Orleans sino en Texas, tan tristemente pobre que los alcantarillados no funcionaban, y el agua potable no lo era... De ahí el poema que sigue, mientras el entonces presidente Bush descansaba en su mansión veraniega....

Vengo como el ocaso

Vengo como el ocaso,
arrastrando tristezas,
hojas al viento, pétalos
de jazmines muertos, los últimos rayos
de un sol ensangrentado
en la campiña seca.

Aquellas horas últimas vimos llegar a los niños, los niños con esos rostros solemnes, que no pueden comprender tanto horror, que no se ríen ni sonríen, que caminan sonámbulos hacia el comedor de la iglesia, donde hay comida, agua, todo lo que faltó en aquel paraje triste donde hubo tanta belleza, tanta música, tanta risa.

El mundo sigue en sus asuntos
diarios, la gente camina por el aeropuerto,
los teléfonos suenan, las alarmas
gritan en sílabas estrepitosas.
En cada esquina una mujer
habla de sus compras.

Había una bebe negrita como un carboncillo, llorando desconsoladamente; aguantaba un osito que alguien le había dado, pero como con olvido, con desinterés, y cerca la madre, amamantando a un crío silencioso. Dos niños, dijeron tener doce años, mirándonos con la cara del que ha visitado el infierno y todavía no da pie con bola.

Los televisores todos reportaban
la continuidad de los desastres,
las aguas inundando ilusiones,
platos, cruces, tenedores y libros,
cadáveres, todo en una putrefacción
de 'limpieza étnica.'

Agua, jugos, sacos de papa, papel higiénico, cajas de galleticas dulces, y algo de abrazos y de besos, de un pedir perdón porque somos de la misma humanidad que los atropella, los abandona, los hace maldecir el mismo día de su nacimiento. Y al final, un abrazo empañado de lágrimas, y un querer quitarse hasta la ropa y los zapatos, hacer algo, algo, cualquier cosa, un alivio...

Fuimos a ofrecerle algo a los dos chicos,
una zanahoria, un trago de agua,
una tajada de manzana. Las miradas
decían, 'aparentamos vida,
solamente.'

He regresado. Me duele la espalda de acarrear bolsas de zanahorias, papas, me duele la vergüenza de una impotencia sorda. No tengo lenguaje. No tengo nada que decir. Cuando trato de expresar aquel horror imperdonable, la gente me dice que tal vez cuando duerma, que seguramente estoy algo cansada, que con los días se me 'pasará' la desesperación.

En un rancho lujoso
un presidente tocaba la guitarra
como Nerón tocando el violín
mientras ardía Roma. En las afueras
del lujo y la miseria, la muerte acecha, fiera.

Escribimos con sangre pero no perdura

The French did not learn the lessons of history,
nor the British, Spanish, German, Portuguese,
and we, the latest bloated children of empire,
have learned them least of all.

We write with blood but it does not last, it never
lasts; we guillotine, garrotte, nuke existence beyond
existence. The trees remember and they perdure,
but they do not speak. Late at night there is a susurration

of aimless human souls beckoning remembrance.
Alas, it is too quiet, gentle, too much a part
of the natural environment. We are the animal
that puts its hand twice, thrice, no, even unto

eternity on the burning fire, and are amazed
when the fire is hot, and burns it. We have no memory
of yesterday, of the singeing pain, of the pain
of our mothers holding their dismembered children.

Escribimos con sangre, pero no perdura.

Yesterday as I was driving back from a job, I listened to a report on China's black jails on NPR's All Things Considered. Jails where dissenters, people complaining about corruption, are locked away, sometimes tortured, and if not physically tortured, at least mentally tortured, in that they do not know why, or what or when will happen, whatever is going to happen. It brings the dissenters away from the main city, so that there can be an appearance of 'normality' and all things are bright and beautiful in this wonderful land. Obama talked about human rights in China... but no one is talking about the human rights of our prisoners, the ones in Guantánamo, in Afghanistan and Iraq, and who knows where else...

Friday I leave for the SOAW, which trains foreign Latin American soldiers to engage in brutal repression (remember the recent Honduran coup d'état?) So it seems as though, in many ways, it is business as usual,
oh what a thrill, Lucille,
let's not complain, Lorraine,
we understand, Rostand,
and we haven't got time for the pain...

Oh, and, the economic recovery? The 'bailout'? For the rich and the superrich, mes amies. For the AIG's and the Bank of America and the major major fuckers... the University here, the State University, is increasing its tuition and costs by 32%. After all, we don't need no college degree to work in the McDonaldized future world...

O brave new world that has such people in it...

Letter to the President

I woke up very early with a protest in my dream. I had achieved something, which I cannot remember, and at the last minute I could not perform it, or read it, or whatever. I then started writing this very long letter to the President, which eventually also became a letter to Hugo Chávez, the WTO, and sundry. Especially sundry. So in the end I had this motley crew of people I was bitching to, and a realization that I had to finish writing the letter, request, yell, bitching, song, novel and perform it, whether anyone cared to listen or read or watch. Not very articulate today, am I...

Somewhere along the way I thought about something Amy Goodman said in a recent interview or talk about the media... she said something to the effect that if the media every day for a week, at the top of the news, showed the real footage of war, the dead children and the women trying to walk on bloody stumps or watching their dying babies, or even our own servicemen and women gutted by shrapnel, the "American people" who are not cruel as a rule, would say, war is not the answer to conflict.

And then there was one of the Yes Men, who talked about how when he spoke as a (fake) representative of the WTO and said that the WTO would disband within months and then reorganize with a view to the original founding principles, creating trading practices and regulations that were fair to the poorer countries and poorer people, for a couple of hours after it was reported in the news, before everyone realized that this was a hoax and not a real WTO pronouncement, everyone that was interviewed were amazed and excited that this was going to happen... and when they engaged in the DOW Chemical hoax, where he pretended to be a high representative from DOW who was finally going to take full responsibility for the BHOPAL incident, and pay 12 billion dollars to the injured, and to clean up the place (Dow had bought out Union Carbide, who ran the plant where this horrible industrial accident took place), the Dow Jones index went nuts, investors lost confidence and Dow Chemical lost billions...

So it's this greed factor in our world or global society that is in the middle of our inability to 'fix' the world...

And the question, as always, is, are we on the side of the angels or the greedy bastards who run it all?

Of course, somewhere in my letter there has to be an explanation of why America is not a country, and why the United States as a world power is so clear about this that when they opened the school of assassins to train torturers that would do the dirty deed throughout Latin American countries, they called it the "School of the Americas."

In November I am going down to Fort Benning again... last year the interpreting for the victims of torture took its toll on me, and I had a dizzy spell getting out of the airplane, so that the airline produced a wheelchair and nice man who wheeled me about. It is hard for them to speak about what went on, and the interpreter, whoever does it, has to live through what is being talked about by the victims. There were so many stories... the literacy teacher who was tortured in her 8th month of pregnancy for teaching indigenous people to read and write... and lost her baby and went into a coma for 6 months, and only survived because her torturers believed she was dead and threw her into a common grave. Or the sister of the doctor who treated the very poor and who disappeared, only to be found, his body a mangled bloody mess, dead on a roadway...

All of it, all of the wars, covert actions, military interventions, police actions (too many to mention, but some of them are listed here: http://www.globalpolicy.org/empire/us-military-expansion-and-intervention/26024.html) had greed as their foundation. Greed for markets, for power and control, for hegemony. And of course, before the US, there were all the other empires, throughout the bloody history of mankind.

Ultimately, if we are to survive as a world, as a planet, we need to change our point of view, eliminate the greed factor... In Moore's latest film, and in his talks about it (Capitalism, A Love Story), he discusses the fact that throughout the world, countries have taken out the profit motive from the health question, as the right to medical treatment is one of the fundamental rights of man. But we are mired in a discussion that has profit at its bottom...

I want to know what it is that everyone out there is fed to keep them so compliant, so willing to cut their own throats on the altar of greed and capital... to act against their own interests.

The "I dont' want to do it/couldn't care less/am done with it/ because I'm sixty book club

Just a side commentary...

Yes, I'm sixty!

And that means "I don't want to/couldn't care less/am done with all of that.'

More on this later!!!!!!!!!!

P.D. I am thinking of bringing back hermitry... I am looking for someone who will give me a hermitage, with food and drink of course, overlooking some nice mountain. I do promise meaningful blog entries from time to time..

Welcome to Fascism 101

I almost don't want to actually write this down, but after reading Sara Robinson' "Fascist America: are we there yet?" http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009083205/fascist-america-are-we-there-yet, I "don't got no choice." Some years ago in the Poconos, at the end or start of one of our anti-war vigils, I talked about the rise and spread of fascism in the US, and it was picked up and printed in our local paper, and I was excoriated for it... One newspaper reader who always had something to say even suggested I be tried for sedition...

The truth is I don't want to talk about this, but yes, I do think if we are not there yet, we are very close. We've had the roving bands of nationalistic thugs around for a while (vigilante groups such as the Minute Men) and what I realized a while back, and a reason for my long silence from writing down my thoughts, is that the fact that we have a Black president who also has a foreign name, and actually God forbid a foreign parent (all the nonsense about his birth certificate is related to this) has pushed some final buttons in the minds of the 'thugs that be.' So in a way, it's all possible now. Welcome, not only to Fascism 101, but to Columbine redux!

More on all of this later...

Then and now

The other night after finishing a large and frustrating job I decided to watch some television because I could not sleep, and there is station, HITN, which shows very interesting documentaries... and one of them was about the protests at the UPR in the late '60s. So many of us were participating in marches against the Vietnam war... although Puerto Ricans on the island are unable to vote for the president, they were drafted like everyone else, and many of them refused to go to Vietnam. September 26, 1969, the student Edwin Feliciano Grafales was sentenced to prison by the Fed. Gov't. for refusing to go to 'Nam. There was so much anger... and right on campus we had the ROTC; they marched and displayed their colors, in a campus with so much antiwar feeling. And so after Edwin was sentenced, there was a protest, a symbolic burning...
On March 4, 1970, there was a second protest. The ROTC was across from the School of Architecture, and as I recall, close to Charlie Rosario's Programa de Honor, where I took classes. My recollection is that although there were loud words and hymns and posters and thousands of students marching, there was no violence until the President, Jaime Benítez, called in the shock troops... Everyone was hit; even innocent passersby, professors, anyone who was there got a macana wherever they got you. And when they stepped out of the recinto universitario, a cop killed a young girl from the Education Department (Pedagogía) who was up on a balcony watching the events. He pointed up his gun and she was killed... a 19 year-old girl called Antonia Martínez who was said to be the first in her family to go to college.

We graduated in June of that year... and at least Humanidades was mostly outraged, so we talked about what to do when we went up for our diplomas, and decided we would not accept them, nor shake the President's hand... But one student, activist Carmen Noelia Benítez, grabbed his hand and slapped him on the face. It was rather a riot. What a way to graduate from college... and all of us on that line had torn up the little fake diplomas as a symbol of our outrage...

When we started protesting, before the satrap George W. Bush invaded Iraq, I kept thinking, we stopped that war eventually, and surely we can stop this one! But we just recently celebrated the 6th anniversary of bloodshed and mayhem...

Roy Brown was 'our' musical voice in those days... and here is a song by León Gieco, from the time of their US-sponsored dictatorship, which lasted 30 bloody years... sung by Roy and others. Sólo le pido a Dios que la guerra no me sea indiferente, es un monstruo grande y pisa fuerte, a la pobre inocencia de la gente. (I only ask of God, that I am not indifferent to war; it is a large monster that steps harshly on the poor innocence of the people).

The next one became the hymn for the protests against the ROTC... Un mister con macana... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t51P-FKH8OQ&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CvrVR_A2rg

And this one is in several of my poems! I still sing this in my sleep...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vo8jOxLrURo&feature=related

Here is one of them:

The meaning of life (for Warren)

if you think i am going to tell you anything
about the meaning of life
think again, amigo
what i really wanted to tell you
what i wanted to explain
in one or two versos claros
is why sometimes, maybe most times
there is a lack of punctuation,
puntos y comas
or capitalization,
mayúsculas y minúsculas
when i write my stuff
i gave up most of this
when i was seventeen or eighteen
i'd started college early
la universidad de puerto rico
and had a ball with juan ramón
jiménez, garcía márquez had just
published cien años de soledad
cortázar was writing about cronopios
y famas, joan manuel serrat
kept singing songs in catalán
and ray hernández, whose father
was a US militar with large pistolas
sang against the yanquis, his own
father being yanqui, with his guitar
in cheap bares where we gathered
nights and listened to the story
of profit and destrucción
in colombia, méxico, chile
"fuego fuego fuego, el mundo está en llamas
fuego fuego, los yanquis quieren fuego
fuego fuego..."
it was a simple thing
a given somehow
when the presidente called
in the policía and they killed
antonia martínez, who was just
looking from her balcón in río piedras
that puntos y comas would become
as unimportant as all the major issues
such as why we were killing children
in vietnam or why we were giving money
to the government of papadoc in haití
and pretending he wasn't a killer
or why we were friends with dictadores
and people engaged in la tortura
and were training folks with dinero
through la cia to be asesinos
and so a little punto or a coma
became so not the thing to look at
that i stopped looking, rhyming
and it wasn't eecummings 'cause i was
reading antonio machado and goytisolo
but why rhyme when reason was passé
you may have noticed that i use
the puntos suspensivos - ... -
and sometimes i don't use the I
which is the yo en español
and some of that is who i am
a sad cubana who has never learned
to love this exile who still misses
beaches with arenas blancas
and such a sea you'd cry
and sometimes there's a point
that must be made with proper
puntuación or a mayúscula
that must be used
but most times whether anyone reads this mierda
i've lost the little bastards
with my virginidad
they're gone
mi buen amigo
se fue para no volver
manicero se va...

Teach participation and empathy for others by teaching true history

We have been engaged in 'nation destroying' with regard to other nations, and are quick to point a finger at others' so-called terrorist practices when they refuse to bend down and knuckle under. From our definition of 'all men are created equal' to include only White, propertied males, with a certain religious persuasion, to our persecution of dissenters (although the Republic was founded on dissent), and our invading the domain of other cultures, countries and races, we remain as a nation ignorant of our 'true history.'

Start a collaborative project, through the use of original records, story-telling gathered from elders, and other 'true history' markers, to teach the history as it happened, and in the process, learn what it is that made us succeed and what made us into a target for terrorism and for worldwide hatred and despair. Endow this project with federal funds, as a way of affirming diversity and true origin. And let us see where this may lead us. We might begin by using some of Zinn's historical writing.

True education builds understanding. Understanding is the first step toward a new nation dedicated to peace and to the empowerment not only of its own people, but of all people in a planet conceived as a global village. That which hurts the smallest member hurts the entire body politic. Let us remember Donne's beautiful statement that every man's death diminishes me.

All empires come to an end, some with more bloodshed than others. America is not a country, it is beautiful continents made up of many races, languages and beliefs.

We are divided by our beliefs, racial and ethnic origin, languages, and economic class. We must begin to walk in our sister's moccasins in order to understand her path, and her needs. At a time of great economic and moral need, when we have been led astray by imperialistic greed, empathy through true education would allow us to begin to heal our national woes.

The hypocrisy of Memorial Day

I watched part of a concert in DC for Memorial Day, with wonderful performers and speeches... but despite the beautiful speeches and the talent, and the sharing of stories, the facts about the reality of veterans, then and now, are horrible. A survey prior to 2000 showed that 23% of the homeless population were veterans, and 33% of the male homeless population were veterans. The government of course had a 'challenge' survey, but this was a government that called torture, or the release of prisoners to third parties (foreign parties) 'rendition,' even to eventual assassination, and used the term collateral damage when speaking of civilian 'unintended' death. Similar to the 'unintended' effects of the Israeli AF dropping a one ton bomb on the house of a Hamas leader and claiming that the deaths of surrounding neighbors and all the residents of the leader's house, including small children, were 'unintended.'

Perhaps the difference between this concert and previous ones is the focusing on seriously and hideously deformed soldiers with their families... The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans mentions the causes for veteran homelessness:

"Homelessness is caused by a number of factors, but generally it can be attributed to health issues, economic issues and lack of affordable housing – or any combination of these.

* In addition to the complex problems associated with all homelessness – extreme shortage of affordable housing, livable income, and access to health care – a large number of displaced and at-risk veterans live with lingering effects of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and substance abuse, compounded by a lack of family and social support networks. Military occupations and training are not always transferable to the civilian workforce, placing some veterans at a disadvantage when competing for employment.
* Adding to the difficulties of veterans in crisis is the misconception that the VA takes care of all veterans in need. According to the VA CHALENG Report, in the years since it "began responding to the special needs of homeless veterans, its homeless treatment and assistance network has developed into the nation’s largest provider of homeless services, serving more than 100,000 veterans annually." With up to 400,000 veterans experiencing homelessness at some time during the year, VA programs reach about 25% of those in need ... leaving 300,000 veterans in need of assistance from community service providers.
* While "most homeless people are single, unaffiliated men … most housing money in existing federal homelessness programs is devoted to helping homeless families or homeless women with dependant children," according to "Is Homelessness a Housing Problem?" in Understanding Homelessness: New Policy and Research Perspectives published by the Fannie Mae Foundation, 1997."
http://www.nchv.org/media.cfm

On Link TV tonight there was a documentary called An Act of Conscience, filmed in 1997 by Robbie Leppzer about the war tax resistance of Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner in Massachusetts. It is a moving film, about a couple, and community, willing to make that last sacrifice for their convictions against war... I am a war resister myself, but this couple paid a heavy price... the IRS have Kehler arrested and the couple have their home confiscated for refusing to pay a 'war tax.'

It is interesting that so much of the history of the US has to do with taxes... 'taxation without representation' was the clarion call of the Revolutionary War, and the Boston Tea Party was also over 'taxed' tea and the Tea Tax Act. Thoreau in 1846 refused to pay the poll tax, and was jailed... and his most famous essay, read and inspiring so many, was his personal response to his imprisonment for breaking this law. He refused to pay the taxes because the taxes were used to support slavery, in the same way that our taxes today and for the past century support all our wars and 'police actions' of aggression against people everywhere.

In the meantime, An Act of Conscience moved me... not only the initial struggle, but the long community protest, which took years, and in which people decided to be refuse to leave their vigil, after the local court signed an injunction. They said, by their actions, what Thoreau had earlier said:

"Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right."

Gandhi was inspired by Thoreau, and wrote about his rebellion of conscience when he was himself jailed; Martin Luther King read both Thoreau and Gandhi, and helped to bring about the current times...

Yet today we have ongoing hypocrisy... We have the Hope President reversing and contradicting himself... no more pictures, no more revelations, and who knows what will happen with Guantánamo.

I remember a poster from the sixties, when we were protesting Vietnam... What if they gave a war, and no one came?