A Time to Break Silence

 

"When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, 

are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, 

extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered."

-- Dr. Martin King Jr., Speech at Riverside Church, April 4, 1967

"It is my firm belief that Europe of today represents not the spirit of 

God or Christianity but the spirit of Satan.  
And Satan's successes are the greatest when 

he appears with the name of God on his lips.  
Europe today is only nominally Christian.  
In reality, it is worshiping Mammon."

-- Mahatma Gandhi, Young India, August 9, 1920.

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The Truth, The Whole Truth, and....

For decades now, the corporate media has celebrated Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech.  At the same time, the Powers That Be have completely white-washed his legacy.  

With one hand, they claim to have joined hands with Dr. King's dream of racial harmony.  With the other, they continue to bury Dr. King's teachings on racial and economic justice.  With the corporate media now running ads in front of our faces 24-7 (even on platforms that we pay to access,) a wealthy elite's media minions pay lip service to his Dream, while burying King's words on the nightmare created by our country's extreme materialism. Buried, Dr. King's condemnation of our nation's unbridled militarism never sees the light of day.  Instead we have armed force now policing the world -- and our own streets.

Like Mahatma Gandhi, King's message was not solely political.  It was vaster than that.  It was Spiritual.  Like the Lord's Prayer, it sought to manifest Love "on earth as it is in heaven." These two saints saw clearly that Mammon worship, the soul-sucking evil of materialism/consumerism, was alive -- and unwell -- in the belly of capitalism.  There it feeds on the life force of countless human beings. 

 
Throughout its history, the dark trinity of racism, economic exploitation, and warfare have maimed and harmed countless beings.  The prosperity of the capitalist English Empire and it's rebellious teenage offspring, the USA, were built squarely on the horrors of genocide and slavery.  Though the ascendancy of Trump 2.0 and MAGA are trying their best to bury this fact.  Most of us know the truth.

Like my identical twin brother, Lance, I usually tend to be more Buddhist in my lingo.  Yet, I just gotta say it out loud (and type it clearly): 

Unbridled Capitalism is fucked up.  It is the work of the freakin' DEVIL! 

A system rooted in greed and exploitation is the dark side of the force.  "Business as usual" is a demonic energy that is taking aim on the survival of our planet.

Mahatma Gandhi saw that clearly. He called it out -- again and again.  More importantly, he put his body on the line to do something about it.   The non-violent soul force that energized the movement he pioneered sent the British Empire packing.

No Kings but Dr. King!

Dr. King, like Gandhi, was a Bodhisattva, a Holy Man.  He dedicated his life to alleviating the suffering created by a political and economic system that feeds on the three poisons identified in traditional Buddhism: greed, hatred, and delusion.  Like Jesus of Nazareth and other Jewish prophets, both King and Gandhi threatened the ruling order of bankers and preachers -- and were martyred for their efforts.

Although Dr. King focused on the evil of racism in his "I Have a Dream" speech that late summer day in Washington DC, most of this year's mainline coverage will not mention that this speech was delivered to a throng that had assembled for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.  This effort, which he had helped organize, not only called out racism, it challenged our nation's capitalist political economy.  It demanded bold governmental action to correct the inequity resulting from the systemic exploitation of the poor -- of all races.

And, of course, under the leadership of J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI claimed the event was inspired by Communists and lobbied to prevent it from happening. 

Yet, Dr. King, the organizers, and the Movement he helped to inspire prevailed.  Continuing to preach the power of Love, he championed a non-violent resistance to a system that relied on violence to maintain its ascendancy.  Dr. King knew full well that he was risking his life to challenge the ruling order -- and he chose Love and "Good Trouble" instead. 

Dr. King's assassination, five years after the "I Have a Dream" speech, occurred when he traveled to Memphis to support striking municipal sanitation workers as the leader of the National Poor People's campaign.   That campaign demanded an Economic Bill of Rights which included five planks:

1. "A meaningful job at a living wage"
2. "A secure and adequate income" for all those unable to find or do a job
3. "Access to land" for economic uses
4. "Access to capital" for poor people and minorities to promote their own businesses
5. The ability for ordinary people to "play a truly significant role" in the government

When's the last time you saw the Economic Bill of Rights highlighted -- or even mentioned -- in the corporate media coverage of Dr.  King's life? 

A Time to Break Silence

When Trump's legion of misanthropes, materialists, and militarists first attempted to loot our country and the world, it was easy for Progressives to protest.  Trumps unabashed misogyny even brought many Republican women to the "pussy hat" rallies and aligned them with other core Progressive values.

Yet, with the election of Joe Biden, many of us relaxed and fell into line.  Meanwhile, the same collection of neo-con's, foreign policy "experts,"media pundits, and wealthy donors moved ahead with an agenda that allowed the moguls and minions of the countries wealthy elite to to dominate US domestic and foreign policy. The Democratic administration continued to pursue the objectives of the military industrial complex that President Eisenhower, a Republican, had warned us would destroy our democracy, stoking the flames of warfare in Ukraine and Gaza.  They continued the longstanding goals of de-stablizing Venezuela, Iran, Russia, and confronting China in Asia.

At home, despite a number of overtures, even with a Democratic majority in the House and Senate, the Biden Administration didn't move boldly on economic issues.  They didn't make the revisions to the tax code or empower the SEC or FTC to take the actions necessary to reverse the increasing wealthy inequality.  They didn't move on promised to enhance the ability of unions to organize or to raise the minimum wage. With the ever-increasing dominance of Silicon Valley high-tech corporation in the post-COVID economy, income and wealth inequality continued to grow to historic levels.  And the rich got richer and the middle-class and poor got poorer.

WTF!?

Now,  the master manipulator, Donald Trump has returned.  Claiming a mandate that his 1.5 % margin of victory does not deserve, his administration immediately began to act on the radical course of actions outlined in Project 2025.  With Republican control of all three branches of the federal government, the Trump Administration has acted to shred the US Constitution, scuttle our democratic institutions, use armed force to terrorize people at home and abroad  -- and fill their own pockets. 

In part, Trump's slim margin of victory was the result of a corporate Democratic party that has lost its soul.  Many folks stayed home because the corporate Democratic Party couldn't neither deliver the goods at home -- nor avert people's eyes from US support for the genocide in Palestine.  Now with Trump, Steven Miller, and Marco Rubio ranting a raving, all hell has broken loose.  This is not just metaphorical.   Armed ICE agents and US military personnel are doing the work of the Devil.

Give Peace a Chance

It's clear.  It's time for those who believe in the creation of a world of peace and shared prosperity to speak out.  Dr. King did so, dramatically, on April 4, 1967, at the Riverside Church in New York City.   

On that day, Dr. King proclaimed, "these too are our brothers," and came out against the US involvement in the Vietnam War with a passion and an eloquence that some believe caused his assassination -- exactly one year, to the day -- later.

The corporate media today ignores this speech and remains silent.  I hope you don't.  Please listen and pass this along.  Then join some folks and speak out -- with love in your heart!

It's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it!

Beyond Vietnam: A Time To Break Silence

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks -- and No Thanks

Some Personal Reflections on Thanksgiving Day 2025

"Oh, Great Spirit whose voice I hear in the winds, 
and whose breath gives life to all the world, hear me, I am small and weak,  
I need your strength and wisdom." 
 -- from a prayer

by Lakota Chief Yellow Lark, 1887
(Read Entire Prayer)

"Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, 
it was loaned to you by your children. 
We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, 
we borrow it from our Children." 

-- Ancient Native American Proverb

 

The three day feast that brought together 90 Wampanoags and the 50 surviving Pilgrims at Plymouth Plantation in 1621 has become part of our nation's mythology.

Unfortunately, the idyllic tale that was presented to me as a child was incomplete.  It did present the legendary generosity of the Wampanoags, who graced the ill-prepared immigrant Europeans with sustenance and support to make it through their first winter.  

Yet, it didn't portray the whole story.  

Until the past few decades, our American mythology turned a blind eye to the dark side of the European colonization of the Americas. 

If the whole truth be told, a genocide began as my ancestors descended upon this continent.  They brought with them a three-fold horror.  

Embodying a worldview dominated by white supremacy, a distorted and highly judgmental Christianity, and the unbridled avarice of an emerging capitalism, "our forefathers brought forth on this continent" a cultural cauldron that still wrecks havoc in the world today.  It is propelling us toward the horrors of climate disaster and nuclear warfare.

Although the set of ideals set forth in the foundational documents of the United States reflect humanity's quest for an egalitarian, democratic, and just society, the settler colonists (who received a land patent and funding from London investment corporations) brought forth on this continent disease, domination, and death.  With their vision obscured by their worldview,  most of the Pilgrims who invaded Massachusetts at Plymouth didn't recognize the humanity or the rich spirituality of the indigenous people of this continent.

The indigenous people had lived in the vast expanse of what came to be called the Americas for upward of 10,000 years.  Like other indigenous people, an ethos of connection and reverence was embedded in their worldview.  All of existence, the sentient and inanimate, the seen and unseen, was perceived as an interconnected web of relationships.   Reciprocity rather than personal advantage were highly valued.

Our forefathers brought with them, instead, the unbridled greed buried in the belly of capitalism and their myopic form of doctrinal Christianity. Each produces a profound sense of separation.  Increasingly, each individual is experienced as fundamentally separate from other individuals, from the natural world, and from a notion of the immanence of the sacred dimension of being. 

Through force of superior weapons, germ warfare, and the power of European political and religious"law," the European settler colonists arrived at Plymouth and elsewhere, then swept across the continent.  Unfortunately for Mother Earth and her myriad beings, these forces still hold tremendous power in our world today.  Propelled by powerful elites and a misshapen worldview, those who have the most institutional power in determining our future, seem dead set on a suicidal mission.  If a nuclear war doesn't destroy life as we know it, a climate catastrophe may.

Yet, it doesn't have to be this way.

It is true that history shows us that those with more guns and less morals have often taken power.  Yet, in the 20th century, Mahatma Gandhi, armed with nothing but a spinning wheel, the force of Great Loving Soul, and the Power of the People, sent the mighty British Empire packing.  Martin Luther King Jr. and legions of non-violent civil rights activists toppled the framework of legal racial segregation that had existed here in the "land of the free." other Non-violent revolutions toppled the Marcos dictatorship in the Phillipines, and the communist governments of eastern Europe. 

So....? 
(READ MORE)

Woodstock Forever!

Originally published in The Progressive, August/September 2019.
View their on-line version

James M. Shelley, Woodstock 1969

The event that drew almost half a million of my peers to a farm in upstate New York in August 1969 wasn’t supposed to be a free concert.  Rejected by several town boards, the four young promoters finally found a venue, a dairy farm in Bethel, New York.  They didn’t have the time or money to fence it all in. 

It didn’t matter.

Revolution was in the air.  We’d taken it to the streets.  We’d occupied buildings.  Now nearly half a million young people headed for the hills—and the fences came down.  The spirit of the times prevailed.  The white dove that had been perched on the neck of a guitar on the iconic Woodstock Music and Art Fair poster took flight, descended on the crowd, and made history.
 
It didn’t make money though.  After the event that captured the heart of my generation, the promoters—and presumably the 450,000 folks who’d gone down to Max Yasgur’s farm to set their souls free—ended up taking a bath.

The movie that was released the following spring etched Woodstock into the collective consciousness of a generation.  What had been a mixed bag for those on the ground—and in the mud—became larger-than-life on the big screen.  The spirit of the times that had transformed a disaster area into a peaceful community (where the head of security was a clown with a kazoo), now touched tens of millions of us.  And, of course, a few folks made a bundle.

I didn’t make it to Woodstock 1969.  It didn’t matter.  The genie was out of the bottle.  The word was on the streets.  The following summer, I drove west in a Volkswagen Beetle and watched the heart and soul of my generation play out on screen, through a cloud of cannabis smoke, in a crowded theater in San Francisco.

With peace signs flashing, the leftist folk music of the early sixties danced onto the stage with the electrified blues and acid rock that had erupted on the left coast’s hotbed of be-ins and a Summer of Love.  Through a kaleidoscopic swirl of images and sounds, we long-haired hippies constructed a massive stage and drove tractors.  We danced and did yoga amidst teepees and gaily painted school buses.  We skinny dipped, then rolled up our sleeves to answer the call to, as Wavy Gravy famously put it, “serve breakfast in bed for 400,000.”

It was a revival meeting.  The spirit of the times danced with the timeless.  In cinematic communion, we were living the dream.

In that dream, martyred union organizer Joe Hill appeared on Joan Baez’s breath and encouraged us to organize.  In that dream, bomber death planes turned into butterflies.  With irreverent reverence, Country Joe McDonald took the pulpit and yelled, “Give me an F,” and we did just that—with a roar! When Joe Cocker proclaimed “I get by with a little help from my friends,” we knew it was gospel. We rocked.  We rolled.  We laughed.  We cried.  Then, as dawn emerged, Jimi Hendrix captured the fury and anguish of the war that raged halfway round the world.  His “Star-Spangled Banner” became our national anthem. J oni Mitchell’s “Woodstock” became our “Rock of Ages.”

We’d been to the mountaintop. We were about to change the world. Or so we thought.
(READ MORE )

My Country 'Tis of Thee

 

Sitting here on a foggy July 4th morning, I'm well aware that patriotic fervor will parade through the streets of America today.  

There will be flags, uniforms, the brandishing of weapons. Then, as the sun sets from sea to shining sea, the night skies will explode with fireworks.

At this moment, though, I can't imagine singing "America the Beautiful" without breaking into tears.  

As I pause to try to describe my relationship to the United States of America, the first thought that emerges is: "it's complicated."  

When I breath in and open my heart, marriage vows come to mind.  For better or for worse, in sickness and in health, I'm wedded to this country.  I've now touched the earth and breathed the air of 49 of it's 50 states.  I love this land and it's people.  The vision of American Democracy that I grew up with still stirs my soul -- and it drives me to tears.

True Love is like that.  It breaks your heart.  

My patriotism, though, is not blind.  The veil was pierced when I was a child.  Watching the Civil Rights movement emerge on the evening news, I knew.  The American Dream had been laced with nightmares all along. There was more work to be done.

I'd wager that many of those who claim "my country right or wrong," is their bottom line never read past the semi-colon in the original quote.  A German immigrant, journalist and public servant, Carl Shurz spoke these words on the floor of the U.S. Senate in 1872:

"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." 

(italics added)

 

Over the years, along with countless millions of other Americans, I've tried to do what I can to set it right.  My heart has led my body into action, again and again, to protest the failure of America to live up to its own professed ideals.  I've sat in, stood up, marched forth, and rallied for these ideals. I've knocked on doors, staffed phone banks and web campaigns, written letters, essays, and songs.  I've attended meetings. I've listened to speeches. I've delivered others. 

Apparently, it hasn't been enough.  

 

So, at age 79, I ain't done.  For all it's flaws, America is my beloved community.  It's "til death do us part."

Back Then

 

America was a different place when I was growing up.  

 

After an unbridled capitalism hurled the world over the edge in 1929, a new consensus had been formed.  The mainstream Republican Party that emerged after World War Two had accepted that the government had a crucial role in "establishing justice and promoting the general welfare." It still had a sense of common decency. 

In fact, in 1952, the newly elected Republican President, Dwight Eisenhower, labeled those who opposed the New Deal as "stupid!" He later put the power of Federal troops behind the Supreme Court decision that segregation schools were unconstitutional.  

Although his foreign policy was still largely dominated by Cold War hawks, the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in World War Two knew well the horrors of war.  In his farewell address to Congress, popularly known as his Guns and Butter speech, he decried the impact of allocating resources that could be used to build schools and houses and hospitals to the military. Coining the term "military-industrial complex," he warned that its wealth and power would endanger American democracy. 

A couple of decades later the next Republican President, Richard Nixon, signed landmark environmental legislation, OHSA, and the Medicare Act into law, famously claiming, "we are all Keynesians now." 

It wasn't a perfect world back then, of course.  Large numbers of people had to hit the streets in protest during the civil rights, anti-war, and environmental movements of the 1960's and 1970's to "bend the moral arc of history toward justice."  Yet, there was a sense that the course of human history was basically progressive.  It seemed that we, as a people, were basically decent.  Although there was resistance, at times violent, from the fringes of society, it seemed we were in the process of increasingly "setting it right."

And Now...

After decades of well-financed and pervasive right-wing organizing throughout all the major institutions in society, viewpoints that were once considered aberrant, crazy, even un-american when I was growing up, are now mainstream.

Since the early 1970's, Organized Wealth (the term used by the late broadcast journalist and public servant, William Moyers in 2012)  has bankrolled a mean-spirited and arrogant cadre of television personalities, radio talk show hosts, so-called Christian broadcasters, and print pundits to reshape the way that Americans viewed the world.   Some of these figures joined others, most often wealthy and/or well-financed, into public office. 

One is now President of the United States,

Over the course of my lifetime, I've seen ideologies, attitudes and behaviors that were decidedly uncool when I was growing up, seize center stage.  The "kill a commie for Christ" fringe, became the Moral Majority.  A former KKK Grand Wizard became a U.S. Senator.  A marginalized John Birch Society (they believed that Dwight Eisenhower a communist) was joined in far right propagandizing by the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the American Legislative Exchange Council , AIPAC, and a myriad other millionaire-financed think tanks to generate a concerted attack on Progressive values. The left was demonized.  The norms of respectful civic discourse were ridiculed. 

Over time, authoritarism became cool to more and more people.

  And today, with the Trump 2.0 operating system in place, after four more years of well-financed MAGA manipulation and Project 25 planning during the Biden Administration, we have the bully in the presidential pulpit ruling through executive (dis)order and deceit. 

 Claiming he would make Americans safer by deporting criminals, ICE has swept down on honest, hardworking immigrants drawn to this country by its promise of liberty. Men, women, and children are being jailed and deported without due process.   

Posturing as a man of peace, he's doubled down on warfare.  American missles and warplanes -- without a declaration of war passed by Congress -- have bombed Yemen and Iran.

Through it all, Trump continues to demonize or mock those who oppose him.  He threatens those who challenge him -- even within his own party -- with ruin.  A razor-slim Republican congressional majority cowers and passes legislation that will harm millions of the nation's oldest and poorest citizens.

On his first watch, we saw the unimaginable emerge.  Now, it's become commonplace.

So, today, July 4, 2025, I'll allow myself to grieve.  Tomorrow, perhaps, I'll focus on gratitude for all those champions of peace and justice who have graced our history.  I'll bow to all those who continue to resist tyranny.  I'll open my heart in gratitude to the One Love that sustains all Life.  Then, I'll  roll up my sleeves and continue to do what I can do about setting it right.

How about you?