Thanks -- and No Thanks
Some Personal Reflections on Thanksgiving Day
Originally Published, Thanksgiving Day, 2014

"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
(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 to a feast at Plymouth Plantation in 1621 has become part of the Mythology of American Democracy.  

Unfortunately, this idyllic tale doesn't portray the stark reality of the Holocaust that ensued as European colonists descended on this continent bringing with them a harshly judgmental Christianity and the European concepts  of Private Property and Capitalism.

Although the set of Democratic Ideals set forth in the Preamble to the US Constitution reflect humanity's universal quest for a just society, "our forefathers" also brought forth on this continent disease, death, domination, and the destruction of a Way of Life that understood and honored humanity's relationship to Mother Earth, to the Great Spirit and to the Circle of All Life.   The Indigenous People's practiced a more advanced Spirituality, an Ethos of connection and sustainability. Our forefathers brought with them, instead, the Unbridled Greed buried in the belly of Capitalism, and the myopic worldview of fundamentalist Christianity with its mindset that reinforces our separation from one another, from the natural world, and from our spiritual connection to all that is.  Through force of arms (including germ warfare and the power of "law"), the bad guys won.

Unfortunately for Mother Earth and her myriad beings, they still are.
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Lest We Forget

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED, NOVEMBER 22, 2014

(I'm sitting here in tears listening to soul singer Marvin Gaye's rendition of "Abraham, Martin, John" as I write this. )


My fingers were fumbling at the keyboard in typing class that day in 1963, exactly 51 years ago, when the teacher from across the hall came into the room and whispered in Miss Jefferson's ear.

Her face turned white.

The other teacher left and Miss Jefferson broke into tears as she announced that President Kennedy had been shot and taken to a hospital in Dallas.

No one said a word.

Moment's later the other teacher returned. He didn't have to say a word.  His face, a portrait of horror and helplessness said it all.  We knew.  He knew we knew.  Holding back tears, he shrugged awkardly, turned -- and left. 

The unimaginable had happened.
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Saving a Real Life Saver

I can't tell you how many times I've been called freakin' CRAZY for believing that Peace is Possible, that human beings are, by their very (Buddha)nature, essentially kind and helpful.  A Dreamer, I've not only imagined "all the people living lives of peace", I've hit the wall and blown a fuse a number of times in my own bumbling quest to help make it happen.

At those time, I found that the systemic  responses available in a capitalist society that is characterized by hierarchy, bureaucracy, great inequalities of power and resources, dehumanizing values, and a very limited -- even unhealthy -- view of what it is to be "sane and normal", is woefully inadequate.  Having witnessed as a child and a young adult the ravages of the prevailing "medical model" of mental health on my mother's life, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" seemed like Gospel to me. Over the years, I saw the woman who had laughed and sang and written poetry disappear into a mire of constantly changing diagnoses and doses of heavy medication, electro-shock therapy, and institutionalization.

So, from the get-go, I wasn't willing to buy the "company line" about mental health.  In fact, as I viewed the widespread pattern of incessant human exploitation, racism, unnecessary poverty and rampant injustice, widespread violence and warfare, and ongoing environmental destruction around me, I was convinced: society itself is pretty freakin' crazy.

A case in point: The person who sits at a computer screen and launches a drone attack that is known to oftentimes cause the gruesome deaths of innocent men, women and children halfway round the world is characterized as "sane and normal" (perhaps even heroic), while a person deeply disturbed by the such horrors that stands on the street corner expressing their anguish and distress may be subject to arrest and enforced hospitalization.

WTF?

The Western Mass Recovery Learning Community -- Greenfield Center

When I stepped into the room, I knew.  I wasn't alone.  When a person in the room said "The RLC saved my life -- literally" and others nodded, I knew it was the truth.  This special peer support network of people who've experienced extreme emotional distress, trauma, psychiatric diagnoses, addiction and a variety of other challenges in life felt like a vibrant part of the Real Revolution to me. 

At the RLC, the genuine human relationships built within a community that values respect, compassion, self-determination, and mutuality (there are no "service providers" and "service recipients at RLC) are recognized as a source of healing.  Alternatives to Suicide is only one of the ongoing support groups that meet regularly at the RLC's Greenfield Center.

Free access to alternative healing practices (reiki, accupuncture, yoga, meditation), personal and system advocacy, and other creative learning opportunities (art, writing, improv) are also offered regularly, as is access to computers, printers and other resources available during drop-in hours.  The Recovery Learning Community continues to make a difference in the lives of the hundreds of folks who have passed through the doors in Greenfield and elsewhere in Western Mass. 

Now, the RLC's Greenfield Center's  existence is in question!  A shift in CDBG priorities threatens to shut its doors  -- and we are reaching out for your help.  This is about saving a real life saver!

But, I've rambled on long enough.  My identical twin brother Lance picked up his pen (uh, a laptop probably), and his Greenfield Recorder "My Turn" guest column appears here:
http://www.recorder.com/home/19400724-95/smithmy-turn-saving-a-real-life-saver

Even Better! Save the RLC's Greenfield Center VIDEO

The RLC's own Evan Goodchild produced an excellent five minute video available at: https://www.youcaring.com/western-mass-recovery-learning-community-rlc-419925 

https://www.youcaring.com/western-mass-recovery-learning-community-rlc-419925

There is more, including links to more videos
 about the work of the 
Western Mass Recovery Learning Community 
HERE

Happy 4th Birthday #Occupy Wall Street!

IT'S SO NOT OVER

Today marks the fourth anniversary of the day that protesters descended on Zuccotti Park in New York City, re-naming it Liberty Park and launching #Occupy Wall Street!  

Although the mainstream media narrative has often tried to deem as inconsequential the impact of the two month encampment, there can be no doubt that beyond the amazing spread of the #Occupy movement across the United States that fall, the Spirit continued to move across the land in a myriad of local, regional and national efforts to create a more equitable and democratic society.   (Read Michael Levitin's  article in The Atlantic, "The Triumph of Occupy Wall Street.")

On the national level, it seems to me that the emergence of Bernie Sanders, an avowed Democratic Socialist, as a credible candidate for the Democratic nomination for President this year is a direct result of #OWS! bringing into focus the alarming, and growing, income inequality existing in the US --and bringing to the national stage the issue of the ever-increasing domination and distortion of a government claimed to be "of the people, by the people, and for the people", by a wealthy corporate elite.  (Although it may be just lip-service even several of the Republicans have been propelled to allude to, if not address,  the disparity between the 1% and the 99% and the influence of unbridled money on the political process as well.) 

#OWS! made the case. Now it's up to each of us to stay on the case. 

The Flame of Liberty Park

Written as a song of triumph the night that Mayor Bloomberg first threatened to clear the #OccupyWall Street! encampment at Zuccotti Park --then backed off -- this is another one of those songs that pretty much wrote itself.  

A year later, for Occupy's First Birthday, I revised it a bit to reflect that fact that the Mayors Militarized Minions had ultimately cleared the camp.  Then I put it up on YouTube with a one take audio track captured with an $8 web cam mike, an old Dell laptop grunting away trying to run a basic video editing program, and a collection of photos that I grabbed from the web.   It took me about 16 hours that day.

It is, I think, still a Song of Triumph.  It certainly was a labor of love,  born of a labor of love.  (You can read the original ramble here: Happy Birthday #OWS!)  

But first have a look and a listen!? 

Lest We Forget: September 11, 2001

An Excerpt From "Thoughts in the Presence of Fear"
                                -- Wendell Berry, Orion Magazine 2001


In the aftermath of the horror of September 11, 2001, Kentucky farmer, author, environmentalist and activist wrote a stirring series of three essays, published as In the Presence of Fear. 

Berry's clear grasp of what had happened and what needed to be done was a clear indictment of the Bush administration's response.  Unfortunately, we have now seen that a change in administration did not change the fundamental nature of the plight we're in.  Fourteen years later, the ascendancy of neo-liberalism, with it's on-going march of an unfettered corporate capitalism bolstered by military power and the national security state, makes Berry's words even more relevant.

Here is an excerpt from the first essay.  It can be found in it's entirety at: https://orionmagazine.org/article/thoughts-in-the-presence-of-fear/

Wendell Berry

We citizens of the industrial countries must continue the labor of self-criticism and self-correction. We must recognize our mistakes…

This is why the substitution of rhetoric for thought, always a temptation in a national crisis, must be resisted by officials and citizens alike…

The aim and result of war necessarily is not peace but victory, and any victory won by violence necessarily justifies the violence that won it and leads to further violence…

What leads to peace is not violence but peaceableness, which is not passivity, but an alert, informed, practiced, and active state of being… The key to peaceableness is continuous practice…

They Just Washed Away 
Katrina a Man-made Disaster: Before, During, and After
(See Laura Flanders GRITv , Democracy Now!, and Brother Lefty Videos below)

Hurricane Katrina Takes Aim on the Gulf Coast

It still breaks my heart to cast my mind's eye on the Horror that swept through New Orleans in August of 2005.

Sometimes I still come to tears as I attempt to sing "Washed Away." The song wrote me ten years ago as I was apartment sitting for a friend in Queens, NY.   Choked with pain and anger, appalled at what was I was seeing on TV and the web, it was, and still is, difficult to accept that what transpired in New Orleans could happen in the wealthiest nation on earth.

 (Click for lyrics)

Made in the U.S.A.

Although Hurricane Katrina, the ferocious vortex that was born over the Atlantic Ocean during the sultry days of late August that year was a "natural" phenomenon, what happened a decade ago was not. It was, from beginning to end, a man-made disaster, a glaring example of the continued institutional racism of the neo-liberal era.

In line for evacuation buses at the Superdome

The catastrophic series of events that decimated New Orleans, killing 1836 people (nearly a 1000 of them in the City itself), and displacing a million and a half others in the region, had been predicted by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Officials at FEMA knew that the 100 year old system of levees and flood control protecting the half a million residents of the City, nearly 70% of whom were Black, couldn't withstand the force of a hurricane of that magnitude.  They had reported repeatedly that there was no adequate system in place to evacuate the people at risk.

Then, the buck was passed -- or the bucks, rather.  In a glaring example of Crony Capitalism at it's worst, FEMA privatized New Orlean's Disaster Planning in 2004!

This is all a matter of public record.  It's there in black and white. 

Those in charge knew.  Many of the career government service professionals were on record, trying to address the problem.

In fact, just three months before Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Federal Agency responsible for flood control, had issued another warning to the Bush Administration which had not yet acted to implement a flood control plan involving extensive construction they had proposed years earlier.
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"I Speak As Someone Who Loves America"

"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

Although the events this year in Ferguson, Missouri and elsewhere make Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s famous "I Have a Dream"speech poignantly relevant this year, I would like more attention given to the words Dr. King delivered at the Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 as the nation celebrates Martin Luther King Day.

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 many believe caused his assassination exactly one year later.

As it is, the corporate media has consistently whitewashed Dr. King's views on economic justice, materialism and militarism for decades now.  Rather than the blasphemous blather perpetuated by today's Psuedo-Christians of the Far Right, King's words were those of a True Christian Prophet.    Like Mahatma Gandhi, Kings politics emerged from the power of Truth and Love.  His stirring call for active protest by all people of conscience ring as true today as they did nearly half a century ago.  It is no wonder the corporate media today chooses to ignore this speech and remain silent. 

Beyond Vietnam: A Time To Break Silence

Let's Get RADICAL: Pope Francis ROCKS the Vatican -- and Corporate Board Rooms!!

Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! Features Pope Francis's Upcoming Encyclical on Climate Change.  (VIDEO BELOW)

"Human rights are not only violated by terrorism, repression or assassination, 

but also by unfair economic structures that creates huge inequalities."
-- Pope Francis

"To say that you can kill in the name of God is blasphemy."
--Pope Francis

Pope Francis

Although there are scores of Catholics that make it to my list of favorite Saints, Seers and Sages, it's been quite awhile since the Holy See and I saw eye to eye.  In fact, after John the 23rd shook things up with Vatican II back in the day, it's been pretty clear that the not-so-good old boy's club of conservatives grabbed the reins again to run the show -- and there was hell to pay.

Rather than foster the Liberation Theology that had emerged in South America, where the church was actually ministering to the poor and actively challenging the forces of oppression,  rope a dope popes quashed that movement, then just hung back and let the masters of mammon and their political minions do their thing. (Although, admittedly, Pope John Paul II did speak out against both Iraq Wars, he didn't really pull out the stops to put his money where his mouth was. )

Now, finally, it seems that the Good Guys have prevailed once again.  When the College of Cardinals sent up those white puffs and I learned that Argentina's Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio. S.J., had become the first Pontiff to choose Saint Francis as his namesake, I thought "Holy Smokes! The Hippies Won!"  

Saint Francis of Assisi, with his pantheistic and inclusive Love of Creation in all it's myriad forms (Brother Sun, Sister Moon, etc.), his uncompromising vow of solidarity with the poor, and his legendary bout of public nudity was a Hippie icon, our kinda fella.

Rather than cruise in the Limo, Francis opted for a Renault

Of course I don't expect Pope Francis to go skinny dipping with the Vatican Press Corps, but from all I've seen and heard so far, this guy really does get it.  A man of insight, humility and compassion, a Christian who clearly understands the Inclusiveness of the One Love, he seems to be the Real Deal.

With him at the helm, this could be an interesting ride.

Of course, the Catholic Church is an incredibly massive ship.  Even with this Good Dude's hands on the wheel, making course corrections isn't gonna be quick and easy. (Think: thousands of pissed off clerics and bureaucrats wanting to hold onto their pride, power,  and possessions...)  
(CLICK FOR MORE AND THE VIDEO)