Thanks -- and No Thanks
Some Personal Reflections on Thanksgiving Day

"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 seemingly understood and honored humanity's relationship to Mother Earth, to the Great Spirit and to the Circle of All Life.   Embedded in the worldview of the Indigenous People was an ethos of Connection and Reverence. Our forefathers brought with them, instead, the Unbridled Greed buried in the belly of Capitalism, and the myopic worldview of fundamentalist Christianity with a 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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It's Showtime

"In this world, hate never yet dispelled hate. Only love dispels hate. This is the law, ancient and inexhaustible. " -- Buddha 

"I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." -- Jesus 

"Don't mourn.  Organize!" -- Joe Hill

Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. moved mountains in their time. This is our time.  

Seems like Truth and Love was the Basic Plan, right?  

This election was the wake up call. Find some friends and figure out what to do -- and do it non-violently.  We need to get our act together -- and ACT.  

No one tactic is going to pull this off. Some of it looks like standing our ground with folks at Standing Rock.  Some of that looks like reaching out to connect with the "other side".  

Hell, I awoke yesterday thinking the best thing I could do is stop at the first house I see with a Trump sign, knock on the door, and engage in a respectful conversation to find out why they did -- and see where we can find some common ground. 

We gotta start building some bridges here or it's all gonna be water over the dam.  

It's showtime. 
Yours in Peace and Struggle,
Brother Lefty

Happy Fifth Birthday #Occupy Wall Street!

IT'S SO NOT OVER!

September 17,  marks the fifth anniversary of the day that protesters descended on Wall Street and Zuccotti Park in New York City, re-naming it Liberty Park and launching #Occupy Wall Street!  

(Click for lyrics)

I put this video together on Occupy's First Birthday.  I had written the song when Mayor Bloomberg, aware that thousands more people had flocked to Zuccotti Park to prevent his first attempt to clear the park in October, backed down.

Back home in Western Massachusetts, I stayed up all night, riveted to the Livestream.   "By dawn's early light", a roar surged through the crowd as the announcement was made that Bloomberg had caved.  The song wrote itself.

Of course, I had to rewrite it after the Mayor's Militarized Minions swept the park in November.  Yet, it's still a Song of Triumph.  As the song now sez, "you can trash a camp, but you can't sweep away the Spirit! 

It's SO not over!

#Occupy Five Years Down the Road

Although the mainstream media has often tried to discount 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 was a direct result of #OWS! bringing into focus the alarming, and growing, income inequality existing in the US.  

Although he didn't secure the nomination from the embedded Democratic Party establishment, the campaign he calls "a Political Revolution" continues on to confront the utter domination and distortion of our democratic process by a wealthy corporate elite.  Unfortunately, the widespread frustration with the continuing looting of the economic resources of this nation -- and the world -- by the banksters and tycoons, and the culture of fear and divisiveness that has been fomented by the Republican Party for decades has also fueled the campaign of one of the worst of the ruling elite, Donald Trump.   

Yet, at this stage of the journey, on the eve the Fifth Anniversary of that magic September day that sparked an autumn blaze of urban encampments throughout the United States, I think its time to celebrate, to reflect, and to re-commit to the on-going efforts to work for a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people."   

Over the course of it's two month occupation, #OWS! made the case.  Now it's up to each of us to stay on the case. 

Lest We Forget: September 11, 2001

"In this world 
Hate never yet dispelled hate
Only love dispels hate
This is the law 
Ancient and inexhaustible."
--  Buddha

"You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.'  But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."
-- Jesus

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 abroad and a militarized police force and the national security state at home, 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…

"We're out to raise Hell--in the Bodhisattvic* sense."
-- Stephen Gaskin

I think a whole bunch of us misfits were incarnated at this point to wake up from the so-called American Dream, to see it for the Materialistic Nightmare this it is, and join together with Kindred Spirits to create this world the "way it's 'spozed to be": a world where Love, Peace and Fairness prevail.

You got anything better to do?
One Love,
Brother Lefty Smith, S.O.B.*

The Mother of Mother's Day

Julia Ward Howe (May 27, 1819 — October 17, 1910)
Mother of Mother's Day

Although I plan to honor the various mothers who have graced my life this Mother's Day, I'm beginning to recognize that one of my pet peeves is seeing how often our holidays have morphed into highly commercialized social events that seem to be completely divorced from their historical roots as powerful celebrations of the human spirit.

I've already Rambled On about Labor Day here.  At some point I'm probably going to rant about Martin Luther King's Birthday and the pervasive whitewashing of his views on war and economic justice in a capitalist society by the mainstream media each year.  And don't even get me started about the Birthday of the Prince of Peace and the Annual Blue-Gray All Star Classic college football game with Blue Angel fly-overs.  (I'm gonna take some long, slow breaths and sit still for a few moments before I continue. LOL)......

So, here's the deal on Mother's Day:
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Four Dead in Ohio: The Shootings at Kent State

(I wrote this piece last year on the Anniversary of the Kent State Shootings--but it never made it to the Rambling On Blog.  It's hard to believe that a year has passed, let alone 43 of them since I walked into the teacher's lounge at Wauconda Middle School as a first year teacher to hear a colleague proclaim, "those kids got exactly what they deserved. "  I shuddered at the time.  I shudder as I recall that memory.

As the pundits search for answers to the Boston Marathon tragedy, the shootings in Newtown or Aurora, how often to do they address the glorification of violence that lies deep in the fabric of our own cultural values? A society that continues to support capital punishment and the use of drones against distant villagers; a society that entertains itself with violent video games and countless media heroes with blazing guns, a society where Donald Trump would be seriously considered for the office of President, need not look any further for the answers. -----Brother Lefty ) 

Originally Published, May 4, 2013 

Lest we forget--or never knew--on this day in 1970 four students at Kent State University were killed when national guard troops called into "maintain order" opened fire on the unarmed protestors.

I hadn't realized the anniversary was today until Jenny, my friend and Yoga Mentor mentioned it this evening after class.  She was amazed that when she had mentioned to a 40 something year old friend earlier, she had never heard about Kent State--or Crosby Stills Nash and Young for that matter!! The true history of the quest for peace and justice--and the violent reaction to it--is so often lost in the noise and distractions of daily life in this hyper-capitalistic society today.  It's easy to forget.  I did today--twice.
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