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I who am I? Born at the pinnacle of American prosperity to parents raised during the last great depression. I was the youngest child of the youngest children born almost between the generations and that in fact clouds and obscures who it is that I am really.
Given a front row seat for the generation of the 1960's I lived in Chicago in 1960. My father was a Democratic precinct captain, my mother an election judge. His father had been a Union organizer and had been beaten and jailed for his efforts. His first time in jail was for punching a Ku Klux Klansman during a parade in the 1930's. I never felt as if I was raised in a family of activists but seeing it print makes me think, yes. That is a part of who I am.
We find ourselves today living in a world treed by the hounds of madness, a complicit media covering contrite parties. Multilevel media, giving more access to communication yet stunting actual communication. More noise, less voice, more sound less music, more law less justice, more medicine less life.
SHARE Thursday, October 13, 2011 American Stories
The "Stop the Machine" rally was for me a huge success; it has restored my faith in the general goodness and wisdom of the people of this nation. I have met Americans of every age, race and station and they are good. They have put down the tools of their lives; they have left their jobs and their loved ones and traveled thousands of miles to come here to address their government.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, October 10, 2011 We are the 99%
We marched through the city canyons of concrete columns, bureaucracy and statues of long forgotten dead generals. As we marched the car horns sounded in support and people on the sidewalk gave us the thumbs up sign. "Occupy Wall Street, occupy K Street, occupy everything and never give it back!"
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, October 10, 2011 Freedom Plaza DC; Breaking News
Freedom Plaza - Organiser Kevin Zeese anounces Federal Officials in Washington agree to a four month extention of Freedom Plaza protest permit. Officials also stated the the Freedom Plaza protestors must make accomodations for other scheduled events in the park.
SHARE Monday, October 10, 2011 Mixed Messages
I make my rounds through the plaza to see all my friends both new and old. Andrea and Bert from the staff of the Old Elm Tree and the special Code Pink ladies from deep in the heart of Texas, they are all special. We are all special here. That is the lesson which I have gleaned. I have met so many really nice, really great and really special people.
SHARE Saturday, October 8, 2011 Day One
The crowds were large diverse and expectant, all are waiting for something. They are as diverse as a crowd can be yet they are united in the knowledge that something is very wrong in America.
SHARE Saturday, October 8, 2011 A Plaza Called Freedom
The time is pivotal; will this thing now grow or wither away? There is a lot riding on this event and a lot of people have invested a lot of hope in this and we must trust and depend on each other despite our political differences.
SHARE Wednesday, October 5, 2011 I Am In
The road passes beneath us, across one thousand miles littered with chain stores and sterile corporate fast food outlets. As we passed through Chicago at rush hour I was struck by how little this city ever really changes. It is a city of brownstones and of small alleyways, of gritty skylines filled with smokestacks and Catholic church steeples.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, September 30, 2011 I Am One
I gave him five bucks but what struck me most about this young man in his mid twenties was the fear that I saw in his eyes. He was a man afraid, afraid of his hunger, afraid of his own tiredness and afraid of his future. He is a young man lost in a nation of locked doors, so as I prepare myself for my trip to Washington D.C. part of this young man will go with me.
SHARE Sunday, September 25, 2011 Schizophrenic Nation
If the Bush administration had been looking to invade just any old oil rich nation they should have chosen Mexico and saved the bus fare. A nation of 107 million souls where a ruling elite of one million rightwing ideologues controls a majority of the society's assets. Forty seven percent of the Mexican population owns nothing, not land or cars or homes, they own nothing.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, September 21, 2011 In Every Age
Recently the mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, warned that New York could face riots in the streets if something were not done about the employment situation. This was a story with media legs, ABC glossed over it while the Wall Street Journal pooh poohed it. CNN took the story and turned it into a story about partisan politics.
(7 comments) SHARE Thursday, September 15, 2011 The Big Book of Freedom
In those long ago days our soldiers were referred to as our brave boys serving their country, today they are called only heroes. The irony has not escaped me that some of my friends served in Vietnam and now my son's friends who serve in Iraq / Afghanistan and they return home damaged and broken just as mine did.
(5 comments) SHARE Saturday, September 10, 2011 The Fascist Moses
Let's kick Richard Nixon, its great fun; we all did it at parties back in the 1970s. But that was the previous generation and this generation has missed out on the fun, like Woodstock. Unbeknownst to this current generation there would have been hundreds of fistfights and stabbings at Woodstock had it not been for three little words, "f**k Richard Nixon!"
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, September 9, 2011 Twilight's Last Gleaming
The crime is beyond rival, it opened an entire new field of warfare upon the earth. Or as the Roman maxim advises, "Who gains from this?" Did Islamic revolutionaries gain anything from the 9-11 attack? Did this attack in anyway advance their goals?
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, September 5, 2011 The Real History of Labor Day
The courage of unarmed men who charge a line of well armed men for a principle is the epitome of valor. When government shoots down its citizens in the street it is a public admission that any references to liberty and freedom are nothing more than pale illusions; an admission by government that their power is exerted from gun barrels alone.
(7 comments) SHARE Saturday, September 3, 2011 Caligula's Orgy
It has been ten years now since this country began beating its plowshares into swords and beating its people into submission. It has been ten years of Caligula's orgy, ten years of banquets and fine feasts, ten years of high tech weaponry and low tech poverty, of high tax cuts and low wage cuts and an age of societal dissolution.
(4 comments) SHARE Monday, August 29, 2011 The Miserable Ones
On July 11, an eleven year old boy awoke from his bed to find that his father was gone. The boy found two notes left behind, the first instructed the boy to take his play station and go to the neighbor's house. The second note asked the neighbors to take his son in because the father was no longer financially able to care for his son.
SHARE Saturday, August 27, 2011 Summer Winds
There is no competition here, only the desire to cooperate with each other and to work together communally. The gardeners share their stories and their problems. It's been a tough year for corn and the potato bugs were especially hungry this year. The gardeners share their extras as well,
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, August 24, 2011 He's Not Serious
It would be hilarious if it wasn't so sickening, college tuition paid out for jobs at McDonalds and the Gap are called job training while interning for pennies is called retraining.
(7 comments) SHARE Saturday, August 20, 2011 The Outcast
I feel as if I've have been immersed in a bad dream from which I cannot awake. I've witnessed the changes in myself which unemployment and homelessness have wrought while I have witnessed the playback on our society as a whole. I no longer feel at home anywhere,
SHARE Friday, August 19, 2011 And So It Has Begun
The more the Tea Party pushes, the lower their popularity numbers fall and Republicans in Congress are able to play a now you see them, now you don't game. When it suits them, the Tea Party members appear in the media as Republican statesmen while shaking the crazy stick on other more partisan media outlets