- Call a pile of elephant dung what it is - a pile of shit. You can be "more proper" and say, "that is unsupported assumption."
- Ask for facts. When someone spews crap ask for references supporting the crap. Do not engage in crap dissection.
- Call 'em on double speak. "Job creation" is the new phrase that is interchangeable with "trickle down" economics.
- Keep "news" persons on task. Don't let "news" persons and commentators sidestep the issues. When a journalist asks a question and it isn't answered by the person being interviewed, call it out. Email, phone, text - do something - to contact the journalist or journalist's boss and to say that allowing an interviewee escape answering a question is not doing the job of journalist. Demand an explanation.
- Take the high road. Don't take the easy road. If you are a progressive you will have to read and do research. Use what you learn. Yes, it takes work.
- Verify. Don't repeat rhetoric without doing your homework.
- Ask proprietors to turn off FOX, or change station, any and everywhere you encounter it in a public space.
- Push back, then go around, under, or over, and move forward.
- Call street theater what it is - street theater.
- Ask who is funding programs, people, and groups. No, many groups do not have to disclose, but why not disclose? What are they hiding. As the question. Don't stop asking the questions!
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 01, 2011
The Rules - A Review for Progressives
Monday, May 02, 2011
On Realizing I Was Impacted by Terrorism
I'm still trying to wrap my head around the last 12-24 hours of world event news.
The bombing of the Pentagon and WTC Twin Towers changed the course of my life n very significant ways. While I was initially worried about my step-daughter who was at work a few blocks away from the WTC in NYC. We heard from her fairly soon after the plane strikes and knew she was ok. We knew people who worked in the WTC who got out, although we did not know for a while if they were safe but they were. They worked on the 23rd floor. But that was it for direct impact on my life. Like most of the nation I was connected to the events of that day primarily through media coverage.
Indirect impact that day was far more significant for me. My sixth grader was so upset by the attacks that the school called me to ask how I wanted them to proceed with her. She had visited the WTC the previous month with her dad and knew the place and scale of what was happening in a way that most kids from Tucson could not.
I had worked for several years as the head of the security section at a major anthropological museum. I received training in cultural property protection coordinated by the Smithsonian and partially funded by the Getty. My thoughts were about evacuation routes, responders, and infrastructure and the magnitude of what was transpiring. Then like everyone else I mourned. Then I watched the whole world reach out to us and our leadership at that time choose how to react to that embrace of good will.
In October of 2001, a month after the attacks, my husband was contacted by the head of the section at the National Science Foundation, with whom he had a fair amount of contact during the first 15 years of his professional career. That gentleman told him they were having absolutely no one express interest in starting a rotation the following summer in 2002. They had slots they could not fill. The NSF brings academic and scientific professionals from various research areas to Arlington, VA to rotate through the Foundation for a year or two so evaluations of research proposals are headed up by people actively involved in the research area within which the proposal falls.
Unlike most academics, my husband had done a stint in the military after the draft was eliminated and before he finished his education. We are progressives and we are very patriotic. We decided it was our duty to help keep part of the cycle of scientific inquiry in our country going after the attacks. It was the least we could do. So we uprooted our family over the protests of our preteen daughter, who bemoaned that she would absolutely die if we took her away from her friends, and moved across the country to the Ballston area a couple of miles or so away from the Pentagon in a lovely little neighborhood just off Highway 50. Our daughter went to school that next year with kids whose parents had been killed in the Pentagon attack. It was a good year for us in all regards but financial. We went into debt with the moves and inability to rent our home in Tucson for the whole time, and the extra expense of living in a costly city. It was life-changing.
I expected surgical strikes and undercover ops would take out the Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden within a year or so from the time of the attacks. I did not expect the vast constriction of our rights as Americans nor did I expect the blatant misdirection of our precious resources and lives in war toward a land, against a people, and despot who had absolutely nothing to do with the heinous attacks on the U.S. on Septemberr 11, 2001.
Living just outside the Beltway made me aware of politics in, for me, a very new way. We didn't have a television that year, but we did have internet, radio, and newspapers. I watched a group of women vigil in front of the Whitehouse, starting in November of 2002, against the invasion of Iraq that the Bush administration seemed hell bent on accomplishing no matter what. I watched huge, absolutely HUGE, anti-war marches in the winter receive practically no news coverage. I began to join in those peace marches in February and March of 2003. I marched with CODEPINK, in their first march, on International Women's Day, March 8, 2003.
We had been attacked, our land and people assaulted and killed, I allowed my family's entire life to be upturned so that in some small way terror would not win by disrupting our country's way of life. I knew there were countless Americans who had made far larger changes to their lives and offered up sacrifices of their lives to serve our country, so I didn't think much about what our little family had done until our administration insulted and in many ways desecrated the memory of all those who died in the attacks on our country and in the initial attacks in Afghanistan by focusing our country's energies and sacrifices in a political and economic vendetta against Iraq. Wrapping my home in plastic and sealing it with duct tape just isn't my way. I wrote about it email lists and friends. I blogged about it a bit. I had to do more. My way is to react consciously and purposively. My father taught me that. We have civic responsibilities and they are precious.
Back in Arizona in April of 2004, I joined together with a few other women and began to bring the PINK message of peace to Arizona through CODEPINK Women for Peace actions. I liked the spontaneous, truly grassroots, and positively focused organic, interconnected nature of the links between individual women that made us respected by the peace and justice community and detested and vilified by the far right wing. I felt my actions were patriotic and proudly still feel so.
Since that time, I have had my patriotism questioned, had my life threatened, been called reprehensible names, and had my resolve and heart hardened. I've given up time with my daughter as she grew up so that I might return to D.C. with other women to press the peace and justice message forward and keep it visible so that no one would forget that our country is about plurality and diverse belief systems working together for democratic principles. I was removed from Senate Committee meetings on May 17, 2006 when I could not contain myself and shouted out, "Liar" to Rumsfeld as he ended a report to Armed Services Committee. I helped start the house in D.C. that grew into an "official" Pink House that housed women from around the country for a week or two when they could travel to D.C. in order to let officials know there were and are other views in the country that did not support our men and women being killed and our country being bankrupted and our constitution violated.
Even when I had briefly moved back to Indiana to take care of my mother so that she might leave this world in her own home of 60 plus years I managed to bring a bit of PINK to Fort Wayne to brighten the peace message that has been a constant in that agrarian and blue collar part of the world through the message of Church of the Brethren, Mennonite and Amish faiths as well as the progressive political community.
It is from this lens through which I have to view the death of Osama bin Laden. I wasn't filled with joy when I heard the news of his death. Neither was I sad. I've become very measured in my response to war. I am on discussion lists where almost every day I read about the deaths of young children from drone attacks. I hate war. I hate violent death. I hate what we do to each other. As I wrote in a rather inarticulate post shortly after I learned of bin Laden's death, my husband I opened a bottle of wine and toasted. The toast was, "May our troops come home soon."
I was trying to not make my response to this into a political statement. But everything we do has political impact. We make political choices in everything we do, even if we do not consciously understand or want to think about that. I mean that. The most important thing I have brought into my conscious life since I joined with the efforts of thousands of other women in the U.S. and around the world who work for peace is that every little thing we do, say, or think has consequence.
Mother's Day is coming this weekend. It seems like a good time to remember the call of Julia Ward Howe, yes the same person who wrote the words to The Battle Hymn of the Republic, when she wrote another document in 1870 when she issued her:
This week I will reflect on where I should aim my efforts in the next 10 years. These last 10 years were not a concrete block of time for me until last night. I have been putting all my efforts into starting a business these last few months. Everything somehow changed again in the last couple of days. This week I will reflect on these past few years and where my next 10 years of effort in this world might be placed. I need to do this. Until I sat down this morning to write my reaction to the death of Osama bin Laden that our President announced last night, I didn't really grasp how much my life has been directed by actions and reactions to things that this man set in motion. I'm pretty sure I met extremists who worked with bin Laden when I worked at the University Library here in Tucson. I first worked in current periodicals where international newspapers were available. This was during the time when Al Qaeda in the U.S. was head quartered here. An islamic cleric was murdered here during that time. Later when I worked at a museum here I became aware of FBI agents specifically using our buildings for terrorist related training exercises. More was going on around me in my daily life than I ever dreamed. These things have impact. We cannot ever know all the impact single actions may take, but we can know they are vast and immeasurable.
I need a week, I'm giving myself until Mother's Day, to contemplate the past ten years and the next ten years. What are you doing differently this week?
------------
I also published this as a member post on the BlogHer network.
The bombing of the Pentagon and WTC Twin Towers changed the course of my life n very significant ways. While I was initially worried about my step-daughter who was at work a few blocks away from the WTC in NYC. We heard from her fairly soon after the plane strikes and knew she was ok. We knew people who worked in the WTC who got out, although we did not know for a while if they were safe but they were. They worked on the 23rd floor. But that was it for direct impact on my life. Like most of the nation I was connected to the events of that day primarily through media coverage.
Indirect impact that day was far more significant for me. My sixth grader was so upset by the attacks that the school called me to ask how I wanted them to proceed with her. She had visited the WTC the previous month with her dad and knew the place and scale of what was happening in a way that most kids from Tucson could not.
I had worked for several years as the head of the security section at a major anthropological museum. I received training in cultural property protection coordinated by the Smithsonian and partially funded by the Getty. My thoughts were about evacuation routes, responders, and infrastructure and the magnitude of what was transpiring. Then like everyone else I mourned. Then I watched the whole world reach out to us and our leadership at that time choose how to react to that embrace of good will.
In October of 2001, a month after the attacks, my husband was contacted by the head of the section at the National Science Foundation, with whom he had a fair amount of contact during the first 15 years of his professional career. That gentleman told him they were having absolutely no one express interest in starting a rotation the following summer in 2002. They had slots they could not fill. The NSF brings academic and scientific professionals from various research areas to Arlington, VA to rotate through the Foundation for a year or two so evaluations of research proposals are headed up by people actively involved in the research area within which the proposal falls.
Unlike most academics, my husband had done a stint in the military after the draft was eliminated and before he finished his education. We are progressives and we are very patriotic. We decided it was our duty to help keep part of the cycle of scientific inquiry in our country going after the attacks. It was the least we could do. So we uprooted our family over the protests of our preteen daughter, who bemoaned that she would absolutely die if we took her away from her friends, and moved across the country to the Ballston area a couple of miles or so away from the Pentagon in a lovely little neighborhood just off Highway 50. Our daughter went to school that next year with kids whose parents had been killed in the Pentagon attack. It was a good year for us in all regards but financial. We went into debt with the moves and inability to rent our home in Tucson for the whole time, and the extra expense of living in a costly city. It was life-changing.
I expected surgical strikes and undercover ops would take out the Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden within a year or so from the time of the attacks. I did not expect the vast constriction of our rights as Americans nor did I expect the blatant misdirection of our precious resources and lives in war toward a land, against a people, and despot who had absolutely nothing to do with the heinous attacks on the U.S. on Septemberr 11, 2001.
Living just outside the Beltway made me aware of politics in, for me, a very new way. We didn't have a television that year, but we did have internet, radio, and newspapers. I watched a group of women vigil in front of the Whitehouse, starting in November of 2002, against the invasion of Iraq that the Bush administration seemed hell bent on accomplishing no matter what. I watched huge, absolutely HUGE, anti-war marches in the winter receive practically no news coverage. I began to join in those peace marches in February and March of 2003. I marched with CODEPINK, in their first march, on International Women's Day, March 8, 2003.
We had been attacked, our land and people assaulted and killed, I allowed my family's entire life to be upturned so that in some small way terror would not win by disrupting our country's way of life. I knew there were countless Americans who had made far larger changes to their lives and offered up sacrifices of their lives to serve our country, so I didn't think much about what our little family had done until our administration insulted and in many ways desecrated the memory of all those who died in the attacks on our country and in the initial attacks in Afghanistan by focusing our country's energies and sacrifices in a political and economic vendetta against Iraq. Wrapping my home in plastic and sealing it with duct tape just isn't my way. I wrote about it email lists and friends. I blogged about it a bit. I had to do more. My way is to react consciously and purposively. My father taught me that. We have civic responsibilities and they are precious.
Back in Arizona in April of 2004, I joined together with a few other women and began to bring the PINK message of peace to Arizona through CODEPINK Women for Peace actions. I liked the spontaneous, truly grassroots, and positively focused organic, interconnected nature of the links between individual women that made us respected by the peace and justice community and detested and vilified by the far right wing. I felt my actions were patriotic and proudly still feel so.
Since that time, I have had my patriotism questioned, had my life threatened, been called reprehensible names, and had my resolve and heart hardened. I've given up time with my daughter as she grew up so that I might return to D.C. with other women to press the peace and justice message forward and keep it visible so that no one would forget that our country is about plurality and diverse belief systems working together for democratic principles. I was removed from Senate Committee meetings on May 17, 2006 when I could not contain myself and shouted out, "Liar" to Rumsfeld as he ended a report to Armed Services Committee. I helped start the house in D.C. that grew into an "official" Pink House that housed women from around the country for a week or two when they could travel to D.C. in order to let officials know there were and are other views in the country that did not support our men and women being killed and our country being bankrupted and our constitution violated.
Even when I had briefly moved back to Indiana to take care of my mother so that she might leave this world in her own home of 60 plus years I managed to bring a bit of PINK to Fort Wayne to brighten the peace message that has been a constant in that agrarian and blue collar part of the world through the message of Church of the Brethren, Mennonite and Amish faiths as well as the progressive political community.
It is from this lens through which I have to view the death of Osama bin Laden. I wasn't filled with joy when I heard the news of his death. Neither was I sad. I've become very measured in my response to war. I am on discussion lists where almost every day I read about the deaths of young children from drone attacks. I hate war. I hate violent death. I hate what we do to each other. As I wrote in a rather inarticulate post shortly after I learned of bin Laden's death, my husband I opened a bottle of wine and toasted. The toast was, "May our troops come home soon."
I was trying to not make my response to this into a political statement. But everything we do has political impact. We make political choices in everything we do, even if we do not consciously understand or want to think about that. I mean that. The most important thing I have brought into my conscious life since I joined with the efforts of thousands of other women in the U.S. and around the world who work for peace is that every little thing we do, say, or think has consequence.
Mother's Day is coming this weekend. It seems like a good time to remember the call of Julia Ward Howe, yes the same person who wrote the words to The Battle Hymn of the Republic, when she wrote another document in 1870 when she issued her:
Mother's Day Proclamation for Peace
Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe out dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.
This week I will reflect on where I should aim my efforts in the next 10 years. These last 10 years were not a concrete block of time for me until last night. I have been putting all my efforts into starting a business these last few months. Everything somehow changed again in the last couple of days. This week I will reflect on these past few years and where my next 10 years of effort in this world might be placed. I need to do this. Until I sat down this morning to write my reaction to the death of Osama bin Laden that our President announced last night, I didn't really grasp how much my life has been directed by actions and reactions to things that this man set in motion. I'm pretty sure I met extremists who worked with bin Laden when I worked at the University Library here in Tucson. I first worked in current periodicals where international newspapers were available. This was during the time when Al Qaeda in the U.S. was head quartered here. An islamic cleric was murdered here during that time. Later when I worked at a museum here I became aware of FBI agents specifically using our buildings for terrorist related training exercises. More was going on around me in my daily life than I ever dreamed. These things have impact. We cannot ever know all the impact single actions may take, but we can know they are vast and immeasurable.
I need a week, I'm giving myself until Mother's Day, to contemplate the past ten years and the next ten years. What are you doing differently this week?
------------
I also published this as a member post on the BlogHer network.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer Calls on Legislature to Do The Lord's Work
This is getting ridiculous. You can read it for yourself, here, but basically Governor Jan Brewer seemed to step over some political/religioius boundaries when in today's replacement statement for the State of the State address she said, "With our faith and our courage tightly in place, we will step forward from this Chamber, dedicated to the Lord's work -- continuing our service to the public."
Arizona is run by right wing corporate money and has over-representation in its legislature by Christian and Mormon fundamentalists, most of us know that, but essentially charging the legislature to leave the legislative chambers and go out and do the work of a feudal concept of a male diety is way, way over the top.
Being over the top is nothing new to Brewer. She and her ilk seem to want to rule and not govern. I don't want any elected official to do the Lord's work, I want them to do what they were elected to do, the people's work. I can ignore references to God by officials now and then, but this purely Christian religious charge to the legislature is offensive to me and probably is to others who think that the welfare of citizens beingplaced in the hands of people who believe in a feudal framing of the concept of a deity to be quite frightening.
Arizona is run by right wing corporate money and has over-representation in its legislature by Christian and Mormon fundamentalists, most of us know that, but essentially charging the legislature to leave the legislative chambers and go out and do the work of a feudal concept of a male diety is way, way over the top.
Being over the top is nothing new to Brewer. She and her ilk seem to want to rule and not govern. I don't want any elected official to do the Lord's work, I want them to do what they were elected to do, the people's work. I can ignore references to God by officials now and then, but this purely Christian religious charge to the legislature is offensive to me and probably is to others who think that the welfare of citizens beingplaced in the hands of people who believe in a feudal framing of the concept of a deity to be quite frightening.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Senate Hearing on FLDS/Polygamy and a personal rant on religious freedom and the separation of church and state.
I didn't catch most of this hearing as I didn't read my email that said that Terry Goddard would be testifying in front of the Senate Judiciary panel on the FLDS and Polygamy and that it would be on C-Span 3 as well as streamed on the internet. My sketchy notes are at the very bottom of this rant. :-)
Many women I know watched in horror as the abuse of children became evident when the FLDS compound in Texas came under scrutiny and massive media coverage a few months ago when hundreds of children were removed and again when they were returned to the compound.
The absolute authority of religious doctrine over how a family conducts its business, both private and public, if it wishes to remain within a congregation of a church is nothing new. I happen to have a couple of my ancestral family branches come from a group of people who attempted to leave the Catholic Church a few centuries ago in Switzerland only to meet with horrific torture and death before escaping the country and then continent. The FLDS may be a much smaller group than other larger organized religions within which the repressive doctrine of absolute servitude to a single person through whom God speaks is at the core of the religion but it is not the only one and certainly not the most sizable example.
This is why the men, with significant input from their wives and scholarly female friends, wrote the constitution to address the centuries of inequity in European governments and religions with which they were most familiar and which they were specifically addressing in the Declaration of Independence, The Constitution of the United States of America, and the Bill of Rights - the first 10 amendments to the Constitution. They addressed both the tyranny of monarchy and religion albeit they addressed it in a bit more diplomatic manner speaking of freedoms. The flip side of any freedom is the tyranny to which it stands in contrast.
People in the United States, especially in the Mid-West where I grew up, don't like to talk about religion or politics,at least not in "polite company." As far as I have been able to discern, "in polite company" means in the company of women, children, in groups of diverse background be they socially, ethnically, or economically diverse. In other words, don't stir up the rabble with potentially revolutionary thought. Ha! They don't know me very well do they? Obviously someone like me, questioning everything from the get go, did not fit in well with those folks who were interested in preserving or conserving the status quo. Society needs a few folks like me or we would stagnate and die. Too many folks like me and we would become unstable with a lack of integrative infrastructure. At least that is the simplistic view. Complex systems are way too hard to talk about, so we simplify and get the basics wrong from time to time. That is just the human condition.
Let me let you in on a little secret. Tories still exist. Monarchists still exist. Just because people are living in the U.S.A. doesn't mean they actually support the tenets of our Representative Democracy. Most of the folks who don't support democracy don't even know they aren't supporting it. Religious freedom (which can also be read as freedom from specific religious tenets,) equal protection under the law, and freedom of speech are the pillars of our fledgling democratic state. And yes, we are still fledgling. The United States is less than 250 years old. We allowed slavery until 150 years ago, and women have had the vote for less than 100 years. This is all transitory and very unstable. This is why every citizen of the U.S.A. has responsibilities as well as rights. If we don't exercise these responsibilities then everything will disappear. Poof. No more democracy. Anyone who attempts to impose his or her way of thought and belief on you is engaging in distinctly un-American activities. When people say that by not allowing them to impose their way of thought that I am imposing mine, well let's just say that a mind is a terrible thing to waste. I don't expect or want others to view the biosphere as a complex living system that holds special spiritual meaning for them. I like my own view of life and love.
Don't talk about religion or politics (or sex) in polite company. WTF? We have to talk about these things. Nothing gets me madder than a swarm of killer bees than perfectly competent women saying that they don't get involved in politics. Ick. Ptooey. Hack. Spit. That leaves a very bad taste in my mouth. Who is carrying their share of the political responsibility? No. NOT their husbands! Their husbands do not understand the impact of current policies on families in the intimate way that women do. Allowing men more political input than women pretty much guarantees that education, health and the general welfare of the common person will take a back seat to areas where there is a concentration of male power: territorial aspects of life like borders, both real and imagined, and large symbolic tributes to power and status. It's okay, that is just how they are, for the most part.
I simply wish women would look at where submission, deference, and allegiance to a centralized patriarchy leads... to Warren Jeffs and if allowed to become ineradicably entrenched in society and culture to the cruel and immoral domination of papacy as represented by many corrupt papal regimes throughout the ages.
We need equal access to education so that all children are presented with access to the best understanding of art, literature, science, and world geography and history that our country can offer them. These children have a right to be well fed before the school day starts, as well as well fed in the evening when they complete their homework. These children have a right to healthcare. These children have a right to childhood, adolescence and early adulthood that broadens their understanding of the world and opportunities that it holds.
Religious indoctrination cuts off these avenues of learning and opportunity at an earlier age than the age of consent, the age of majority, and the age of full adult citizenship. Anything that cuts off opportunity to full rights and privileges as an adult is decidedly not American in spirit if not in law.
The separation of church and state, equality under the law, and the right to freedom of expression are all being denied by religious groups in the United States. Speak up women. Speak up for our children.
----------
Notes from the last few minutes of the hearing
______
human trafficking -- it is not the travel - it is the servitude.
the land they purchase
income streams, laundry of money in Nevada and Wyoming through corporations
task force
centralization of property and power to the leaders of FLDS
Bryce canyon property sold for 8 million - probably to fund legal
members of the community regularly go without pay for work
businesses were expected in the 1980s to turn over ownership to the church
mid to late 1990s leadership determined not only who marries whom but also how long they stay married to whom. "shem dear you need to get dressed and meet me at uncle Rolands--- I've been released from your father. 3 wives of his father -- he was not worthy of three wives. sons were admonished to support the church. "the time is too short, there is no support
waren and roland. women were remarried to others -- home was taken -- financial support without visitation of children. 2000 - stop doing business with those who have left and remove any such employees. 1999 end of the world was immanent. This gentleman spoke of his father, himself, his brothers -- 70 year old father had to drive alone -- unlike usual practice of traveling with a family member which he no longer had -- and he careened into a ravine to his death later that day --- with no skid marks evident.
Many women I know watched in horror as the abuse of children became evident when the FLDS compound in Texas came under scrutiny and massive media coverage a few months ago when hundreds of children were removed and again when they were returned to the compound.
The absolute authority of religious doctrine over how a family conducts its business, both private and public, if it wishes to remain within a congregation of a church is nothing new. I happen to have a couple of my ancestral family branches come from a group of people who attempted to leave the Catholic Church a few centuries ago in Switzerland only to meet with horrific torture and death before escaping the country and then continent. The FLDS may be a much smaller group than other larger organized religions within which the repressive doctrine of absolute servitude to a single person through whom God speaks is at the core of the religion but it is not the only one and certainly not the most sizable example.
This is why the men, with significant input from their wives and scholarly female friends, wrote the constitution to address the centuries of inequity in European governments and religions with which they were most familiar and which they were specifically addressing in the Declaration of Independence, The Constitution of the United States of America, and the Bill of Rights - the first 10 amendments to the Constitution. They addressed both the tyranny of monarchy and religion albeit they addressed it in a bit more diplomatic manner speaking of freedoms. The flip side of any freedom is the tyranny to which it stands in contrast.
People in the United States, especially in the Mid-West where I grew up, don't like to talk about religion or politics,at least not in "polite company." As far as I have been able to discern, "in polite company" means in the company of women, children, in groups of diverse background be they socially, ethnically, or economically diverse. In other words, don't stir up the rabble with potentially revolutionary thought. Ha! They don't know me very well do they? Obviously someone like me, questioning everything from the get go, did not fit in well with those folks who were interested in preserving or conserving the status quo. Society needs a few folks like me or we would stagnate and die. Too many folks like me and we would become unstable with a lack of integrative infrastructure. At least that is the simplistic view. Complex systems are way too hard to talk about, so we simplify and get the basics wrong from time to time. That is just the human condition.
Let me let you in on a little secret. Tories still exist. Monarchists still exist. Just because people are living in the U.S.A. doesn't mean they actually support the tenets of our Representative Democracy. Most of the folks who don't support democracy don't even know they aren't supporting it. Religious freedom (which can also be read as freedom from specific religious tenets,) equal protection under the law, and freedom of speech are the pillars of our fledgling democratic state. And yes, we are still fledgling. The United States is less than 250 years old. We allowed slavery until 150 years ago, and women have had the vote for less than 100 years. This is all transitory and very unstable. This is why every citizen of the U.S.A. has responsibilities as well as rights. If we don't exercise these responsibilities then everything will disappear. Poof. No more democracy. Anyone who attempts to impose his or her way of thought and belief on you is engaging in distinctly un-American activities. When people say that by not allowing them to impose their way of thought that I am imposing mine, well let's just say that a mind is a terrible thing to waste. I don't expect or want others to view the biosphere as a complex living system that holds special spiritual meaning for them. I like my own view of life and love.
Don't talk about religion or politics (or sex) in polite company. WTF? We have to talk about these things. Nothing gets me madder than a swarm of killer bees than perfectly competent women saying that they don't get involved in politics. Ick. Ptooey. Hack. Spit. That leaves a very bad taste in my mouth. Who is carrying their share of the political responsibility? No. NOT their husbands! Their husbands do not understand the impact of current policies on families in the intimate way that women do. Allowing men more political input than women pretty much guarantees that education, health and the general welfare of the common person will take a back seat to areas where there is a concentration of male power: territorial aspects of life like borders, both real and imagined, and large symbolic tributes to power and status. It's okay, that is just how they are, for the most part.
I simply wish women would look at where submission, deference, and allegiance to a centralized patriarchy leads... to Warren Jeffs and if allowed to become ineradicably entrenched in society and culture to the cruel and immoral domination of papacy as represented by many corrupt papal regimes throughout the ages.
We need equal access to education so that all children are presented with access to the best understanding of art, literature, science, and world geography and history that our country can offer them. These children have a right to be well fed before the school day starts, as well as well fed in the evening when they complete their homework. These children have a right to healthcare. These children have a right to childhood, adolescence and early adulthood that broadens their understanding of the world and opportunities that it holds.
Religious indoctrination cuts off these avenues of learning and opportunity at an earlier age than the age of consent, the age of majority, and the age of full adult citizenship. Anything that cuts off opportunity to full rights and privileges as an adult is decidedly not American in spirit if not in law.
The separation of church and state, equality under the law, and the right to freedom of expression are all being denied by religious groups in the United States. Speak up women. Speak up for our children.
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Notes from the last few minutes of the hearing
______
human trafficking -- it is not the travel - it is the servitude.
the land they purchase
income streams, laundry of money in Nevada and Wyoming through corporations
task force
centralization of property and power to the leaders of FLDS
Bryce canyon property sold for 8 million - probably to fund legal
members of the community regularly go without pay for work
businesses were expected in the 1980s to turn over ownership to the church
mid to late 1990s leadership determined not only who marries whom but also how long they stay married to whom. "shem dear you need to get dressed and meet me at uncle Rolands--- I've been released from your father. 3 wives of his father -- he was not worthy of three wives. sons were admonished to support the church. "the time is too short, there is no support
waren and roland. women were remarried to others -- home was taken -- financial support without visitation of children. 2000 - stop doing business with those who have left and remove any such employees. 1999 end of the world was immanent. This gentleman spoke of his father, himself, his brothers -- 70 year old father had to drive alone -- unlike usual practice of traveling with a family member which he no longer had -- and he careened into a ravine to his death later that day --- with no skid marks evident.
Monday, August 06, 2007
Intentionality and Activism
At times I find the irony of my situation, a woman who doesn't believe in the inherent worth of politics, in which I spend so much time writing about the whole mess to be a bit sardonic.
I am a dedicated believer that you have to go around obstacles. Trying to plow right through items or processes blocking your intended path, or become one with them so that you can just move them do not make sense to me. But I've also lived in the southwestern U.S. long enough to know that if you go around barricades you might just get swept away by a fast current or a flash flood's wall of water.
In anthropological graduate school there was a distinct disdain shown by mentors and professors for anyone foolish enough to flirt with the idea that any one person can impact a cultural system in a predictable fashion. Individuals have influence, sure, but intentionality and emergence are problematic concepts or so say some of the most informed discussants in fields that discuss such things over coffee and for fun as well as to make their bread and butter.
That's right, I'm talking post-modernist thought. (Run away, run away!) No really, it is okay. I'm talking thought not application. Premature application is almost as devastating as premature .... well, you know. Sorry. Couldn't resist and just had to see if you were paying attention. (And no I wasn't one of those undergrads who salted term papers with sentences like, "check here if you read this.") The banality of unnecesary use of complex tools for analysis of simple procedures is evident when you watch a group of young persons listening to literary "theorists" applying post-modernist thought to specific written works or performances. The truly profound can turn to mush when used by someone who really doesn't have a handle on the complexity of systems and the narrowness of any interpretation.
Any way let me talk about this via some examples.
In the grassy area south of the White House and north of the Mall an effigy of Bush was pulled down by a web created when women encircled the effigy and, while hanging onto one end of the thread, threw balls of yarn over the Bush effigy to the woman on the opposite side of the circle. A web was woven in this process and it then pulled down the Bush effigy.
The metaphor was beautiful and illustrative whether I believed in, acknowledged or even knew about Wiccan aspects of the action. There was also direct action and with it the consequent arrests. Women had banded together and taken back control over symbols associated with them,
this allowed the budding network of women to sprout and grow it's own frame (and trunk) rather than attempt to layer change over existing structure.
Ignoring is bliss. We don't have to pound through barracades, or go through channels to have them removed. We can go around them, tunnel under them, or even remove them spoonful or splinter at a time.
I'm wondering whether now is the time to start going around our Government in a new way? I'm not sure what that means. We have to grow it.
I am a dedicated believer that you have to go around obstacles. Trying to plow right through items or processes blocking your intended path, or become one with them so that you can just move them do not make sense to me. But I've also lived in the southwestern U.S. long enough to know that if you go around barricades you might just get swept away by a fast current or a flash flood's wall of water.
In anthropological graduate school there was a distinct disdain shown by mentors and professors for anyone foolish enough to flirt with the idea that any one person can impact a cultural system in a predictable fashion. Individuals have influence, sure, but intentionality and emergence are problematic concepts or so say some of the most informed discussants in fields that discuss such things over coffee and for fun as well as to make their bread and butter.
That's right, I'm talking post-modernist thought. (Run away, run away!) No really, it is okay. I'm talking thought not application. Premature application is almost as devastating as premature .... well, you know. Sorry. Couldn't resist and just had to see if you were paying attention. (And no I wasn't one of those undergrads who salted term papers with sentences like, "check here if you read this.") The banality of unnecesary use of complex tools for analysis of simple procedures is evident when you watch a group of young persons listening to literary "theorists" applying post-modernist thought to specific written works or performances. The truly profound can turn to mush when used by someone who really doesn't have a handle on the complexity of systems and the narrowness of any interpretation.
Any way let me talk about this via some examples.
- When you are inside you can't observe from the outside.
- All singular entites have a viewpoint from which they collect information and from which they act.
- You will choose a different path when you are walking with a group in contrast to when you are walking alone.
- Sometimes unintended consequences are small, sometimes large, but they always are.
In the grassy area south of the White House and north of the Mall an effigy of Bush was pulled down by a web created when women encircled the effigy and, while hanging onto one end of the thread, threw balls of yarn over the Bush effigy to the woman on the opposite side of the circle. A web was woven in this process and it then pulled down the Bush effigy.
The metaphor was beautiful and illustrative whether I believed in, acknowledged or even knew about Wiccan aspects of the action. There was also direct action and with it the consequent arrests. Women had banded together and taken back control over symbols associated with them,
this allowed the budding network of women to sprout and grow it's own frame (and trunk) rather than attempt to layer change over existing structure.
Ignoring is bliss. We don't have to pound through barracades, or go through channels to have them removed. We can go around them, tunnel under them, or even remove them spoonful or splinter at a time.
I'm wondering whether now is the time to start going around our Government in a new way? I'm not sure what that means. We have to grow it.
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