The task of the 5th house is to create drama-or else live melodrama – Caroline Casey

Drama is substantial, the stuff of journalism.  Melodrama is artificial and belongs to the world of sensationalism.  Lately, I’ve been exhorting my friends to recognize the difference, especially when I hear them say, “I can’t stand all the drama.”  

In my quest to live for my ideals in a world of conflicting values, drama is an inevitable and often helpful companion, because it can cut to the heart of an issue and make complex conflicts easier to comprehend.  Melodrama shrouds relevant information in a dense fog and trivializes our precious time.

It can be easy to confuse drama with melodrama because they have a common ingredient, conflict.  However, dramatic conflict engages our emotions, our passion and even our compassion.  Melodramatic conflict is a distraction from real life and a short cut to burn out.  Learning to distinguish between the two is a valuable life skill.

Solstice thoughts

As the streets of Tehran sizzle and people come to my neighborhood to assert their rights and bonfires rage in observance of the summer Solstice, I am reminded of Carlo Giuliani.  June 20th marked the 8 year anniversary of his death.  On that day he was in Genoa, Italy demonstrating against a meeting of the Group of 8, the most industrial and influential countries in the world today.  Carlo was shot in the face by the ruthless Carabinieri who then ran over his body with their land rover vehicle.  He would have been 30 years old today.  

Carlo Giuliani, casualty of the war waged by the wealthy to consolidate their power, even at the expense of human life.  It is a war in which mere survival is a form of resistance that not everyone can afford.  The United Nations estimates that 6 million children die every year because of policies imposed by the IMF and World Bank, institutions that are primarily controlled by G8 countries.  

To fight back is a privilege that Carlo chose to exercise.  His death tempered the movement to stop corporate globalization, but direct actions continued past Genoa.  Street protests continued to shift the balance between corporate power and people power, some more successfully than others.  We went on to learn from our mistakes and do more sophisticated preparation before engaging in mass direct action.

Last year I was at a training to get ready for an action at the Republican National Convention.  Our highly experienced trainer was showing slides from the Genoa action and she mentioned Carlo Giuliani.

“Sometimes,” she said, “people get killed.”  

Her statement seemed to gloss over something I could not put my finger on until she mentioned the importance of facing yourself.  That’s crucial, because when we step into the chrysalis of nonviolent mass action we emerge as different people.  Attending a mss action is like riding in a car or stepping onto an airplane.  You could wind up dead, as Carlo Giuliani wound up dead.  However the greater danger is much more common.  Step into the world of street protest, and you run the risk of being reborn.

Something about me & the world i live in

Violence is a corner stone of our society.  Children are routinely sexually abused.  Women undergo the trauma of rape.  Men are discouraged from developing their mind, body and soul but are given plenty of incentive to join armies and wage war.  Other men are convicted of nonviolent “crimes” and must then suffer the indignity of prison.  The oceans of a violent culture simmer and warm and unleash storms that kill.  Trying to maintain some sanity in this world is like trying to build a house during a hurricane.
I’m still just scratching the surface of molestations, massacres and the swirling vortex of institutionalized violence that we live under.  None of these things has actually happened to me, but that’s the thing about a culture; it touches everyone who lives in it.  I’ve enjoyed a lot of shelter from the storm, but even those who find refuge in the basement would have a hard time denying that something is going down.
It took me a while to figure out that something was going down. It’s amazing how those who shelter us from the storm will still refuse to talk about its existence. It’s amazing how seldom Americans will admit to each other that we live in a violent culture, but eventually I came to that conclusion. 
In the mysticism I practice one of our core values is knowledge.  So today, I keep restating the fact of our violent culture because I believe it is one of the most important things for Americans to know.  But this fact also leads to knowledge about me, an inhabitant of this society.   I am rarely directly victimized by this violence, but I’m always aware of it.  Not a single day goes by when it’s not on my mind or even breaking my heart.   Every day I the choice to feed this culture or starve it, and those are hard choices.  I would like the next generation to have easier choices.  I would like there to be a next generation.  
Pushing the violence out of my awareness has not worked very well.  I’ve tried.  It only serves to divide me from myself.  Instead, I practice a religion that emphasizes sitting in order to expand our awareness and find integration.   We sit with that which is difficult and contradictory.  We reflect on our choices and work.
 I sit on a daily basis and become aware of suffering, oppression and war.  This is difficult.  It brings up questions.  How can this be?  How can this be changed?  What is my role?  Often I have to sit with the questions.  On a good day I will find an answer; then I know what work lies ahead.

Soil not Oil

My city’s weekly paper ran a cover story with a funny subtitle.

“Old Message:  We’re doomed

New Message:  Not necessarily”

The name of the article was Hope for the Planet.  It contained some encouraging news from environmental scientests who see potential for us to reverse course on global warming.  Some of them were a little too caught up in the craze over biofuels, so I wrote a letter-to-the-editor and they published half of it.  I offer you the uncut version.

More Agriculture, Less Agrofuels, Soil not Oil

 

Tracey Holloway’s policy suggestions on climate change (Hope for the Planet, April 17 Cover Story) make me want  to jump start her gubernatorial campaign, if only she would reconsider her support for investments in agriculture based biofuels, also known as agrofuels.   Researchers who have studied agrofuels have concluded that even if all cropland in the U.S. were used to grow corn and all the corn were used to make ethanol, we would not produce enough ethanol to replace our over consumption of gasoline.*  Instead of growing crops to feed that over consumption, we could be addressing the climate crisis by supporting those enthusiastic young people who want to make careers out of growing food for their communities.  

Relocalization of our food system will be an essential piece of building resiliance in the face of environmental threats.  This is the message of Vandana Shiva, internationally renowned farmer who recently lectured in Wisconsin.  Her latest book exposes how the rush to subsidize agrofuels is actually an environmentally dangerous move largely driven by and for big agribusiness companies like ADM, Bunge and Cargill.  Get a copy of Soil not Oil today, and find out why the only Green in agrofuels is the color of corporate profits.  

 

*The studies I refer to include a report, “The False Hope of Biofuels,” profiled in The Washington Post, July 2, 2006

Civics

Last week I voted in my community’s municipal elections, something I highly encourage.  My country’s new president has sparked hope for political reform, but the people benefitting the most from Obama’s leadership will be those who have direct and accountable relationships with local elected officials.  Building those accountable relationships will require us to vote and mobilize our neighbors, friends, and family to do the same.  So do it.  It’s not just about being , “a good citizen,” as nice as that is.  It’s about advancing our self-interest.

I take pride in 2 acts fo good citizenship from election day.  Getting to the polls on time was one of them.  Number two is that I rode my bicycle to the edge of town in order to talk to Robert Pierce, long time Madison resident, coordinator of the South Madison Farmer’s Market and member of Growing Power.  I arrived just as he was ploughing his field.  Robert P. is a serious vegetable grower.  Serious vegetable grower’s tend to be busy people.  Lucky for me, he was gracious enough to chat with me about soil.

Soil literacy is another part of good citizenship.  Vandana Shiva convinced me of this.  In her best selling writings she coined the term Earth Democracy.  In my country we are used to restricting our political thought to electoral democracy, a dry world of polling stations, voter rolls and debates on the Senate floor.  The demands of the future will require us to get beyond that world and into the realm of Earth Democracy, an exciting world of dirt, microorganisms, organic fertilizers, top soil and the incredible food those resources produce.

On election day I participated in both forms of democracy.  I’m happy to say that the woman I voted for won.  Kathleen Falk will continue to be my county’s Executive.  She has a strong record of wetland conservation and restoration, so from that perspective I believe my ideals will benefit from her continued public service.  At the same time, ideals, good citizenship, and the needs of democracy in all its forms demand that we take the initiative for community improvement, rather than letting politicians do it for us.  So for that reason, I am also very grateful for my conversation with Robert Pierce.  We discussed some plans to build soil this summer.  The vision is manifesting as I write this.  Earth Democracy is being served.  Praise Be.

Shame???

Oh, what is the use of shame.  Very little from what I can tell.  Shame imprisons us.  It keeps us bound to destructive secrets that erode our ability to form intimate relationships and live up to our fullest potential.  

I am aware that some people find shame to be very useful.  When I was younger there were appeals to bring shaming back into American culture.  I suspect William Bennett was a major driver of this movement.  His argument came at a time when day time talk shows began competing to see who could broadcast the freakiest guests.  Perhaps some people saw reviving a culture of shame as better than having to turn off their television sets.  Maybe other people saw this revival as having the potential to advance progressive causes.  It’s tempting to believe that we could reform naughty corporations by harnessing the power of shame, but since they have none, it’s really not a very effective tactic.  In fact, shamelessness pays off very well for the rich and powerful.  Maybe the rest of us should try it.  

Shamelessness does not have to equal arrogance.  My magical colleagues are renowned for getting around dualistic brainwashing.  When mainstream culture tells us that shame and arrogance are the only possibilities, we invoke Pride, a third road that cuts through false choices.  True Pride.  Healthy Pride.  What fills you with pride?

Defining it

In my last blog entry I declared that organizing is an act of love.  I’m already anticipating the questions my statement raises.  ”What do you mean by organizing?  Really, what is love anyway?”

Last Fall similar questions arose at a training I attended.  One of the presenters asked if anyone could offer a description of organizing.  This is what I said.

Organizing is the art of creating and sustaining relationships based on solidarity, relationships that can challenge and ultimately replace relationships based on exploitation.

Later, when the training was drawing to a close, we were asked to shut our eyes and imagine the future world that we were all working so hard to create.  I pictured a world full of organizers, all of them furiously working on meaningful projects and long term relationship building.  The work was demanding and often difficult, but the organizers were nourished by thousands of acts of appreciation, because in this future, most people recognize that organizing is an act of love.

This is something I wrote around New Years

There is so much to be angry about.  My mother shovels snow to the stench of shit because a factory farm has been setting up shop within sight of the home where she raised me.  After describing her dilemma, she announced that she just paid her taxes, taxes my representatives have sent to the Israeli military so that they would have enough bombs to kill hundreds of Gazans.  Even the virtual world is not immune to the devastation.  A friend informs me that pictures of the Palestinian dead are cropping up in his social networking site.  Then he goes on to tell me about other pictures being taken from the sky above Appalachia.  The pictures are of coal ash, a poisonous by-product of coal burning.  The Tennessee Valley Authority’s power plants store their ash in huge containment ponds.   As with any system that relies on dirty energy, tragedy will happen.    On Dec 22nd one of those ponds burst , spilling 1 Billion gallons of nastiness into tributaries of the Tennessee River.  I view the aerial photos showing a lake of toxicity washing over people’s homes.  It reminds me of the tons of cow shit generated by that factory farm now embedded on the landscape where I used to watch sunsets.  Mother says the manure gets piled on a hill to fester, and, during a heavy rain, it will wash right over to the neighbor’s playground.  There is a lot be be angry about.  

There is a lot to be angry about, especially if, like me, you live by a coal plant, and when you hear the trains making their deliveries of fossil fuel, you wonder how many mountains were leveled to make today’s heating bill possible.  

There’s a lot to be angry about it, if, like me, you drove a lot this week and had to wonder, while stopping at the gas station, about this bizarre and deadly exchange the U.S. has with the middle east.  Send in the guns.  Distribute to dictators, terrorists, and armies of occupation.  Remove the oil.  And if petroleum oil wasn’t bad enough, now there is palm oil.  It comes from palm trees that are usually grown on tropical lands that were once rain forest, until they were converted by fire.  Now palm oil, the fruits of this scorched earth agrisprawl, has infiltrated thousands of products in just about every American supermarket.  Grrrrr!!!  Feeling that every meal contains rain forest destruction is enough to drive a person crazy.

But not for me; not today.  Today I devoured a bowl of manoomin, wild rice grown by the Anishanabee people.  They grow it north of where I live.  They have grown it before, during and after American colonial genocide, and their defiant food traditions have been keeping alive possibilities of liberation.  Plant and resist.  Harvest and resist.  Eat and resist.  When I eat manoomin I ingest some ancient strength. The rice mingles with the rage that lives in my belly, and that digestive marriage produces something new, a productive anger, a call to action, transformation.  I go for a walk, mail some protest letters, compose some e-mails & make further plans for turning my seething rage into focused intent.  I intend to keep organizing.  Organizing is an act of love.

One Person’s masochism is someone else’s comfort

Supposedly, Wisconsin is in the grip of a bone chilling cold front.  The words of caution didn’t deter me from going out to enjoy today’s sunshine.  I walked around the neighborhood and was surprised at how warm I felt, in spite of being well bundled

I decided to visit my place on power on the shores of Lake Mendota, and suddenly I felt the meaning of the words wind chill.  Out there there are no trees, no houses, no barriers to the rapidly moving north east air that pummeled my exposed little face.  Now those words of caution all make sense.

Nevertheless, I stayed, bedazzled and captivated by the winter wind surfers strutting their colorful sails and daring to do acrobatics on the frozen lake.  I canceled my plans to hike across Mendota, but I watched Her for a while.  The wind was whipping snow across the lakescape.  The after math of this is drifts that no human architecture can equal.   It was glorious, and the chance to behold a piece of glory is worth some pain.

Reading, pausing, reading

Today I am taking my second break from the book that I’ve been devouring, Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.  I bought it the night that Naomi Klein visited my town.  She delivered a riveting speech to a packed lecture hall.  It was her first public address since the November elections.  Afterwards I just had to get a copy of her book since everyone has been talking about it.  On the back cover there is a prominent quotation by Howard Zinn.  He calls The Shock Doctrine, “a brilliant book, one of the most important I have read in a long time.”

During my first year of college, I was assigned to read the beginning chapters of Howard Zinn’s premier publication, A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present.  It was electrifying to discover an historian whose writings were all about the experiences and resistance of the enslaved, the indentured and the indigenous, nevertheless, I didn’t read very far past the colonial period.  Then a decade passed, Naomi Klein came to town, I read Part I of her book and then felt compelled to finish Zinn’s history before going any further.  So that’s what I did.  

People’s History  was one of many excellent text books from my undergraduate days.  There were plenty of not so good ones too, but the sheer volume of assigned readings that defined my college life led to some literary burnout.  The mind and heart needs time to digest profound ideas, just as the stomach needs time to digest a wholesome meal.   Most semester class loads didn’t allow for that kind of balance.  If I lurched down the aisle to receive my diploma, it’s only because I was feeling more like a foie gras goose than a triumphant student.

2008 marked my full recovery from being burnt out on books.  Through intentional searches and chance discoveries, I rediscovered my passion for works of history and historical fiction.  Each one taught me something different, but together they reaffirmed that it is important to make time for ideas, and it is also important to take breaks.