Everyone has their own opinions, judgements, ideas and passionate displays. Each are controversial, each with passion supporters and detractors.
Is there a 'right' way?
We, as a society, need to stop criticizing each other for our passions, and start doing something productive. Something WE (as individuals) are passionate about. Something more than just sitting down and watching TV at the end of the night. There is so much going on the world, it is a shame to NOT get involved.
I believe:
*Deep down, each person wants to make their world a better place to be.
*Change starts small. It could be one small voice on a school yard that stands up to a bully.
*Everyone has the ability to be great catalyst for change and part of a solution.
My point:
Never stop learning.
Never stop being part of a solution.
Never stop pursuing your passion, dreams or desires.
Never stop doing what you love.
No matter what.
In honor of Money Monday and the first Monday of 2012, I dedicate this post to Big Banks, and the notice that average Americans are sending you.
You are not too big to fail.
If you haven't already, now is the time to move your money out of big banks.
Consider it the healthiest New Years Resolution you can keep.
In a time when corporations are people, and our elected officials seem to have more concern for the bottom line of business than the health and well-being of the populous, your dollars now become your voice. ... and collectively, our voice is powerful.
If you don't think you matter, you are wrong. Your money matters. If you want to see a more sustainable, locally driven economy in your community, then support the local businesses with your dollars.
"Be the change you want to see in the world."
~Ghandi
Courage.
One word can evoke a thousand images in the mind.
One word. Whose connotation evokes the ideals and ability to confront fear, pain, danger, uncertainty or intimidation. To act rightly in the face of popular opposition, shame, scandal or discouragement.
Courage.
When I was in grade-school, we put on a performance of the Wizard of Oz and I had a starring role as the Cowardly Lion. Perhaps it was that moment of being cast, or the lines, or perhaps the dozens of shows we did over the school year. But there was something I took away from that experience that has shaped me.
I have never thought of myself as particularly courageous. Adventurous? Yes. Brave? No. Yet, as I get older I find that just taking a small step outside of one's comfort zone takes courage. Courage whispers in your ear when you are busy paying attention to other things in 'life'.
It takes courage to live. It takes courage to stand up for what is right. It takes courage.
Every day is an opportunity to start a new adventure, to live with courage.
Thus the reason for my blog name: Begin an Adventure.
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature,
nor do the children of men
as a whole experience it.
Avoiding danger is no safer
in the long run than outright exposure.
Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
--Helen Keller
What is your adventure?
Muster the courage to take one small baby step outside your comfort zone and begin it today.
So, apparently one of the latest trends is to tell 'people' to 'Get a job'. The'People' I refer to are people such as: Occupy Protestors, People on unemployment/welfare/food stamps, recent college grads and .... ME!
You see, I have this friend. A friend I have had for the last 20+ years. This particular friend and I have been through a lot. Our lives, friendship and love for each other has ebbed and flowed. I have known this person since I was 8 years old. Over the years we have stayed in touch and I have watched this friend accumulate the 'perfect' life. Which includes the perfect career, the perfect house, the perfect spouse, the perfect car, with the perfect 2.5 kids.
And we had lunch not too long ago, to catch up. I will skip the boring part of the 'catching up' and head straight to the meat.
As we were chatting about life, and I stated that money had been tight, they said:
"You should just get a job"
I responded with, "you could hire me" to which they backpedaled.... quickly. I quickly followed up with:
'You know I have been writing and currently have 6 books published, right?' and
'Money is tight, self-publishing is expensive and book sales have been slow, I am undeterred. I love what I do and I'm going to just keep working as hard as I have been and things will turn around.'
Their response:
"You could be so awesome if...."
My. Jaw. Dropped. I didn't hear anything after that.
I was silently raging.
I had nothing else to say.
I kindly finished my meal and said my good-byes.
Still shocked.
After 20 years of knowing this person, of being friends for so long.... I was stunned. It took me a while and a very long walk home to come to the following conclusion.
My value, and the value of my brothers and sisters with college degrees and no 'job' isn't based on some arbitrary idea of:
'what I can do for someone else' or 'what someone will pay for me.'
My value is ME.
Just living, breathing and existing has value.
Not to mention my ideas, passions, educated opinions and connections. I am not going to just go out on the job market to pimp myself out to the highest bidder. I am worth more than that and refuse to de-value myself.
Take note: You are worth more than that, do not devalue yourself. EVER.
I thought I was done posting about the Occupy movement. I thought that somehow the conversations would start and the police brutality would end. By some magical wave of the 'Scott Olson' wand, I mistakenly thought that unprovoked beatings would end.
They haven't.
An abridged version:
Raw Footage:
This sickens me.
Will it have to come to a 'Kent State moment' before the world wakes up to the heavy hand that is unfairly being placed upon our country's citizens? I thought we already had this moment? Didn't the events in Oakland teach us anything?
The police in this video are repeatedly beating students, students who are standing there. Students who are not throwing anything, punching anyone, defacing property or putting anyone else at risk. It is during daylight, they are unmasked and unarmed. These students are ... wait for it....
STANDING.
They are expressing their First Amendment right of Freedom of Speech and Assembly. And yet, it is students who are trapped between the solid wood baton of police and an immovable bush.
What happened to protecting the citizens of this great land who pay taxes which pay the police salaries?
Call the fucking Marines, at least they have taken an oath to protect this country from all enemies, foreign AND domestic.
P.S. A very Happy Birthday to the Marine Corp today!
Here he is again, in uniform (with an helmet on).
In Iraq.
Look at him.
Look at his eyes, his face, his body. Look at his courage to not only join the military but go to war in Iraq TWICE in defense of this country.
This is your brother, my brother. He is my uncle, cousin, son, father and beloved.
Look at him again.
I have never met him. My introduction to this man, was this picture.
This man, my brother/father/lover, was shot in the head with a tear gas canister by the Oakland Police Department while marching PEACEFULLY with the #Occupy protests.
He is now laying in a hospital in critical condition with a fractured skull and brain swelling.
Cards, flowers and well wishes can be sent to:
USMC Scott Olsen
Highland Hospital
1411 East 31st Street
Oakland, CA 94602
"The first rays of light have broken upon the night sky heralding a new dawn after the darkest of hours. A song of change has been heard. A chant of hope, a group of people who speak of a better tomorrow, a brighter future and a more effective (and efficient) form of 'government'.... Ruled by the people, for the people. A new era of democracy is upon us. The kind our founding fathers could only dream of."
I have blogged about this, I have posted about this, and I am consumed by this. An idea, a spark that has ignited in the hearts and minds of thousands of Americans.
"An idea. Resilient, highly contajous. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it's almost impossible to iradicate."
A revolution is beginning to stir in the heart of the American youth. The youth who grew up with computers and laptops in front of us, the youth who made this world small with our social networking creations and online infomation sharing capabilities.
We are the children of the internet.
Children of the information age and we will never rely on mass or corporate media to share the message we want heard. The era has arrived, and never before has there been such a movment from our generation. Never before has the power of our 'social media' been felt, never before has anyone seen what this generation is capable of. Never before have we flexed our intellectual and creative muscles on how we can change our world. We are masters of information, conductors of thought, and this movement will be downloaded, our thoughts will be documented, every person's action will be streamed and circulated and spread without direction.
The Whole World will be watching.
Despite the limited coverage the Occupy Wall Street protest has had from the US media, despite the dismissal on the claim that protesters 'lack a clear objective', dispite the ridicule from every major news organization on everything from 'lack of organization' to accusing the protestors of being 'just a bunch of hippies smelling like patchouli and weed and beating on drums', and dispite the dismissive quality Corporate Media is not so sarcastically suggesting.
The truth is: We are highly organized, we are highly diverse, we are highly educated and we are invested in our future.
Do not be so arrogant to think that our slow and careful pace can be mistaken for ineptitude.
At this point, so-called 'Third-World' news organizations have better more accuate news reporting skills than we have seen thus far.
From India, the Hindustan Times gets to the crux:
"There are obvious reasons. We are watching the beginnings of the defiant self-assertion of a new generation of Americans, a generation who are finishing their education with no jobs, no future, but still saddled with enormous, unforgivable debt. Most were of working-class or otherwise modest backgrounds, kids who did exactly what they were told they should: studied, got into college, and are now being humiliated - faced with a life as deadbeats, moral reprobates.
Is it really surprising they would like to have a word with the financial magnates who stole their future?
What we are witnessing can also be seen as a demand to finally have a conversation we were all supposed to have back in 2008. Everything we'd been told for the last decade turned out to be a lie. Markets did not run themselves; creators of financial instruments were not infallible geniuses; and debts did not really need to be repaid - money itself was revealed to be a political instrument, trillions of dollars of which could be whisked in or out of existence if governments or central banks required it.
It seemed the time had come to rethink everything: the very nature of markets, money, debt; to ask what an 'economy' is actually for. Then, in one of the most colossal failures of nerve in history, we all collectively clapped our hands over our ears and tried to put things back as close as possible to the way they'd been before.
We don't know precisely what will come out of this round. But if the occupiers manage to break the 30-year stranglehold on the human imagination, they will have done us the greatest favour anyone possibly can."
I've heard many of the critiques of the movement, saying everything from:
"They need a unified message"
to
"They need a list of demands"
But, I see those critiques and requests as nothing more than a way to figure out how to pacify the people and make this movement just 'go away'.
#OccupyWallStreet will never "Go Away", I guarantee you that.
Well, then, what is this about?
Everything.
That's the thing about the movement, it includes everyone, regardless of race, gender, age, political orientation, sexual orientation or what-have-you. Everyone has an opinion, everyone has a grievance, and everyone has a reason for their voice to be heard.
EVERYONE has one demand.
Who is everyone? Everyone is the 99% of people who have received the short end of the stick. The people who pay too much in taxes, people whose homes have been foreclosed, people who have lost their retirement in Ponzi schemes and Enron scandals, people who have no food to put on the table for their kids, people who work 60 hours a week for minimum wage with no health insurance and people who are just plain sick and tired of not being heard. We are the 99% who have to split a very small amount of monetary pie. It includes everyone from
Grannies for peace
to Pilot Unions, Teachers Unions, and Mass Transit Unions.
To even our most recent Middle-East war Vet's
(on a side-note, my sister is being deployed to Afghanistan in the next two weeks. God-speed sis, I love you. Come back safe.)
and...
Where are you?
Facts are:
There isn't just one demand - that is what makes this beautiful.
There isn't just one person - that is what makes this powerful.
There isn't just one place - it is spreading.
This is why the movement is growing. This is why the movement will not go away.
The power is the people.
United We Stand!
It is not longer about race, gender, position, age or sexual orientation. It is about all of us. It is about humanity.
It is about existence.
It is about democracy.
An un-defined, un-leadered, un-organized, beautiful, organically growing movement that is history in the making.
A great article in Huffington Post
"Occupy Wall Street may expose the Achilles' heel of many other civil protests. Occupy Wall Street has no repeated cheer to stop coal mining, or to grant civil rights, or even to end a war. This protest cannot be boiled down to a simple soundbite because this protest is ambitiously seeking a complex, fundamental, philosophical change in the social, political, and economic infrastructure of our country. (Try feeding that line to Katie Couric before she goes on the air and see what kind of terrified, vacuous stare you get in return.)"
“Education is a human right with immense power to transform. On its foundation rest the cornerstones of freedom, democracy and sustainable human development.” ~ Kofi Annan
A good one on: MSNBC (sorry I couldn't embed the video)
One news organization defying the rest:
Michael Moore being interview by Keith Olberman:
... and with many family and friends who have been shipped overseas, I post this one for you. You are not alone.
We are all in this together!
His note says:
"I was deployed to Iraq 4x
1 of my friends is missing his arm
1 of my friends killed himself
I've been blown up 2x by roadside bombs
Hearing fireworks makes me nervous
I cant sleep at night
All so bankers and war profiteers could get richer
I am the 99%
www.occupywallst.org"
UPDATE: A declaration made in the wallstreet protest:
This is the Declaration of the Occupation of New York City and the call to action, adopted last night by an enthusiastic consensus.
As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.
As one people, formerly divided by the color of our skin, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or lack thereof, political party and cultural background, we acknowledge the reality: that there is only one race, the human race, and our survival requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their brethren; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.
They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.
They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give CEO’s exorbitant bonuses.
They have perpetuated gender inequality and discrimination in the workplace.
They have poisoned the food supply, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.
They have continuously sought to end the rights of workers to negotiate their pay and make complaints about the safety of their workplace.
They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.
They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.
They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.
They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.
They have sold our privacy as a commodity.
They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.
They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.
They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.
They have donated large sums of money to politicians supposed to be regulating them.
They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.
They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantive profit.
They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty book keeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.
They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.
They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.
They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.
They have participated in a directly racist action by accepting the contract from the State of Georgia to murder Troy Davis.
To the people of the world,
We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.
Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.
To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.
Join us and make your voices heard!
We are the 99%
UPDATE: October 1, 2011
We are watching History happen.
Today, Occupiers marched over the Brooklyn Bridge. Hundreds were peacefully arrested including Natasha Lennard a NY Times reporter, and a 13 year old girl with a camera. See more here:
In the words of my mother: "We encourage our girls to follow their own path, and to be independant."
That's what I have done. I've never been a joiner. I've always done my own thing. I grew up in a world and environment to be strong, independent, educated and to stand up for the injustices.
My parents always taught me "Doing what is popular is not always right, and doing what is right is not always popular."
... and right now, I am compelled to do what is RIGHT! I know I might lose a few of you with this post, but I believe in something. I believe in something today more than I have ever believed before.
I believe in change.
and...
NOW is our chance.
NOW is our opportunity to change things for the better.
You may or may not have heard of something called Occupy Wall Street. The US media is not covering this, but there is some good international coverage coming out of Europe (Here).
And, it is spreading.
In their own words, Occupy Together states that,
"We hope to provide people with information about events that are organizing, ongoing, and building across the U.S. as we, the 99%, take action against the greed and corruption of the 1%."
No one can predict the moment of a revolution.
A great video here:
Just like in Europe.
Just like in the Middle East.
We demand change. We demand true democracy.
And we will not be silenced any more.
The revolution is now.
Get educated.
Get involved.
Spread the word.
UPDATE: It is spreading. Passionate peaceful protests will change the world!
Watch this.
