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Work 4 Peace,Hold All Life Sacred,Eliminate Violence! I am on my mobile version of the door-to-door, going town-to-town holding readings/gatherings/discussions of my book "But What Can I Do?" This is my often neglected blog mostly about my travels since 9/11 as I engage in dialogue and actions. It is steaming with my opinions, insights, analyses toward that end of holding all life sacred, dismantling the empire and eliminating violence while creating the society we want ALL to thrive in

Monday, March 04, 2013

Examining theft - to be continued



A white man told me today he’s had 10 bikes stolen over the past couple years.

I told him there’s another way to look at this: he was able to afford to buy 10 bikes over the past couple of years.

This was yet another reason I got in trouble at Occupy in D.C. when the 1% who came to pitch their tents & occupy the plaza were attempting to protect their resources from the 99% who called the plaza their homes during their daily lives.

Of course we all want to believe we are/were brought up 'poor', 'working class', anything but privileged. Yet we know if we have merely 4 things: a roof over our heads, food in the cupboard, shoes on our feet, clean water to drink, we are living among the top 5% of the world. If we add a car, clothes, electricity, we are in the top 1% of the world.

But we are busy looking at those with more then we have and wanting it, instead of comparing our lives with those that have less then we do and becoming committed and determined to STOP taking so much and to begin to share.

We need to re-examine 'theft' and rename it. The real 'theft' is the belief that it is not just okay but desirable to have more then others - really we rarely think about how much more then others we have, but we are more likely to think about those that have more then we have and how we can get some of that.

"Wealth" needs to be redefined as well, and here comes that old paradigm change I am promoting: the belief that it is wrong, immoral, anti-human to have more then any other human being on this planet. If we embraced this paradigm, we would have no need for jails, for our hyped up fears of someone 'stealing' from us, let alone for wars, occupations, military aggression, weapons, etc.etc.etc.

Let us redefine 'wealth' as the ability to share our mother earth's resources equitably, to find meaning and peace through the way we live our lives and not some 'spiritual' path we are on that allows us to continue on the material path that exploits the resources and destroys the lives of others while we seek an inner peace that can only come with our outer lives being one and the same.




We are NOT done...

I'm deeply disappointed in "We are NOT done" - their white maleness is sooooo obvious (or else their extremely internalized misogyny and racism). This is my post:

The two things that are grossly (at best) or criminally (closer to the truth) missing from above 'list' of our 'issues' (Stop the gridlock, reduce spending, universal voting system, tax the rich, etc.) are RACISM and MISOGYNY, which means "we are not done" is attempting to tweak the current system to bring them more privileges that they believe they are entitled to, instead of calling for REVOLUTION: DECOLONIZING our country, our world, our beings; DISARMING the military, police, all men; and DESTROYING the military/prison industrial complex, wall street, and the amerikan nitemare(dream)!

As long as we do not face the legacy we've been handed that this country was founded for, built for, grown for - and continues for - the benefit of white people at the 'detriment'(at best) of people of color, there will be no change. As long as we do not face the propaganda, myths, lies that make up the very fabric of this nation, we will perpetuate those myths, etc., even as we claim we are not done.