tornado warnings...

I'm such a Californian: when a young, straight bi-racial couple with a baby approaches me at the rest stop, they ask me about the weather.

What weather I'm thinking, it's been beautiful - hotter then I like, but I've been hanging out all day, writing, reading, talking with folks, catching up on blogging some.

Now I hear there are tornado warnings out through Oklahoma.

Lucky for me, I can head south & hope like hell I don't run into any.

Ron Paul and veg oil in Albuquerque - to be continued

Bringing out the big guns...

pride goeth before a fall - to be continued

I'm so full of myself: I've found a nice, empty lot with a decline to park my truck on so I can lift the hood without help and change my veg oil filters.

I change the little one again, even tho I just changed it yesterday, 500 miles ago, in California at a rest stop. It is dirty already, although not critical, but I decide to change it anyway along with the big filter.

Feeling quite accomplished, I lower the hood and attempt to start the truck. It is still hot so I'm starting on veg oil. Only the truck won't start.

I decide there is air in the line, reopen the hood - altho it is much heavier this time despite the decline - and notice that the big oil filter has not filled up with veg oil. So I open a drain valve and rescue some oil, feeling quite resourceful, and poor into the filter.

It STILL won't start. I switch to diesel and she finally fires up - not after I close the hood on my little finger, smashing it and drawing blood! grrrrr - battle scars of veg oil

New Mexico activists

Veg oil and organic seeds morning - to be continued

day 2 - to be continued...

I wake early, after 4 hours of sleep and prepare myself for continuing my journey. 

I have filled up several bottles of water that sit next to me with a bag of snacks, left-over dim sum, my travel mug still full of luke warm coffee, and my book on tape lined up and ready to continue read– i could drive forever!

There is a surprising amount of traffic - not like Livermore of course – but I welcome it: I paint my truck for these messages to be seen – and they are seen. Some folks shake their heads in wonderment or bafflement; one white fellow gives me the finger as several others twist in their seats to flash a big smile and peace symbol.

I get so engrossed in my book I barely notice the needle on the heat gauge creeping over the center mark as morning morphs into afternoon. I’m glad I drove out of the desert in the early morning – out of desert and into the Arizona mountains.

I climb up to over 7000 feet – very slowly, eye now glued to my heat gauge. My ankles are swelling – besides being so engrossed in reading, I’ve been munching on pretzels which have so much salt – bad combo for my poor ankles.

The lovely rest stop outside of the grand canyon and flagstaff is closed, much to my disappointment so I have to stop at a pilot gas station. I snatch a parking space in front of macdonalds, mindful but ignoring the stares and stage whispers all around me.

I hear a womon ask me “rise womyn what?” as she attempts to read my shirt. I’m startled between the land of the book I am reading where the character is a reclusive white woman so old she has to die her wild hair the red of her youth and here, stepping into real life time, is the character.

I attempt to shake myself completely out of the story – although the despair and grief of this red-headed womon character still hang around me – and resist rubbing my eyes as I gape stupidly at this slight, elderly yet spry character leaning against the MacDonald's wall, cigarette in wrinkled hand, trying to speak with me, not on cd through ear phones in the cab of my truck, but in real time.

She contemplates and then nods sanguinely, agreeing we must rise.

I talk w/her about Julia Ward Howe and her 1870 call for womyn to take over. She stares at me, as if hearing words for the first time, then continues to nod solemnly as she states maybe that is what it will take.

Then to my dread she makes a thinly veiled racist attack on Obama. "We gotta first get rid of them that's in the white house." she declares, slyly looking at me altho she has turned her face and the shoulder where the cigarette is dangling from her hand, slightly away, as if she is trying to hide her covert studying my reaction.

"Them that's in the white house"? Her white Arkansas accent, laced with a cigarette growl, noticeably thickens as I attempt to figure out how to challenge her racism while steering the conversation back to common ground.

She must see something in my breath as she adds immediately with as much denial as she can muster, that it has nothing to do with race. I say sure it does but she continues to deny her hatred is based on race.

I reflect on my conversation with Carole in Whole Foods the day before I left and try to channel her, my hero and mentor. We had the conversation about Obama's faults - we knew them down to the most recent piece of legislation he's signed or vetoed - but this woman knows nothing: except she hates a Black man being president, a Black man holding the highest office of this country, a Black man being the most influential man in our world.

I notice several men in military uniforms sitting inside MacDonalds and I’m shocked again –I don’t remember such a military presence growing up, not even in nyc where we went monthly - by everyone's acceptance, everyone continuing their lives oblivious of the violent aggressive strangers hanging around like just another potted plant.

My live character spits "he's a liar" and I say, what's so different about any politician. She looks a little chagrined when I mention Nixon, she mentions Clinton, and then I ask her what has Obama lied about?

I personally think he's been pretty truthful, if one is listening carefully, sifting thru double speak and all that, especially in his pre-election campaign speech about taking our troops out of Iraq and putting them into Afghanistan. Of course he did say he's going to shut down Guantanamo but he's claiming Congress has his hands tied - which we all know is a lie.

She is saved from answering me as the glass door swings open and out comes a huge old white man, arms laden with MacDonalds packages, wearing some kind PETA shirt that barely covers his 20 month bulge for a stomach.

She immediately trots after him as she flings over her shoulder "nice talking with you".

On the road again .... finalfuckinly!

It takes so much to finally leave town. Today, I take my time, grateful I have no deadline I have to meet, just a self-imposed "today is the day!"

I finish all the normal daily errands: bank, bills, post office, library and finish preparing for the trip packing clothes, food, supplies, arranging and rearranging truck space. I make my last Berkeley Bowl stop, skip my run for dark organic chocolate from Berkeley Natural Grocers and opt instead to indulge in dim sum on my way outta town!

By the time I leave, I am heading into rush hour traffic, stuck in Livermore for several long minutes - but I get to flash my billboard to probably thousands of commuters. The reaction is mild, given I'm so close to both a huge prison and the nuclear laboratory.

The last time a few months ago I headed down this road, a car full of soldiers almost lunged head-on into traffic they were so busy screaming 'fuck you' and flinging middle fingers out the window of the shiney new white dually pick up truck.

This time, I get several casual honks, peace signs, grins - and a couple baffled blank "huh?"s.

My first stop is a rest area on I5. I stretch, attempt to heat up my coffee but it seems I'm outta propane, so I que up a book on tape and begin to drive into slowly fading light.

By the time I reach the turn off for Bakersfield, it is almost pitch black out, which is good because I have to climb the Tehachapi mountain, over 4000 feet high, and the combo of heat and incline cause the needle on my temperature gauge to also climb.

My truck doesn't mind heading up mountains in the cool of the dark night. I drive all the way to the mojave desert before climbing into the back to take a brief sleep. I still have desert and more mountains to climb before it gets too hot tomorrow!

Embrace, reclaim original intent of Mothers Day!

Please remember and reclaim the original intent of the Mothers Day call: for womyn to leave home, gather together, and figure out how to have peace in our world. Know our herstory! Smash the hallmark, flower & chocolate industry, etc., co-opting of mothers day! BOLD womyn gather together today, 4-7pm.

Here is the call, written by Julia Ward Howe in 1870. As you read, imagine what our country (and therefore world) would be like if womyn had insisted on making this a great and earnest day of counsel:

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 great 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.

Don't be fooled (or co-opted)

Recently, several states, cities, counties are considering making laws governing the use of drones - most laws concerning privacy issues, not the issue of the morality of using drones to hurt/hunt people.

Let's not be fooled - or co-opted. We know that this is an attempt to dilute rising public anti-drone pressure: notice that the use of drones is a given; controlling, setting parameters for that use to a certain extent is the focus of the legislation.

I think we need to fight harder to totally get rid of drones at the hands of both 'law enforcement' and military. For search and rescue, no problem. But to use against people, given the current (and all the past) history of our country, a resounding NO, NEVER.

So even if we are somewhat heartened by this at least acknowledgement (and beginning sprouts of our years of hard work) that people are standing against drones, please keep pushing for the ideal.

I am reminded yet again of Fanny Lou Hamer, who more then courageously fought all the way from Mississippi to Atlantic City to demand the seating of 68 delegates that had been elected by over 80,000 Mississippi votes to the Democratic National Convention in 1964, where Blacks not allowed.

After much fighting, the delegation was offered 2 seats but told they could not vote.

She walked out, refusing to take the crumbs, refusing for her fight to be diluted.

She faced brutal rapes and beatings, horrific torture, jail time, death threats - things we do not have to face at this point - but she stood firm.

Let's stand with Fanny Lou Hamer and not accept the unacceptable!

The Amerikan dream

I see two major problems entrapping people of this country: 1) we don’t know the truths about our history; 2) we know as surely as we know the color of our eyes, the lies, propaganda, myths that are so dominant, so pervasive they permeate the water we drink, the air we breathe, the food we eat; so powerful that we rarely even consider questioning those lies birthed long before we are even conceived.

From conception, we are completely sunk plunged into this legacy of lies and justifications that grows with us, carefully taught, thoroughly pounded into our cells, as our past, our history, our glory, the truths of our nation.

We want to think of ourselves as “good people”, industrious, smarter then most, enterprising. We want to believe we really DESERVE the riches, the life styles, the access to walmart, walgreens, 24/7 cheap stuff, the land, roads, food, street lights; we want to know that we have what we have (and other people don’t) because we’ve worked hard, pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps, paid our dues.

We want to think we go around the world truly helping people – not helping ourselves to their resources: their land, their oil, sugar, rubber – whatever we need during whichever decade – even their bodies, their labor, their babies.

We want to believe the people we are ‘helping’ are suffering because of their own ignorance, deprived because of their own lack of diligent productivity, dying because of their own incompetence – not because we have invaded, stolen their resources, and polluted & destroyed their lives.

We don’t want to know that everything – EVERYTHING – we have from our homes on this soil, our education, our jobs – has been gained thru genocide, rape, enslaving people – wars, invasions, occupations.

Who had to die in order for us to be able to pursue the “Amerikan Dream”?

We know the First Nation people had to die, and millions of Africans as well.

Do we know our military was first sent off this land in 1801 to protect U.S. business interests? And the country now known as Libya is where our soldiers fired their guns into.

Do we know that we have overtly invaded, occupied, and/or bombed over 120 countries in our world? Which has enabled us to maintain over 1000 U.S. military bases – that we know about – in the world?

And who has to keep dying for us to pursue the Amerikan Dream?

Most recently we know that over a million Iraqis had to die, and the bloody dust hasn’t settled yet over Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, Libya – not that we count deaths of collaterally damaged civilians of color – so who knows how many are dying/have died.

Over 300 mostly women in Bangladesh had to burn up in flames in order to keep the steady stream of cheap clothes to wal-mart flowing.

Do we know we have over 80 U.S. military “installations” in a country the size of Indiana? A country we first sent our troops to in 1871; a country our military has been occupying since 1945; a country where we permanently and collaterally ‘damaged’ over 2 million civilians in the name of stopping communism in the early 1950’s?

Do we know that today we are working on building yet another base on one of the islands of that country so it can accommodate U.S. nuclear missiles lugged around on naval submarines and ships, 300 miles from China?

Do you think I am telling you this so you can be depressed? Overwhelmed? Hopeless? So you can glibly justify going back to our lives pursuing the Amerikan dreams as usual because we can’t do anything anyway, it’s tooooo awful, toooooo much.

NO – I’m telling you this so that we can be empowered: with the truth! With the ability to see thru the lies; with freedom; to gain the tools we need to examine our history, lies, myths and tear them down so we can rebuild.

REBUILDING! RECREATING! REDIRECTING! Knowing this legacy on our backs, adjusting its weight, and working to unburden especially the world – but also ourselves – from our u.s. nitemare!

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.

What Can I Do??? to be continued

I know  I’ve written about this before but tonite, I was at a gathering where we were defining and discussing our country’s evils when someone asked, once again, but “what can I do about it?”

I did not respond with my normal either 1)“that is not really the whole question you are asking” – the whole question is what can I do WITHOUT changing my life style, WITHOUT it costing me too much, WITHOUT having to stop my life-as-usual or sacrifice anything; or 2) that is not really the question – the real question is “what to I WANT to do about it?

Instead I decided to directly answer that ‘can’ question and began listing the concrete things we could/should be doing:

•         Never buy anything new (except toilet paper maybe)
•         Only buy organic – if you can’t ‘afford’ organic, you can’t afford to buy it
•          The least we can do is recycle (which of course begins with not buying things that are containers needing recycling or throwing out), conserve resources
•         Grow your own food organically (of course, especially including seeds)
•         Make connections, conscious choices where you spend your money: NO corporate buying (including fuel, food, etc.); support womyn especially with children, men of color
•         Share your resources, privileges, access to necessities
•        Get rid of ‘things’ around your home, in your life
•       Open your living space to others, live cooperatively, live where you can walk to what you need
•       Make money doing something you love, something meaningful, something sustainable, something that does not contribute to the genocide of people and destruction of the mother earth
•        Spend a minimum of three hours a day doing actions working for change
•       Meet with your critical thinking/action community group weekly to really develop and this list, while we figure out together how really to work together for change

Which then brings us to what do I WANT to do?

And who can blame us for not wanting to change our lives as usual? After all, we are ‘told’ – inundated, hammered over the head, reminded in every book, every lesson, every moment of our waking lives really – that we need a career, a house in the country, children, success as measured in how many things we own, etc.

We are taught not only that we need these things, but that we deserve the things we get, that we have somehow worked hard, studied harder, and are the ‘special’ people who are granted the knowing that we will obtain the security of stuff. 

But perhaps the biggest ‘disservice’ at best, destruction of our humanity closer to the truth, is our shared belief in this country that it is not only okay to have more then others, but it is desirable as well as deservable.

Few want to own that we have whatever we have because this country is carefully shaped to ensure what everyone has (or doesn’t have).

Fewer still want to own that EVERYTHING we have in this country, we have because of killing people, enslaving people, occupying and stealing other people's lands and lives - and we continue doing the same. We are currently attacking at least 6 countries in the world, have over 1000 military bases that we know about, and spend as much on our military as every single nation TOGETHER spends on their militaries.

Even those of us who live 'frugally' or consciously, still have access to the empire, whether we like it or not: the asphalt on the roads, the access to food 24/7, electricity - etc.etc.etc.

I say this not to encourage depression or helplessness or futility - but to inspire us into ACTION; for it is only when we ACT against war, militarism, all the isms that we will find true wealth, true peace, true spirituality, our true paths.