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“And there we wept…when we remembered Zion.”
Today at the second day of Netroots Nation convention in Providence, Rhode Island, there were all kinds of panels to attend and films and presentations to watch — and they all seemed to have the same common theme: That Americans need to start working together instead of going for each others’ jugulars with red-white-and-blue tooth and claw.
During the American Transit Workers union’s presentation of a documentary on the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike that included video footage from the Lorraine Motel, with tears in my eyes, I remembered Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s heroic bravery and wisdom. http://newsreel.org/video/AT-THE-RIVER-I-STAND
“We are facing a two-headed creature here,” King said. “He is a labor-union hater with one mouth and a civil-rights hater with the other.” The ATW also gave out free ice cream at the showing as well. Dove bars. Dulce de leche. And chocolate chip cookies. No kale chips? Huh? What is this world coming to.
Then someone in the audience at a panel discussion on undocumented Americans stated that, “Sure, people of color have it hard these days — but we ALL have it hard. And we all need to unite in common cause to make sure that all of our voices are heard as we face the greatest challenges of our life; as the One Percent tries to drown out the American Dream for the rest of us — all the while trying to make us believe that they are on our side and are truly our friends.”
Uh, no, they are not. Make no mistake here. The One percent are NOT our friends. Never have been. Never will be.
“And the wicked carried us away…captivity.”
According to Massachusetts senatorial candidate Elizabeth Warren who also spoke today, the One Percent’s philosophy, in one sentence, is “I’ve got mine — but you are on your own.” Why would we want to give the rich and powerful even more power and more money? “We don’t run this country for corporations. We run it for people.”
And then another free lunch was offered to us conventioneers. I’m so there!
“On 9-11,” said one firefighters’ union rep at an afternoon panel presentation, “it wasn’t the bankers running up those stairs. It was government workers there saving lives.”
In my own personal opinion, stuff like Wall Street deregulation and the Koch brothers and ALEC and Citizens Untied are the worst things that have ever happened to America’s freedom. These oligarchs’ highly-planned and highly-coordinated attacks on our laws, freedoms and way of life have been far more disastrous, far more scary and far more EFFECTIVE than 9-11 ever was.
There are also many massive and coordinated attacks on unions these days. And on women. And on people of color. And response to these attacks has been for us to viciously begin fighting each other for crumbs falling off these rich men’s tables. How American is that!
So. How do we now unite together instead of fighting each other? “Let’s organize around universal similarities,” one panelist said. We all love our families (at least most of us do) and we all have to eat. We all have emotions. We all need to breathe clean air and send our kids to school. “So mix all that up and come out with some common denominators that we can all rally behind.” We all love a good free lunch. Would that do for a start?
Americans of all colors and shapes and sizes have so much more in common with each other than we do with those few oligarchs who are currently spending billions of dollars on trying to turn us against one another. Come on guys. Get a clue! Kumbayah here! Everyone — every one of us — wants the American Dream. So let’s work together to get it back.
“Let the words of our mouth and the meditations in our hearts… WE’VE GOT TO SING TOGETHER!” Or the wicked will continue to “carry us away…captivity”. For sure.
So let’s “Sing a song of Freedom!” instead.
PS: This evening the AFT is offering a presentation of the movie, “American Teacher,” and then I’ll be taking the bus back to my sweet little room at the Warwick Motel 6 where I can listen to the people in the neighboring room fight and make up all night long.
And tomorrow Paul Krugman, Sherrod Brown and Van Jones will be speaking. Then on Sunday Netroots Nation will have a day of service and join the mayor of Providence in trudging around some kind of swamp, cleaning up garbage. And will they feed us? Yes they will!
19 Comments
You are correct, we do need to come together.
But honestly, do you even think that’s a possibility?
Seriously!?
And listening to Warren? Have you read her stance on the Middle East, namely Israel and Palestine, and on “terrorism”? Direct from O’s obfuscate-and-distract playbook.
Words are nice, … but I’ve been down that road before. It goes nowhere.
Just IMHO.
I liked the piece and always appreciate your take.
Please follow up with more Netroots info. Thanks.
Some serious Food for Thought… This Version of the Four Horsemen the Apocalypse actually Makes Sense…
…Here’s a really simple taxonomy. Had some fun with this. All of these use rapid, very difficult to counter self-replication to do massive damage.
Again, folks. The only long term counter to self-replication is through the smart decentralization afforded by networked resilient communities.
Communities that produce most of what they need locally. Communities that can physically disconnect themselves as needed. Communities that aren’t dependent on complex global computer systems that can be corrupted. Communities that use diverse polycultures to produce their food.
“Communities that produce most of what they need locally. Communities that can physically disconnect themselves as needed. Communities that aren’t dependent on complex global computer systems that can be corrupted. Communities that use diverse polycultures to produce their food.”
That’s it in a nutshell.
Of course once such an important part of what we should be doing s answered, the next question is how to do it.
And surprise, there are answers for that too. Local co-ops, permaculture (I’m sure I misspelled that), individual solar panels + individual wind turbines all feeding into local communities, …
There are answers, but they’re irrelevant in the context of actual change right now. But change is coming. And it’s going to be ugly. Worse before it gets better. And after, … that’s when we can use these techniques.
Of course over population and being parasites on the only planet we have will be forgotten topics again. And then the whole cycle will probably (look at the human condition, and tell me that’s not a god bet) repeat again.
Yikes, sorry about your room with neighbors….Try to sleep as well as you can. ;)
Living on the most geographically isolated rock on the planet, I’m working hard to get my critters to adopt “Local co-ops, permaculture, individual solar panels + individual wind turbines all feeding into local communities, …” But, the PTB’s(Local and State) are fighting it tooth and nail, heavily
financedinfluenced by Monsanto/Big Oil/Big Ag, ad nauseum…! 8-(“highly-planned and highly-coordinated attacks on our laws, freedoms and way of life…”
that is the reality we face.
i rarely see it stated so directly and bluntly.
from billionaire oligarchs like the kochs,
to catholic church bishop-pricks and born-again entrepreneurs,
to democratic party fakirs like schumer, levin, feinstein, rockfeller, pelosi, hoyer, and the blue dog dems,
to republican political pathology like mcconell, hatch, graham, collins, the orange man and the dozens of beer nuts on the republican side of the house,
to the aipac,
to the federalist society,
to the nra and its foreign pistol manufacturing sugar daddies,
we face a host of immoral folk employing morality-based rhetoric, who are intent on destroying, heedlessly, for their own convenience and benefit, the remarkable democratic government we have built on the intellectual foundations laid by jefferson, adams, madison, monroe, hamilton.
Bravo, orion…! No doubt…!
and with all the ills and problems you listed above, you totally failed to mention what the US is doing in foreign countries, which makes all the problems in the USA look puny.
Or in other words, at least no one is drone bombing us, poisoning our land so that future generations for hundreds of years will have massive birth defects and cancers, or making millions upon millions of refugees. Having dozens of heavily armed men break into our homes with a grenade toss is not happening either. And we are not holding mass funerals in our towns because of a US air bombing.
I guess “solidarity” is just for the American folks with the (relatively) minor problems who are currently allowing their President to generate KILL LISTS and then drone bomb people out of existence in four different countries (currently – was more counties in the recent past) and who is also attempting to financially destroy several others (notably Iran) for no reason other than he can AND WE LET HIM.
Yes, Virginia, the world does stop at the US borders.
dancewater, we are still allowing; ‘poisoning our land so that future generations for hundreds of years will have massive birth defects and cancers’…! Tho, We are rapidly working on the rest of it…! 8-(
Word.
N Then, There Be Dis, Mahn.
Song. Yeah.
As to Netroots, Warren and the others, well.
Warren has come out for harsh on Iran military wise, so she’s out of my play book.
The other speakers are mostly 1% types who coddle to big bucks, mouth platitudes, and go with the 1% flow.
They are not progressives in any sense and Netroots has been a DNC baby maker forever it seems.
But if yer getting fed, more power to yas. Others, millions, children, are starving in this country.
They don’t much nor do their parents, attend conferences of the rich and famous . . .
They just starve daily.
N then there’s the homeless, underserved needy, jobless, n a ruined middle class which Netroots gracefully evades over cocktail weiners and bacon wrapped shrimp and such.
I’m just not much fucking impressed, Mz. Stillwater, with Netroots, as you can tell . . . you’d do better spending yer time amongst the pale and downtrodden and championing their fight if ya really cared a horses ass.
Harumph.
Good call, it’s like out of NOwhere, she runs to ground and goes all AIPAC . . . fail.
I’m done with her for that reason alone.
It’s like Kuch, and one short ride on Air Force 1 with Obama.
N he was gone, gone gone from the proggy side of life.
Grayson hit that wall too. Sanders, also.
They all caved on warrentless wiretaps, FISA, Wall St bailouts, and every other thing that benefits corps and the 1%.
They don’t fight for us, they fight for the 1%, they legislate for the 1%, and if they don’t they get invited to take a ride on AF 1.
I despise our political system as is and the erecteds who game it, the 1% who own it, and the voters who are stupid enuff still to enable it.
LeSigh.
That’s the plight of the masses today, on yer rock and everywhre on this big rock that’s 3rd stoned from the sun.
How it ends, who knows but I don’t see a lot of hope for us masses, or our species, at this rate.
Agreed in full, that’s it pretty much, aside from the corruption and evil inherent in it all top to bottom of the lowest gutter of our lives.
NIce retort, along the lines of what I was gonna say only I was gonna be harsher about it.
Abroad, or at home, our govt, country and systems are nothing to be proud about . . . too cliche right wing but, I want my country back, too.
Harumph.
Warren: “We run it for people.”
Actually, Elizabeth, you’re not running anything. Neither is Barack Obama. The CHANCE to run it went down the tube with the mid-term hammering.
Or, you could say, it went down along about the time that Obama sold us out on the Public option.
As far as “uniting” with someone goes, I want to hear what they us to unite WITH. If it’s uniting with another 4 years of bipartisan bullshit, then count me out. I’d prefer honest DIS-unity.
“Warren has come out for harsh on Iran, military-wise, so she’s out of my playbook.”
That makes at least two of us with a cleaner playbook, Larue. :o)
And thanks for bringing up Warren’s foreign-policy views. The mousketeers with the big “O” on their sweaters would rather eat dirt than do that. :o)
not like we have done to Fallujah. Not even close.
So, “unity” is the theme du jour at Netroots Nation this year? Sounds (David) Broderrific to me.