We the People Are (Now) On Trial

The people are now on trial. Not by fame or power, not by name, but as conscious members of the human family.

There have been massive marches in capital cities throughout most of the democratic world, but they don't seem to garner the media attention the numbers would appear to warrant.

Front page headlines don't play up engagement or crises if human blood is not spilled. Headlines like extreme politics are not impressed with human activity, knowledge or creativity.  Seems there has to be something manufactured like weapons, vehicles, buildings or money involved. I have heard that newspapers need drama to survive.

However it is the people who are on trial.  We have to let the world beyond our doors know that we will not let the economy make us look irrelevant.  We have to participate in civil society. Not because I say so but because without the commons and our stories, we shall be exploited like cattle in a shed and fish caught in a net.

We know that in the Western world there are two major driving forces of change. One is money, and the other is downplayed to the extent it is barely acknowledged - and that is the broad spectrum of human nature.

Human nature is flawed. It is attracted to the idea of power by association. That is if you are the "right" type - you are given the protection of being in the majority -  a privilege the majority does not see or feel in any conscious way. However the sense of being on the right team, in the right colours, enables a confidence, a fantasy of normalcy, an access to common sense, a right to use the term "we" in expressions of what is right or wrong.

So fascism applauds that power and there will be at least 40% of the population who love that even if they cannot admit it.

Feminism ("the belief that all people deserve an equal chance at success, regardless of gender" - Elizabeth Renzetti, Globe and Mail) is probably a major player of the resistance.  It receives a lot of accusations from traditional groups which are extreme and unfounded, but the emancipation of 50% of a population is obviously a thorn in  the side of an unchallenged hierarchy.  

The fear of equality and democracy is expressed in certain institutions. It threatens to bust apart the status quo. Emancipated, educated, courageous people are the enemy of well managed interests. The voice of humanity with all its quarrels threaten to throw society into chaos and so wherever power is given to a few, they will use whatever weapons they have to silence humanity.

A society that honours life can dispense with racism, religious chauvinism, classism, ageism and sexism.  These are the tools that keep power in the hands of a few.  But power transforms itself to hide from or use the changing demographic.  This is why immigration is seen as a threat to peace and prosperity.

The tragic flaw of humanity lies in the power we pretend is not there. If we are economically well off and have social stability, we prefer not to think about those who are struggling and marginalized.

Populist movements say 'you're okay as long as you are in the majority. What you think and feel is okay. Your understanding of history is the most common and therefore closer to the truth than any specialized academic. Your prejudices are based on the most common knowledge and most likely to be true.' You can express your beliefs among other "normal" people without being challenged. 

When money is kept out of the public infrastructure, it requires a consistent stream of propaganda to appease the majority who suffer from intellectual poverty. The masses who feel little hope because money has been centralized to a few, become dangerous. Politicians who rely on public support and votes dare not say what is true - they must offer special treatment to their funders such as low taxes, and the poor cannot fund political parties  must take up the slack with low wages and high costs for education and health. We look for fantasies to account for the system we are trapped within, the system that becomes more and more dehumanizing with its ever increasing "authority". 

Relationship, bonding and cooperation must be replaced with competition, mistrust, fear and blame.  

It has taken centuries to implant a control in the human consciousness and each time the masses begin to search, to think and to cooperate with one another and demand social justice the old "weapons" are brought out to divide and confuse us.

But now all we have is our wisdom, our sight, our curiosity and honesty to break apart the towers of lies.  Now we must create our civil society based on the needs of humanity so we can protect the diversity of earth's creatures.

Evolution

Whitman, Emerson and Thoreau

died in America.

Four boys escaped Lejac and froze

to death on the lake near home.

The army in Uzbekistan executed children

as an example.

We are not really toilet trained.

We are trained to believe we are.

I have learned how to scream

with my mouth closed.

(from Infinite Power, Ekstasis 2016)

Happiness Reconfigured

Once upon a time, not so long ago

happiness was a product of something else

—to be free of pain, to be warm and fed,

then it became a by-product of profit,

six figures to nine figures, the numerology

of ego and greed, the politics dividing us into

a sixty-forty handicap where a minority

of the certain out-vote the majority

who suspect that low taxes and the economy

have written us, happy or not, out of the future,

who refuse to die in a car crash or overdose,

who question the mathematics of chaos.

Have we become homeless puritans again?

Casting our bodies on the ocean in search

of a new world and finding instead

an old one that was here long before us?

How radical would it be to find happiness

in thoughts moving like fingers scaling

an imaginary piano, or a feeling,

a brief sensory perception of hope?

Suppose these small things moved us away

from the dark resources underground

to the centrifugal forces of our mind

terminally wondering what we can do?

Not as an exclamation of despair or apathy

but a quest, an inquiry into nature, a timeless

question on waking each morning—where did

happiness begin? The big bang?

(published in Infinite Power, Ekstasis 2016)

Requiem for the Goddess

She is a vessel that’s all

a seed from the seed that came before

a wave flowing out from the bang

a reverberating circle reaching out.

Once she was cherished

placed in the centre of the hearth

observed and protected from elements 

she loved no matter how rough.

Now she is tied between two poles 

her limbs cannot move 

or lay down to rest. 

How can she nurture the world 

when hoisted 

as a thing that bleeds onto the soil beneath

her legs forced open so that lost souls can rape 

with their hatred.

How can she see the unfolding drama

now her eyes have been gouged

and how can she offer advice

when her lips have been sewn together

or hear the lamentation of birds

when her ears plugged with the screech 

of a dead warrior is set on replay?

Who will witness the despair of her sons

and the exhaustion of her daughters

when there is no more art or music

only a silent screen capture of today’s

stock market?

How will the starving masses endure 

the endless pain when their hormones 

begin to eat their own organs?

How can she birth the next generation

when her torn uterus hangs

outside her body?

How will the mind remember that life

existed at all when all its seeds have perished?

MOTHER’S DAY PROCLAMATION

Boston, 1870

“Arise, then… women of this day! 
Arise, all women who have hearts,
whether our baptism be that of water or of tears!
Say firmly: 
We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. 
Our husbands shall 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, 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 the 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 vindicate 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 council.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them then solemnly take council with each other as to the means
whereby the great human family can live in peace,
each bearing after his own kind the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask
that a general congress of women, without limit of nationality, 
may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient,
and at 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.“

~ Julia Ward Howe

https://peacealliance.org/history-of-mothers-day-as-a-day-of-peace-julia-ward-howe/

You Were There

Happy Mother's Day

At your eightieth birthday party you sat under the umbrella with Bob,

your cigarettes and martini, your eyes laughing like blue bird wings,

shaded from the sun. Yesterday is smoke to the sky and all the world

rendered to the present is here in this garden, familiar faces

names forgotten along with the rest of your life.

When you look in the mirror you ask whose wrinkled face

stares back at you and I remember the day

you declared yourself not beautiful anymore. Is losing

memory a careless wish to lose the self

you no longer want?

Women’s scars, trophies of battles survived

are not glorified here, they are veiled in shame, but once

you taught me how to tie my shoes, make my bed

and love my children. That is why, as the party began,

I tried to mirror back the beauty you didn’t catch

in your reflection.

Words barely out I strained through tears to bring the air

from lung to tongue, gasping for the right sound.

Surrounding eyes were filled as well as though we understood

what hadn’t formed in the mouth, and you rose from your seat

to put your arms around me. A mother’s comfort burst through

nameless grief and the reason we were there made clear.

That is beauty.

Later you danced on the kitchen floor Sally washed

in the morning of the day we ran like ants to carry tables

and chairs through narrow doorways and carefully lay

the frozen salmon thawed in the bath, on its final platter

in a maze of salads and buns. Tables, ceilings,

punctuated with purple and blue balloons. You and Dot,

your feet fast as marbles jived to Glenn Miller, your face

with no memory of shyness beamed and yet,

the next day when I recalled to you these moments

you asked if you were there.

He calls me an intellectual

He calls me an intellectual

but I know it’s code—meaning
my mind wanders aimlessly through the forest
while he replaces the filter to the UV lamp
or pulls weeds between shrubs
notices the lapsed club membership
leafs through cookbooks for a chicken recipe
scans the Internet for flights to Toronto
sees cobwebs on the skylight which he must keep
to himself, as if


I would never notice webs created by
one or more of the seven hundred spider species
of British Columbia and search the Internet myself
for its name which accidentally takes me
to a strange image of a rat-like creature
who has a tail coming out of its chest and wonder
if it might be a lab-test rat or an entirely
new species, and whether something should be done
about that


like further research
to be informed, to have knowledge
the scientific proof, to know the facts
that escape as soon as I try to pin them down
fearing he will ask
are you sure about that
and I must confess
I am never sure about anything.

(from Infinite Power, Ekstasis 2016. Cover painting is from Paul Grignon http://www.paulgrignon.com)

I Too Have A Dream

That one day we shall get it.
Life, light, garden and the humming bird.
Oh many of us have
And many inspire our opening
Many give their voice to my fragile mind
As I wake to a new day
Many take care of my teeth
My bones and my eyes
Some have pointed out my errors
That I may get over bad habits
For that is the breadth and depth
Of my shattered, bruised heart.

Martin Luther King's Dream

"I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood." Martin Luther King Jr.  Delivered in Washington August 28, 1963.


https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-resources/document-research-requests

I wanted to print the whole speech on this platform but it would violate the copyright law.

I understand the reluctance to allow it into the commons because of the terrible abuse that has been directed to MLK and his family. There is so much evidence of corrupting history for the sake of white power. So here is an example of what happens when White Supremacy rules over others.

Let us weep.

THINGS FALL APART: America and Liberal Democracy

Ideas at 9 pm Friday May 10th. 

James Kloppenberg, professor of history at Harvard University, traces the long and tortuous tradition of American liberal democracy. He argues the United States has arrived at such a precarious place in its political evolution that the very underlying culture that makes democracy possible is under threat. Kloppenberg says unless Americans are willing to move away from destructive tendencies like self-righteousness and dogmatism, then democracy itself may never recover.

Listen to Ideas with Paul Kennedy on CBC.CA