Revisiting Jack Layton's Letter to Canadians

During the Leadership convention of the NDP, I heard Olivia Chow use Jack's Legacy in the future tense.  Reminding us to carry it forward. Let the task transcend the individual egos of candidates, news show hosts and media interests.  This is more than entertainment. This is deeper than the sound bite, and the playing field is much wider than the convention centre.  We all have a part to play in that legacy. Choosing a leader is just the start. We must support whoever is chosen to bring our ideals to a troubled world.

August 20, 2011

Toronto, Ontario

Dear Friends,

Tens of thousands of Canadians have written to me in recent weeks to wish me well. I want to thank each and every one of you for your thoughtful, inspiring and often beautiful notes, cards and gifts. Your spirit and love have lit up my home, my spirit, and my determination.

Unfortunately my treatment has not worked out as I hoped. So I am giving this letter to my partner Olivia to share with you in the circumstance in which I cannot continue.

I recommend that Hull-Aylmer MP Nycole Turmel continue her work as our interim leader until a permanent successor is elected.

I recommend the party hold a leadership vote as early as possible in the New Year, on approximately the same timelines as in 2003, so that our new leader has ample time to reconsolidate our team, renew our party and our program, and move forward towards the next election.

A few additional thoughts:
To other Canadians who are on journeys to defeat cancer and to live their lives, I say this: please don’t be discouraged that my own journey hasn’t gone as well as I had hoped. You must not lose your own hope. Treatments and therapies have never been better in the face of this disease. You have every reason to be optimistic, determined, and focused on the future. My only other advice is to cherish every moment with those you love at every stage of your journey, as I have done this summer.

To the members of my party: we’ve done remarkable things together in the past eight years. It has been a privilege to lead the New Democratic Party and I am most grateful for your confidence, your support, and the endless hours of volunteer commitment you have devoted to our cause. There will be those who will try to persuade you to give up our cause. But that cause is much bigger than any one leader. Answer them by recommitting with energy and determination to our work. Remember our proud history of social justice, universal health care, public pensions and making sure no one is left behind. Let’s continue to move forward. Let’s demonstrate in everything we do in the four years before us that we are ready to serve our beloved Canada as its next government.

To the members of our parliamentary caucus: I have been privileged to work with each and every one of you. Our caucus meetings were always the highlight of my week. It has been my role to ask a great deal from you. And now I am going to do so again. Canadians will be closely watching you in the months to come. Colleagues, I know you will make the tens of thousands of members of our party proud of you by demonstrating the same seamless teamwork and solidarity that has earned us the confidence of millions of Canadians in the recent election.

To my fellow Quebecers: On May 2nd, you made an historic decision. You decided that the way to replace Canada’s Conservative federal government with something better was by working together in partnership with progressive-minded Canadians across the country. You made the right decision then; it is still the right decision today; and it will be the right decision right through to the next election, when we will succeed, together. You have elected a superb team of New Democrats to Parliament. They are going to be doing remarkable things in the years to come to make this country better for us all.

To young Canadians: All my life I have worked to make things better. Hope and optimism have defined my political career, and I continue to be hopeful and optimistic about Canada. Young people have been a great source of inspiration for me. I have met and talked with so many of you about your dreams, your frustrations, and your ideas for change. More and more, you are engaging in politics because you want to change things for the better. Many of you have placed your trust in our party. As my time in political life draws to a close I want to share with you my belief in your power to change this country and this world. There are great challenges before you, from the overwhelming nature of climate change to the unfairness of an economy that excludes so many from our collective wealth, and the changes necessary to build a more inclusive and generous Canada. I believe in you. Your energy, your vision, your passion for justice are exactly what this country needs today. You need to be at the heart of our economy, our political life, and our plans for the present and the future.
And finally, to all Canadians: Canada is a great country, one of the hopes of the world. We can be a better one – a country of greater equality, justice, and opportunity. We can build a prosperous economy and a society that shares its benefits more fairly. We can look after our seniors. We can offer better futures for our children. We can do our part to save the world’s environment. We can restore our good name in the world. We can do all of these things because we finally have a party system at the national level where there are real choices; where your vote matters; where working for change can actually bring about change. In the months and years to come, New Democrats will put a compelling new alternative to you. My colleagues in our party are an impressive, committed team. Give them a careful hearing; consider the alternatives; and consider that we can be a better, fairer, more equal country by working together. Don’t let them tell you it can’t be done.

My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.

All my very best,
Jack Layton

A message from Ta'Kaiya

Please watch this video of Ta'Kaiya Blaney's beautifully sung incantation to protect the environment.  In spite of our dependance on oil and industry this admonition must not be overlooked as naive. Her youth is a testimony to the clarity of a mind not yet corrupted.

If you want to know more about Ta'Kaiya Blaney visit this CBC site.

This War Against You

Does every piece of information seem like a threat to your health these days?

The latest news reports include the Robocall scandal and the teacher's strike in BC. The other day I watched a documentary about the pornography that pervades the media and how it affects our sexuality and how young people who don't even know what sex is are becoming brainwashed to believe they must look like porn stars in order to be 'normal'.

When I was a teen I was compelled to be 'in'.  That was in the sixties. The call seemed to be so authoritative that I could not see how my 'programming' was inspired by the corporate media. It took another decade before I was able to look back and see how I, and all my peers, were influenced by the notion that those images presented to us hourly through mainstream entertainments were examples of what we could be if we work at it. And it was another fifty years later where I was able to see how my need for approval has kept me in a state of prime availability to suggestion no matter how many defenses I put up.

Sure I can question everything and anything and I remind myself to do so whenever I read something that raises my temperature, however I am also aware of how my world is becoming, either through awareness or maturity, further and further removed from reality.


Reading 1984 so many years ago I thought Orwell was predicting that every household would have a television screen where we would be watched by Big Brother, but now I see he could have meant  that our inner minds were already pre-wired for manipulation.

Millions of dollars, no billions and trillions of dollars, are spent to invade our most private thoughts and desires, and to offer immediate relief. Sugar, alcohol, drugs, sex, money and power are the addictions that keep us sucking on the shiny metal tit of Capitalism. We are no longer human because we have been genetically modified through persuasion and propaganda. We are not homo sapien as much as we are consumer (meaning 'squanderer' in its middle-English origin).

The ruling systems, from the early Catholic church to imperialism keep us shopping for the next best ideology that frames and guides our future.  Ways of letting us believe we are choosing, we are in control, when in fact our consent is manufactured.

Even Jesus was killed during the Crusades when His message was co-opted to support patriarchy, military might and imperialism. Since then we have sacrificed our young on the bloody battlefields in the name of honour, which we were led to believe we could win.  But the only winners were the industrialists and the arms dealers. Personal survival meant traumatization and the interruption of our most intimate relationships.  That is how it was then and how it is today.


When societies, through intelligence, insight and cooperation, become more socially just, more civil, where power is shared more equally, suddenly a new war is paraded as a new necessity. Innocents  are swooped from their epistemic homes to slaughtering fields where they learn how to rid themselves of sensitivity and tenderness and focus on the task to kill or be killed.

Prior to the Witch hunts, to the First World War and the Second World War, women were participating and demanding their dignified place in society.  Prior to Vietnam African Americans were demanding civil rights. Prior to the Gulf wars, women were demanding more social power in the work place. War is the device that sacks civil society, and returns the masses to the brutality of strategic ritualized violence. 

Now that the Occupy movement has aroused the people to the injustice of the current system, there is another war on the horizon - with Iran. But the victims will not just be the Iranian regime. As with all wars, whether military, economic, political or class - YOU are the victim. Your social systems, your health care, your libraries, your universities, your courts of law and your neighbours will be sacrificed so that the most powerful can play their nihilistic games of power.

WHO World Cancer Day

A few days ago I received an email asking that I say a small prayer "Dear God - I pray for a cure for cancer. Amen" and then to forward to all my friends.

Since I don't do chain letters I thought I would write this blog post as a prayer to the universal mind for a cure for cancer and by finding the causes of cancer. Not just the many small details of toxic substances, but the overall cause of cancer - that resistance towards embracing the whole world and nurturing the best possible health for it through our work, our practices and our goals.

This takes more than looking to others to find magic cures. Sure we need the researchers and medicine, the scientific experts and world leaders to do what is right, but they are not magicians. We are all the stewards and agents of good health for the mind, the body, the community and the work place.  These are all connected.

Cancer is not just a single disease, it is the symptom of a very sick system that promotes oppression and greed through ignorance, fear and hatred for humanity on many levels.  Such a system doesn't care for people - it pays lip service to ideals but seeks only to exploit. It does the talk and punishes those who do the walk.

We are micro-units of that system which only has as much power as we invest in it. May we find a way to reconnect to the healing practices we are capable of by living as though health is profit.

I have a dream

To celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday - here is part of his famous speech delivered in Washington, D.C. in 1963.  You can find the full text on The Huffington Post web site.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.


I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.


I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."


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.


I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.


I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.


I have a dream today.


I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.


I have a dream today.


I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.


This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.


This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring."


And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!


Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!


Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!


But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!


Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!


Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.


And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

Wishes for 2012

What I hope for us all is peace, in the deepest sense of the word.


That in your workplace you are seen (and respected) as the complex, gifted, individual you are.

That your family see the beauty in you and the world around them. That you appreciate and support one another. That your love is reciprocated.


That your community acknowledges your wealth in terms of what you contribute to the group - empathy, problem solving, ideas, effort, nurture, critical thinking and patience.


That your hopes and desires are aligned with the reality around you, and your expectations arise from a place of integrated kindness and justice.


That you are able to bridge the disappointments with new goals and aspirations, and that your moments of despair are short, alleviated by your resolve to carry on.


That your pain is met with healing from your own body and mind, and from your family and community.


That shame or guilt, if it must arise, is aligned to the pain we have caused (and not to the superficial crimes of failing to live up to artificial fashion) and will ultimately lead to forgiveness and compassion.


That, once and for all, we learn how power and wealth are irrevocably tied to our capacity to distribute and meet human needs for shelter, warmth, food and community; and that we understand there is no single leader who can provide this without the help and commitment from us all.

Reverberation: power from the personal to the global

Whatever we value most in life is more than just a cause for celebration, it can lead us to the tools of our collective power, as long as that power is life affirming. But using any tool requires some skill and the more we use it the more skilled we will become.

The Toolbox

Interrogation – who benefits?

Every issue, change, policy, initiative, ideology must interrogate its own value by asking who benefits by this? And if it doesn't those who are affected by it must.

Naming, Unmasking, Engaging:

In his column published in the Guardian, George Monbiot quotes Walter Wink ... "challenging a dominant system requires a three-part process: naming the powers, unmasking the powers, engaging the powers."

I would extend this exercise to all social interactions from family to neighbourhood to community to national. To assume that social relationships do not use power can lead us blithely into relationships where power is abused. Domestic violence certainly puts a strain on challenging power beyond the home. Abusive power in community undoes benefit of community.

Progressive Thinking:

In a Straight Goods article, George Lakoff writes "a robust public is necessary for private success, about all that the public gives us, about the benefits of health, about a Market for All not a Greed Market, about regulation as protection, about revenue and investment". These are all assets our ancestors gave their lives for. Lakoff warns against accepting systems that are not in our best interests. Such as those that allow corporations to get rich by keeping wages low. There is nothing morally right about centralized power that enables oppression, because it always seeks to punish not the causes but the victims of it.

Civil Society:

Yes this gives the individual the power to move freely in the city. Marilyn Hamilton writes that civil society occupies "the We and Heart of the Integral City . . . the pulse of cooperatives, credit unions, foundations, institutes, not-for-profits, NGO’s, social enterprises and other agencies who invest in cultural and social capital". We give and take in society. We have a responsibility to it and gain protections from it.


Education:

I am talking about more than certificates and accreditation here – of course those enable us more choice in our future. But I am talking about the lifelong learning that enables us to participate in systems of power that arise from our knowing and our imaginations. In order to do this we have to let go of the beliefs that comfort us. As the Bible says "the truth shall set you free". But first it will make you miserable as you read the horrors that humankind has imposed on its earthly home.

Contraction:

Every outward act will return.  Whatever we do to others will be done to us. Whatever we send out we will bring back.

In an interview with Michael Moore, Chris Hedges explains the system that currently rules the planet – unfettered capitalism, turns everything into a commodity, even human beings. It exploits and extracts the essence until it is emptied of itself, exhausted and destroyed.  Built into capitalism is a self-destructive ideology that deeply disrupts societies. Imperialism is a disease and the tyranny it imposes is also imposed on itself.

Here then is the warning we must never forget as we struggle to create a better world – we are in the throws of a "giddy intoxication" of an illusion that we can impose our will on the planet; and in the process, we have set in motion the final death of our unborn seeds.

The difference between Hedges, Moore, and myself – is that (I believe) the cause is not capitalism, communism, fascism, or religious fundamentalism – the cause is unfettered power.

We can use our power without harming or controlling. We may send out our desires and receive our limitations. We may work on hope and be discouraged. We may bring peace and be killed for it. We may knit garments of justice and watch them unravel. But work on what sustains life, no matter how futile it may seem, is the natural power we have been given.