4.23.2016
Jewish anti-occupation activists arrested blocking ADL offices during Passover protest
Man Puts Dream Boat Aside, Plans to Pay for Kindergartners’ College Education Instead
***** STOP. READ. PASS ON. Edelman had always resented Israel's claim on the Warsaw Ghetto uprising as a symbol of Jewish liberation. Now he said this belonged to the Palestinians. NOW.
**** If nonviolence is a tactic, as near all of today's practitioners Proclaim, then it is not nonviolence. It is violence, manipulation, the attempt to get others to pay the price for what one wants. Nonviolence is loving, paying the price with one's own life.........
***** If nonviolence is a tactic, as near all of today's practitioners Proclaim, then it is not nonviolence. It is violence, manipulation, the attempt to get others to pay the price for what one wants. Nonviolence is loving, paying the price with one's own life for what one wants; it is not a tactic but a way of being, the way of non-cancerous life itself , the strategy of non-cancerous life itself. This is what we do for our children, largely, is it not? This is what we do when we want a house, or a car, or food? We don't go and try and cheat someone out of what is theirs. We don't go and try and force one to give it to us. We pay with the price of our lives, with the work of our lives, our bodies, and we seek to get what we want in that way, except in our worst moments, which may be Legion as we are taught in the sickest of all cultures. Non-violence better termed anti-violence, or better still, Loving) says that in matters of what is right and wrong, Justice, larger concerns of the human good, that we will go about securing those in the same way, paying the price with our own lives, not in the slightest trying to force others to pay for what we want. Nonviolence understood this way is The revolution, there is none other other, and it almost never has been tried. There is no other Revolution. Everything else is simply an attempt to reverse the roles of who is doing the violence and who is receiving it.
***** Why am I so actually, physically, immobilized, paralyzed, these last 3 days? Why can't I move on with full support of the campaign Sanders, Spirit Sanders, Revolution Sanders? My body and soul are in such tormented limbo. This is far from the first time I have gone through such total limbo. There......
***** Why am I so actually, physically, immobilized, paralyzed, these last 3 days? Why can't I move on with full support of the campaign Sanders, Spirit Sanders, Revolution Sanders? My body and soul are in such tormented limbo.
This is far from the first time I have gone through such total limbo. There have been periods throughout my life when I could not yet align my nervous system and its needs with the outside world. I lacked the clarity of vision and understanding. And my nature is such that I am physically unable to move forward without that clear unifying clarity as to what the world needs me to attempt, and with that Clarity I cannot be stopped, except by a bullet. I think we all have that needed, but few are as debilitated as I when I lack the clarity. This has been true since my earliest memories.
Because of this severe characteristic I have learned not to fight with this, but rather to submit to the process of regaining Clarity, understanding, purpose, mission , as I am doing now.
It is an unsettling time. It is somewhat frightening. I never know if I'll emerge on the other side. Though so far, I always have. It must be very frightening for the caterpillar to enter the Cocoon having no idea except that it is disintegrating into nothingness , no idea what is on the other side.
I think what my nervous system has known is wrong even with the Great Justice campaign Sanders, is that Justice for the 10%, and we Americans are the 10% , is not enough to live for. Is not enough to fight for. It is only for the 90%, or the bottom 10%, that life is worth fighting for.
I think my nervous system is facing that the American dream , heaven for me and mine, is death itself, is cancer, is killing everything, is Antichrist, is ungodly. No, I don't understand this in such intellectual terms but I use such intellectual terms to try and grasp what my nervous system is telling me which is much more Elemental.
When pressed very very hard Gandhi said that the force he was devoted to tapping into was, the love of a mother for her child. He did not say justice. He did not suggest that what the love of a mother equates to for her child is justice. That may be a piece, that may be a tiny piece, but it is not what the mother is concerned with. The mother wants a reduction of suffering for her child, and the increase in joy. Justice has some relationship to that but it is too distant. Justice does not equate to the love of a mother for her child, the force that I have worked to take over Within Me entirely for the joy of it, the reign of my heart over me, the reign of my soul over me.
My body has been able to go out into the miserable, Hellish, Godless, Loveless world we have created for the love of the least of these. It is telling me it is unable to do so for justice for we Americans, the world's 10%, which the man Sanders, good, Godly, righteous, just, honest is trying to lead us toward.
Nor is it even enough, so far, maybe this will change, to lead us away from the huge increase in the speed with which the future tidal Wave of suffering descends upon the world as it will with the election of anyone besides Sanders.
Does it know, is it trying to tell me, my nervous system, that the impending tidal wave of accelerated suffering is unavoidable? Unavoidable because the American Empire must and will end. Mother nature in the form of environmental cataclysm is authoring it. Not to belittle Sanders, he is a miracle, but Sanders is not leading us to disassemble American Empire.
I don't know how much longer my nervous system will be wrestling with all this. It has been having its way with me for days now or even longer. Frequently I have thought I was out of the paralysis, moving on, only to find moments later I was not. This is a very difficult juncture for me to get past. It is also a very necessary thing for me to work through, for all of us to work through.
***** The key that I see, found by all the great enviable Souls throughout history, is rooting ones being in the task of reducing the suffering, and increasing the joy, of the neediest people. This saves one from a life of destructive addiction to pleasures, joylessness, mental masturbation.
***** The key that I see, found by all the great enviable Souls throughout history, is rooting ones being in the task of reducing the suffering, and increasing the joy, of the neediest people. This saves one from a life of destructive addiction to pleasures, joylessness, mental masturbation.
4.22.2016
For the first time I'm seeing the rich, the 10%, as our mortal enemies.
For the first time I'm seeing the rich, the 10%, as our mortal enemies.
My nervous system, my body, kept me in bed for the last 2 days. I did not feel ill. Every time I tried to get .......
My nervous system, my body, kept me in bed for the last 2 days. I did not feel ill. Every time I tried to get out of bed, which was every 2 hours or so, my body said no, get back in bed. I think of the caterpillar, butterfly, cycle. It's much like much like that for me. The last month has been very stimulating, very different, democracy spring March for 10 days, two days impossible journey of cycling to get to Philadelphia in time , being publicly ridiculed in front of 450 people by the DC activist Club, being blocked by democracy spring from their Facebook page , Bernie's defeat in New York City, shockingly bad treatment at the hands of Bernie organizers , many stimulating meetings that I am now attending in the evening, a ridiculously high energy burn and output for me for the last four weeks or so.... tonight, I feel alive again for the first time in several days. Will be interesting to see what tomorrow brings. What I hope it brings is the physical and spiritual energy to be on the phone much of the day for Spirit Bernie. We'll see.
4.21.2016
***** Nonviolence is paying for what you want with your own life, not the live of others. Nonviolence, AKA unviolence, antiviolence, loving.
***** Nonviolence is paying for what you want with your own life, not the live of others. Nonviolence, AKA unviolence, antiviolence, loving.
4.20.2016
You don't do what's right because it works. You do what's right because it's right.
You don't do what's right because it works. You do what's right because it's right.
A new era of anti-occupation Judaism American Jews have long overwhelmingly supported an end to the occupation, but increasingly, we are building an organized critical mass who are also willing to push our institutions and politicians in the same direction. IfNotNow takes its Passover message of liberation to Hillel and AIPAC.
4.19.2016
***** I was wrong. This is so hard. I'm sorry. I'm having such trouble finding the path. My nervous system has been devoted for near all of my adult decades to the total turnaround of dire situations, 1st in Industry, and more recently relative to The Human Condition. Yet for years.......
***** I was wrong. This is so hard. I'm sorry. I'm having such trouble finding the path. My nervous system has been devoted for near all of my adult decades to the total turnaround of dire situations, 1st in Industry, and more recently relative to The Human Condition. Yet for years it has been inescapably clear to me that we are too far gone nationally, internationally, globally, ecologically to avoid near total catastrophe. And yet having seen this, having written of it, having for brief spurts lived it, my nervous system keeps spring back to its old measure of turning everything around for the better. Hence my horrible waffling recently on diving into Revolution Sanders, pulling out, diving in, pulling out..... I'm doing the best I can and it is not good enough at finding and Walking the right path for me. I wrote most recently of my horrible encounters with the Sanders Campaign which discouraged me from jumping in totally, or even at all, as I had expected to do. And yet now I expect to be jumping in totally. What has changed? Even days ago I was jumping in with the notion that Revolution Sanders was a significant promise. At least for the moment, my nervous system seems to have accepted that Revolution Sanders is not of significant promise because we Americans are just too selfish even those drawn to Revolution Sanders. But hearkening, yet again, for the moment at least, argh, to what Jane Goodall wrote recently, there is still much worth fighting for. Spirit Sanders I can get behind. He's a very good man. And whatever I can do to drave Spirit Sanders wherever it might go advances every cause of rescue that I am devoted to, Palestine, affordable housing, just wages, decent employment.... maybe I can sustain this footing for more than a few hours. Maybe not. I'll continue to do my best. But I expect to spend much of the rest of the day on the phone for campaign Sanders and shortly to donate what funds I can.