Occupy and the empowerment of the individual

                July 7: As part of an independent study to meet my continuing education requirements as a licensed professional counselor, I will be posting over the next sixth months a look at the state of mental health via the views of Occupy. Occupy has shown people their individual power and we are the "hope" we are looking for. 

 OCCUPY AND THE EMPOWERMENT OF THE INDIVIDUAL
http://www.facebook.com/#!/OccupyPsychiatry
 

                In America, Mental Health is over-medicated, underserved, narrow in focus, reactive instead of proactive, quick to pathologize, stigmatize,  and  a failure overall. The statistics, if they are to be believed having been promulgated by big pharma; with its profit agenda, reveal a nation of bi-polar, p.t.s.d., anxiety ridden people with a varying array of eating disorders, addictions, violent tendencies and personality disorders from ADD to Xenophobia and getting worse every day. Everything, and the smallest things are turned into pathology so a pill can be used to cure vs. the genuine interaction of one caring human with another over time. Mental Health has been co-opted by advertisers who want to manipulate the masses to buy the products of their clients, used to find better ways of torture and taken over by idealogues who believe that God is the only cure for all mental illness as if "demons" exist in our heads.

                If mental health does any good it is by accident, not by design; by the very tenacity and heart of the men and women who choose to be in service to others. What these caring individuals end up doing is triaging the horrible bloody psychological wounds of a society that has turned people into liabilities and assets. Consumers not customers, terrorists not patriots, chickens in a pecking order of meritocracy where the biggest bullies claim to be the smartest and have been robbing everyone blind, raping the environment for decades through the piracy of free market hierarchy, wars un-ending and the co-opting of democracy worldwide. On the one hand we are manipulated daily by the marketplace, surveyed, polled, analysed, spied upon, brain washed and kept confused with lies, lack of information, and fear and then told each of us must fight peer pressure, temptation, impulse by simply not thinking or acting wrongly. It takes super human effort not to be dragged about by the tender parts

                My own personal story of trying to do good in the world, while holding onto any semblance of mental and spiritual well-being perfectly illustrates the undermining of fragile ego, the fracturing of the id, and expecting the soul to survive in a country that has become full of religious fascism, demagoguery, phony patriotism, myths of the rugged individual, glorifying militarism and violence, brainwashing and outright lies.

                I am 54 and have been a therapist for twenty years. I started out in theatre because it felt safe and helped me to overcome a life time of being bullied, abuse and grief. I decided at eighteen I wanted to use theatre and dance to help others delve into the largeness of themselves, to "fill the egg" as the great dramatist Stanislavski taught. I invented drama and dance therapy and it would be twelve years later before I would find out it had already been invented. I realized very quickly that I needed to live some life and learn about who I was before I could take on the hopes and wounds of others. I went to graduate school in theatre only to be attrited out. I thought at first I was not good enough but found out due to cuts by the Reagan administration the university couldn't afford to have so many graduate students. This was the first time in my life I was aware how national politics could effect me personally. I was always more aware of national politics than most of my peers. I snuck out of bed at the age of 12 to see the election returns. I was aware of environmental issues because of an art teacher in seventh grade. The Vietnam War was played out before me in black and white, but somehow I could still see the red of the blood. When Reagan ran I got into fights with class mates over his being a John Bircher and his record of austerity in California. I was very aware of local politics, of graft and corruption in the county commissioners, developers wanting to run highways through established neighborhoods, the race riots of 1927 in Tulsa still being played out 60 years later in aggressive and passive aggressive Jim Crow, the oil industry’s  devastation of the water and air along the Arkansas river.  

                Along the way I have felt useless and helpless. During the crash of the 80's I was everything the President and his minions said was causing the downfall of America. On welfare, not a Christian, liberal politically and female, the only thing I wasn’t; black. I didn't own a car or phone, day care was impossible to find. I can't express the gratitude for our public schools for a place for my child to be safe while I tried to find work. Then as now the need for money was critical. The schools were under attack, the war on drugs ramping up; the ideologues were emboldened, the racists wanting segregation again. Big pharma had its eye on boys and the use of Ritalin was a dollar sign in their eyes. Reading rates had plummeted, math dumbed down, crowded rooms, less pay and the attack on the teachers and their union and unions in general was just under way. The grade school I had my daughter in told me she needed to go to transitional before first grade. I respected their professional advice and it was a mistake.  The transitional year had become a place to make money, not to help learning disabled children. Since there weren't that many learning disabled kids they started cherry picking, especially kids from single parent homes. My daughter could barely read by third grade in spite of the extra year. I read a book called "Why Johnny Can't read" that laid out the national politics behind the removal of phonetics in the schools. I taught my daughter to read in two weeks from that book. The teachers were amazed at her progress and I sent them a copy of the book. A year later the school won a presidential award for the most improvement in reading. Again national politics and money had a profound influence to the negative in my eldest and later two subsequent daughters’ lives.

                I was married to a lawyer and  his legal assistant for several years. In that time he had environmental cases come across his desk from natural gas condensates in the water of a Kiowa family, a team of con artists tried to put toxic waste over an aquifer on Apache land. Another suit that had been in the works ten years by the time he saw it, where a crop duster spraying a noxious mix of a variety of chemicals on peanuts and homes nearby.  Pres. Carter allowed the chemical companies to spray under "experimental" status on peanuts. It was then we began to see the rise in peanut related deaths. Politics reared its ugly head again when laws were passed to allow large law firms to advertise and do the thing lawyers are always accused of, chasing ambulances. Once large firms could hire cheap or free interns to track down accident records and literally go to the homes and hospitals of victims to offer their services, my attorney husbands business fell off the map. Bankruptcy was the biggest part of his business and that changed has changed as well due to federal laws that make the lawyer responsible if clients lie about assetts.

                When I went to graduate school for my masters in human relations, counselors were making on average to start of $55,000.00; where they got this number I do not know but I have never seen more than 24,000 a year. As the ink was drying on my license Pres. Bush was changing the laws around mental health and giving public dollars to religious organizations. Religious organizations see psychology as secular humanism and God-less. They were telling us through the corporate media that humanists ( code for therapists) were destroying our nation. Pres. Bush being "born again" believed this as well. Under Reagan, mental institutions were shut down all across the country. My grand uncleTed was released from a Baltimore hospital and never seen again. No one in my family could find him, no doubt like so many others he ended up homeless, unable to manage his medications for schizophrenia and died. Then the religious lobbyists wanted all institutional facilities and clinics to hire preachers. I am a licensed therapist, passed my boards and am in good standing and can't find work because I haven't a degree in psychology, sociology or theology. My masters is a diversity program which includes counseling, systems and organizations. I watched religious students get up and leave in a temper because the professors discussed gender issues, religious abuse of women, reproductive choice, racism, atheism, gangs and value systems of people from all walks of life. Gender issues seemed to be a particular sticking point. My masters combines sociology on steroids, psychology with soul, theology not just Christianity. I can't get work for the lack of the suitable degree and more importantly because there is no money. ( I  read an article yesterday that discusses the lack of mental health dollars and the ramifications of further cuts in light of the Aurora theatre massacre.) It was pointed out to me that it is also hard to get hired when every place I have worked has been shut down. Two nursing homes and a facility for children all shut down for neglect, dangerous facilities, and wrongful death. I caught a doctor prescribing anti-psychotics for the sedative side effect, gas leaks, water in air ducts, mold, religious abuse of a patient, bed sores, and sexual assault. We won't even talk about the food and the need for profit running it all. Politics looms large while the men behind the curtain of the tea party takeover of the Republican party ( or is that bring it out of the neo-con closet). They scream for cuts in all social programs since FDR, all the while the corporate war machine, oil and banking get fat on subsidies and gaming the system. My depression was deepening the summer of 2011, to a level I had never experienced before. I didn't know what to tell someone like me. I am well educated, always made goals and kept them, tried to do right, and was working in a low wage service job. No hope or prospects and realizing the older I get the less likely anyone would hire me. I am worth more dead than alive to my family (1,035.00 in social security to my daughter and husband if I died, and bringing in less than $1,000) what a way to see things. Then you add in the savings in resources from food to upkeep.  

     Occupy came in the nick of time for my part. I had spent so many years working to be a person who could make the world a better place in my small way. After I obtained my license and finished almost a decade in personal healing and certification in integrative breathwork I couldn't find work. I bought a little store from a friend who was moving and was able to provide counseling with some of my customers. When the bankruptcy law was passed and the adjustable mortgages began to trickle through the economy, gas reached four dollars a gallon and inflation roared I could see we were in for hard times. As my sales slumped, customers would come in to apologize for not spending money, just to say hello and try to make sense of things. I did my best to help them realize it isn't their fault; the deck was stacked against them long ago. By Christmas of 2007 I knew I would need to close. The depression from yet again being cut off by politics and the greed of corporations has been devastating. Now I am hounded by collection agents with false lawsuits and inflated amounts owed on credit cards. I tried to pay and when we lost our jobs it was impossible. The 1% ultra-rich sells our debts over and over to make money and don’t actually care if the debts are paid back. Watching the Spanish "indignado" and the Arab spring unfold on the internet via current TV, free speech TV and Democracy Now lifted and excited me like nothing has in over almost four years. From there I was aware of the protests in New York. I was watching live streaming the second week and Ad Busters called for occupation I was glued to my computer hunting down all the live streaming footage I could find.

     Like the hiking in group’s adage, our society only evolves as fast as the slowest among us.The personal sense of vindication was powerful. The conclusions I had come to regarding the shadow side of capitalism were not just the personal rantings of  a woman slowly losing her grip. I wasn't and am not alone. People like me who had been bullied and shamed into silence, derided and marginalized for not joining the group think of "Americanism" now had the courage to speak out loud, to wear our values openly. Slogans like; "Banks got bailed out, we got sold out!", "Human Need over Corporate Greed" "The Earth is not an Assett", "I am a human being, not a pathology!", have changed the tone of the conversation dramatically.  Occupy helped expose the horrible state of mental health among the many inequity’s in the world. This very young field of science was just beginning to get some strength when it was attacked by ideologues and a right wing agenda of rugged individualism, hyper masculinity and "Greed is Good". Occupy Wall Street was in a position to help many mentally ill persons who were tossed aside. At one time they were the largest free food kitchen in the city of New York. They also were dealing with a rainbow of mental issues from depression, addiction and suicide, violence was rare but not unheard of. The encampments across the country gave voice to those parts of our society that have been cast aside the mentally ill, addicts, veterans, single parents, LGBT, non-Christians, debtor class, wage slaves, unions holding on by a thread, immigrants and allowed us to yell enmasse, THE EMPORER HAS NO CLOTHES! 

    My endeavor over the next six months through articles, videos, websites, books and activities to research the benefits of Occupy and the Empowerment of the Individual. There is a long history of populism in this country usually by factions whether is it white blue collar labor, African Americans, women, gays and immigrants.   I want to explore the non-hierarchy used in the general assemblies, the inclusion of the best of social structures, the failure of the mental health field to protect its own, and its client’s best interests. The application of psychology of place as it relates to inequity in the United States. Occupy has changed the conversation and given voice to those who are marginalized. I want to find my way to understanding what can come of the cry rising from the land, to understand how mental health can better assert itself as a way through the miasma of pain. How mental health can overcome derision, educate better, be more present, overcome profiteering, and help us as a nation to attain that small part of the pursuit of happiness our founders felt was a right of all beings.

These groups have changed the conversation slowly but surely through decades of protest and education. As factions they fought often alone and died, only when a larger part of society joined them, those not a part of the core group, change was realized. What is remarkable about Occupy, it is a banner where all groups can rally together as a force not seen in the world or this country. All walks. Not factions. All walks all voices. And though the powers that be have tried to fraction and cause dissent the movement keeps going. A deepening equality is being revealed by Occupy. 

   

It Is All About What The Neighbors Think!

I can’t stand my neighbors! I have lived in this place for eleven years and not one of my neighbors has been kind, thoughtful, friendly or even tried to keep their yards nice. The “white trash” in this town figuratively and  literally are outrageous. I can’t take it anymore.

What is really weird? Most of these places are rentals always have been and they keep attracting the same types of people. What is with that? Do the landlords make the same judgments’ over and over about their renters? Or are these the only types to rent to? Whatever the case…one house had a hoarder and an alcoholic living there. The old guy had lived there a long time. The roof was no good; trees and weeds over took the place, the back yard full of junk. His grandson was living in one of the trailers in the back, grandpa finally in the hospital. No electricity and the place condemned. One of the grandsons’ friends set fire to the place. It went up in less than two minutes, never seen a house go up so fast. It was fully engulfed ten minutes later and catching the house to the east on fire.   As the firemen were cleaning things up one of them rolled out an old freezer and it opened up, the stench must have been horrendous as the fellow started gagging as the others laughed at him in sympathy. That house sat for two years, stinking and ugly before the city finally hauled the trash away.  Someone bought the property, built a darling little rancher and sold it….to a woman who is a cat lady and a hoarder! WTF?

Another big two story house has been bought and sold at least on average every two years then rented. Each new buyer has poured money into this pit. It has asbestos siding and the last renovator simply covered it with siding that is bubbling, bending and falling off. The roof was cheaped out and is blowing off (third layer) There are no gutters and the water for a year was running off the back and straight into the basement through the door outside. Every group that has rented, has been nasty, loud, rude and trashed the place again. Dogs barking, trash blowing around, screaming and yelling, kids running up and down tearing up yards, doing whatever they like, fights and drunkenness.

My neighbor next door is from Michigan (and thinks the Gov. is a great man there) they live here in Colorado and there six months each stay to avoid paying property taxes. They hate Obama. I don’t talk to them anymore; they think it’s funny to insult my views. Their yard is a moon scape derived from so much weed killer and insecticide that two of their dogs have gotten tumors. Hello! Clue!?

 There is an Irish saying: “más rud é nach bhfuil tú mhaith dom, saoire dom féin”; If you don’t like me, leave me alone. It has become my mantra with my neighbors.

The cat lady said a nasty thing to another neighbor in front of my then 8 year old daughter, she of course told me. I don’t acknowledge her at all.

Now I see the thought process behind covenants. The neighbor who screams like a “fish mongers wife” all day at her kids and grandkids threw two large ugly sofas out to the curb two weeks ago. Okay, I think they are taking them to the dump or donating or whatever. Two weeks in a row the sofas are soaked by downpours. The first big rains we have seen in years. The woman puts a “free” sign on them. OMG! I call code enforcement. I have never done such a thing. Today the fellow drives by to look and low and behold, the woman has thrown more crap out there and is having a garage sale. And to top it off, the cat lady (who btw feeds her cats inside and out so every night the raccoon parade hits the front porch with fighting and frightened howling cats)  decides to let her friend the former junk store owner also have a garage sale. One of many that will be held all summer AND they lay the crap all over the yard of the house next door because it is empty. That does it!

As far as I am concerned they don’t think. Not about the trash, the animals,  screaming horrible things, the loud music, the dying grass or trees, the dead cars, the dying dogs, the mean spirited gossip, the bigoted digs, the religious ignorance…..

It is all about what the neighbors think……they obviously don’t care about what I think.

We have a nice little house. It was built in 1900 by a local architect and builder for his own family. I call it a poor man’s Queen Anne; with a touch of ginger bread and pillars. It is well built, with beautiful carved oak mantel piece, egg and dart on thick oak doors, old growth hemlock fir floors. My husband hated the yard though. It was a desert (hello southern Colorado); five hundred year old fir trees and one tiny four foot beat up crabapple tree; which was not identifiable at the time.

I have painted every inch of this house, inside and out. Hubbie got all the “sexy jobs” the roof, the attic, the foundation. It of course is a work in progress and still needs work and after ten years it needs to be painted again. I bought a Van Briggle vase and used it as inspiration for the bright colors. I found out a neighbor hates the colors. All the houses are pale yellow, brown, tan in a word dull. Someone finally painted one of the houses adobe orange.  Colorado means land of color, literally. Yet no one uses color on their homes, their clothing, their yards. Yes I exaggerate some, there are some lovely buildings and homes here, but the slum lords who rent don’t care about this place. They rent to whomever; do as little as possible on their properties. Collect the money and live in Denver, Utah wherever.

I love this little house. We sometimes think we could just pick it up and move it to the countryside. I had a dream the other night where I had money and I bought all the houses and the crappy little fall-y down rectory next door. I tore most of the little old guard shacks down, the nasty asbestos thing, planted trees, and built two maybe three more house in the style of R.J. Okie did for this little house and sell them to the kind of neighbors I want. Nice people, without dogs, who use trash cans, are quiet and like the color of my house.

Sure, that will be the day! (Shut UP Mojo!)

Where have you been all my life John Galsworthy?

Where has John Galsworthy been all my life? I have read thousands of books and never read The Forstye Sage. What a revelation! Charles Dickens go bark at the moon! Galsworthy lived from 1867 to 1932 and his work reveals an attitude of “a man of property”; Soames  Forstye;  timeless and timely. Galsworthy has an insight into British exceptionalism that is familiar and sad in its intransigeant.  Soames is a solidly wealthy man. Not only did he inherit great wealth he was raised to believe in his superiority in that fact. Having grown his wealth with practical English logic almost Vulcan in its detachment, he finds himself in his later years defending his universe to himself thus;

Take his own case for example! He was well off. Did that do anybody harm? He did not eat ten meals a day; he did no more than, perhaps not so much as, a poor man. He spent no money on vice; breathed no more air, used no more water to speak of than the mechanic or the porter. He certainly had pretty things about him, but they had given employment in the making, and somebody must use them. He bought pictures, but Art must be encouraged. He was, in fact, an accidental channel through which money flowed, employing labour. (sic)  What was there objectionable in that? In his charge money was in quicker and more useful flux that it would be in the charge of the State and a lot of slow-flying money sucking officials. And as to what he saved each year-it was just as much flux as what he didn’t save, going into Water Board or Council Stocks, or something sound and useful. The State paid him no salary for being trustee of his own or other people’s money – he did that all for nothing! Therein lay the whole case against nationalisation – owners of private property were unpaid, and yet had every incentive to quicken up the flux. Under nationalization (sic) – just the opposite!

 
Soames’ cogitations come in the roaring twenties and with a jaundice eye toward human beings he has been able to ride the profits of chaos with the expertise of the great British Empire builders and explorers. He is not oblivious to the “ruffians” in the market running up commodities, selling shoddy goods and undermining the practical English character. His only concern is to dodge these gamblers and come out ahead. He is totally unaware of the benefits bequeathed to him on the backs of slaves and oppression. After this brief attempt at bolstering his own world view he proceeds to one of his many law offices and orders sale of stocks and the eviction of an old woman of eighty three. There! English practicality prevails and all is right with the world!

The attitude of the elite, the 1% is a grand and gross rationalization. What harm does it do indeed!? Soames is a cold man of property, his love of his first wife was that of a buyer of beauty. When he realizes he may lose this perfectly beautiful woman his response is to show her how much she “belongs” to him by “ enforcing his rights as a husband” ; spousal rape. Confident in his re-possession, believing she was finally convinced of his loyalty to her by his showing of intense emotion he is devastated by her finding a lover. Devastated to learn of her careful avoidance of pregnancy, and suffers the role of the victim, why doesn’t she adore me?

I can’t help feeling sorry for him as does his cousin Jolyon Forstye who marries Irene, the woman who from some “perversion” is unable to submit to Soames. Unsentimental, practical, controlled and controlling English man of art bought and paid for, but artless to his core. In his way he feels deeply his position in the Empire and his family, but never expresses it, each rare tender moment with a dying father, the birth of a daughter, the grief of losing his perfect wife, is concentrated, condensed to the point of pain almost unbearable; to be carefully hidden and covered over with business, logic, plans. Force and strength are all he knows. He does not know he is lost, caged and cut off, like Midas.

The crash is coming, war yet again. His type will be undone, the gilded cage will break and like domesticated birds he will not be able to fly for he never learned. A world will crash about him. As a reader almost one hundred years later, to see this hubris repeated yet again makes me feel like an alien in a weird way. The elite of today, those empire builders that had it handed to them after World War II are coming to the downhill side; Tied in knots by their own exceptionalism, their own practical rationalizations’. The “job makers”, the Kings of the Universe, the smartest men in the room, the men of free markets, of world order.

I am reminded of the poem by Kipling;

The White Mans Burden;

 

Take up the White Man’s burden

Send forth the best ye breed

Go bind your sons to exile

To serve the captive’s need

…

In patience to abide,

To veil the threat of terror

And check the show of pride;

…

The savage wars of peace

Fill full the mouth of Famine

And bid the sickness cease;

…

And reap his old reward:

The blame of those ye better,

The hate of those ye guard

We should trade white for rich as in the new world economy the “burden” is shared and carefully nurtured by the elite of all races, colors and creeds. America may have been handed the spoils of empire after World War II, but the views of the fictional   Soames Forsyte have been sold to the entire world. We fought the fascism of old only to pass down and expand that fascism in a “burden” of democratic fascism to all men around the world. The rich are democratic among themselves, a country apart. They see themselves as the conduit of civilization, nothing would happen without them;  not greatness, no jobs, no art or beauty. They will tell you it isn’t about the money and it would be the God’s honest truth. What is this human capacity for wearing psychic blinders? Are they put on while one is very young? Are we born with them, the psyche’s way of protecting the young ego, and then that same ego is never allowed to take them off? Why is it that the elite rich keep the blinders in place? It seems to me that the culture of wealth must maintain a separation in their minds between their actions and the fragile ego’s knowledge of the harm they do? This wall is kept carefully between themselves and the “lower” classes. (Euphemistically called “working” class)  They must know. They can’t possibly live in such fish bowls where everyone can see all they do as they parade around and deny what we all see and experience. It is a grand culture of narcissism.  

Galsworthy’s ability to observe a class, his keen subjectivity as a Brit, his poetic prose, the beauty is astonishing almost breath taking like fine portraiture. One chapter covering the death of old Jolyn Forsyte leaves one in a state of longing for all death to be as beautiful. All writing should aspire to this.

May the Day go your way!

May 1. Occupy is calling for a general strike of all commercial transactions and work by the 99%. As I understand it, May Day, or Beltane, Walpurgis Day is an ancient pagan and Celtic holiday celebrating the return of spring, fertility, and the abundance of life. It later became the date Karl Marx called for a strike to promulgate and demand the eight hour work day. I found (sorry) on Wikipedia a quote:

"In the United States of America, any sort of independent labor movement was paralyzed so long as slavery disfigured a part of the republic. Labor with a white skin cannot emancipate itself where labor with a black skin is branded. But out of the death of slavery a new vigorous life sprang. The first fruit of the Civil War was an agitation for the 8-hour day – a movement which ran with express speed from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from New England to California."

The need for an eight hour work day seemed to blossom all at once across the globe in the mid-19th century not to mention child labor laws. The May Day strikes by newly formed labor unions began in the United States and later in the Soviet Union to celebrate the worker. I just finished John Farrell's Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned. The first case to bring Darrow to the attention of the world was the defense of the Hay Market protestors. Mr. Darrow would be in the thick of it today, just as he was then. 

I find it ironic that we now either have a job that requires us to be on 24/7 call to a boss via our electronic devices or only part time low wage work. The idea of leisure time to contemplate and be with kids and family, fix up ones little castle, invent, create, read or commune with nature was the purview of the wealthy. The ability to be in connection to something other than the mechanistic cogs of commerce is important to civilization.

 To strike is "illegal", and Occupy speaks of proxy protests, strike by representation of supporters, the We vs. the royal we; thus the shutting down of the ports, blocking Bank lobbies, protesting shareholder meetings. Occupy has attracted under one banner the vestiges of the battered unions, civil rights and the social institutions of environment and human rights stuck or trapped in a perpetual wrestling match with government and corporate corruption. The recent ideology by free market corporatists that all must serve the almighty dollar is strangling the best of society. It is believed on the part of the Friedmanite/Randyites that if one is starving and oppressed you will work harder, longer and the stress of being under threat of survival will make you succeed. It is the "tooth and claw" approach to life. Eat or be eaten and then pat yourself on the back for being a bigger, badder meaner animal in the game of markets thus superior in every way, not to mention sanctioned by God. I feel we are lambs to the slaughter for thirty years now, just like the Jews of Europe before WWII.; swinging between, anger and depression and hitting helpless in between. Watching in horror as our nascent democracy and our fragile planet are plundered and bastardized.

How much do these self-appointed kings of the universe think the rest of us can take? How much whip cracking of the business model till we are all trained to salivate to the clink of coin? MAY DAY MAY DAY MAY DAY. venez m'aider. Come help me! Is the cry from every corner of the globe, the cry for dignity of soul, not just of race, religion, gender but of soul. Our collective souls are crying out and in our personal screams of agony we are finally able to hear the chorus about us. Occupy is calling us to join forces against the raping and pillaging by these neo robber barons, pirates and vampires. Yes, it has been a class war; classism is the root of all schisms. We are not crying for equality with the greedy, we are saying "you are no better than the rest of us" what makes you think you are? When did you earn it except off the backs of others? Many who gladly gave loyalty to good ideas and charisma, now find themselves betrayed, thrown aside, worn out, sucked dry and then called losers for believing in the greater good. Losers, anarchists, communists, socialists for demanding that those who cheat, rape and pillage in their legal, extra-legal and passive aggressive way be held accountable in this world not the next.

I plan to stay home; I cannot strike my family as that is my work. NO pay. I am valued by them, but not by society. My low wage personal care job I will not strike as the gentleman I help is one of us. But I will copy the story in the Nation this week regarding the organizing of caregivers unions. A Campaign of Caring by Laura Flanders and give it to my boss. An 84 billion dollar industry that pays on average below minimum wage, part time, no health care or anything else considered creating a good job. Caring for other human beings whether it be children or elderly is a low priority in this world of capital demographics. It is the hardest job and the basis of survival whether bonobo monkeys or humans.  How can we make a buck off the sick and dying is the driving factor with the rose colored rationalization of doing good.  Many home service provider companies get 3-8 dollars for every dollar a worker earns. The profits are enormous, off the public tax payer going straight into the pockets of the one percent and a token given to those who need service. They take the whole loaf, promise to share it equally and then call the end piece our equal part. It reminds me of the Lucy and Linus cartoon where Linus asks Lucy for a glass of orange juice and she says yes if he will share. She returns in the next panel, drinks the entire glass and when Linus complains she announces; "my half was on the bottom".

I am a counselor and have found the most exploited sector of the population is the disabled, sick and elderly. I remember my Mothers attitude about growing older was "just put me on an ice floe". The sense of being useless ( as a consumer) and now an asset class to be exploited is truly  uncivilized. Ageism that last stage of classism has become a trillion dollar business, between big Pharma, hospital and health Inc. Much has been said about the young college student and the lack of jobs, no mention of those over 50. Ever! Talk about wasting brain power. It is as if we reach an age when we realize we are in the matrix and wake up only to be "shat" out into space as dangerous to the body economic. If you realized it earlier you had little chance of making any difference except to huddle with your fellows, find comfort in the collective misery and try not to be noticed.

MAY DAY from pagan celebration of life to a cry against wage slavery and soul killing labor. I am grateful to the grave yard shift in the pharmacy, but they better get paid well to be there when someone needs them not to mention the harm it does their body. I am grateful for all those people on Dirty Jobs who do those awful things, often with a joke and a smile most of us cringe at. But they need to be paid well instead of treated like "untouchables" by the corporations they work for who rake in the lions share. Even the male lion knows better than to eat more than a fair share or the females turn on him. Even a chimpanzee who bullies its peers knows there is a line to be drawn if they want to remain with the troop. That is evolution, not the crawl in a hole and die attitude of the market when it can't get any more money out of you, evolution says bullies end up dead. Haven't we seen this in history? This countries inability to deal with the bullies in our midst who perpetrate upon the rest of the world is coming home to roost. Our very wars are for profit only, not even the resources we might gain, or the moral high ground. Wars unending to keep us all frightened and off kilter; wars to terrorize a world into doing what we are told as an excuse to shred human rights, democracy and the environment. War machine corporations sucking and taking at gun point all of my life, cold wars, Vietnam War, axis of evil, holy wars, oil wars, war on terror, drone wars, shadow wars war on drugs, class war.

 If we are to survive to become that collective vision of utopia we must exorcise the bullies. It's going "to be a bumpy ride" as the lady said. 

 It will take decades to unseat the ruling oppressors and as their way of life dies they will scramble and fight even harder to hold on as they scheme to create a new hierarchy that keeps them in power; as the wannabe oppressors and greedy try to take their place. Our planet cannot afford for us to be in a chicken yard feudalism. We must hear the MAYDAY call. Our planet, our country, our souls are all at risk.

Other Womens Clothing

I always liked Easter. My Mom would make each of us new dresses, buy new shoes and sometimes outfits for spring and summer.
Swiss polka dotted sun dresses, t-strap shirts with matching shorts, sandles. It made it exciting, special and because it was spring better somehow than Christmas. When I had my first daughter I would make as much of her clothes as I could. I would buy fabric in the fall and spring and make at least five little outfits, till she decided she liked store bought better around the age of ten, not being a little kid anymore. I have tried to make my own clothes most of my life, but the last few years the fabric
has gotten cheaply made and expensive, the pattern styles not to my liking. When I was a teenager I loved "vintage" clothing. Vintage then was anything from 1900 to 1950. Beaded sweaters, jackets with padded shoulders, rayon blouses (which was exotic to me as everything in the 70's was polyester.) I had no problem scrounging around junk stores for a bit of old victorian underwear or slip, scarves, gloves.
It was my style to have a bit of the past over levis worn out and faded naturally over time. Most of my life I have worn second hand. Goodwill, salvation army are treasure troves. I also began to realize that second hand was/is environmentally sound. The making of clothing, the dyes and chemicals that go into them? If I could afford organic I would, but second hand the clothing is clear of formaldihyde. If they were going to fade or fall apart they would have already.
I fantasize about Clinton and Stacy from What Not To Wear showing up to peruse my closet and finding Goodwill tags. I dare those folks to find fashion at Goodwill. I do all the time. The photo is of five items I found just today. Neon, I am told is the color for the season and
I found some, plus silk. It makes me feel smart and creative to buy other women's clothing. I wonder who it belonged to, why she bought it  and then gave it away in most of the time perfect condition. I know some clothing is given by department stores and manufacturers, there will
be store labels on them or I will find the same blouse in different colors. Apparently blouses and shirts are the most commonly donated.  I have never seen jeans, sweaters or shoes brand new from a designer or store. I have a sweater thing. I love them and have a cupboard full including my own hand made.
In all the years of buying and donating to Goodwill (yes I too, buy new and then decide it wasn't for me) I have only seen one thing I  donated on another woman. We have no clothing stores for women in our tiny town unless you count WallMart (which I don't). We have two consignment stores
and two charities to buy from. An Alco sells levis and nurses stuff. That is it.
No one here is a fashion plate, but I see some interesting creative choices. I have been complimented many times on my outfits and will brag; "everything is goodwill except my underwear!"

As I run my hands over the racks I sometimes get melancholy, wondering who "she" was, is she dead, got  fat, lost weight, decided she was to old for lime green, to young to wear baggy t-shirts over polyester elastic waist pants. I see the other old ladies poking about sometimes I hold
something outrageous or horribly ugly and say; "oh honey, its you!" to giggles and rolling eyes. I wonder what my Mom did with all of her nice outfits she bought over the years. They mostly didn't fit me and I was so happy when I did get hand me downs from Mom. A black, yellow and white dolman sleeve sweater by Dion. The brown plaid circle skirt all of my daughters have worn in turn. A little blue beanie with a tiny cashmere stripe a Nun made for her. I wonder what happened to the lovely negligee Dad bought for her when they were newlyweds. That Red dress and the sleeveless mock turtle neck blouse she wore with panties and high heels when she posed for private cheese cake photos for Dad. Memories are in the clothes I touch, the clothes of other women full of harmonal hatreds and flashes of beauty. Trying to look pleasing or just not be bored with comfortable. The cloth imbued with that little contentment or thrill at seeing it for the first time. Tiny pleasures derived from a favorite color or fabrics luster. The pride in being able to tell silk, linen, cashmere by touch alone. I heard once we dress for other women not men, perhaps but I dress in othere women's clothing to feel a connection on an intimate level, an vicarious affirmation of community. Its spring, go buy a pretty something, feel good about who you are what you do. Merry Ostara Easter Passover.

Suspicious in a hoodie?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAbdswLRNRM

A little black and white vid to illustrate.
As i listened to Keith tonight i though of the fact if an old white woman had been shot? going to the store late at night? what justice then? Fear is killing all of us. My mother stopped going out at night at my age, refused to go to a movie alone or eat out. I am 54, for me that is too young to be old and afraid. At 16? to young to go and get skittles by himself in the dark? in a hoodie? chatting on the phone? I would assume I was being stalked also by a pedaphile, robber, rapist? just being paranoid? as it turned out.....I remember hearing a story when i was young of a woman raped and crying for help and people who didn't help, as she screamed and was murdered. This was all over the news when I was young....memory is fading. I remember little black girls being burned at church, I was there age. It never ends. I hope I live to see the day. I have never seen that mountain top.

Throw the dog a bone!

Someone in our town put up a flyer on light poles in a few places:

                "Outside, in the mountains, can you hear them grinding away in the quiet of the day, or at times, in the still of the night, or even the predawn hours? This grinding sound is heard too often, in these hard times, for it to be the sound of commercial or private jeTS alone. Burning jet fuel and money like theres no tomorrow. The military has money to burn. After all it's not their money. Over half a trillion dollars a year for the defense budget. The highway robbery of the high and mighty. Up above the world so high, like a sneaky ripoff artist in the sky. Or when visible, like the arrogance of the airborne bully "the arrogance of power".

The making, maintaining, repairing, fueling and flight of military jets is not an inconsequential part of our enourmous defense expenditure. As the world's most indebted nation we can ill afford such extravagance. I am appalled that so much of our tax dollars go to greedy defense contractors.

By routing jet traffic away from this area we take a crucial first step in reining in the overfunded corporate defense budget. We stop the military from doing what it wants to do, by rerouting unidentified military flights, that maybe confused with commercial flights. Building upon this success, we can encourage others to join us, until we grow strong enough in number and organization, to persuade congress to take money away from the military that it does not need, and reallocate that funding in the form of loans to worthy and needy individuals who will benefit the economy and our society, without digging us deeper into debt. (Certainly more than the recent minor if not insignificant defense budget cuts. We are in desperate need, the military is not.)

The 400 million allocated for Colorado from the Defense budjet is a drop in bucket compared to what we would and should get were there a significant cut in the defense budget. If we, and not the military, get anything. Throw a dog a bone. (A drop of equal to about the cost of two F-22 jets fighters.)

JUST SAY NO TO JETS. ESPECIALLY IF THEY ARE FREQUENT FLYERS HOT RODDING ACROSS THE SKY ON THEIR PRIMITIVE KEROSENE BURNING, INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINES."

Without getting into a debate over every issue mentioned in the piece or nit-picking the spelling and grammar…this act of public expression was remarkable. Albeit, anonymous it speaks to the fear, disgust and despair in our society over the now Balrog size of our military industrial complex. We know there are real people with real jobs in defense, doing the best they can to live and feel good about they are doing, being part of a military non-ending war footing. A war machine looks constantly for another enemy, real or supposed to feed itself with fires of greed and power. Why do we not hear from the religious types?  “Live by the sword, die by the sword” has new meaning now. The cry against deficit that mean no help for education, elderly or the disabled, no infrastructure repair or modernization rather than bombs and war toys that waste our resources, in a black hole where the Balrog lives.