Thursday, April 27, 2017

Blog 27
April 27,2017

Refuse Silence

Overload will do it.  After weeks of “executive orders” most of which do little or nothing and what is about to happen, doesn’t, and facts that are not facts are repeated over and over, it is easy to think, “enough is enough”.  I am going to the beach, which I have done recently.  But still, a resurgence is bubbling up, and I can feel the Spring rush.  I am brought back into the fray, when I hand out a red card to a Spanish speaking member of my community, and we have a conversation that we would otherwise never have had like yesterday, with three hospital workers who wanted to tell me about a raid in San Jose where some people knew to keep their doors closed and others did not know.  Ths last group was taken away.  Many people have kept going.  Indivisible reports that 250,000 people went to 400 Town Meetings and confronted their representatives over the spring recess.  And in fact the ACA didn’t pass(although they are creeping up on it again), we have no wall, the Moslem ban has been stopped and the promised tax disaster is still underwraps. 

The Science March was particularly heartening.  People who had never marched before came out to insist that science matters and without it we are doomed. http://www.npr.org/2017/04/22/525250799/out-of-the-lab-and-into-the-streets-science-community-marches-for-science.

“GREENFIELDBOYCE: There were surprisingly few white lab coats, mostly looks like normal people, although there were people in lab coats. One woman I met is Carol Trosset. She's a field biologist, and she came from Minnesota for what she said was her first political event ever.
CAROL TROSSET: My sign says without data, you're just another person with an opinion.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: And so why did you decide to come all the way from Minnesota to this event?
TROSSET: Because science is how we know things, and if we don't pay attention to whether we know things or just think them, then we're going to make lots of terrible mistakes.”
The poet Jane Hirshfield has never thought of herself as an agitator. A self-described “genuine introvert,” Ms. Hirshfield likes to spend her days gardening, hiking and writing verses about nature, impermanence and interconnectedness.
But a couple of months ago, to her own surprise, she emailed the organizers of the March for Science in Washington and urged them to make poetry part of the protest. At the rally on Saturday, Ms Hirshfield will read her new poem “On the Fifth Day,” which addresses climate change denial and the Trump administration’s dismantling of environmental regulations.
“I’ve never done anything like that before,” Ms. Hirshfield said. “I don’t even give dinner parties.”
Overload can lead to silence one of the most dangerous opponents of freedom and democracy.  This week “This America Life” examined fake news in Russia and its longterm effects: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/614/the-other-mr-president.

Prologue:
“Since Russia meddled in our election, there's been concern that the fake news and disinformation that's so prevalent there could be taking hold in this country. But is that hyperbole? This week we look at what it's actually like to live in the confusing information landscape that is Putin's Russia.”

In Part 1 quoting a piece from the Guardian http://reprints.longform.org/putin-conspiracy-banned-story-anderson the story looks at bombings in Russia in 1999 which many believe brought Putin to power.
In 1999,  following four deadly bombing attacks on apartment buildings in Moscow it was believe by some, it was the government not terrorists as claimed by the government, which sponsored these attacks.  It was his response to these “terrorist” attacks that many thought brought Putin to  power. All who questioned the government’s version of what had happened were silenced. In 2009 when people were interviewed about this event most people interviewed  either didn’t believe that the government would do something like that, or didn’t care as if it was true or not true their lives had nothing to do with what the government did. By 2009, challenging the government seemed to be no longer an option.

So where are we headed?  Will overload, confusion, and misinformation take over our ability to discern fact from fiction?  Or will we continue to  Rise Up and challenge those who are attempting to put us to sleep and keep us in silence.

Wise Words


Charles Blow

Excerpt:
I worried that modern shortsightedness would prevent resisters from seeing the long game, that the exhaustion of constant outrage would numb them to unrelenting assault.
But, to my great delight, my worry was unfounded. Not only is the movement still strong, it appears to be getting stronger. People have found a salve for their sadness: exuberant agitation. Far from growing limp, the Trump resistance is stiffening and strengthening.

As John Cassidy put it this month in a progress report on the resistance in The New Yorker: “Indeed, what is striking is how many people Trump has mobilized who previously didn’t pay very much attention to what happens in Washington. He has politicized many formerly apolitical people; ultimately, this may be among his biggest achievements as president.”
These comments came specifically in reference to the throngs of resisters showing up at lawmakers’ town hall events, sometimes in record numbers. They are passionate, vocal and confrontational. They are not bowing down; they are holding their representatives accountable and giving a very visual reinforcement to the threat that defending Trump or supporting his agenda will be punished at the ballot box.

Jane Hirschfield

The Fifth Day
On the fifth day
the scientists who studied the rivers
were forbidden to speak
or to study the rivers. 
The scientists who studied the air
were told not to speak of the air,
and the ones who worked for the farmers
were silenced,
and the ones who worked for the bees. 
Someone, from deep in the Badlands,
began posting facts.
The facts were told not to speak
and were taken away.
The facts, surprised to be taken, were silent.
Now it was only the rivers
that spoke of the rivers,
and only the wind that spoke of its bees,
while the unpausing factual buds of the fruit trees
continued to move toward their fruit.
The silence spoke loudly of silence,
and the rivers kept speaking,
of rivers, of boulders and air.
Bound to gravity, earless and tongueless,
the untested rivers kept speaking.
Bus drivers, shelf stockers,
code writers, machinists, accountants,
lab techs, cellists kept speaking.
They spoke, the fifth day,
of silence.
Action: Decide where you want to focus your energies. Take care of yourselves.  Work with others. Reach out to people in your commuity who are already organizied and can use your help.
Call your MOC. Remind them to stand firm in support of the ACA.

The Budget: Now that your MoCs are back in Washington this week, they have to pass a stopgap funding bill, known as a “CR” (Continuing Resolution), to fund the government past April 28. But with his 100-day report card looming on that same day, Trump is desperate for any legislative win he can get—so much so that his cronies in Congress may be willing to risk a government shutdown by including unpopular policy riders in the funding bill, such as:
  • Defunding of ACA cost-sharing subsidies (CSRs) that millions of Americans rely on to keep coverage affordable
  • Defunding Planned Parenthood and other family planning initiatives
  • Additional funding for Trump’s mass deportation force, including his border wall, detention facilities, and more ICE agents
  • Restricting federal funding for cities that take up sanctuary policies
  • Defunding the EPA and other climate protection programs
Ask your MoC not to risk a shutdown and to oppose any of these policy riders in any funding bill.
March April 29, March for Climate Change

















Monday, April 17, 2017

Blog 26
April 17, 2017

Adjusting Our View

Are you dejected?  Feeling as if the keeping on keeping on is just too much.  I have been, and I have been taking a break.  Slowly, if I allow myself to back off from the daily onslaught of what is happening and what to do, I am able to come back to the daily demands, but with a new perspectve on what is happening and what I can do.

Right now, I am looking through a wider lens.  I am asking myself questions about how what is happening here is reflected world wide.  I am reading about the developments of  democarcies from a historical perspective and wondering:  What is a democracy?  How do democracies evolve? How do they change?  It seems crucial to keep our eyes on larger issues, possible visions of what might be possible in our contry’s future, as we take daily actions against immediate issues.  Without some perspective, I drown in the unresolveable values differences leading to policies that harm so many.

I am also looking inward as I examine my prejudices, assumptions and values.  At our seder, we considered exodus  from our inner enslavers and what we must do to find our own liberation.  Takes some pretty fancy dancing to keep it all in view,but for me right now it is energizing me and bringing me focus.

Wise Words

MCCOY: Well, what we are seeing is when voters divide into opposing camps they come to view the other side not any longer as a political adversary, as in a healthy democracy, just one to compete against and occasionally to negotiate and compromise with, but instead as a threatening enemy to be vanquished. And that means that compromise is no longer possible. Negotiations and communications break down. And people begin to perceive and be afraid of the other side.
MCEVERS: How polarized is the American system as compared to these other places that you research?
MCCOY: What we do see in the United States is over the last 15 to 20 years, one is that the growing distance between peoples and between the political parties as they each become more homogeneous within themselves, the Democrats and Republicans, and further apart. But the second part of it that's very important is the growing antipathy. So that is this perception that the other side is actually threatening, that if they come to power, if they win the elections, that that is threatening to our way of life.
MCEVERS: So what - from what you've seen in these three countries, what's the result of polarization? What happens?
MCCOY: Well, there's three possible outcomes. One is simply paralyzing gridlock where the two camps can't negotiate and compromise and arrive at any decisions at all. A second is that you may see a veering back and forth between two sides so that one side is in power for a while and is imposing its decisions on the other side. And that creates a backlash, and they'll be removed. And then the other side gets in and they do the same thing. The third is that the leader can stay in power, can change rules such as election rules that will benefit them, and begin to isolate, divide and repress their opponents. And you can see a growing authoritarian trend in those cases.
MCEVERS: So how can democracies reverse this process? How can you depolarize a political system?
MCCOY: One way to do it is to change the things that allow one side to gain too much power or to make, you know, political fights like elections a winner-take-all game. So in the United States, that would have to do with redistricting and not allowing the political parties to control the redistricting decisions to benefit themselves and to benefit the incumbents. But there's also a strong effect at the individual level where when people are afraid that - if somebody's own self-concept or world view is threatened, they refuse to receive new information that may disconfirm that.
Even if we can get out of our echo chambers and only, you know - and we can hear more points of view, people will still tend to reject the view that does not fit with their pre-existing beliefs. So we've got to find ways to bring people together and tap into their shared humanity. That is, to give them experiences where they can begin to empathize again with the other person.

“Adjusting Our View”
Marilyn Robertson

A fresh wind blows from the east, ruffling the leaves.
A rock is struck like a bargain.  Water reappears.

On a cold night, a warm fire. Soup bowls are filled.
The fierce-eyed neighbor is invited in.

Don’t all eyes look out from the same fear?
A knot of men, fists clenched. Suddenly a somersalt
In the dust, an aria from an upstairs window.

A lineon a map means nothing to a line on the earth.
That same earth, walked and plowed, turned
And planted: enough corn for two villages.

For one day, pretend what is different is the same
Or one hour.  Even a minute can awaken change.

Small hands fold and refold colored paper.
Lanterned boats are set afloat.  Each one carries
a flame bound for the land of new words.

Actions:

The Sister’s District Project https://www.sisterdistrict.com/what-we-do/
Organizing in your neighborhood to change red seats to blue state and congress.



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