Category: Fear

Enemy of the People

The elections have come and gone but the dilemmas of governance still face us. And if there is an enemy of the people, the enemy remains this: fear.

My first encounter with white fear came in my youth from an aunt who told me how the “colored” races were poised to outnumber whites. She showed me literature on it. She commented on the character of Jews. This was my first taste of fear and hatred. I did not like it then. I like it less now. My father, her brother, did not share her viewpoints. A Republican and a Veteran he taught me about respect of others, about patriotism and most importantly about respect of self.

I had a choice then and I have a choice now. To accept fear mongering, to pretend it’s not there, or to stand up and call it out for what it is. And what is it? Fear is the death trap of the living. It is the cold and dismal feeling that drains hope from our being. It is the precursor to anger and hate.

What does fear have to do with an election? This election was not only a race between parties. It was a choice between the politics of fear and the politics of hope.

And in this very fortunate moment, as people of color are stepping up and fulfilling the promises of this great country – we must support them. When people are grieving loved ones lost in violent and unforgivable ways, we must stand by them. When the earth weeps for the brutality we have wrought on her, we must come to her aid.

This is our moment of choice. Who we are and who we want to be is before us. Fear or hope. Kindness or brutality. It is no longer a choice between Republican and Democrat. It is a choice to be human.

 

The photo is of yarrow. From wikipedia: “In antiquity, yarrow was known as herbal militaris, for its use in stanching the flow of blood from wounds.”

This piece aired on WDRT’s “Consider This” November 8.

Walking

As I write, it is reported that there may be as many as 7, 000 Honduran migrants walking through the scorching Mexican sun to reach their destination – political asylum in the United States. Contrary to the wild reports made by our president of terrorists and gang members among them, the people are largely mothers with children desperate to seek new beginnings from our country, which is preparing to close our borders to them. And yet another wave of 2000 Honduran people are preparing to begin the journey north.

It is not because Honduran people like the treacherous journey that they walk. They walk out of desperation.

These caravans of human beings have been occurring for some time with people trying to escape the violence and poverty of their country. A country greatly diminished by the United States supported coup d’état in 2009. What we are witnessing is the end result of a series of missteps by United States foreign policy in the region. What they are fleeing is a repressive Honduran government aided by the financial and technical support of the United States.

And before we put blame on the Trump administration we must understand the role of the Obama administration and the actions of then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in creating this human nightmare. We must recon with the reality that our military is and has been used to benefit corporate interests – both here and abroad.

To understand that our politics, regardless of affiliation has been imperialistic; that our military has been used to support corporate greed could wake us to the reality that it is our responsibility to rein in the unleashed power of the United States. It is up to each of us to fight for the preservation of our humanity.

It is time to lend a hand, not build another bomb.

 

You can listen to this on Soundcloud. It aired on WDRT Thursday Nov 1.

*photo on Facebook, no credit found, but it does tell the story…

One Thread

Sometimes I can’t help feeling we have gone incredibly off kilter. Far too many are sinking in modern day madness. While scores of statistics remind us of our fragility as human beings and as a culture, we seem incapable of pausing long enough to right the ship. We have not yet learned the truth: What happens to one happens to all.

Discussions on mental health and mental illness are on the rise, yet the inadequacies of our systems are glaringly obvious. Money for the war machine is boundless, yet too many veterans are homeless. Good clean food is important to healthy bodies and healthy minds, but we reward our small farmers by allowing them to fail. “In God We Trust”, or so we have been led to believe, yet we tighten our borders and condemn the needy.

The inconsistencies of our society could drive anyone mad. And it is. But I do not think it is an umbrella of thought that will unite us or drive the demons away. It must come back to this: We are tied together in one thread of consciousness.

What happens to one happens to all. Our fear of “other” is a symptom of sickness, not a course of action we are meant to follow. We are not meant to follow.

As I take time to ponder our willingness to be led by politics, religion and the economic grind, I am heartened by the courage and vision of the many refusing to succumb.

This is the thread of humanity that has held the world together through reigns of tremendous ignorance. It is found in tree sitters halting the pipelines, in police refusing to serve at borders, and in backyards and acres of those growing food for themselves and others. There is a pulse, a thread of consciousness that unites us. And it is on the rise.

 

This aired on WDRT’s Consider This, August 16, 2018.

In This New Year

As we move into the New Year and before our glad tidings once again fall prey to divide and conquer, let’s take a moment to assess.

What have we learned?

For the past forty plus years we have swung between false visions of who we are as a people. The atrocities of the Vietnam war and the Civil Rights era were great Awakenings, yet we have surrendered the hopes and dreams of that time to sound bites of fear and stories that teach us to hate.

What could have been and should have been the beginnings of creating a new vision based on dignity, peace and prosperity have become a nightmare of innuendo and the tightening of power and control.

The storylines are dizzying and the “tell” of where we stand is alarmingly clear: the rise of suicide, the rampant use of recreational and pharmaceutical drugs, the willingness to destroy the earth and our insistence on war are all results of our negligence to foster peace.

You might say, “It is not my fault, I have stood up, I’ve voted, I’ve marched and signed petitions.” And I would say, “All good. But efforts are fruitless if the bitter cup of hate continues on.”

The blaming game has crippled us. The inability to trust one another has hindered our ability to galvanize a movement towards peace with any staying power. We fear those who are different and we are willing to dwell in the comfort of sameness.

I think it is time we reach for discomfort. I think it is time we assess and take stock of beliefs we harbor that diminish our humanity and another’s. And it is time to let them go.

There is little left that we have not tried. Except this: We have not secured our right to peace. We have not yet learned the power of it. We have ignored the need of it for ourselves and for each other.

In this New Year, we can stand together for what is right, just and human. Let the love of the sacred and the awe of the earth call us back to the source of peace and dignity within us. There we will find compassion and resilient love, and there we will find the courage to act.

Let us try what has not been yet been tried; let us act together with one voice towards peace. Rise up. Make it a good year.

 

 

 

This piece aired on WDRT’s “Consider This” Thursday December 28th.

Looking forward to everything this New Year brings. Love and Best Wishes to all

Challenging Center-Mass Shooting

Jason Pero died on Nov 8, 2017 when an Ashland County deputy’s bullets hit his heart and right shoulder. He was 14 years old.

Jason lived in the tight knit community of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. He was learning the traditional ways of his people. He was a drummer. He was in eighth grade. Home sick from school, police reports say he was walking with a knife near his home and that he was the one who had made the 911 call describing himself. The deputy tells us that Jason lunged at him with the knife and that the boy refused to drop the weapon on command.

There were eight minutes from the time of the 911 call until the fatal shooting. Eight minutes. Eight minutes of thoughts running wild. Eight minutes and the training to shoot a suspect at center-mass was executed.

Eight minutes and now an eternity to understand why… The why that we may never know…

But there are some things we can know. No child should be cut down in the street.

We can send people to the moon, we can transplant human organs, but we cannot find a way to stop an assailant with a knife, or perhaps someone who is frightened or mentally distraught, by any other means than a lethal shot to center-mass?

I believe the time has come to end this dogmatic practice by our police forces or to at least begin a healthy dialogue on the possibility of ending it. The life of a 14 year-old boy is over and the life of the 24 year-old deputy will be forever changed. A community is reliving the trauma of centuries of occupation and people are once again blindly defending the actions of authority.

The time to remember our humanity is now. There are solutions that can be enacted but we must have the will to allow them to emerge. We are better than this. Our children deserve more than this.

The storyline will always be second to this fact: Jason Pero is dead. It’s time we care. Let us begin a conversation about the misuse of power, acknowledging that it is detrimental to the abuser as well as to the victim, and above all, let us find a way to quell the fears that too many of us harbor towards one another. Let us rekindle kindness. It’s time.

 

This piece aired on WDRT’s “Consider This”, Thursday, December 14.

The photo is of forget-me-nots.