And one day, after a time...

 Once, in the history of this country, the people addressed the then government of issues and grievances in person and through correspondence. Their words were received, and responded to, with contempt. Their voices fell upon deaf ears, and their persons were labeled as trouble makers, rabble rowers and instigators of unrest. This only accelerated the situations presently in contention, and after a time, these persons instituted a direct action against the then empowered government. Yes, the first hesitant and faulty steps toward revolution and replacement of empowered government with new provisions and government body.

Almost every existing country today can claim that as a beginning of their now embanked government body. And in many places, these scenes are replayed over and over, time and time again, for various reasons with various peoples portrayed as villain and veteran, terrorist and patriot, sinners and saints all. We have so many reasons and excuses to 'go to war', and many were initiated from a 'move for peaceful change'. We take sides based on individual needs and sometimes switch sides for reasons as minor as worried about being on the loosing, or as history usually records it, the 'wrong' side. Petty and impersonal decisions, that fall far from the initial reasoning and desired outcomes.

Always is there a call from the oppressed to be helped, to be aided and uplifted from depression, disease, hunger and lack of shelter. Always there is reason to assist our fellow humans as we ourselves were helped and aided by others. Always is there also a call by the empowered to be served. Where these line vary and cross, we see injustice, unlawfulness, and a reason to be concerned. Our existing government has set guiding laws into place to uphold these less fortunate, to ensure a common defense of all persons. Persons...not corporations, not government employees or elected officials, but persons.

YET WHEN THE PEOPLE SPEAK, THEIR VOICES ARE FALLING ON DEAF EARS. 

Deafened by cash, gifts, entitlements not earned by any other means but to give heedance to those already empowered. 

And the people continue to suffer. But they are not silent.

 Together, they gather and vent their grievances, plan communications with their government, and hold to their promised rights and liberties, all the while being stripped of them and limited by new laws. Until, one day, after a time...

There is honor in holding to truths, honor in defending those who cannot defend themselves. There is honor in demanding justice, and equality, for all under the law; and there is honor in demanding the laws be just and followed by even those who would make the laws.

But there is no honor in war. No glory in battle.

Battle, the acts during a state of war (and in many times during a state of peace) cause harm, destruction, and death. They hold a high price, even unaccountable by some measures, especially when compared to the miniscule cost of a movement toward peace or peaceful change. There is little glory in death, even when defending a purpose or ideal greater than accepted Gods, endangered family, or indebted friends. Death, the final sacrifice that one can give, is a final act of defiance in the face of adversity. You cannot repeat that action once done, nor repeal it's application, but only hope to honor it by following it with changing what has lead up to and caused it's appearance.

Wars are not impersonal, they affect everyone. They affect economics and environments. They affect every species that come close to it's boundaries and actions, and they affect them for far longer than the time it takes to fight, win or loose. We all loose in war. In battle we say we either won or lost, ground, men, ideas... We still loose. In war if we be victorious, we then survey the damages and losses on all sides...We still loose. Those costs are rarely repaid nor reclaimed, and many are uncounted. We loose so much because we, as fickle and impersonal as we have become, do not see that once we begin to attack and engage in battle, one side, or many, will loose the ability to hold to itself and it's goals and will be forced into something it does not belong to nor want. Sometimes that is forever.

We destroy the old and replace it with the new. We loose. We loose bits of identity when cultures are over run and replaced by different alien things. We loose languages, art, cultural histories that once stood out and became unique only to be redefined and judged against the new. We might believe that we have won, but the cost is almost always too high to bear.

I am no lover of war. I, much like most people, prefer peace. I'm not considered a pacifist by my peers, however I hold to debate, legal precedence, and mediation and negotiation of commonality and or compromise. I will defend myself, and those who cannot defend themselves, and that of my property, and my family when necessary. That too being my right. And I will do so by any and every means necessary based on circumstance, and here too ,I hold to peace and peaceful means as long as possible. But even the hardest steel can shatter under extensive pressure.

Change is inevitable, and we are in the constant field to implement and direct it. We are all accountable for it, and it will affect us all, in some manner or another. Our choices are independent and personal, the consequences, however, are another matter all together yet still are shared by all.

And one day, after a time....

Revolting Development

Something that first caught my interest, now has me getting involved...

Occupy Together (occupytogether.org) will provide you a list of places, dates and states that have gotten organized and are getting organized

Revolting Development

hactivism is a great use of this otherwise self serving social networking technology,

but when you overstate your case or senselessly exaggerate even the slightest of wrongs, you begin to become as corrupt as those you protest against.

in short, tread carefully, lest you become just another version of the man.

it’s trite to say that power leads to corruption, but that’s because it’s so true.

many of the dictators in the world came to power in idealistic revolutions.

the prevailing force in many ‘revolutions’ end up often worse than those they are replacing.

then came occupywallstreet, which seems both inspired and muddled. the lack of a coherent strategy hurt them with respect to public opinion.

even though i’m on their side, watching some of it did feel like a lot of people wanting to play the parts of protestor and activist, but not having the lines to speak. individually the people make a lot of sense, but outwardly they seemed confused, at least at first. i don’t think it was the fault of the protesters themselves, but just poor marketing and management, as silly as that sounds.

still, occupywallstreet has inspired similar ‘occupy’ movements in several cities. ‘day of rage’ movements have popped up as well, which i think are unfortunately named. i think they are taking the name from the arab spring protests, but it seems like that sends a wrong message to americans. howard beale was great fiction, but in this day and age he’s bill o’reilly or rachel meadow. he ain’t reaching anyone who doesn’t already share his views. being mad as hell is only entertaining, it doesn’t open minds.

i think everyone has the right intentions. but the point of the protests isn’t to pat ourselves on the back for caring but to reach out to the rest of the country to try to effect some kind of real, tangible change.

what i’m getting at is that we have to know who we are, what we are about and we cannot let the power of our movement be invested in any one person or group. i think this is key. i think it is possible to arrive at a simple framework of ideals that is attainable, non-violent, inclusive of everyone and dare i say it, moral.

the most important aspect of this movement would be careful consideration of your words. they will be used either to tear us down or show our rightness. you have the control over which it is. so many of the tweets and blogs i read about some of the occupy(fill in the blank) protests and the opbart (and opfullerton re: the kelly thomas death where the policeman was charged with murder) were so heavy with angry rhetoric as to sound crazy. it doesn’t have to be us vs them. we are them. they are us.

we don’t have to use the same rhetoric to decry those who would denounce as they use against us. this just makes for a noisy mess where no one is challenged to change their minds or consider our point of view. there is a way of answering criticism not by replying with the same but by demonstrating knowledge, caring and benevolent determination. that sounds soft but i swear it will work. doing the opposite is just an argument, and no one ever wins an argument.

i don’t think our ‘enemy’ is other people. it’s corrupt systems. it’s unjust (or just too many laws). it’s any police force that has more power than the people they are ‘protecting’. it’s the greed of an unchecked segment of society that chokes the economic opportunity of everyone else below it. it’s unchecked military aggression around the world. it’s a hawkish foreign policy that has been a huge contributor to the near-bankrupting of our nation. it’s a corporate climate wherein it pays businesses to send jobs to other countries. it’s a relentless diet of foreign oil. it’s a denial of even the simplest national environmentalism, whether or not you believe in climate change.

it’s an unjust and unintelligible tax code. it’s the loss of our sense of community. it’s the mired mess of how laws are written and passed in washington with cynical political dodges and lobbyists helping to write the laws in the first place. it’s allowing conglomerates like monsanto using the most cynical of means to control the future of farming, the landscape of our nation and the price of food itself.

it’s the unfettered ability of our government to surveil us because they are purportedly trying to find terrorists. it’s declaring wars on ‘things’ like drugs or terrorism: silly, endless wars that can never be ‘won’. it’s using nonsense and emotion to get people to argue against things that are in their better judgement, which is what all of politics on both sides seems to be anymore. it’s the government of our country having a globalist outlook. it’s putting people to death in prisons, something very few 1st world western nations do. it’s taking people’s land by force when they won’t sell it otherwise in order to hand it off to a big corporation that will pay more in taxes. it’s corporations that aren’t owned by the employees. it’s a corporate pay climate which ensures corruption and job elimination if it’ll mean a larger bonus for a handful of men who happen to be sitting on a board of directors. it’s the astronomical inflation seen in the cost of higher education.

it’s a stock market that has been reduced to nothing more than a handful of interests essentially gambling with our economy and taking a nice percentage for themselves, whether they win or lose. it’s the growing gap between the wealthy and the poor. it’s the shrinking of the middle class. it’s the death of main streets all over this country. it’s mindless political rhetoric that separates people and distracts the nation while the ‘leaders’ gerrymander themselves into perpetual wealth. it’s allowing factions to put forth moral issues as political ones which clouds the mind and emotions and causes the average person to lose sight of the real problem: that those doing the distracting are walking away with our futures.

damn, we have a lot of enemies. but they can call be beaten.