Living in Crisis Time

Posted on April 26, 2020 by admin

How to live well when everything seems to be falling apart? When no one knows what tomorrow may bring, how do we know what is right, what is healthy, and what might be effective? We can’t know, but we can learn principles from previous crises and teachers. From reading and talking with survivors, it seems we may need to make three commitments to keep focused and be good people in times of crisis.

Self-care

When so many are suffering, when danger lurks all around, does it sound selfish to rest, to relax, to eat healthy food, go for a walk, have sex? It’s not. It’s recognizing that we are part of a community. If we don’t take care of ourselves, we can’t do a good job of helping others. If our health breaks down or we become depressed, others will have to care for us instead of our caring for them.

Caring for self doesn’t mean ignoring injustice, hoarding food, or leaving people alone in their misery. It doesn’t mean giving up the fight to protect our world. It means finding a balance, realizing our bodies are the most precious things we have, and they need our attention. The Buddha said, “To keep the body in good health is a duty… otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear.”

Let’s say the Buddha is right, and self-care is worthwhile in this time of pandemic, socially-engineered Depression, and authoritarian governments’ taking over much of the world. How could we take such care in such a time?

The first challenge is to create a pattern for our lives. That sounds really hard; we all see the world becoming more chaotic every day. Instead of a regular job, you might have to gig. Instead of sending kids to school, you might have to teach them at home. It’s easy to scatter our energy in such a time, but bodies need rhythm and repetition to function. So, can you live a schedule that includes breakfast, exercise, outdoor time, social contact, productive work, and rest? Can you eat in a healthy way instead of drowning your anxiety in sugar or alcohol?

I know you’ve heard this before, but with work and family responsibilities, healthy living is hard even in normal times. How much harder is it when every voice you hear is screaming ‘Run! Hide! Eat sweets!’? Or when you’re out of work and worried about losing your home?

Healthy living in perilous times is a book-length topic, for sure. Actually, I have written a book about it, and gave some good ideas in this article. Others have written well about it here and here and other places on the Web. But one point that hasn’t been mentioned enough is ‘Turn those scary voices off!’ Our perception of the world depends where we focus. Most people find constant focus on threats and horrors exhausting and depressing. Corporate or social media fear-mongering sap your energy and bring despair. We don’t have to ignore them, but we do need to spend at least half our time more positively, which usually means being with actual people, animals, or plants, meditating, or doing something we love and enjoy. Music helps too.

If you can turn off the terror chatter, you might find time for exercise, eating, and working. You can do things for money and still find them enjoyable, or if there is no money, find the pleasure or joy in free things. Of course, there are limits. For someone who is going hungry or sleeping on a sidewalk, self-care is much harder. I’ve never had to do that, so I can’t promise anything, but studies show that time and energy spent on being healthy also makes people more confident and happier, even if they still face major life challenges.

Help others

OTOH, self-care means very little if you are not making the world a better place. When you die, no one will ask how many pushups you could do. Who can you help, even one person, one animal or plant? What cause can you support, what mess can you clean up? It’s tricky to figure out where to help and how, because the needs are overwhelming, the situation keeps changing, and available information is so unreliable. Like, is it better to donate to a food bank or to a strong political candidate who might help more people? Should you volunteer on a crisis line or give time to needy neighborhood children? Or whatever, the needs are endless, but our time and energy are limited. Whatever you decide, helping others will make you feel better about yourself.

Almost nothing feels as good as helping others. Baptist Bishop Greg Valentine told me about buying a $200 pair of shoes, then hearing God’s voice telling him to give the shoes to a homeless man he saw, who had no shoes. After struggling with himself for a few minutes — “I really liked those shoes” — Bishop Valentine gave them up. “The man seemed really happy to have these shoes,” he told me, “but you know what? I felt even happier. The feeling I got from that was so powerful. Since then, I have been a lot less focused on material things. It’s not about possessions. God really doesn’t care about those. It’s about how we treat other people.”

Still, that knowledge doesn’t tell you how to divide up your limited resources, or how much to keep for yourself. Right now, need is everywhere. Most Americans have received $1200 “stimulus” checks, or soon will. My income has not changed, so I’m stimulated to give away most of it, and hopefully it will be effective. I don’t know how to decide except that giving to someone you know is usually better than giving to an organization where you know no one. Or at least, do some good research before giving.

Resist

Sometimes survival is the only victory we can hope to achieve — sometimes even that is a long-shot — but often people do far more. Things may seem hopeless now, but they’ve been hopeless before, and change still came. The great revolutionary Vladimir Illych Ulyanov (Lenin) said, “Decades go by and nothing seems to happen. Then a week comes when decades happen.” Those weeks come because a lot of people put in a lot of effort making them happen, even when all seemed lost.

Successful revolutionaries like Lenin or Mao-Tse Tung also had to think way, way outside their boxes. Lenin said he was following Karl Marx, but the Russian revolution, in the midst of World War 1, was very different from anything Marx had predicted or recommended. Mao didn’t follow in Lenin’s footsteps; he based his revolution on the peasants, not the workers. What they had in common was a single-minded focus on overthrowing the corrupt, destructive system they lived in.

A revolution today couldn’t be anything like Lenin’s or Mao’s. It probably wouldn’t be “Left” at all; it would have to be a movement that appeals to people of all kinds. It might not have to be a revolution with lots of killing, but it would have to decouple money from power. It would require everyone to change, including you and me. I don’t know how to do this, but I can’t accept just letting the machine run over us like it’s doing now.

Grow

Times of great change are the best teachers. You or I might have been happier living in less challenging times, but really, how many of those have there been? For billions of people in the world, the crisis is not new and will not go away when the shutdowns are lifted or COVID is cured. The pandemic is just making existing challenges more intense. But we are here; the time is now, and the old ways can’t go on. Can we change ourselves and make the new ones better? We are called, as author/philosopher Charles Eisenstein, says, to make the most of our gifts and share them while we’re here. Perhaps we’ll be among the lucky ones who experience this crisis as a time of growth.

Wishing you love, strength, courage and wisdom, David.

Posted in happiness, Self-Care Support, Uncategorized | Tagged COVID-19, Helping others, resistance, self-care | 2 Comments

Strengthen Your Immune System

Posted on April 6, 2020 by admin

All day we hear about avoiding exposure to COVID 19. Stay inside, wash hands, wear a mask, stay away from other people. Those practices might help prevent exposure, but is there another way to prevent infection? Can we also strengthen our immune systems to fight off COVID if it comes to us? Actually, we can do a lot.

Food – The right foods boost your germ-fighting capacity. According to Healthline.com, citrus fruits, red bell peppers, spinach and broccoli are full of immunity-building vitamins. Garlic, turmeric, and ginger have disease-fighting chemicals that are used all over the world. Nuts and seeds (e.g. almonds and sunflower seeds) pack the most life force into the smallest quantity of food. Tropical fruits such as papaya and kiwi also seem to fight off infections.

Medical News Today has similar list, which includes blueberries and dark chocolate at the top. All these foods are high in nutrients such as vitamins A, B, C, and E, and compounds such as antioxidants and flavonoids that help bodies work better.

There are also foods to avoid. Refined flours and sweet sugary things gum up body’s disease-fighting cells. Cured and burned meats, and a number of chemical additives can sap germ-fighting strength.

Eating well in times of shortages or closures requires some planning. There are great ideas in this article by my associate, dietitian Amy Campbell. Of course, if we have no money because of job loss, or if food is not available, we will need other practices which are beyond the scope of this article. But farmers’ markets, discount stores, community supported agriculture and food banks can make food more affordable. Sharing with neighbors can help everybody eat.

Supplements can help, especially if we can’t get a variety of healthy foods, which will be a problem during the shutdowns and the depression. Harvard Medical School’s newsletter recommends zinc, selenium, iron, copper, folic acid, and various vitamins.

Substance use – The Centers for Disease Control says, “Smoking harms the immune system and disrupts its balance.” It might be hard to quit smoking at such a stressful time, but it’s one thing you can do to prevent COVID. Smoking also makes people more vulnerable to the lung damage by which COVID kills.

Alcohol might be OK in small amounts, but overdoing it leaves one vulnerable to infection. It might also make you stupid, so you don’t take anti-COVID precautions you would usually take. The same might be true of other drugs such as cannabis. Use them in moderation, but not in ways that expose you to unnecessary risks.

Sleep time is when the immune system gets to work. When you’re awake, the body and mind are too busy to give attention to fighting disease or healing damage. We need to sleep; it’s medicine. Hopefully, you have a comfortable, quiet place to sleep, but whether you do or not, the ideas in this article from my diabetes column might help.

Like the rest of us, the immune system needs motivation to work well. Why, exactly, should your immune system fight? Do you have goals, connections with others, sources of pleasure and of support, people to protect, or another reason to keep going? On some chemical level, in my holistic opinion, the immune system knows how much we want to live. If you can’t identify such a reason – which could be as minimal as taking care of a plant or enjoying an occasional sunset – see if you can think of a couple of good ways to make life more enjoyable.

Hugs and other physical contact promote health, including immune system health. You can find good articles like this one on the curative power of hugs all over the Internet.

Moderate exercise also helps immune cells function. I’m not sure how people are supposed to exercise when the playgrounds and gyms are closed, but there are a lot of things you can do inside – exercise programs online, household objects you can use as weights. And we can still get out and walk, run, or bike if the police haven’t stopped that where you live. Having a dog to run is a good justification for being outside.

This may sound ridiculous in the current moment, but try to reduce stress. Actually, if you’re not working, you’ve already relieved a major source of stress, but fears about the future and loss of one’s sense of safety are major stressors. Exercise and prayer are two great stress reducers. Social support is, too, so try to connect by phone or online if you can’t do it in person. Of course, physically meeting people is still better if you can. Animals are also great stress relievers, and you can see other approaches here. Humor and laughter have immune and stress-reduction benefits shown in many studies. So, try to find some reasons to laugh. Even in hard times, people do funny things.

Keep warm – Although some scientists call it an old wives’ tale, Grandma’s advice to put on another layer and have a hot cup of tea works for me. Now some studies have confirmed that coldness contributes to respiratory infection by suppressing the immune system. Hard for homeless people to keep warm, but if you can, do. Helping others keep warm by donating blankets or clothes is a great way to share.

image courtesy Web MD

Even with the strongest immunity, it still makes sense to avoid infection. Hand washing, avoiding sneezes and coughs (and covering your ow) and keeping hands away from your face still make sense. But by eating right, getting sleep and exercise, touch, and laughter, we can greatly reduce our risk of COVID and other infections.

Posted in healing, Reasons to Live, Uncategorized | Tagged COVID19, exercise, Health, hugs, Nutrition, stress | 1 Comment

Chaos is the New Normal

Posted on April 1, 2020 by admin

Rapid change can be good. Spiraling, chaotic change is something else. No sooner do we hear about one challenge to our economic, social, or political life, than when another comes to make the change more extreme or take it in a completely different direction. Do you remember four years of Russia being our enemy, an existential threat to America? And before that, Islamic terrorism? Well, now it’s China. Very 1984 isn’t it?
Remember when corporate media was all about Trump and Impeachment? Then when it was all about elections? Now it’s all about the COVID 19 virus, and the profound ways it’s changing our lives every day. It feels silly to focus on career, on education, on making a home or raising a family, when we literally do not know whether our jobs or schools will be open tomorrow. For people with money, the current shutdown could be an enforced vacation, but for most people, those on the financial edge, without investments or at least Social Security, it is a catastrophe.
And it keeps changing every day. One day, you can go to a restaurant. The next day, only take-out, the next day, you’re on your own. One day, you can take the bus, the next day, only Uber and Lyft, the next day, walk, then stay inside. People try to organize, but no meetings and no demonstrations are allowed. Some who can afford them buy guns through the Internet; others fight with words on social media.
Friends say, ‘Hunker down. Stay centered. Plan for what we’ll do when some kind of new normal takes hold.’ But as Australian rogue journalist Caitlin Johnstone says, “Things may get better; they may get worse. But they are never going back to normal. Normal is gone for good.” What reason is there to think that any kind of pattern will establish itself when our corporate rulers have adopted full-on looting of society as their daily practice? When our political system and media have been exposed as frauds, pushing us this way and that to get support for our rulers’ sociopathic agendas? When one virus is controlled, what makes us think our rulers won’t unleash another one, or some other terror weapon? Some may believe COVID 19 is naturally occurring, but all agree the US Dept of Defense has dozens of others in their labs.
We are in a new world, though we have faced similar times before. My parents told me about growing up in the Great Depression, scrounging papers, cans and rags to trade for a piece of fruit or a bottle of pop. Those were hard times, brought about by the normal workings of capitalism’s boom/bust cycle. It took the government interventions of FDR’s New Deal and World War 2 to get the USA out of that crisis.
This one is worse; my parents’ generation weren’t dealing with a deadly disease at the same time. They were able to meet; they could organize unions. When a family was being evicted, the community could rally around and keep the police away. Now, such resistance or even a party to raise money to pay rent would be squashed as a threat to public health. Everyone is on their own.
Government bailouts shovel all of society’s wealth to the very rich, hoping that will restart the economy, but no government intervention can save capitalism, defined as rule of society by private owners of the means of production. Those rulers have lost all sense of living with people who have needs and other living things on which we depend. Because these oligarchs run government, corporations and media, any attempt to restart or reform the economy would have to go through them. And as last week’s bailout fight showed, they won’t allow implementation of changes that don’t benefit them. If there comes a cure for the COVID-19 virus, or a cure for global warming, it will not be implemented unless the oligarchs profit from it.
Then, what about the Deep State: the Department of Defense, the CIA, the FBI, those armies of killers and bureaucrats with multibillion dollar budgets and no oversight? What about the four-dimensional kaleidoscope of corporate media, the endless vortex of fantasies they weave around us, until we can neither see clearly nor move? Can we have a “normal” world run by people like that?
No, we can’t. That is why our political, economic, social and media systems are all being exposed and falling apart at the same time. Caitlin Johnstone calls this the great unpatterning. “Our patterned behavior,” she writes, “has led our species to the omnicidal, oppressive and exploitative status quo we now find ourselves in. Unpatterning, in and of itself, is neither threatening nor helpful; it’s just change. What matters is where it all goes.”
                                                                   Caitlin Johnstone @caitozWhere will it go? The new normal our rulers have in store for us is a world of mass poverty, disease, environmental collapse and constant chaos. Ending capitalist control of society is the only way we’ll ever have a new normal worth living, or one that is sustainable.
We need to create our own normal; one whose patterns we can barely see yet. We could still have free markets, we could still have some private ownership, but most large-scale stuff needs to be publicly owned and controlled. There won’t be as much wealth, but it will be much better distributed. And people will be encouraged to take care of each other, instead of the everyone-for-themselves ethic we have now.
Such changes can’t be done in a society run by people like Goldman Sachs, Boeing Corporation, Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. But we can do it without them. In some ways, we are lucky; in some ways cursed to be living in such critical times. But here we are. We can’t go back to normal. We have to create something better.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged bailouts, CIA, corona virus, courage, Great Depression, rent parties | Leave a comment

Corona Lockdown: Catastrophe and Blessing

Posted on March 23, 2020 by admin

Fish return to Venice canals

A germ has closed the world. Economies are shutting down; culture has been put on hold. No restaurants; no bars, clubs, concerts, sports, or theater. No religious services or political events. Schools, libraries, museums all closed. Nowhere to go, and not allowed to go there anyway. People left without sources of income, connection with others, or things to do.

If this lasted just one or two months, society might recover. But health officials are saying house arrest could go on much longer if necessary. Half the economy and most of our cultural outlets will be gone by the time they let us out. But the quarantine has its positive sides, side effects of the negative ones. The damage capitalism does can best be seen in the good things that happen when it grinds to a halt.

Environmental Repair

Animals are coming back. Road kill numbers seem way down. Salamanders are observed crossing the road in Marin County, California. All because vehicle traffic no longer takes up all the space.
Air is cleaner without all the pollution from cars and factories. Water may be cleaner, too. People, animals and plants can breathe better.
Global warming is slowed without all the fossil fuels being burned. For decades, our rulers have been negotiating; scientists have been researching, activists have been organizing, writing, and fighting, and fossil fuel emissions have continued to rise. Now, a virus comes along and stops them. Industrial economy is inherently destructive and unsustainable. Maybe almost anything that stops it is a good thing.

Social Problems

The quarantine has spurred governments to consider measures that have long been needed, but never taken seriously until now.

Homelessness – In some communities, such as Santa Clara, California, authorities are planning on moving homeless people into empty motels and providing services. These people will now have actual homes with addresses. Because of travel bans, nobody was using the motels anyway. This seems a much higher-value use of the space, and it’s happening because of the virus.
Incarceration – Similarly, people are being let out of prison, because incarcerated people cannot be quarantined; they’re too close. Millions of nonviolent offenders may soon be out of jail, where they never should have been in the first place.
the crime of mass incarceration
Immigration – ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) has slowed down or stopped their deportation raids against immigrant communities. Maybe they’ll start releasing some deportees from concentration camps, in the name of protecting against the virus. An extreme blessing for these families.

Quality of life improvements

People are working less, which means less stress, fewer work injuries, and more energy for other things. Of course, we’re not allowed to do many other things, and we have new sources of stress, but still…
We can get our homes cleaned up, catch up on reading, do those projects that we’ve put aside for years.
Time to reflect and grow – We’re less busy; we can stop and think. We can meditate, pray, or use mind-expanding drugs. We can make plans for our lives going forward, though it’s hard to plan when we have no idea what the world will be like. But at least we’re not busy doing made-up stuff.

Economic/Political changes

Since so many people can’t work and can’t pay for things, governments are starting to consider socialist approaches like providing basic incomes, health care and housing. Maybe income will be decoupled from work. Some people will see this as Heaven and some as Hell, but when so many jobs cease to exist, people, if supported, can do other, more creative or generous things.

For positives to outweigh the negatives or come anywhere close to them, people’s lives will have to change. A good life will be evaluated as one which helps others, not one that accumulates wealth. But we will have to fight for this. This is a crisis like we’ve not seen in our lifetimes – a time of danger and also of opportunity. Hope to see you out there, helping and fighting.

Posted in creativity | Tagged corona virus, environment, homelessness, incarceration, pollution, quarantine | 1 Comment

How I Became Oppressed

Posted on March 20, 2020 by admin

“If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you see your liberation as bound up with mine, let us work together.” Lilla Watson, Aboriginal activist

I’m a middle-class guy with a family and a nice apartment in San Francisco. I’ve always been pretty much White, straight, middle class and male. So, what have I got to complain about? Yes, I’m disabled, but society helps me out with curb cuts and wheelchair ramps on the buses, social security payments and Medicare. Until a few years ago, “oppressed” is one of the last things I would have called myself.

I could see oppression happening to other people: people of color, women, children, gay people, manual workers, poor people, people in other places. I would fight those people’s oppression and work for justice, but I didn’t think I needed liberating myself. I didn’t get what Australian aboriginal activist Lilla Watson meant by “your liberation is bound up with mine.” I rarely got angry for myself, only for others. And that has made me politically ineffective.

It took decades for me to wake up. In childhood and young adulthood, I believed the media. In 1963, when I was 12, the CIA murdered President Kennedy, and in ’68 they killed his brother. The same year, the FBI collaborated in the killing of Martin Luther King Jr. All these murders, we were told, were committed by “lone gunmen,” patsies who never got to tell their side of the stories in court or to media. I believed all the fantasies I heard on the news. I believed all the government’s commissions and authoritative reports.

Then in 2003, I blundered onto a 9/11 Truth web site. I saw well-sourced information that discredited the official version of that terrible day and challenged some of the absurd stories that are part of that narrative. (‘Hijacker’s passport found on sidewalk!’) It dawned on me that when the stories media and government tell you don’t make sense, they probably are not really true. Then I read books like Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States and James Loewen’s Lies my Teacher Told Me and realized that I had been lied to constantly since birth. Social media showed me that we are still lied to all the time by corporate media now. We are being gaslighted — told to doubt our own perceptions and believe things that make no sense — all day, every day.

Now things have changed. I’m getting angry. I’ve come to hate the mass media for forcing me to live in a nightmare world, when they’re not even my own nightmares. I feel alienated from people who believe what they see in corporate media. I hate being gaslighted day in, day out.

Gaslighting is a form of psychological oppression, but I hadn’t realized how those stories serve as key elements in regimes of oppression that have been affecting me since my youth. In my 20s, I was a hippie, or more accurately a hippie sympathizer. I was too political and too responsible to fully drop out, but I identified with the culture and the philosophy of focusing on beauty and enjoying life rather than on accumulating wealth.

So, it hurt when the hippie movement was discredited and demonized by horror stories like the Charles Manson Family and their murder spree through Los Angeles and the California desert. Suddenly, hippies went from being creative, lovable, if somewhat lazy nonconformists to violent drug-crazed menaces. Although hippies still exist, as a movement we were crushed.

Why is that a big deal? What does that have to do with oppression? Well, as I found from reading CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Hidden History of the Sixties by Tom O’Neill, the Manson family was most likely a CIA experiment. In the 60s, the CIA had a top-secret program called Operation CHAOS, which had the goals of suppressing the Black Liberation movement, the antiwar movement and the hippies. They seemed to think this internal dissent was a great threat to America, and all means necessary to squelch it were appropriate, no matter how many lives they damaged or killed.

Charles Manson, subject in a CIA experiment?

Related to Operation CHAOS was a program called MKULTRA, which enlisted top psychiatrists to research how much it was possible to control people’s minds. Specifically, could agents convince people that what they knew was false, and that made up stories were true? Could they turn innocent people into assassins, in ways that the subjects would not remember? O’Neill’s book includes actual memos between one of these psychiatrists and his contact at CIA complimenting each other on doing this vitally necessary work.

The impetus behind MKULTRA appears to have been stories of Communist China ‘brainwashing’ US POWs during the Korean War. (You might remember this from the film “The Manchurian Candidate’ starring Frank Sinatra.) This ‘brainwashing’ was blamed for confessions by American soldiers of using biological weapons against Korea. After the POWs came home and met with MKULTRA psychiatrists, many recanted their confessions, saying they were false memories. This was counted a great success for mind control research and a reason for the USA to keep developing these capabilities in self-defense. Except that in reality, the original confessions were true; bio-weapons had been used against the Koreans. Brainwashing was not involved.

Scene from the Manchurian Candidate, 1962 propaganda film

But MKULTRA rolled on and came to San Francisco for the Summer of Love in 1967. CIA-connected psychiatrists were interested in the power of psychedelic drugs to enable mind control when combined with hypnosis. Hippies made excellent subjects for their experiments, and one subject was Charles Manson and his cult, the Family. One of the psychiatrists, a Dr. Louis J. West, met with Manson and other hippies many times. Nobody knows what he did with them, but he had a history from his time in Oklahoma of at least two other patients who either became killers for no apparent reason, or went floridly insane after meeting with him.

Meanwhile, a string of judges and parole officers inexplicably allowed Family members to stay free after committing crimes that would have gotten ordinary people sent to prison with their paroles revoked. Police departments closed murder investigations without arrests, despite strong evidence of Family involvement.

What was going on? We will never have proof, but it seems that the Manson Family’s crime spree was an MKULTRA project, and quite a successful one. It was used to discredit the hippie movement and drive young people away from it. Of course, at the same time, CIA and FBI were using more violent and corrupt methods to destroy Black Power movements like the Black Panther Party, so maybe the hippies got off easy. But still, my anger at our ruling class, or ‘Deep State’ has become much more personal, more all-consuming. I know these people, whether Dick Cheney, J. Edgar Hoover or Dr. West think they are doing right things, but I don’t want to forgive them anymore.

Fred Hampton, Black Panther murdered by FBI and Chicago police

It doesn’t feel good, and perhaps I should give up being oppressed and return to seeing whatever happens as the endless flow of Karma, or something like that, but I don’t want to. I’m tired of being gaslighted 24/7/365. I hate not being able to believe anything I hear or see on media.

You and I and everyone we know have been living in an elaborately falsified dreamworld known as American History. And now, we have to cope with not just one nightmare, but two: the actual disaster that our rulers are making of the world (e.g. the destruction of Libya and Iraq), and the made-up narrative about it that they want us to believe (e.g. ISIS!). Both nightmares are depressing; both are terrifying, both are largely based on lies, and I cannot accept them.

Despite my relative comforts and privilege, I’m counting myself among the oppressed, not just as an ally who can walk away from the struggle any time I want. I’m taking it personally. Whatever they do to the least of us, they do to me. I’m not good at this yet. I look at friends with lifetime experiences of oppression and marvel at how they are able to keep calm and not hate. I need to learn from them, but at least I now see how my liberation is bound up with theirs.

Posted in spirituality, Uncategorized | Tagged 9/11, Charles Manson, CIA, gaslighting, hippies, Kennedy assassination, liberation | Leave a comment

Revolution of the Heart

Posted on March 2, 2020 by admin

“Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address 1961

Something profound is happening in this country, and no one knows where it will lead. JFK’s 60-year-old call to service has found resonance in the 2020 presidential campaigns of Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard, and people are flocking toward the chance to be of use. You might not recognize the USA in a few years, and that might be a wonderful thing.

We have lived so long in a predatory corporate capitalist society that we have come to think daily cruelty is normal. Over a half million Americans sleeping in the street; more than two million in jails and prisons. People dying for lack of healthcare or going bankrupt paying for it. Immigrant children caged, endless wars fought against mostly unknown enemies, so that weapons and death rank among America’s chief exports. Media that lies about real things and broadcasts spectacles of things that may not be happening at all, carefully crafted to maximize our fear and our distrust of each other, while their advertisers work to make us unhappy with ourselves.

Is it any wonder that people are desperate for change? That life expectancies are dropping and drug addiction rates rising? People are angry; they’re sad, they’re desperate. We elected Obama and Trump because they promised change, but nothing got better. Of course, neither of those two were the change agents they claimed to be, but actually no president could do what’s needed. The changes we need are so profound that we will have to change ourselves in major ways to have any chance. We have to move away from the Each-against-All, every man for himself caricature of human nature that unfettered capitalism requires. We need to care and be cared for, normal functions of both traditional societies and modern social democracies, but not in cutthroat America.

This is the background for Bernie Sanders’ slogan “Not me. Us.” When I first heard that, I thought he meant, ‘This is not about one candidate; it’s about our movement.’ And maybe he does mean that, but there’s a deeper meaning. It’s like Kennedy’s “Ask what you can do for your country.” ‘Not me, Us’ is the way we want to live our lives, the way society should be. We should be helping each other and meeting people’s needs, instead of focusing on individual accumulation and financial security. The slogan calls for a very different way of living than our capitalist rulers envision. And this vision is resonating with people; it is winning elections, as it did in Nevada.

In Nevada, according to Cristina Beltrán, a political science professor at NYU, casino workers have a strong union contract with very good health insurance, possibly better than they would have under Sanders’ signature program of Medicare For All. As a result, the union leadership discouraged members’ voting for Sanders in their recent caucuses. Every member received a mailing to that effect. On election day, seven out of eight casino worker caucuses went for Sanders, voting against their union and their immediate material interest.

Professor Cristina Beltran

Beltran explains: “A lot of those union workers have family who are in nonunion jobs and have really precarious healthcare. And so, there was a sense that it isn’t just about the kind of narrow self-interest of protecting one’s own quality healthcare, but a larger sense that there’s a healthcare crisis beyond themselves, and trying to think about what’s going on with their children, their cousins, their grandchildren, you know, and all the people around them. So, it’s a combination of a kind of interest group and solidarity politics that allowed people to ultimately vote in a broader way than people might have imagined.”

Service before Self

Another presidential candidate, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii has a similar motto: “Service before Self,” a US Air Force slogan that is officially explained as “Duties take precedence over personal desires.” Officers writing on the USAF web site have called it, “doing your duty with respect, whether pleasant or unpleasant, and relinquishing your stake in the outcome.” Gabbard uses it to describe her own approach to life, serving the people, and calls on people to embrace service in our own lives.

To me, this campaign and the changes it is bringing are way more exciting than who votes for whom. Votes in the USA aren’t always counted, and it’s unlikely those who own the voting machines, the parties, and the media will let Bernie or Tulsi win. But they cannot stop people from growing. They can’t stop our compassion or our wrath.

People are freeing their minds from the nightmare conspiracies that corporate media pass off as reality. One example: for years, media, Democratic leadership, and the intelligence agencies have been attacking Donald Trump with a made-up Russian-interference conspiracy theory. Now they have turned those same tactics on Sanders, claiming he is Russia’s favorite. Hillary Clinton said the same thing about Tulsi Gabbard, also without evidence. Media consumers are exposed to several different flavors of Sanders-sliming attacks daily.

But people, at least young people aren’t listening any more. Nicholas Levis wrote on Counterpunch of “the decline of the corporate media’s power to persuade. It is why these outlets have become so fervent in condemning social media, as if people sharing bullshit on Facebook is somehow inherently more pernicious than the activities of the cable news networks and the pronouncements of their “unnamed sources” at the blood-drenched State Department, Pentagon and national security agencies.”

Media is doing all it can to stop people’s awakening. It seems that, unable to counter Gabbard’s message of peace, they have blacked her out entirely. She isn’t invited to debates or town halls or media interviews; her name has even been dropped from many polls and surveys. Sanders at least gets negative coverage.

The results so far, with Sanders in the lead are joyfully heartening. I had thought that it would be impossible to compete in a presidential election without media coverage. But I was wrong. The Sanders campaign reaches people in other ways, by organizers who come to their community groups, and through social media. A Facebook friend reported “I just had a Mike Bloomberg canvasser come to my door. I let him know politely I’m voting for Bernie Sanders, and then he just gave me a fist bump and said, “Oh me too! Feel the Bern, homie!”

Why this is revolution

I don’t care how well-off you are. This system oppresses you, even if you’re an oppressor yourself. Sanders and Gabbard aren’t revolutionaries in the political sense, but they both call on us to throw off the chains of our isolated self-interest and our fears. Buddhist friends can check me on this, but Service before Self and Not me, Us feel like what the Buddha meant by “liberation.” Get over yourself; join the beautiful, infinite world. Liberated people do not fight imperialist wars, fear immigrant children or destroy their own environment.

True, service isn’t always good. People can Serve terrible things. The US Air Force, which commits horrible crimes, includes Service before Self as a core value, but they have to work very hard at brainwashing airmen about USAF’s role in the world to make this principle fit.

Not me, Us seems clearer. It sounds like socialism in three words. It is liberation. Having life not be about ourself frees us to go all-out to create a better world, to use what Malcolm X called “any means necessary.”

Liberating ourselves and freeing society are inter-related processes, it turns out, and both are essential for our survival. Could you even imagine a society like ours: scattered, alienated, scared, obsessed with possessions and status, making the changes we would need to address environmental destruction and climate change?

A better world will not come just from pressuring powerful people to change. You and I need to change, too. Regenerative agriculture could reclaim wasteland, produce food, and soak carbon from the air, but would require millions of people moving back to farms, learning how to farm, and doing hard physical work. Restorative justice — finding alternatives to incarceration — could allow us to close prisons and put all those prisoner and guard lives to better use, but restorative justice requires thousands of volunteers to work with lawbreakers and help them get their lives together. Reparations to communities traumatized by generations of oppression would enable us to create an inclusive society without race hatred, but that couldn’t be done just by writing a few checks. It would involve years of truth and reconciliation that will be uncomfortable for nearly everyone. And all those changes would damage the profits of powerful corporations. Peace might put them out of business. They will resist. Are you ready for a revolution like that? Because it won’t happen without you.

Spiritual people have long told us that changing the world always involves changing yourself. (A marvelous cinematic illustration of this truth is the Lebanese movie Where Do We Go Now? See it and you’ll know what I’m talking about.) Political people have argued back that working on yourself is a distraction; we need to focus on changing the system. But Bernie and Tulsi are saying we do them both together. The revolution will start with our own hearts and spread from there, by any means necessary. I’m asking everyone to embrace this change. Service before Self. Not me. Us.

Posted in spirituality, Uncategorized | Tagged anger, Buddhism, change, courage, election, Gabbard, global warming, liberation, peace, Sanders, service | Leave a comment

Parting with Money

Posted on February 17, 2020 by admin

I have a 20-something Facebook friend in Gaza, with whom I message and chat. She is a mother of two. Her 6-month-old baby has asthma and is in some kind of breathing tent, for which she needs money for oxygen and medicine. I’ve seen pictures and video and talked with her; it’s not a scam.

I’ve sent her $15 or $20 several times over the last six months for food. I doubt this is the most effective use of this money in the Gaza context. But how does one say no to a mother trying to keep her baby alive, and then donate the money to some political campaign instead, or buy a sandwich for dinner?

For that matter, how does one step past homeless, hungry people on the street and then go home to a warm bed and food? Much less eat in a restaurant?

Times have changed and it’s harder to figure out where to give, especially if you don’t have much. I was raised to save money, live frugally, to be ready for old age and hard times. But now, saving money seems the least productive thing one can do with it. When nearly everyone needs help, when political action is so necessary to stop wars, social evils and climate catastrophe, what good does it do to have money in the bank? What is money but numbers on a paper or a spreadsheet anyway? How does it make sense to add another zero to your life savings for a future that may not come, or which may be beyond the power of money to help?

For people before the Internet, those in need around the world were just photo images, or descriptions in a story, or statistics. We didn’t know them. But now, people in Gaza or Gambia whom I meet online can share with me personal details and pictures; we can video chat on messenger apps. Now I know them, their families and their need. It feels very different than a fundraising letter from an American charity.

On the other hand, sending money to an online contact helps only one person or family out of millions and does nothing to address the causes of their suffering. But that said, we do for people we know personally all the time. We buy for our cousins; we give to local food banks; we share with our neighbors. Even more selfishly, if that is the word, we spend money on ourselves every day without thinking about it. Buy food, clothes, batteries, take classes, pay doctors. Why is that OK? Does it make sense to buy shoes for our neighbor children, when children farther away may have much greater needs?

I have been told that, instead of giving to individuals who may be scamming me, I should donate to agencies working in their areas. But is that really more effective, or just adding a layer of administrative spending to the donation? And then again, a working person, to say nothing of a low-income disabled person like me, who gives to every worthy cause would be bankrupt by the end of the first day.

Maybe it would be better to spend on political donations to causes or candidates, to address the systemic causes of suffering. I’ve never helped candidates much before, but it’s an election year, and there actually are good candidates. Though I know (believe) that US elections are fixed, and that unelected corporate reps continue to run everything no matter who wins, I’m still drawn to support people who are fighting for change.

But really? What good does sending $20 do, when some billionaire can contribute a few million out of his pocket change? Could giving $50 to support indigenous Amazonians succeed in stopping multi-billion-dollar logging and mining industries? Wouldn’t it be better to send that money to a baby in Gaza who needs milk or hand it to a person begging on the street? Or what?

I’m also told that the world is a place of abundance, and to focus on those in need or on things that need changing is choosing to make myself miserable. I should help when I can but not focus too much on suffering. Maybe they’re right. I feel there are deep emotional or psychological issues that impact my attitudes and choices about what to do with money, but I don’t know what they are. Mostly I’m just confused. How do you deal with these issues of gifting money in your life?

Posted in Reasons to Live, spirituality, Uncategorized | Tagged charity, Gaza, money, politics, poverty | Leave a comment

Grateful for Mistakes

Posted on January 20, 2020 by admin

“What seems to be a mistake in our lives may actually be a step forward that leads to the Great Way, though we had no way of recognizing that at the time” Stephen Mitchell

This is the most personal healing story I have ever told, and I’m still figuring out what it means. Maybe you can help me understand.

TMI Warning — because these events involve hospitalization and disability, I’ve had to include too much info about body functions and situations you might find unpleasant, and certainly won’t make you want to date me. (If you were thinking about that, you might want to skip those sections.) As often happens in stories, however, the bad stuff makes the positive conclusions more powerful. I’ll put a ᵗ ᵐ ᶦ signal when we’re coming to those parts.

So, you may know I’ve been living with multiple sclerosis (MS) for 40 years, and I’m pretty thoroughly disabled. For one thing, ᵗ ᵐ ᶦ my bladder function is completely shot and I rely on catheterizing myself four or five times a day to empty urine. This process is time-consuming, but not as bad as it sounds. I can live with the inconvenience, but two and a half years ago I started a long series of urinary tract infections (UTIs), a common complication of catheter use.

When you’re old, and your bladder is not working, UTIs feel very different than they do in a young healthy person. There’s not a lot of pain or having to pee all the time. Instead, I simply become very weak and start running an elevated temperature. These temps completely knock me out. I can’t sit up; I can’t handle a cell phone; I’m pretty much paralyzed.

This is dangerous, because the infection might move into my kidneys, from where it could go into the blood and be fatal, or at least require an ambulance ride to a long hospitalization. But at the beginning, the UTIs weren’t hard to treat. I would just get some antibiotic pills and be better in a day, and back to normal in two days. As usually happens with chronic infections though, the pills stopped working. The germs get used to them; you need stronger and stronger antibiotics.

Since I was averaging close to a UTI a month, I was rapidly running out of antibiotics to use. Twice, the temperatures came on me while I was out on my mobility scooter and I became too weak to sit up and needed ambulance rides to Kaiser Emergency Room. They would give me intravenous antibiotics, a liter of IV fluid, medicine to bring the temperature down, and I would go home with oral antibiotics, usually the more expensive, newer medicines to which the germs hadn’t yet developed resistance.

The frustrating thing was not being able to figure out where the infections were coming from. As a nurse, I know about antiseptic technique, and I was doing my best within my limitations. I would wash my hands in the sink, then transfer from my scooter to the toilet seat (out of reach of the sink,) wash hands again with rubbing alcohol, and make sure the catheter didn’t touch anything on the way in. I didn’t know what else I could do. I despaired of getting better.

Whether from the infections or the medications, I also felt weak all the time, long after a particular UTI resolved. Even on a healthy day, I was usually only up four hours at a time, in bed 12 hours or more. I never felt good. I started to think, ‘Life isn’t so great. I still like it, but it’s becoming too much trouble.’ Not that I was considering suicide, but I did feel life could stop any time, and it would be OK with me.

Then last Memorial Day weekend, I got another UTI after a long, beautiful day at Carnaval SF. I was too weak to stand or transfer, having chills, so I asked my son Mathias to take me to ER. This is when things started to change.

It started as the typical ER experience, fluids, IV antibiotics, Tylenol, and I was feeling better. The doctors said I should stay overnight for safety, but they always say that, and I always say, “No, I’d rather be home.” This time, though, my wife Aisha said, “Maybe you should stay,” and I thought, ‘OK, I haven’t stayed in a hospital in 60 years, maybe it will be interesting. At least I can get another dose of IV medicine.” So I signed in.

Huge mistake. It became the most miserable night of my adult life. ᵗ ᵐ ᶦ For one thing, I had to pee all the time. They had put in an indwelling Foley catheter for urinary drainage, but it kept falling out. Foleys seem to have changed since I was a nurse, and for whatever reason, these would not stay in. I was wetting myself and in pain continuously.

If that wasn’t bad enough, ᵗ ᵐ ᶦ I also needed badly to move my bowels. When I asked them for a bedside commode, the nurses refused. They were very concerned about patient falls; there were “Call, Don’t Fall” signs on walls, and staff kept saying “Use the bedpan; it’s safer.” Problem was, I had never used a bedpan and I didn’t feel comfortable with it and couldn’t poop on it. Finally, I insisted on a commode, and they reluctantly got me one. All in all, they had to clean me up three times in one night.

“Torture” would be too strong a term for what I was going through, but “suffering’ would be a perfectly apt description. The worst thing was that, when I asked when my next antibiotic was due, I was told “4:00 tomorrow afternoon.” I was shocked. ‘You mean I’m here suffering like this, and I’m not even getting any medicine for another 16 hours? I could be home in my own bed! Why am I here?”

The rest of the night and next morning, I kept asking myself and the staff, ‘Why am I here?’ I was angry with the doctors for talking me into the hospital, angry with myself for going along with it, beating myself up, adding to my suffering. How could I have been so stupid? Why did I forget the principles I’ve worked, lived by and written about for decades, that hospitals are dangerous and self-care is best?

I knew asking ‘Why’ wasn’t helping me. Worrying about why when you can’t change a situation just makes it worse, as the Buddha taught 2,500 years ago. But I wasn’t feeling the Buddha at that point. I was miserable. “Why am I here” and “This is a terrible mistake” became my mantras.

In the morning, a physical therapist came to see me. One of the docs must have ordered it, though I don’t know why — my admission had nothing to do with what physical therapists do. The PT, a tall good-looking guy named Sean, gave me some tips on my exercise program, which were nice, but certainly not worth the hell I had been going through. Then he said, “maybe we should send a therapist out for a home visit.”

This suggestion changed my life. I actually hadn’t known PTs did home visits. I said OK, and a few hours later I got my second med dose and escaped hospital. The next day, a young PT named Erin called to set up a visit. She came the following day and started going through the apartment with me, asking “How do you this?” and “Show me how do you do that.” Everything from working at my desk to cooking to getting into and out of bed, Erin had ideas for doing it better. Then we came to the bathroom.

Erin watched as I transferred from my mobility scooter to the toilet seat. She asked, “Is this where you cath?” I said yes; it certainly seemed like a normal and convenient place to do it. She said, “That could be a problem. You wash your hands, but then you put them on the toilet seat to transfer, and then again if you need to adjust your position. You could be contaminating your hands, leading to infection.”

“And,” she said, “we have equipment for that.” Suddenly, I felt a thrill of hope. I had thought of the ᵗ ᵐ ᶦ toilet seat problem before, but had not pursued it because I saw no solution. But that same afternoon, Erin ordered me a commode chair with arm rests, so I never have to touch the seat. It’s a drag, because it means peeing in my bedroom, but it works.

In the eight months since that hospital admission, I have had only one mild UTI, instead of a severe one each month as I had been having. I have my energy back; I’m getting a lot more done. I’m starting a tutoring business. I can imagine continuing to live for a while.

All those hours in the hospital wondering why I was there, and I got no answer. Then, two days later, I found out why I had been there. Couldn’t this be true of other situations in our lives? We may think we’ve made terrible, inexcusable mistakes, but as the great translator of spiritual works Stephen Mitchell says, those mistakes could be vital steps on our path to wholeness.

How often do your missteps turn into good things? Mine sometimes do. Like, you take the wrong bus and run into an old friend or a future business contact. Take a wrong road and come across a beautiful or interesting sight that makes your day. Lose something, and the person who finds and returns it becomes a friend. Screw up at work you hate, get fired, and find a much better position in life. Agree to an unnecessary hospital admission, and find Erin.

Now, I’m thinking back over other times and decisions in my life I perceive as mistakes, to see the gifts and growth they may have brought, as well as ways to do better next time. I’m trying new things. I encourage you to join me.

Posted in healing, miracles, Self-Care Support, Uncategorized | Tagged Buddhism, healing, hospitals, multiple sclerosis, physical therapy | 6 Comments

Behold!

Posted on January 8, 2020 by admin

”Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.” –
Confucius

About four years ago in San Francisco, we had a series of amazingly beautiful sunsets, possibly because of a wildfire 100 miles away. Deep purples and golds, with sheets of red and fluffy white clouds, they were artworks no human artist could have matched, if only because of their immense scale. They made all the other sunsets I have seen pale into niceness. One evening, while sitting in my wheelchair on a street corner, enthralled by this sky scene, I noticed that nobody else was paying attention. They were hurrying by; some looking at devices, some just walking fast, missing this absolutely free gorgeous show. It was puzzling.

Finally, I stopped a guy walking by and, pointing to the sunset, said “Look!” He did stop, perhaps because of the novelty of being stopped, and looked at the sky for about 15 seconds, said, “Yeah, that’s nice. Thanks” and kept going. I stopped a couple of other people, and the first man’s 15-second gaze held up as the longest of any of them. If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, they weren’t beholding anything. So for them, the beauty didn’t exist.

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” is a deeper saying than it appears. Dictionaries of idioms say it means that perceptions of beauty vary from person to person. The saying is usually accompanied by a shrug, similar to “There’s no accounting for taste.” But there’s another way to look at it. Without our beholding it, beauty may not exist at all.

Remember the most beautiful full moonrise you have ever seen. Now imagine that same moonrise, but with nobody to see it. No humans, no animals to observe the brilliant ball rising from the depths of space. Maybe the planet is uninhabited; maybe everybody’s busy watching their screens, but nobody beholds. Would it still be beautiful? Wouldn’t it just be one rock circling around another rock? Beholding is a crucial contribution to the creation of beauty.

The same is true of nonvisual beauty. Is music beautiful if no one hears it? Not necessarily human hearers – animals love music, too – but what good is unheard music? Or writing – a question with which I’m quite familiar – what good is writing if nobody reads it? The writing process might be healing for the author, but what happens to the beauty in it? Wouldn’t it just be ink squiggles on a page?

I’m pushing two ideas here: the first is Behold! Notice the beauty in the world; let it enrich you. That way, you may pass the beauty on to others by your presence or your actions, or by recommending a work to someone else.

The second is for creators: Find your audience. You can’t please everyone, so make your work count for those who can appreciate it. It doesn’t have to be a huge audience, but someone! Finding your audience is part of creating. It’s not the fun part, but it is rewarding for the artist, because we can see the beauty coming back to us in the audience’s reaction.

And notice the importance of you and of us, the beholders of the world. Without our beholding, there literally would be no beauty, so let’s pay attention!

Posted in creativity, happiness, spirituality, Uncategorized | Tagged Art. beauty, attention, awareness, creativity | 3 Comments

Can Class Solidarity Beat Racial Division?

Posted on January 4, 2020 by admin

What could make an activist so dangerous that the FBI would need to assassinate him in his sleep at the age of 21? That’s what happened to Fred Hampton of the Chicago Black Panther Party in 1969. What could make a singer such a threat that the US government would deny him the right to travel or perform? That’s what they did to the singer/scholar/athlete/actor Paul Robeson.

What made these men so dangerous? They were able to unite people of different races and ethnicities on the basis of class, the unity our rulers fear more than anything else. When 0.1% of the people control everything, while maybe 20% prosper, and the rest struggle to survive, the rulers’ power absolutely depends on keeping people divided. They’re happy with racial conflict; they know they can win that by turning people against each other, but in a class war they would be overwhelmed. So, they work full time on both the Left and Right to keep the subject focused on race.

Hampton and Robeson powerfully challenged that narrative, and people listened. Hampton said in 1968, “The Panthers’ struggle is primarily about class. We’re not going to fight racism with racism. We fight racism with solidarity. We don’t fight capitalism with Black capitalism; we fight capitalism with socialism.”

As a leader of an armed revolutionary group, Hampton got the attention of young people in Black, Latino, Native, and White communities. He pulled together (at the age of 19!) the Rainbow Coalition of Revolutionary Solidarity, uniting the Panthers with the Puerto Rican Young Lords and the Appalachian Young Patriots organizations. They worked to end gang violence, which they believed the city government promoted to gain support for law enforcement.

Similarly, Robeson uplifted the cause of workers in England, Ireland, Africa, and the US. On more than one occasion, he won White worker support for Black workers’ fights against racism. He once wrote, “my people are not the only ones oppressed…Whether people weave, build, pick cotton, or dig in the mine, they understand each other in the common language of work, suffering and protest…The problem of the Negro people is generally a problem of working people.” People listened to his powerful presence and his truthful ideas. That is why he had to be suppressed.

Is anybody talking like Robeson and Hampton now? In a world where corporate media makes politics all about race, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, and age, can working class solidarity overcome these divisions and win? Some, including Bernie Sanders’ supporters, think it can. In an article December 10 in the New York Times, Professor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, author of From #Black Lives Matter to Black Liberation, details the broad and deep support Senator Sanders has from Black, Latino, and White workers. “He has tapped into the anger,” she writes, “and bitterness coursing through the lives of regular people who have found it increasingly impossible to make ends meet in this grossly unequal society. Without cynicism or the typical racist explanations that blame African-Americans and Latino immigrants for their own financial hardship, Mr. Sanders blames capitalism.”

Maybe comparing this old white guy with Hampton or Robeson is too much. Obviously, Sanders hasn’t shown the physical courage or had the core personal experience of oppression that those heroic Black leaders had. He is not a revolutionary; he is a reformer who relies on electoral politics. But where he does resemble Robeson and Hampton is his ability to unite the multiracial working class. According to Taylor, “the Sanders campaign has transformed into a tribune of the oppressed and marginalized, a powerful platform to amplify the experiences of this multiracial contingent.”

Here’s a fact that we should not ignore. Sanders is the top recipient for donations by teachers, farmers, servers, social workers, retail workers, construction workers, truckers, nurses and drivers. His donors’ most common employers are Starbucks, Amazon and Walmart. Think about that. This is the base for working-class power; it also overlaps Trump’s base.

No wonder the rulers are scared and using all their identity tricks to discredit Sanders. They say his campaign is too White, too male, too Anglo, while the data shows he has the strongest support among Latinos and younger African Americans of any candidate. Talented young people of color are running his campaign. Women of color are his most prominent representatives.

He also has strong rank-and-file military support. According to historian and long-serving US veteran Stan Goff, “A recent study by Foreign Policy-dot-com showed that Senator Bernie Sanders is far and away the most frequent recipient of individual contributions from active duty military members…. Rich people don’t enlist. Working class people do. Someone who wants to leave the military right now has to factor in the free medical care for the service member and family which will be lost upon separation. Medicare For All has traction there. A federal jobs program has traction.”

So, class struggle and race struggle are not mutually incompatible. But, what about the White conservatives who go ga-ga for President Trump? The ones who are armed and angry at American decline and their newfound poverty and blame immigrants for it? There is evidence that, for some of those people, even those long infected with racism, class issues can change their mind. A well-publicized example was the true story of C.P. Ellis, poor son of a North Carolina millworker who became Exalted Cyclops of the Durham, NC Ku Klux Klan. He said the Klan gave meaning to his life and that of hundreds of other impoverished White men. But, as detailed in the book and movie The Best of Enemies, over the course of two weeks’ forced interaction with Black activists who recognized the class-based sufferings they shared, Ellis came to realize who his real friends were. He tore up his KKK card and much of his old life to do what was best for his people, becoming a union organizer, uniting with his class brothers and sisters.

Was C.P. Ellis a special case? He certainly wasn’t typical. Although he reached out to his Klan buddies, none of them joined him in his changed attitude. Perhaps he only learned because of the courageous outreach of Black activist Ann Atwater, who wouldn’t give up on him. According to Osha Gray Davidson, who wrote The Best of Enemies, 100 years of racist propaganda had most poor Whites convinced that their problems came from “Negroes, Jews, and Communists.” Only a few, like Ellis, could step back and see how they were being used against their own interests by wealthy White racists, The same dynamic still works, as shown by Trump’s popularity among White people. How many white supporters will join their class and give up Trump for Sanders? Based on polls, it seems quite a few are ready to make that switch.

Not an election, a movement

If this was just about an election, Sanders’ popularity and the surge of class consciousness wouldn’t mean much. American elections are heavily fixed by voter suppression and voting machine manipulation. After decades of excluding African-American, Latino, and youth voters by dropping them from voter rolls and closing their polling stations, the rulers have moved into excluding White working class voters with programs like Cross Check, which deletes voters who have the same name as other voters, even in other states, and through mailout programs that require voters to confirm they have the same address they last voted from, or be purged. Naturally, poorer people are more likely to have moved, and why should moving disqualify one from voting?

Up against this vote suppression, and the immensely hackable electronic voting machines owned and operated by right-wing corporations, and the media boycott of all Bernie news that isn’t critical of him, Sanders may not have much chance of actually winning. But Bernie himself says his campaign is less about winning an election than building a multi-racial working-class movement. People will need to be in the streets, running for local offices, possibly striking their jobs (which Sanders supports,) or picking up guns (which he wouldn’t.) Even so, the billionaires have shown no intention to listen, but if the people are joined by the military rank-and-file, maybe the rulers would have to at least make some concessions.

Social democratic reforms like health care and housing for everyone are obviously not fantasies; most of the rich countries of the world (and many of the not-so-rich) have them to some degree. We could, too, but as Senator Sanders says, “We have to get beyond the alleged conflict between fighting racial injustice versus fighting economic injustice. We must deal with both. We need to end institutional racism, end poverty, end militarism, and create a government that works for all of us.” Paul Robeson and Fred Hampton might agree. We don’t have their voices anymore, so we will have to speak for them

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged class, elections, racism, revolution, socialism | Leave a comment

The Inn by the Healing Path