Nonviolence Is Creative
Consumerism is violent. The apologists for ads and products, life styles and brought-to-you-by media are disastrously wrong. The thousands of marketing confrontations that a person must get through daily are not persuasive, clever, or normal. The 50 foot-tall actor wearing a watch and grinning at me - is not my new best buddy, Amen? This is atmospheric assholishness
The mono-culture of Consumer...
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Consumerism is violent. The apologists for ads and products, life styles and brought-to-you-by media are disastrously wrong. The thousands of marketing confrontations that a person must get through daily are not persuasive, clever, or normal. The 50 foot-tall actor wearing a watch and grinning at me - is not my new best buddy, Amen? This is atmospheric assholishness
The mono-culture of Consumer...
Read More
Mickey Mouse Pleads with the Wisconsin Children: Don't Revolt! Watch TV! Go Shopping!
There is a new sales campaign the Disney Company recently announced. Wall Street analysts talk excitedly about the newborn market. Disney representatives enter hospitals birth rooms with sales kits, trying to sell onesies with Mickey logos to the enthralled or scared parents soon after the baby cries for breath. Yes - the...
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There is a new sales campaign the Disney Company recently announced. Wall Street analysts talk excitedly about the newborn market. Disney representatives enter hospitals birth rooms with sales kits, trying to sell onesies with Mickey logos to the enthralled or scared parents soon after the baby cries for breath. Yes - the...
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The one question I return to: From the center of our vast population can we human beings reach out to the thing that created us? The industrial inebriation of traffic-life, computer-life, and military-life - is so complete. We as the top dog species isolate ourselves from the Earth just as the Earth makes the effort to talk to us. And oh its trying to get...
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What I Learned in Detroit
At the United States Social Forum in Detroit I concentrated on three areas: reclaiming the commons, organic farms and the end of mountaintop removal. My idea was that this trinity of issues make a revolutionary combination.
Reclaiming the commons - taking back into public ownership the air, water, parks, schools and much of government from the privatizing take-over begun by...
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At the United States Social Forum in Detroit I concentrated on three areas: reclaiming the commons, organic farms and the end of mountaintop removal. My idea was that this trinity of issues make a revolutionary combination.
Reclaiming the commons - taking back into public ownership the air, water, parks, schools and much of government from the privatizing take-over begun by...
Read More
Oil Spills and Real Change
Its good that strip-mining, tar sands, hydro-fracking, oil spilling this flood of nightmares is scaring us silly. Were getting that energy extraction has consequences on this earth. What could be more important than that? But our public discussion doesnt go to the inevitable political change that is on the horizon.
The elephant in the middle of the room is: slowing...
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Its good that strip-mining, tar sands, hydro-fracking, oil spilling this flood of nightmares is scaring us silly. Were getting that energy extraction has consequences on this earth. What could be more important than that? But our public discussion doesnt go to the inevitable political change that is on the horizon.
The elephant in the middle of the room is: slowing...
Read More
THE UPRISING
Its the worst of times and the best of times. We now face the power of the ultimate destroyer. Major institutions re-ignite their consumer democracy, showering detractors with greenwashing rhetoric as CO-2 emissions rise every month. There is commitment by leaders to a deadly gradualism. On the other hand, we dont have a social movement. Have we ever needed one more? Theres no...
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Its the worst of times and the best of times. We now face the power of the ultimate destroyer. Major institutions re-ignite their consumer democracy, showering detractors with greenwashing rhetoric as CO-2 emissions rise every month. There is commitment by leaders to a deadly gradualism. On the other hand, we dont have a social movement. Have we ever needed one more? Theres no...
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RUNNING IN GREAT CITIES
Today I jogged through Amsterdam from the Royal Palace on Dam Square to the mouth of the river. Like many European city centers, Amsterdam has evolved into a super mall, an old surface covered with the images of models posing with products, often in gigantic proportions. There is a spell cast on me, regardless of how much outright disgust I have...
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Today I jogged through Amsterdam from the Royal Palace on Dam Square to the mouth of the river. Like many European city centers, Amsterdam has evolved into a super mall, an old surface covered with the images of models posing with products, often in gigantic proportions. There is a spell cast on me, regardless of how much outright disgust I have...
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EXCERPT FROM A WEDDING SERMON
for Christine and Scott
Will somebody give me a Love-a-lujah!
Look at the two of you. It is so amazing, such a miracle. It must be that were not alone. As we all stand here in that wedding way, staring and not necessarily comfortable, who else is standing with us? Do you feel the centuries of unstoppable lovers who put...
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for Christine and Scott
Will somebody give me a Love-a-lujah!
Look at the two of you. It is so amazing, such a miracle. It must be that were not alone. As we all stand here in that wedding way, staring and not necessarily comfortable, who else is standing with us? Do you feel the centuries of unstoppable lovers who put...
Read More
Theyre Sleeping
I got out of bed carefully in the dark. In the bed a splayed-out-to-all-the-edges-woman was sleeping, with a second smaller person sleeping inside her.
I walk northwest through the darkness to a window that was bright turquoise. I put the pan of water on the stove and watched the blue flame. A cardinal sang in the backyard, in that broad style of Spring....
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I got out of bed carefully in the dark. In the bed a splayed-out-to-all-the-edges-woman was sleeping, with a second smaller person sleeping inside her.
I walk northwest through the darkness to a window that was bright turquoise. I put the pan of water on the stove and watched the blue flame. A cardinal sang in the backyard, in that broad style of Spring....
Read More