 |
|||||||||
|
Our Velvet Revolution A growing number of Americans are beginning to identify with the pro-democracy activists whose courage opened much of the world to freedom in the final decades of the 20th Century. We remember and honor the poet revolutionary Vaclav Havel of Czechoslovakia, where Charter 77 rendered the flowers and songs of a velvet revolution more powerful than the guns of oppression. We remember the shipyard hero, Lech Walesa, of Poland. We remember those who stood non-violently in Russia, in Yugoslavia, in Tiananmen Square, in East and West Germany. When people stand united with certain courage, they get their way. That fact is an axiom in the geometry of world history. These revolutions come easier when the timing is right. The European pro-democracy activists did not have a Stalin commanding the guns against them, but a Gorbachev, who could see the future with a human heart. And the activists had the advantage of an undivided popular sentiment. To say we are oppressed in America sounds remarkably like the whining of spoiled children. We live such privileged lives compared to many in the world, it is true. We have our cars and our homes or apartments‚ most of us, and our television shows and our clean cities and glittering stores‚ cornucopias--and theaters and a thousand kinds of systems and conveniences and communication devices and all the rest that seem to work and serve us with well-maintained reliability. Living in the midst of such luxury, it is hard to imagine that one might not be free‚ that freedom might be an illusion, a fraud. Was the hoopskirted, ante-bellum Southern Belle, living her life in the plantation mansion amid her luxuries, a free human being--or was she as constrained from independent action as the slaves who served her luxury? Our homes are now filled with the cheap products of slave societies, and our streets are safe because those who dare move against the system are locked away by the millions, so that their forced labor can serve us, too. But we are free and happy, we think. We are Americans. We need no Velvet Revolution, for our lives are sufficient; they are velvet couches, made in China, affordable to us because the best part of the price is paid by others, by the young worker in China, by the unemployed fellow in our own town, and by his children who pay in a thousand ways. So, we have it made. Yes, it is a problem that we Americans use a third of the world's resources, and that global pollution and the balance of our trade are all completely unsustainable, and that we can only get the cheap resources we desire by destroying democracies around the world and installing dictators to whom we can dictate; and all this sowing of bitterness is a harvest of terrorism now and to come, but we can at least live for today in our freedom and our happiness. We, empire's debutantes, need not look out our plantation house window to the slave quarters in the distance, when the same window will give us our beautiful reflection. But the small, everyday injustices of a population must flow somewhere; indeed, they gather into great rivers that flow through capitols and pentagons, where the selfish energies combine and become the bombs and machine-gun roar and rattle of our bloody agents in the world. Our vote every four years is a weak ceremony of little importance compared to how we live our personal lives, which empowers either good or evil in the world. But as for our freedom, what do we have left of it? No man or woman is free whose life is built upon the suffering of others. Slavery enslaves the master more than the slave, for the master is enslaved in mind as well as body. And so we take off our shoes at the airport and are too dumbed-down to think why, and we send our children to factory schools that are the abattoirs of their tender imaginations and grand potentials, and we are too hypnotized to think much of it. We bow our heads to our bosses, without the clear minds to mourn for our human dignity, for we dare not miss a paycheck or else the credit card and mortgage bales on our backs will come crushing down on us, and that is all that matters, we have been programmed to believe‚ not think. ["Our Velvet Revolution"...Continued]
Mark Your Calendar!
Week of JANUARY 20 Granny D will be speaking in Washington DC 10:00 a.m. at
Malcolm X Park Inaugural Protests Planned "Public" space along Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington D.C. will, for the occasion of the Bush-Cheney inaugural parade on January 20, become tightly-controlled private space, with police turning away protesters in favor of corporate sponsors. Protesters are nevertheless planning to attend, officialdom’s lapse of etiquette and constitutionality notwithstanding. The D.C. Antiwar Network (DAWN) is planning a 9am counter-inauguration rally in D.C. at Malcolm X Park, 16 th St. NW & Euclid. Details http://www.dawndc.net/ For rides to Washington, housing, and information about other counter-inaugural events in D.C. and around the nation, click HERE. http://www.counter-inaugural.org/ The ANSWER Coalition, an antiwar, pro-justice group that was heavily involved in organizing protests against the US attack on Iraq, is hoping to occupy space along the parade route. They are encouraging protesters to arrive before 9am at a location yet unannounced. The group’s lawyers are working to secure permits but have been unsuccessful for nearly a year. Details http://www.ANSWERcoalition.org Other groups are planning to seed the crowd with people who will not carry signs, but who will turn their backs on Mr. Bush when his motorcade approaches. Some will likely reveal banners or shirts as they do so. Details http://www.turnyourbackonbush.org
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 19 - TAKOMA - WASHINGTON, DC - 8PM The amazing performance poet Chris Chandler performs his biting political and social satire in this Counter-inaugural concert with David Rovics at The Electric Maid - 228 Carrol Ave - Adjacent from the Takoma Metro Stop, admission: $5-20. Can't make it to the show? Here is Chris' tour schedule . You can also sign up for his ever-so-insightful "Muse and Whirled Retort" e-mail newsletter here. You'll enjoy hearing of Chris' regular brushes with Americana as he continues his 14(?) year tour across the county. If you want to hear Chris now, check out these cuts from his latest CD, "Live from the Wholly Stolen Empire."
Home - Past Issues - eCards - Classifieds - Blog Spot - Free Subscription - About Us |
