The Tao Of Brother T

“Our actions are like ships which we may watch set out to sea, and not know when or with what cargo they will return to port.” ― Iris Murdoch, The Bell

At the end of the day, the Golden Rule is called the Golden Rule for a reason – do unto others as you would have done to you. – Chad Kroeger

I was in a bad mood. Back in those days I was always in a bad mood. I walked into the office and saw “Donna’ sitting at her desk. I leaned into her cubicle and said. “Hey, do you have those deposits done yet.”

Without turning to me or saying a word, she handed me a folder that contained the documents that I was asking for. I turned and walked out without a “thank you” or a “go to hell.”

I was about twenty feet down the hallway when I heard footsteps coming behind me and fast. A hand touched my elbow and I spun around. It was the girl that I was dating at the time. She’d witnessed the last exchange. She said, “”What do you think you’re doing?”

“What do you mean?”

“Back there with “Donna.””

“Taking care of business. That’s what I do. Take care of business.”

“That was completely wrong.”

“What do you mean?” I was genuinely perplexed.

“In my culture we would never have an encounter like that. You walk in. You say hello. You ask after the person’s health and family. And then you take care of business. “Donna’s” father just had a heart attack and you didn’t even bother to ask. You have to consider people’s feelings!”

It was like a slap in the face. Now those of you who know me know that I am the very definition of being socially awkward. I have gotten better over these last fifteen years, but I’ll never be the belle of the ball. My eyes were opened that day, so much so that I was forever changed by the encounter. The following day I went back into that office to see “Donna.”

“Hi Donna, I heard about your dad. Is he doing okay?”

She looked at me like I had just stepped off a spaceship, complete with green skin and antennae. “Yeah. thanks for asking.”

I walked out of there feeling pretty good about myself. I carried that feeling until the following day, when another coworker told me a funny story. “So, Donna said that you were really nice to her yesterday.” I smiled. “She also said you were faking it.” I was flabbergasted. It would have been the easiest thing in the world for me to blame her for being harsh and unforgiving, but indeed it was I who’d built up these bad feelings in her over the years. She was perfectly justified. My negative energy had killed any chance that we ever had to be friends.

I was bitten by reciprocity.

I was a raving lunatic back in those days. I was working too much, drinking too much and was dumped by the aforementioned girlfriend. The icing on the cake was when I got fired from the job for “just not caring” anymore. I was just not caring to the tune of 65 hours per week. In retrospect it was one of the best days of my life. I moved on through a succession of General Manager jobs in restaurants. With each new job I got a little bit softer, a little more empathetic. Finally, after twelve years of mind-numbing soul-crushing work. I was ejecting into the real world like Neo being unplugged from the Matrix for the first time.

I took that “Donna” lesson with me.

I’ve become the antithesis of that raving lunatic, so much so that my most recent girlfriend said, “No one could be that happy all the time.”

To set the record straight, she was right, I am not that happy all the time. But I am that cheerful all of the time. I choose to be cheerful because I’ve noticed that when I’m in a good mood it puts everyone else in a good mood, which in turn makes me happy.And it also allows me to keep any bad vibrations at bay.

I wrap my arms around reciprocity.

We all have the ability to be creators. We create every encounter that we have with another human being. We can shape it into a thing of beauty or make it as ugly as we want. If I spend 15 seconds with a complete stranger, does it cost me anything more to make it a beautiful 15 seconds? Heck no! In fact, I can gain spiritual currency in every exchange. When I get a smile out of the deal, I win. When someone says thank you, I win. When someone gains some satisfaction, I win. If I do the right thing in every situation, I always win.

This is my Law of Reciprocity.

Do something beautiful without expectation, it will bounce right back at you.

Do something evil and spiteful, be prepared for the whipping post.

Karma gonna get you, baby.

I often think back to that day 15 years ago and the lesson that I learned. It would have cost me nothing to do the right thing, yet I chose to “take care of business.” Now I hope that everyone throws their arms around Reciprocity. All these good vibrations bouncing around make the world a kinder gentler place.

Namaste, Your Brother T

Or
The Middle Way Vs. The Way of the Artist

“First of all, Buddhism is neither pessimistic nor optimistic. If anything at all, it is realistic, for it takes a realistic view of life and the world. It looks at things objectively. It does not falsely lull you into living in a fool’s paradise, nor does it frighten and agonize you with all kinds of imaginary fears and sins. It tells you exactly and objectively what you are and what the world around you is, and shows you the way to perfect freedom, peace, tranquility and happiness.” – Walpola Rahula, What The Buddha Taught

“And so it goes…” Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five

“You can do anything you set your mind to.” Benjamin Franklin

The world is a vast playground where virtually anything is possible, yet from the day we are born our options are limited and stunted. Our parents, however well-meaning like to put us in a box, do what is best for us, help us be all that we can be. Later, as we start school, our teachers do the same thing. They begin teaching to the standardized test, teaching us what every kid needs to know to be successful in the world. In short, we make our kids what we want them to be rather than allowing them to become who they want to be.

I don’t claim to be an expert on any subject. I’m really more of an unused mind that is playing catch-up in my dotage. I’m an under-educated underachiever who is finally using my brainy superpowers for the forces of good. Or rather the all-consuming power of Art. By the way, what happened to Art?

I can hear you thinking (cue lab rats running on a little wheels), “What are you talking about Brother T? There is art all around you. Open your eyes, Brother T.”

True, you can turn on the radio and hear music or go to the library and grab a book that will make you laugh AND make you cry. Every city has art galleries and museums where you can see stunning works of visual art. Drive through any town and you’ll see architecture, parks and landscaping that will blow your mind. Listen to a street poet or read a poetry book. Go to a popular restaurant and you might see a stunning recipe plated like a masterpiece. Pop into your local brew pub and drink a work of Art. Stop by the indie record store and see window art and posters for rock shows. Go to a town with a thriving bicycle scene and be amazed by the beauty of the handcrafted bicycles. I could go on and on, but I think you get the point. There is ART everywhere that you look. Right now. “Open your eyes., Brother T.”

My eyes are wide open. My heart fills with joy every time I rub up against any one of those examples that I just rattled off. Right now there is ART everywhere I turn my head.

But where will it be tomorrow.

I’ll bet when you read the title of this piece you thought it was going to be a treatise on Eastern mysticism and spirituality. It is. Nothing is more spiritual (to me) than ART. For thousands of years the standard bearers of the Eastern religions have been preaching the Middle Way as the way to find enlightenment.

Buddha said “The middle way avoids both these extremes; it gives vision, knowledge, and leads to peace, direct acquaintance, to discovery, to nirvana.”

Indeed, the Middle Way can be the source of enlightenment if all I want to do is to know my own mind (a frightening prospect, if you’re asking). A life of knowing the ecstasy of emotional highs and the crash and burn of the lowest lows are what makes me tick. When I’m too happy for too long I can almost feel the gears within me start to grind to a halt. I have hurt many people and ruined many relationships because of it. Does that mean I should stop seeking the ultimate happiness that life can give? Should I settle for a life of safety and mediocrity? Might as well shoot me now.

What I’m talking about here is the Western version of the Middle Way, a version also fraught with mediocrity. For many people, probably the majority of people in the world, the Middle Way is probably a perfectly acceptable way of living a good life. Born into a happy home, work hard in school, get a degree in an acceptable profession, find a job in said profession, marry within your social class, buy a house, pop out a few kids and retire in Florida. Sound good?

Sounds like hell to me. Which is probably why I am hopelessly and forever single, a status in which I am beyond redemption.

Not every kid that is born in 2013 is going to want to follow the Middle Way blueprint that I just laid out. There are kids who are going to want to write and paint, play music and cook, design buildings and parks. The embracing of the Western Middle Way has systematically taken away these alternatives for generations of our kids. Music and art classes have disappeared from our schools. Every kid is thrown into a box, shaken vigorously, and then expected to come out the same. Expected to pass THE TEST. The brighter kids can’t help but be bored, the average kids make out like bandits and kids at the bottom of the curve come out alienated and miserable. Kids who are too lively, who don’t fit the cookie cutter, are brought down with pharmaceuticals and counselling until they can’t touch those emotions without self-medicating. Is it any wonder that many of the world’s most creative minds of the last century have died well before their time.

What we need is a system that allows each child to be celebrated as the individual that they are without the stereotype of what they should be. So what if little Johnny wants to be a hairdresser or little Janey wants to work on motorcycles. Their happiness should be valued as much if not more than their future financial viability. This is where the government of Bhutan has surged ahead of the rest of the world. Instead of a Gross Domestic Product they calculate a Gross National Happiness. This is the Way of the Artist.

Creativity can be a curse. It can be the bane of our existence. But the absence of creativity makes for a world not worth living. There is something to be said for the Middle Way, but I’ll spend my nickel on the Way of the Artist. Thanks for listening.

The hardest part of writing a book is pulling all of the thoughts from my head, translating them into words, stringing the words into sentences, into paragraphs, into chapters, into completion.

I take that back. The hardest part of writing a book is sitting my butt down in a chair and making myself stay there for three to five hours per day, every day, for months on end. I have a short attention span. I am easily distracted. The slightest thing can throw my off. There is one thing that can keep me in the groove, keep my butt in that chair, keep my eyes on the prize. Music. The right mix of music. And it is a constantly morphing chameleon of songs. It’d be great if I could punch up the same three hours of songs every day. I’d be one prolific mofo. My kudos to all of the musicians who inspire my heart and mind on a daily basis.

JACKSON FALLS is driven by music. One of the main characters in JACKSON FALLS is Johnny Turner, the town’s prodigal and most famous son. His band, the Cliff Dwellers, is in the exactly the right place, at exactly the right moment in time. They are children of the Seventies, so their music is influenced by the early age of rock and roll. I imagine Mary Turner loving the Beatles. I imagine Johnny hating them because his mother loves them so much. That’s what kids do. I imagine a spinning turntable. I imagine the next record dropping onto that turntable and Johnny’s mother smiling broadly and pulling a 1965 Fender Jaguar guitar from behind the couch and handing it to her only son. I imagine Johnny Turner learning his first song:

The Beatles “Birthday”

The opening scene is the Cliff Dwellers’ coming out party. Some of my favorite parts of this book are the ones that take place with Johnny on stage. Johnny is a guitar genius with the love for the heavy riff. I see the hot summer day, the windblown fair, and the apathetic small-town crowd, I see the Cliff Dwellers coming out on stage and electrifying the crowd with the songs like:

Creedence Clearwater Revival “Born On A Bayou”

Ripping their hearts out with:

MC5- “Kick Out The Jams”

Johnny hits New York City as the worlds of punk and glam are colliding and he feeds off of that energy. He is the guitar hero that everyone wants to play with, but he has a hard time getting his own band up and running. And then he goes to CBGB and wows the punk world with songs like these:

Richard Hell and the Voidoids “Blank Generation”

Johnny Thunders “In Cold Blood”

The nineties are a blur for Johnny, with celebrity marriage, fame and fortune, and endless touring taking a toll on his health and his personal life. I see him winning his Grammy with a song like this:

Rocket From The Tombs “30 Seconds Over Tokyo”

While alternately shredding ear drums with the likes of:

Ball and Biscuit by The White Stripes

At the turn of the new millennium Johnny turns back inward to his roots, straight-ahead songs with blues sensibilities. I imagine Johnny writing and playing hit after hit with gut-punching guitar lines:

The Black Keys “Tighten Up”

The Raconteurs “Steady, As She Goes”

When Johnny finally makes his return to Jackson Falls, I can see him sitting down with his old buddy Darryl, just two men and two guitars, and playing an old song that they both learned together, like this:

Papa Junior “Wake Up Mama”

JACKSON FALLS was a lot of fun to write. The Rock and Roll aspects of it are just a small but important part. The best part of being a writer is making myself smile. If you guys get a chance to grin a little that’s just icing on the cake.

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“The greatest delight the fields and woods minister is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me and I to them.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

You know that I love my food. All you have to do is look at my ever-present love handles to see that I haven’t missed too many meals. I’ve evolved over the years, from my days in the Marine Corps chow hall, to a beer-soaked decade as an amateur frat boy (no college required), to my years turning out high quality airport meals for the jet-set and finally to the tens of thousands of pizzas that I shipped out to the hungry folks of Columbus, Ohio. I’ve eaten my fair share of dollar menu burgers and fried foods, washed down with flavored high fructose corn syrup, and finished off with copious amounts of alcohol. Through it all I somehow maintained a conscience. About nine months ago, right before my last birthday, I had an awakening like Buddha under the Bodhi tree. I did a 180 and flipped my life upside down. I escaped the restaurant business and started canvassing for Working America, spearheading one of the greatest grassroots movements in the history of Ohio. At the same time, where I was once an omnivore who was chained to my car, I became a vegetarian who was saddled to my bike. As if I was playing poker, I pushed the chips to the center of the table and went “all-in” for the environment.

This isn’t the first time that I’ve said all-in. Back in the 90’s I spent a year or so on the streets canvassing for environmental justice. I was a true believer. If you looked at me you might be fearful that I was an eco-terrorist. In order to get the maximum impact at the door, I went through a subtle transformation from friend to activist to businessman. It was my jobs to not only get you to recognize the problem, but I also had to transform you into an activist and support the organization. It’s a skill that served me well over the years.

A few years after my flirtation with the environmental side of activism I got activated again for a different cause. I don’t remember what it was that set me off, but I became deeply involved in the movement to dethrone George W. Bush from the White House. It was 2004. I worked tirelessly for the better part of a year to get John Kerry elected, only to be left at the alter on election night. Even though I was devastated, not so much by Kerry’s loss, he was far from the ideal candidate, but by Bush’s win. I traveled to DC to make my last statement, took a healthy dose of pepper spray from my trouble (with roughly 50,000 new found friends), and returned to Ohio chastened and demoralized. A six-year slumber ensued. Which brings us back to 2011.

You see it in the news all of the time, “Refugees Flee Famine in Somalia,” “North Korean Famine Looms,” and “Thirty-six Million Die Of Hunger and Malnutrition Every Year.” The Sahara Desert is expanding southward at a rate of thirty miles per year. Fossil fuels are beginning to run out, requiring ever more dangerous techniques to bring them out of the ground. Water shortages are reported in nearly every country of the world. At the same time the residents of America and of other “developed” countries are seeing an epidemic of heart disease, obesity and diabetes. With my track record I’m lucky to be unscathed. But I’m lucky to have my eyes open. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the world food crisis, the water crisis and the energy crisis are all interrelated. Humanity has created this confluence (some would say that lack of humanity). He has manufactured it. And it will take humanity to set it right before it’s too late.

So what to do about it? Surely one man can’t make a difference against all of these forces that are bearing down on the human race. I submit that he can. If I do the best that I can, and I motivate my friends to do the same, and they in turn motivate their friends, and so on, we can indeed change the world. But we need to take that first step, and the one after that, staying on the path even when it seems too hard.

So what is that first step, Brother Terry? Well, it seems like a good first step is localization. If we all agreed to turn our resources inwardly, to reduce our own carbon footprint, then we will not only be on the way to energy solvency, but we also fortify our own communities. We would support our own local markets and artisans and they would in turn nurture more and more of their kind. The second benefit of localization is that it creates a economic ecosystem that spawns development and redevelopment. We see that happening in neighborhoods like Weinland Park and Franklinton right now, so why not Linden and King-Lincoln? And that in turn would check our suburban sprawl. If inner-city Columbus were vibrant and alive it would be more appealing to be a city-dweller. I love living in the city, but not everybody will take that leap of faith. Besides, the last thing we need is more houses in the ‘burbs. Better to rebuild the houses and neighborhoods that already exist. That way we can concentrate our resources in a confined area and create safer and more beautiful neighborhoods inside the city. And it all comes together as an increased demand for cheap high-quality food.

The second benefit of urban renewal is freeing up land and resources for the urban garden and the small family farm. This country has gone far down the road of mechanized farming to the detriment of the small family-held farm and our waistlines. Factory farms growing fruits, vegetables and livestock are taking the humanity out of it. They try to manipulate the way our food was designed by nature in order to make it bigger, faster and more commensurate. With some of these foods that means gene-manipulation and hormones. And then they ship it halfway around the world and sell it for half the price of the local product. And that’s just the fresh products. The packaged goods are even worse.

Mega-corporations, often the same ones that grow the food, have become masters in loading the recipe with the things that our bodies crave, sodium, sugar, MSG, high-fructose corn syrup. They make them cheap, quick to prepare, even available at the drive-thru window. Everything but healthy. The result is the onslaught of diseases, destruction of our biodiversity, drain on our resources and our strain our health care system. The reason why these products are so cheap is that the greater amount of them are subsidized by the government, the companies are multinational to the point where that are not beholden to any sovereign government. This monopolization of resources comes at the expense of the little guy. Localization is the only answer to battle this. If more land were available near the city then more fresh food would be available for its inhabitants. As the availability rises the costs go down. And if the farmers work cooperatively their costs go down as well.

Another factor in the equation is the production and removal of waste. The very nature of time and distance necessitates that the mega-corporation resort to excessive packaging, fuel usage and marketing materials. Twenty percent of fossil fuels used in this country go toward the production and shipping of foods to market. Here in Columbus, the self-proclaimed test market of fast food restaurants, the percentage of trash that gets recycled in less than fifteen percent. Neither one of these numbers are sustainable. We need to get better. The way to do that is through localization. It takes less (sometime zero) packaging for a local crop to get to market. Similarly, I’d rather have my food arrive in a box truck instead of a ship, plane or semi truck. Common sense dictates the real cost of food is far higher than it reads on the dollar menu.

Economic realities are going to force a lot of people to wake up and start living more sustainably. Here in central Ohio we live in a recycling desert. We have evolved into a throwaway society. We have to have the newest car, computer, couch and house on the street. Our closets are filled with last year’s (or last decade’s) clothes that we never wear. Our landfills are filling up with our unwanted stuff. The biodegradable stuff that we throw in there can rot in there for as long as thirty years The same stuff can be composted and returned to the soil in six months or less. We throw away 2.5 million plastic water bottles per hour, 25% of which are tap water and ninety percent of which never get recycled. I can go on forever with these facts, but you get the point.

These are heady times that we live in. The local restaurant, the community market and the thrift shop are going to be more in vogue than ever. A support system for these businesses is going to tantamount to their survival. But that’s the easy part. Local support for local business is a no-brainer. It’s up to each of us to make it so. Reduce, Recycle, Compost and Repurpose. Save yourself, save your community and save the planet. Peace.

Many of you know that I have been organizing for the last year for social justice and labor issues. One of the great things about being a community organizer is that I get to visit with a vast cross-section of the 99%. I have crisscrossed the state of Ohio, from Zanesville to Tipp City, Galion to Athens, Chillicothe to Beaver Creek, Pataskala to Marysville. Common themes seem to pop up everywhere I go. The first thing that I ask a new person (8000+ and counting) is what the most important issue is for his or her family. The overwhelming number one answer is jobs and the economy. Even people who have a great job and folks who are retired with a pension realize that we need to get people back to work. And by getting back to work I mean jobs that pay a living wage with justice and benefits. This is where our politicians are letting us down.

The other thing that I was hearing all throughout the summer was the constant fear (or hope?) that it was going to take a revolution or a civil war to make things right. Class warfare or rich versus poor usually came shortly thereafter. All these people, whether they were truck drivers or teachers, unemployed or self-employed, students or retirees came upon this idea organically. I didn’t need to prompt them at all. The best story that I have from this period was back in April, when McDonald’s pulled off their hire-50000-people-in-a-day publicity stunt. (While I approve of the gesture of getting people back to work, is this really the kind of jobs we need?).

Young Man: I went down to McDonald’s today to get me a job.

Brother Terry: Really? How was it?

Young Man: There was a lot of $%#@ing people down there.

Brother Terry: I imagine so. A lot of people are out of work.

Young Man: You want to know the $%#@ed up thing about it?

Brother Terry: What was that?

Young Man: I had to compete with dudes your age.

Now I’m no spring chicken. The fact that people my age were descending on McDonald’s that day to find work is a telling portrayal of the economics of 2011. Not only do we have a national unemployment rate of nine percent, but that doesn’t even begin to calculate the number of underemployed people in this country. College students are graduating into a workforce with crushing debt and no hopes of finding a job in their field. I have no problem drawing a straight line from college loans to the foreclosure crisis. These students were sold a bill of goods by corporate colleges, all lot of which are run by the state (Ohio State, anyone?), and a banking system that gave out loans willy-nilly to folks with little hope of paying them back. If life was a playing field these graduates and their counterpart would-be homeowners are trying to run uphill at a forty-five degree grade. The game is not insurmountable, but it is skewed heavily towards those holding the purse strings.

And yet, the cry from the 53% is “Get a job, hippies!” Makes me wonder if we are living in different dimensions.

I can hear you now. “Gee Brother Terry, you’re always complaining about the system. Quit bitching and give us the solution.” That makes me smile because that’s exactly what I say to other people on a daily basis. So I’ll start first by telling what isn’t the solution. Politics is not the solution, at least not the political system that we have in place right now. Most of the politicians that we have “representing” us these days are for the most part the privileged class. Most are millionaires or will become millionaires once they get out of office. The system has made it so by ratcheting up the amount of money that it takes to run a campaign and the amount of money available from “corporate citizens.” These politicians have a vested interest in protecting the lifestyle that they have come to expect as a former captain of industry, lawyer, banker or professional politician on the take. I paint this picture with very broad strokes, but for the large percentage of the ones on the national or state level it is the truth. They are not doing the people’s business (the people defined as you an me).

You’re probably still thinking, “I’m still not seeing a solution, Brother T.” Okay, you’ve worn me down. I guess I’m going to have to give up the goods. The solution is a good old-fashioned uprising. You’re seeing it on the streets of our large cities. You saw it last summer in Wisconsin and last week in Ohio. The people are rising up and organizing. They’re even organized in the disorganization. That’s the beauty of it. When a diverse group of people get together, the ideas start to flow and common values sprout and blossom. Here in Ohio we gathered 1.3 million (12% of the population of the state) signatures in 75 days for a ballot referendum to save public workers collective bargaining rights in the state. Even if you were on the losing side of that issue, you have to admit that it is an impressive display of organizing. In Wisconsin they organized to recall six members of the state senate who sponsored a similar measure. Two of the senators were actually recalled. And now they plan the same for their government.

So I submit to you that one of two things needs to happen to break the gridlock. The first option is to force a Constitutional Congress. This would effectively reboot the system. It has the potential to reverse two of the big (and often opposing ) sacred cows, reproductive rights and the right to bear arms to name a pair. Any and all of the 28 amendments would be up for grabs. In order to make this happen two-thirds of the state legislatures would have to ask for it (not very likely). Which leads us to my second and more viable option. Bring back electoral fusion voting in all fifty states. “What’s fusion voting Brother T?”

I’m glad you asked! Fusion voting is allows for multiple political parties to nominate the same candidate. By doing so, the voter is given the option of voting for “Fred Holtsberry – Republican” or “Fred Holtsberry – Libertarian.” The voter would choose the party that they wanted to support while still registering a vote for Fred. The net result is the legitimization of the smaller parties through the accumulation of votes. If the Libertarians were to cross a certain threshold of votes, they gain automatic access to the ballot for the next four years. With automatic access, they can then run candidates of their own in a wider range of races. This is currently being done to great effect by the Working Families Party in New York State and the Independent Party in Oregon.

Electoral fusion voting was once widespread throughout the United States. As the two main parties started to consolidate their power, they began systematically wiping it off the books. With this prohibition, most third parties faded into the background. It is now practiced in only eight states; NY, CT, DE, ID, MS, SC, VT and OR. If it were again legalized in all 50 states, I submit that it would lead to a breakup of the two-party system that is causing our gridlock in this country.

“That’s all well and good, Brother Terry, but the politicians are not going to allow a dilution of power in the Republican and Democratic parties.” Correct. That is why the title of this chapter is POLITICIANS ARE NOT THE ANSWER. Politicians stopped doing the people’s business a long time ago. Fortunately there are less than 600 of them at the national level. There are 330 million of us. I submit that the time has come for a political uprising. People’s initiatives could put Electoral Fusion voting back on the national map by 2013 and in theory put a legitimate third-party Presidential candidate on the ballot by 2016. This is a course correction that our country desperately needs.

“So what do you need from me, Brother T?” Well, the best thing to do is to find out what the petition threshold for an initiative in your state is and then do the math on how many volunteers it would take to make it happen. Here in Ohio there is an active effort to collect 394,000 to make this a right to work (for less) state. That would appear to be the current threshold for my state. Every state is different. It’s not the number that matters, but the motivation behind it. There has never been a better time. One has only to look at the Occupy Wall Street movement, the approval ratings for our House, Senate and President, and the massive amount of people being foreclosed on and marginalized economically. People are ready for a change. Any Change.

Stay tuned. It’s going to be a fun ride. Politicians are not the answer. People are.

I’m sure that many of you who read these words come from the same place that I do. I come from a working class family that became a one-parent family throughout my teen years. We didn’t have much but we made it work. My brother and I went into the Marine Corps after we graduated high school because it was our best outlet into the real world. Afterwards, we chose radically different paths. I became a vagabond, moving through life with little care for anyone but myself. My brother became a police officer, raised a family, did all the right things. It is only now as we both reach middle age that we begin to understand each other and become the friends that we should have been all these years.

I mention my brother because of recent events here in Columbus. It was a week of incredible highs for the forces on the left. After nine months of constant work, we managed to repeal a bill aimed at breaking the forces of organized labor in Ohio, which in turn would be a body blow to the national movement. Ohio is one of the most unionized states in the country. There is an element of the far right that now attacks the labor movement in order to break down any organized resistance to their capitalist growth agenda. If they are successful, in my opinion, they will move unchecked to consolidate our remaining resources and place Mother Earth in environmental peril. The human race is on a collision course with extinction. It might now happen in my lifetime or yours, but it is inevitable unless we resist right now.

The movement that started with Occupy Wall Street and mushroomed throughout the world has turned the spotlight onto what they call the capitalists and banks. A friend who takes an opposing view to mine was happy to point out that there are two kinds of capitalism, “true capitalism” and “crony capitalism.” True capitalism encompasses a free market where supply and demand allow everyone to compete and take part in the market. Crony capitalism is where large entities gobble up smaller entities and use their massive blocks of capital and resources to manipulate the market so that it is no longer free. I submit that the time of true capitalism has past. The world economic system has homogenized into a warehouse where a small group of enormous corporations control a majority of the international currency and resources. It is not that they are too big to fail. It is more like they are too big to be challenged except by one another. We have devolved into a plutocracy. They are profit-taking even on each other’s debt. They are manipulating the markets to make it impossible for the little guy, the family run business to compete. The Tea Party Patriots and Libertarians who defend them don’t realize that the very people who are the “enemy,” the middle and working classes, are the ones who buy their products and services. This is impossible to do without job growth and “entitlements.” That is what the 99 percent are protesting.

So what do I mean when I say we need to resist now? Well, I can break it down for you the acronym RES1ST (note the one in the acronym). There are certain basic things that we (most of us) can agree are bad for the whole of humanity. These are the common grounds with which we can come together and begin to reclaim our Mother Earth.

1. Resist RACISM – Say what you will about this people or that, about illegal aliens and unfriendly nations. We are all in this together. If you can get beyond presidents and warlords, kings and premiers, oligarchs and captains of industry, the rest of us are just people. We have the same hopes and dreams scaled on our personal experience. We want to have a meaningful job that pays a living wage. We want to feed and clothe our children and provide them with a quality education. We want to have a safe and secure house in a safe neighborhood. We want to grow old in dignity, not worrying about where our next meal or next prescription is going to come from. These dreams cross all demographic lines. They are universal. There is only one race, the human race, and those of us who can resist owe it to our cousins to do so.
2. Resist ENVIRONMENTAL PILLAGING – The same market forces that are controlling our currency and wealth are placing an inflated priority on fossil fuels. The relative scarcity of said fuels is driving up the market value to a point where the oil companies are taking in record profits while we continue to see higher and higher prices at the pump and on our utilities. Because we are beginning to exhaust the supplies of coal, crude oil and natural gas, we see ever-riskier methods being used to extract them. Entire mountaintops that took millions of years to form are being removed to get to the goodies. Hydro-fracking sends high-velocity wastewater miles deep within the ground to extract pockets of natural gas, threatening our aquifers. The tar sands of Canada are being developed as a source for crude, but at what price to the environment?
At the same time that we are going to these great lengths to get the goodies we are ignoring all of the sustainable forms of green energy available to us. Wind turbines, solar arrays and hydro-electric power all harness the bounty of the natural world. So why don’t the plutocrats put their capital into these endeavors that could eventually wean us off of the mother crude? Because they can’t profit off of wind, sun and water the way they do off of fossil fuels.
3. Resist SEXISM – Somewhere along the course of human history women got marginalized and enslaved into a Patriarchy. At the dawn of humanity males and females had defined roles. The men were the hunters and the women were the gatherers, the tenders of the crops and the forests. It was a perfect dichotomy that worked for millennia. At some point man decided that he should take on both roles and that was the start of the downfall of man. Women have spent tens of thousands of years trying to catch up. Even now, in a time that we all acknowledge that women have attained a majority in population, they still have to fight and claw for every advantage that men tend to take for granted. It is time for the goddess to have her day.
4. We are all ONE – The only way that we can get past this nexus point that we are in is through the cooperation of all.
5. Resist SLAVERY – Throughout the history of “mankind” there has been one sort of slavery or another. The people with the biggest guns have enslaved their enemies. Men have enslaved women. Whites have enslaved blacks. Higher castes have enslaved lower castes. Women have been indentured into the sex trade against their will and through false pretenses. The list goes on and on. It should be the goal of humanity that each sentient being retains a right of free will. This is what our country was founded on, and yet we were well into our second century before we gave women and blacks the right to vote. Even now the ruling class seeks to marginalize the lower class by limiting their access to the polls. Is this slavery? Not in the classic sense, but it may well be the first step towards it.
6. Resist TYRANNY – The plutocrats and their defenders in the neo-conservative wing of our government have consolidated their resources into an over-whelming amount of power. Through deregulation and corporate welfare they have made it impossible for the common man and woman to compete for what we used to call the American dream. The biggest banks sit on trillions of dollars of capital that could be used to invest in small business under the subterfuge that they are “nervous” about the markets. Anyone can see that they control and manipulate the markets to do their bidding. One has only to look at the way Goldman Sachs gamed the system to topple AIG and then got paid back penny for penny. The markets are a sham and they need to be either severely regulated or dismantled while there is still something left to save.

So there you have it. Now you know why we need to resist. We have no assets. What we do have is the power of the people, seven billion strong, if we can all come together. RESIST, while you still can.

The word resistance conjures up different meanings for different people. For the purposes of this exposition, I’ll go with the classic Merriam-Webster definition of resist.

“RESIST- transitive verb: to exert oneself so as to counteract or defeat.”

So to resist, one must exert oneself. How does this differ from protesting, boycotting, or any of the other forms of expressing discontent with an idea or institution? Resisting means to place oneself outside of our comfort zone and to push back or exert of energy against said idea, entity or institution. I’ll give an example. Let’s say that you have an issue with the practices of the Imperial Federal Bank. You can:

A. Protest – stand outside with a sign, attempt to sway their customers and cost them business.
B. Boycott – refuses to do business with the bank. Organize others to do the same in an effort to do economic harm to the bank. OR,
C. Resist – do all of the above while also resorting to whatever it takes to bring the bank down.

Resistance techniques have been honed throughout the ages. Behind every successful revolution in history there has been an organized, persistent and methodical resistance that wore down the status quo and was the agent of change. The key phrases here are “successful revolution,” “organized and methodical” and “agent of change.” The revolution cannot be successful unless it is organized and persistent. By persistence I mean by exerting constant increasing pressure on the thing that we wish to change.

We have come to a great nexus in the evolution of our civilization. Market forces have conspired to open a great chasm between the few that have and the many that have not. A false economy has sprung forth, an economy that uses commodities and currencies, stocks, bonds and yes, even debt as its engine, rather than the products of man, the cars, planes, wheat, corn, computers and buildings. At the same time technology has started overtaken the engine of people-power, meaning that industry can be more productive with fewer people, thusly putting those people out of work in lieu of the machines that take their place. Much like the laid-off worker training his outsourced replacement, men and women are building the machines that make them obsolete.

As if this were not enough, the same market forces are exerting their own pressure on the very people who their tactics have victimized and impoverished. Bought and paid for politicians are cutting the strings out of the safety net that was carefully constructed at the time of the last great nexus after the Great Depression. Funds like Social Security and Medicare were created for just this type of crisis. Had they been left alone they would be self-sustaining for the foreseeable future. Instead, the last thirty years have seen a methodical de-funding of all these systems through borrowing against and deregulation. Now the far right is attempting do deal each with a deathblow by privatization and austerity. All so that can maintain their Military and Pharmaceutical industrial complexes.

So how did this happen? How did we take our eye off the ball and let it get stolen? There no one easy answer for this. The very technology that we take for granted today, the Internet, reality television, video games, sports, music and movies have conspired to keep us occupied and comatose, while the same medical technology that allows us to live longer over-medicates us to control us. The natural resources that sustain and allow our ecosystem to survive are being gobbled up at unsustainable rates. Renewable energies like the sun, wind and water are demonized when they should be embraced. Meanwhile, the captains of industry have siphoned off every penny that they could, secreting away into a matrix of multi-national interconnected corporations that are beholden to no sovereign nation or government. The buying power of the people is rendered useless by a shadow economy independent of tangible retail goods.

But they made a critical mistake. They discounted what happens to a human when she can’t feed, clothe or house his children. She gets angry. Over the course of the last three years people have begun to awaken. Eyes are opening to the reality that everything is not going to be all right. The bills are not going to get paid. The house is going to be foreclosed. There is no job waiting at the end of college. There is no longer such a thing as the American Dream.

So what does this mean Brother Terry? Should we just give up? If it’s all over then why not just die in our sleep?

I feel your pain. I feel the pain of the mother in Sub-Saharan Africa who children are starving because of the man-made drought. I feel the pain of the father in Detroit who has his son gunned down because he had to resort to crime to survive. I feel the pain of the couple that has to decide between food and medicine at the checkout counter. For each of us there is a different story, a different level of misery. I’m luckier than most. I have never been out of work. I have never been particularly productive. I’ve been more of a consumer than a contributor. Maybe that’s why I write these words.

I don’t believe that the war has been lost. We have lost many battles and we are under siege, but there is still a chance for humanity. As for the United States, I’m a little more skeptical. I believe that we have ceased to be the nation of the principles that we were founded on. I think we have a certain pride or hubris that is difficult for us to acknowledge. I think it would be illuminating to all of us if we could just step outside for a second, see ourselves as a European or Asian national sees us. Many of them think, and rightly so, that we are the problem. Our tendency as Americans is to believe that we are the solution. With that being said, I believe that we are the solution, not just Americans per se, but the people of the world at large. We are all the agents of change, but only if we organize and act as a community. As individuals, we are powerless against the machine. But as a community we are larger and stronger. As a community we can RESIST.

“The greatest gift of a garden is the restoration of the five senses.” – Hanna Rion

In the last chapter I talked about sowing the seeds of a community. Any gardener will tell you that it takes lots of hard work and nurturing to get your garden to be what all that she desires. Turning the soil, sowing the seeds, watering and weeding, always weeding. A community organizer goes through the same steps. The common failure is thinking that he can sow the seeds and walk away, that the community will grow organically. This is a fallacy and the reason why many a grassroots movement dies on the vine. That’s why it’s important to take basic steps before we even start, like an architect or builder, to lay down the foundation stone of the building before we bring out the bricks and the mortar to bind it all together. The foundation stone of any movement is the vision. The bricks and the mortar are the people.

Before we can set the foundation stone it is important to be clear on the vision. Just like an architect who might try out many different blueprints for a building, a group might try out many different goals and values before it coalesces into a community. Some will embrace the common goals and others will move on, but the community will be stronger in its unity. That’s why it is so important for each member to tend to her own garden before she can fully embrace the greater community. We all have core values that are central to our greater fulfillment and happiness. The question isn’t whether we should change our own goals and values, but whether we can further them by coming together on the things that we agree upon. This is progress. But first we need to figure out what we believe in.

Determining our core values is not something that we can do by reading web pages and listening to speeches and watching television news. Our beliefs have to come from within. In her excellent book PRACTICING PEACE IN A TIME OF WAR, Buddhist nun and teacher Pema Chödrön tells us that looking within is the key to attaining any goal. We need to tend our inner garden before we can hope to grow anything so substantial as a community. Set aside some time for yourself, free from distraction, to ask the big questions. It doesn’t matter if you meditate, write it down in a journal or something more substantial. The important thing is to shine a light on your hopes and dreams and see where they lead you. In doing so, you will determine your core values. Only then will you be ready to sow the seeds of your community.

We are at a crossroads of humanity. History has been a succession of ages and epochs. We have passed from the industrial age in to the technological age. Change has been so rapid that the greater part of humanity has been unable to keep up. A tiny percentage of the world’s population has stepped into the vacuum to seize a disproportionate amount of the world’s resources as their own. Their control of wealth is like a boot on the neck of the rest of humanity. It was systematic and systemic, going unnoticed by the general public for three decades. And then we woke up. Now it’s time to set the foundation stone to this new age. The field is fecund. The blueprints are being created. Now it’s time to reach out and grab the hand of your neighbor and plant some seeds.