Labels: 1st UU principle, 5th UU principle, anti-oppression, changing the prison paradigm, drug war, equal rights, freedom versus freedom, marijuana, racism, USA

Dear Mary Jane,

I imagine this Janice Hahn may be a good candidate, however I will not be helping Organizing for America now or in 2012.

I am entirely disenfranchised with the right/centrist agenda Barack Obama has been pursuing.  His policies have amounted to making "Change We Can Believe In" the saddest hollow promise I've ever heard in my 42 years.

Specifically, his budgetary policies continue to serve the wealthy corporate investors in a fashion similar to George W Bush including offering to trade away social security; he is continuing to invest our military in wars upon wars rather than pursue more peaceable solutions; his administration flip-flops on the drug war, muddying the legal waters while continuing to harass moral and innocent people in medical need, using taxpayer dollars as if they are criminals; and he has done astonishingly little to support renewable energy, compared to subsidies for fossil fuels and nuclear. 

Therefore, his name attached to your request does not inspire me to help you unless he truly becomes "The Change I Thought I Was Believing In."  Please send him this message--I voted for him in 2008, but he and any Democratic candidates he supports have squandered my good faith, and lost my support for 2012.
,
With peace and real hope,
Joel

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes
the existing model obsolete."
 -Buckminster Fuller (Architect and Geometrist)

Labels: changing the prison paradigm, classism, drug war, peace, politics, renewable energy, USA, war and peace

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Labels: changing the prison paradigm, drug war, economics, indifferent corporations, oppression

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I know I haven't said all that much on immigration reform, but that doesn't mean I haven't been thinking on it, and I just came across an article with a long list of principles that should be satisfied by meaningful immigration reform. I agree with these.

Three key points:
1. The US has created a system where undocumented immigrants have no legal recourse, and businesses that hire them can treat them very unfairly without fear of recrimination.
2. US policies of interference in other countries (Including the drug war in Mexico and Columbia, School of the Americas harming the countries of Central America, and a variety of unfair lending practices that leave developing nations in the lurch) leave those countries economically destitute, forcing their workforce to other countries (including the US) to find work. Those practices need to end, so that our country is not exploiting the labor of other countries. We need to explore ways of real cooperation.
3. Incarcerating undocumented immigrants and putting them to work in prison at sub-minimum wage? Highly unethical, yet this treatment seems par for the course for those incarcerated in US prisons.

chant/prayer/mantra: May we all recognize our common humanity, beyond any thoughts to human-created national boundaries.


pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel

Labels: anti-oppression, Capitalism, changing the prison paradigm, classism, equal rights, globalism, immigration reform, racism, USA

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I just came across this story about a developer in India who is building and selling condominium apartments for between $7800 and $13,400 each. That's not annual rent. That is the price it costs to purchase and own these units. Here's the simple floorplans, ranging in size from 283 to 465 square feet. This is the same guy who developed and marketed the $2000 car.

According to a study two years ago, there were 744,000 homeless people in the United States. The average price of one of these condominiums is $10,000.

Okay, let's do the math. But first, let's say that apartments like this actually cost a little more to build in the United States. Say it costs twice that, so it's $20,000 per condominium. And let's assume that the number of homeless in the U.S. has tripled with this economic recession/depression, so we have an estimate of roughly 2.5 million homeless now.
And let's assume that not every homeless person is single, and that these apartments are going to be suitable for two people each. That means we divide by two.

DOING THE MATH:

2,500,000 x 20,000 / 2 = ?

25 billion dollars!

For only 25 billion dollars, the United States could have addresses for every homeless person, and a place to lay their head down and call their own. Without home addresses, it's really difficult to get a job, because where will potential employers contact you? This would only help the economy. We spent 700 billion dollars (and much much more) to try and bail out the bankers (who by and large still have homes after screwing us, thank you very much). That is 28 times as much as it would cost to give all of our homeless people homes.

I've already done this math before. This is the second time I've specifically mentioned this here. My thinking this time agrees with my thinking then.

The United States is a sad, sad place if we can't do this. No, it's not that we can't do it. It's that those who control where resources go refuse (or do not have the will) to do it. Guilt and shame, to the highest order of magnitude, rides upon the heads of all those who have the capacity to make this happen but do not. HERE IS A CASE OF THE GOOD SAMARITAN WRIT LARGE, and being "good Sam" in this case doesn't even require these people to spend their own money to make it happen -- only to dedicate a portion of the budget from our commonwealth. Honor and true pride can swell within those who dedicate resources to making this happen, and see it through.

And I realize that I was here talking about the United States, because that is presently the primary domain of my jurisdiction, but this simple mathematics can be extended to everywhere on the planet. If there are 500 million people without homes across this planet, the math works out to 2.5 trillion dollars. A seemingly large sum, but not when you think about it over the long haul, and of the benefits it would provide.


lyrics:
"Feed the babies
Who don't have enough to eat
Shoe the children
With no shoes on their feet
House the people
Livin' in the street
Oh, oh, theres a solution."
From Fly Like an Eagle, by Steve Miller

colors: Brown, as in the new mud huts for everyone. BTW, I hope that these apartments are eco-friendly. For this to be a real solution, they should be as eco-friendly and sustainable as possible.

mood: Hopeful.

chant/prayer/mantra: A place for everybody.


pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel

PS- Here's an even more affordable housing design, perhaps preferable, and from a company with a true eco-friendly, people-friendly mission statement.

Labels: anti-oppression, changing the prison paradigm, economics, homelessness, interconnected web, paradigm shift, restorative justice, USA

 Here is a man who lied and cheated his way into the presidency.  Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and then used that presidency to direct the taxpayers' money (including future taxes -- his administration borrowed HUGE sums of money, which will have to be paid back) into wars and into the pockets of the rich.  The list of atrocities commited upon the American people is almost too much to fathom.  (There are people good wholesome values and convictions who were so upset by his anti-American fearmongering, warmongering, and obstinacy -- and calling it "American" from the highest seat of power -- in the face of justice that they are pretty near suffering from PTSD.)

Labels: changing the prison paradigm, freedom versus freedom, globalism, politics, restorative justice, USA, war and peace

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Labels: anti-oppression, changing the prison paradigm, coursework, drug war, economics, oppression, personal bookmarks, politics, USA

Our country puts people in prison to work for pennies on the dollar. It helps the privately run prisons turn a profit. Please view this map, and article attached to it for more information.

I'm glad this issue is getting coverage by the New York Times.

Here's a quote from the article: "....an industry that detains half a million people a year, up from a few thousand just 15 years ago. The system operates without the rules that protect criminal suspects, and has grown up with little oversight, often in the backyards of communities desperate for any source of money and work."

pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel

Labels: changing the prison paradigm, classism, racism, USA

So uber-champion of swimming Michael Phelps had a picture of him smoking from a bong end up in a newspaper. And now lots of his sponsors are dropping his contract, including Kellogg's and Subway -- corporations which enjoy business from people who smoke marijuana. Perhaps they and the other folks trying to slap his wrist really are doing it because he should be a role model for kids, perhaps they're doing it because they don't want to be associated with marijuana because of family-goodness perceptions they want to keep alive.

There is a lot I would add to this discussion, but apparently, there are many professional journalists saying pretty much the same thing. Note a few of the headlines of the Related Blogs section from the page linked above (I will add my comments in []'s):

• "Why Are We Condemning Michael Phelps' Pot Use? Add decorated Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps to the growing list of successful Americans who happens to indulge in marijuana during his down time." [Or: they will be otherwise successful until they get found out.]
  
• "If Kellogg's Dumps Phelps, We Dump Kellogg's Tens of millions of Americans think that the public condemnation of Phelps is a farce. We're sick and tired of the public outings, and forced apologies and recantations, which perpetuate this shameless hypocrisy."
• " Michael Phelps, Hypocrisy, and American Drug Policy Today, public figures justify past drug use as "youthful indiscretions" and the matter is dropped. But the reality of drug arrests creates a justified perception economic and racial bias." [Let's face it, the drug laws are in place -- and unevenly enforced-- as a method of social control, to keep (groups of) people who are different, either in skin color, culture, or lifestyle choices on the defensive.]
  
• " Marijuana Blues: If All Americans Had Phelps' Press Experience, The Drug War Would Be Over Imagine how the economy would grind to (even more of!) a halt if we tried to arrest and incarcerate all of the people who had ever smoked pot." [Well, the privatized prison economy (complete with its sub-minimum-wage SLAVE labor) would continue to grow, until we can't find the tax money to pay for a dead-end prison system that destroys the lives of not only inmates, but also the guards/employees, and the towns they are in. Wackenhut is not hurting for earnings, however.]
  
• " Quit Crying Double-Standard Over Phelps America gives its marketable, talented and wealthy weed-smokers the Santonio Holmes treatment. We forgive and quickly forget." [This writer, Jason Whitlock, and I agree on my bracketed statement above: 'America's war on drugs is a scam to lock up poor people, a prop to advance political careers and an easy way for corrupt police and politicians to funnel millions of untraceable dollars into their own pockets.']
• " Petition to Boycott Kellogg's for Treatment of Michael Phelps Kellogg's has decided to end their relationship with Phelps after a photo of him surfaced doing exactly what most Kellogg's customers do right before enjoying a bowl of Rice Krispies with an Eggo on top." [LOL. But seriously, if there is an organized boycott of Kellogg's by all those who stand against our nation's drug policy and the continued insistence that the context of marijuana be one of criminality, it would be interesting to watch how deeply their margins are affected.]
  
• " Michael Phelps In Good Company According to a 2002 Time/CNN poll, 47% of Americans have smoked marijuana. Here's a list of famous users and advocates of the plant." [Includes Laura Bush, Donna Shalala, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sarah Palin, George Soros! President Barack Obama, President Bill Clinton, President James Madison, President John Kennedy, President Thomas Jefferson, President Andrew Jackson, President Franklin Pierce, Future California governor Brad Pitt (come on, if Reagan and Schwarzenegger can do it...), William F. Buckley, Jr, Jennifer Aniston, Utilitarian ethicist Jon Stuart Mill... Seriously, where have our values come to if we are willing to continue to use legislation and law enforcement to subjugate the lifestyles of large parts of our population?]
  
• " Excuses, Excuses: The Real Problem With Michael Phelps I flashed back to 2004 when Phelps was arrested for a DUI. He was 19, fresh off Athens and the magazine where I worked was honoring him for being a role model for young people." [Um... drinking and driving -- that IS a bad thing for which there should be negative repercussions, and which our society should find ways to make more difficult, and more unnecessary (more designated drivers, more taxis, better mass-transit...)]
  
• " Bong Hits for Phelps: No Apology Needed Phelps struck another blow to the myth that marijuana smokers are lazy. Successful and honorable people who have smoked some pot are all around us, from President Obama to Mayor Bloomberg." [True. When you start having more and more successful people stepping up being "exceptions to the rule," eventually it becomes clear that the rule is unsubstantiated.]
  

The simple way of saying this is that the context is being presented as if Michael Phelps spending some of his downtime in an altered state of consciousness cannot be allowed as a part of our worldview. For Christ's sake -- and I do mean that literally -- shaman and spiritual guides have been smoking and snorting herbs and such for thousands of years. When can we get real about drug policy, and get real about having a system of laws based on a deep and grounded ethical morality, and put people (and the planet) before ideologies?


pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel

Labels: anti-oppression, changing the prison paradigm, classism, drug war, equal rights, freedom versus freedom, personal religion, politics, theological sources

OK, I'm really not much of an organizer, but I just had an idea, and I hope an organizer picks up on this one. I have been reflecting on the nature of labor, investment, and reward in the U.S. culture, and have come up with this. The people who do the work get the least reward. The people who own the resources upon/with which the workers work get first dibs on the reward.

That is nothing new, and it takes a fool not to notice that. That is not the idea I am speaking of.

The idea I am speaking of is the direct application of the above when it comes to today's situation. It comes from seeing what happened with Enron, and seeing what happened with that Madoff guy recently and his execution of the latest Ponzi/pyramid scheme. With the U.S. government pouring tons of borrowed/taxed dollars into banks and such, where it is not fully accountable and being siphoned off, the government is looking to be the greater fool.

And ultimately, that leaves the people holding the bag. The taxes we paid, and the money borrowed that we will have to pay to God knows who, are being invested in the pockets of pillagers. These pillagers include those at the top/inside/beginning of the stock market game, and the CEO's still receiving exorbitant sums, after their companies received a part of the $700 billion bank bailout.

In short, any government money that is being borrowed from the future, and not being invested in our future -- in the infrastructures of:

• good mass transit (trains, ferries, and electric busses)
• clean and renewable electricity (solar (both centralized and decentralized), wind, tidal, etc)
• a system of refueling stations for electric cars
• r & d for clean battery technologies
• an intelligent and extensible educational system, using both democratically-influenced mass media and community involvement in local schools and recreation centers
  
• desalinization and fresh water control systems
• sustainable agricultural systems and a return to healthy environmental practices and a re-empowered EPA system of oversight
  
• overhauling failed systems such as the abhorrently wastrel military budget and the prison complex
  
• healthy families, living at or above poverty
• i'm sure i missed a few, but the above are all very important and should be near the top of the list...
  

Any money being invested elsewhere, further afield than that related to our real well-being, and the people who are putting it there are criminal. We the common citizens of the U.S. will be left holding the bag, without real investment in our country's future, while the folks in the Senate with a country club sensibility and nary a clue of what it's like to be out in the cold, and those with the tightest connections -- they will be (are) the first to cash in on the economy as the true value of this U.S. company becomes more clear. With our tax dollars ending up in somebody's pockets, it will be really difficult to get it back.

We the people had our money invested over the last eight years (and many prior) by "mutual fund managers" who did not have our interests in mind, or had the singular interest of maximizing money, not in responsible investment. When their investments failed because of unsane monetary policies such as the outrageous overextended ratio allowed (or unregulated) for fractional-reserve banking newly-constructed credit default swap market, the investment (put into things that had low value anyway) has gone sour.

One REAL rule for investors: Put your money in things that you want to see saved/thrive. It's not difficult. It's only difficult if you treat investments as if it's gambling. Put your money in what needs to thrive, and you will see it pay you back in ways well beyond those seen in dividends, stock options and monetary ROI's.



lyrics: No his mind is not for rent to any god or government.
-Tom Sawyer, by Rush

colors: green, as in money. and green, as in environment.


pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel

Labels: Capitalism, changing the prison paradigm, desalinization, economics, environment, paradigm shift, politics, USA

These are two pieces of art that I gifted to some people from the chaplaincy internship I experienced at a mental health / incarceration facility this summer.

Angel Slacks was a gift to one of the employees who had never heard of slack before, and was incredibly bogged down because of it.



Ecstatic Peace was a gift to the people on the unit I was working at, because knowing that I would be leaving, I wouldn't be able be present in the same way, but still wanted them to remember I'd be there.



lyrics:
My God is good in the kitchen
Make a good meal from bread and fishes
Feed the hungry pour the wine
Everybodys welcome to have a good time
Sit at his table enjoy the food
from "Save Us All" by Tracy Chapman

or

Gee angel, gee angel, I need some slack
There's nothing in this world that I'd rather do
Than buy a set of wings and fly away with you
from "Gee Angel" by Sugar

chant/prayer/mantra: May we be always with love, and love always with us.


pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel

Labels: art, changing the prison paradigm, presence, sustenance

This evening I read a few different posts by people I've only recently become acquainted with, or know through other people.

Labels: angry at organized religions, anti-oppression, changing the prison paradigm, LGBT, oppression, racism

If I had the energy, I would be blogging on:

1. Senator Obama's recent resounding speech in Berlin, coupled with the ColorOfChange.org's petition to Fox News (rejected, BTW) to stop being racist. And Fox News' new ploy to call MoveOn.org (related somehow to ColorOfChange.org) 'the new Klan'. Buh??????? As a person who majored in psychology, I will ask, "Project much?"

2. How awesome is it that Texas is plunking down several billion dollars to connect wind energy to the electrical grid, and hopefully other stuff? And also, that GM is pushing to get electrical charging infrastructure set up in many communities around the country, in support of the 2010 release of their electric hybrid car called Volt? (Though big demerits to them for trying to be proprietary about it, and wanting to charge an extra $500 for electric vehicles produced by other companies to get a converter.)

3. The ongoing "trickle down" theory going on with respect to the housing loan travesty. The assumption by those advocates is that by bailing out the big centralized banks, it will somehow help the end user. Sheesh! And with the method of the bailout being related to tax dollars propping up Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, we are finally seeing the black hole that will consume the U.S. economy. This stands to be a very painful event horizon, and I am afraid our nation's economic might has been badly wounded by the Bush Administration's borrow and spend policies (News today: $482 Billion deficit predicted for 2009).

4. My ongoing experience working at a state mental health facility this summer. It has been intense, and deeply instructional. I am seeing mental illness, and spiritual illness, in a whole new light. At the same time, it has been devastating hearing the stories and seeing the conditions of some of the people there, as a result of parents and family, organic brain damage, religiously-based delusions (that run along a continuum), drug abuse, abandonment, stress, and a system that doesn't have the political will to deal properly with mental illness. Along with the prison system, our mental health system could use a lot more support, and some serious reform, bordering on abolition, because our current system is very much still punitive and not designed to be restorative. I'm not happy to say that the prison system sees minimum sentencing laws and recidivism as good for business. I'm also not happy to say that the prison business is not good for the inmates, the correctional officers, or the communities with prisons.

5. The big thing to comment on, that I can barely begin is the hostile shooting with a shotgun at a UU church in Tennessee, by a man who was upset about not having a job, and blaming the "liberals and the gays." This, shortly after the supreme court took the time out to further validate the second amendment. I can't even begin, other than to pray for healing. Healing for everyone involved. Healing of the whole. When I heard that it was an usher who jumped in front of the gunman who was one of the ones who died, it finally brought me to tears.

When time allows, I hope to do a bit more research and reflection and get a bit more detailed on all this.

lyrics:
"Time to bring it down again.
Don't just call me pessimist.
Try and read between the lines.
I can't imagine why you wouldn't
Welcome any change, my friend."
-Aenima, by Tool

colors: light brown, the color worn by all of the "Individuals" in the "Secure Treatment Area" (behind the razor wire fence and multi-port gate) at Napa State Hospital.

mood: soul tired

chant/prayer/mantra: May the people of this world, and of this world's religions, and this world's politics, and the world's cultures, come together and be made whole, and allow for authenticity without harm or intentional transgression. And may there be grace. Amen.


pax hominibus, (for now and the future)
agape to all,
joel

Labels: changing the prison paradigm, Christianity, freedom versus freedom, mental health issues, oppression, paradigm shift, politics, racism, renewable energy, Satan/devil, Universalism