Thoughts Of Peiro Zendik

Let Us Work Together

Hello All,

My name is Peiro, and I welcome you to my blog. I chose to start my blog with this image for a reason. It is a great example of what our culture is doing to the planet, and I feel that one of the most important things I can do with my life is to get more and more people to understand this, as I am understanding it myself. I am not a cynic, nor a nihilist. I am a Zendik. I believe that there are absolutely beautiful aspects of the human spirit. I believe that most of us are ultimately good people just trying to survive in an insane finance economy. We are constantly bombarded by a psychotic pressure to "make it" in this system, and by the time we are done with our day, we just want to escape everything. Who the hell has any energy left to even give a fuck about the planet, or innocent people suffering and dying in a far off country? I have sympathy for everyone's predicament. However, the system will keep going the way it's going until enough people reject it, and the system is killing everything. We have to do something about it. Let us come together and start to discuss what we can possibly do to change this culture. I will write here about many different issues that are close to my heart. Please, if you would like to email me and discuss these issues or talk about strategies for effective change, go ahead: peiro@zendik.org.

I leave you with one of my favorite quotes from the philosopher Wulf Zendik:

"If you see a man with a machine about to do terminal violence to a forest or a mountain, would you not take that machine [away from him]? I know it might seem such a small, isolated act. Yet it is your offering and far from inconsequential. It could mean everything. Your small, your isolated act, might well be the spark that ignites the fuse of passionate resistance to this destruction of our Homesphere."  

The Internal Work

    Upon thorough examination of what this culture has done and continues to do the the planet, everything from the destruction of the ocean through industrial overfishing, the insane amount of plastic in the ocean, the increasing acidification of the ocean due to excessive carbon intake, 200 species going extinct everyday (the African Black Rhino being one of this culture's latest victims), 99% of the world's original forests gone, mountaintop removal, the Alberta Tar Sands in Canada, etc., it doesn't take a genius to see that modern man is absolutely insane. Modern man is literally destroying the very planetary balance that has kept him alive for tens of thousands of years. 

    I haven't written a blog post in a long time, but this very reality swirls through my mind everyday. There is so much work to be done to stop this culture from destroying the planet, and for years now I have hammered my head against the wall trying to figure out what is the best thing I can do to do my part in the fight to stop the destruction. As Carolyn Raffenspurger asks, "What are the largest and most pressing problems you can help to solve using the gifts that are unique to you in all the universe?"

    Well for 10 years now I have dedicated my life to learning and applying Wulf Zendik's philosophy, and I would like to share a little here about that process. I believe, as Wulf did, that the very insane and tenacious force that is killing the planet is manifested in most modern human beings as well, including myself. There is a reason this culture stays in place. There is a reason that we who care about the planet are not actually stopping the planet from being destroyed, aside from the fact that the global elite have a fuck ton of military backing and we don't. I believe the other reason is because of our inability to believe in ourselves and learn how to cooperate with each other. We have many blocks that keep us from working together. I see this inadequecy in myself everyday. Fear, envy, jealousy, doubt, self hatred, apathy. These forces are strong within us, and add the fact that 90% of your time goes to making money to survive, and, bam, who the fuck is really going to work on this shit and create a strong movement of clear headed humans who continue to bravely face their own conditioning and successfully stop industrial corporations from murdering the planet? Who? Fuck man, this shit is hard as fuck. At times I need to stop and drink a beer and watch youtube videos just like everyone else. 

    Wulf's philosophy articulated that you have to become a warrior about dealing with your internal problems. You have to become tough about dealing with yourself. If you can become honest with yourself, then you have a chance to change yourself. You have a chance to override your years of conditioning that the culture has put you through, and get to a stronger place within yourself. I believe that if enough of us were doing this work, we would quite possibly create a very strong movement.

    This work has to be done. I deeply support every brave human who is out there on the front lines right now fighting like hell, sacrificing so much for what they believe in. This is courageous work and we should all be supporting these people more than we do. However, I also know how crucial the internal work is. We have to work very hard to become conscious of what we have been taught and eradicate the conditioning that keeps us powerless in the face of a culture that is constantly trying to beat us down. We have to take a real look at our malformed egos and find others trustworthy enough to heal with. If we can look our comrades in the eye and know that we have paid enough dues with them that we can finally trust them, then we might have a fighting chance at creating a movement that won't fall apart, that won't end in defeat. We have to fight the insanity within ourselves, while supporting or fighting with those who are fighting the physical insanity on the front lines. So, onward the work, and onward the revolution.

Keep thinking, feeling, and fighting friends, 

Peiro

 

 I will end this post with a cool video by Sigur Ros, Glosoli. Nothing deeply political here, just beautiful music with children trying to be free, lol. 

 

 

 

    

 

Death And Permanence

    I just finished an absolutely life changing book, Secrets of the Talking Jaguar, by shaman/writer/beautiful and rare human, Martin Prechtel. I won't launch into the whole book in this post. I will just strongly recommend it and promise you you will walk away seriously questioning the teachings of civilization, while yearning for something much deeper. Anyway, drop the $15 and read the damn book. Seriously. 

    In this post however, I want to cover something Martin covered toward the end of the book about this cultures fear of death. He believes that part of this culture's sickness is its fear of death and the unknown. Being a part of the natural world and living in close with the land, with the vulnerability, precariousness, and wildness of life is something that modern man is very much afraid of. And so, the creation of cities, skyscrapers, nuclear reactors, cars, war machines, factory farms, etc. ad nauseum, is civilized man's way of trying to fight off death, trying to make an immortal mark on this planet. In every indigenous culture, death is very much a part of life. It is not hidden from the children. It is not ignored. Yet within the dominant culture, people get their security from the new: the new I Pad 2, the new clothes, the new car, the new office, the new house. We must fight off the old at all cost, as it reminds us of how temporary and precious our lives really are. This makes us depressed to realize this, because most of us are wasting our lives making money. We have very little awareness of the potential of our own souls and our deep connection with the great circle of life. 

    I have thought about death quite a bit my whole life. I have mostly been terrified of dying. Ever since I was a child, I would get this feeling in my body, realizing my inevitable death, and it was a terror of a feeling like no other emotion I have ever felt. It has only been in the last couple of years that I have started to develop a new attitude about it.

    There is a beauty and mystery to the great circle of life and death, and we cannot fear it to the point where we try to stop it. We are animals. We spend our lives taking from the soil, eating plants, eating animals, consuming life to survive. And when we die it is our great offering to the circle of life to go back to the soil, to give back what was given to us for all of these precious years. Death can be a meaningful experience, one that we can face with courage and dignity. 

    I want to re enter the circle of life. I don't want to die in a big wooden box, pumped full of formaldehyde. I want to feed the earth with my flesh and soul, not continue to poison her even after my death. And I also want to spend my life joining in the effort to stop this cultures drive for immortality. I want to see cities eventually grind to a halt, in the hopes that the real living world can again become the predominant culture. We must grasp these concepts if we are to achieve a culture of biodiversity and balance. 

 

Ok, tonight I have another video by French rapper, Keny Arkana. This song is so beautiful. Enjoy and goodnight.

 

 

    

 

 

 

 

Recent Philosophical Changes

 

    This is an image of Tecumseh, the fierce Shawnee warrior. Tecumseh knew that the only hope his people had was to unite all of the tribes together in one great army against the constantly invading whites. He spent 10 years trying to do this, traveling across the country on horseback trying to get each tribe to join together against their brutal foe. In the end, he died fighting the whites, having been unsuccessful in uniting all of the tribes. Human competition defeated yet another great culture.

    In the last year I have gone through some major philosophical shifts, and I have had a desire for the last few months to write about it. To be honest, I went through a good 6 months of emotional crisis over learning the truth of what industrial civilization is doing to the planet, the tragedy in Japan being the latest terror. I spent nights imagining a dark ocean without any life, massive numbers of humans starving from the failing growing seasons, polar bears drowning into extinction. There are too many horrible realities happening on the planet as we speak: massive species extinction, climate change, ocean acidification, on and on. I looked inside myself, one alive human being right here right now, and asked myself what the fuck I should do about it. I mean really, if we know that coal emissions are capable of starting a chain reaction that will extinct almost all life on this beautiful planet, and the powers that be will ignore this fact into oblivion, isn't blowing up a fucking coal fired power plant the most important thing I can do with my life, and as many more before I get caught? Of course, this does nothing to solve the ongoing problem of humans being unable to work together. But, hell, if industrial civilization is not stopped soon, we may no longer even have the chance to work our shit out. I have struggled with this. How do you justify your life when you aren't on the front lines? How do we deal with the very grim reality that we are born and raised in the most destructive culture that has ever existed, and that it is up to us, at this very crucial moment, to change it?

Well I have obviously not bombed any coal fired power plants. I have chosen to go the route of underground education. I think we desperately need front line activists, and more of them. And I think some of them in a lot of ways have more balls then I do. But I have travelled the country enough and have interacted with enough people to know that very few are aware of how serious this situation is. It is my job to educate as many as possible. And it is also my job to end as much horizontal hostility as I possibly can.

The planet is dying, and industrial corporations, along with the power behind them, are causing it. Those of us who are aware can not waste one second bragging about how we have the right approach, the right answer. The truth is, as I believe it, that the point isn't which effort is the way. It is that all of these efforts must somehow come together. I live at Zendik Farm and for the most part agree with every part of our philosophy. I also agree with a lot of anti-technology, anti-civilization philosophy. I also agree with some anarchist/front line militant philosophy. I also agree with some pacifist philosophy. Oh my God, which one is right? It doesn't fucking matter. What matters is that we are on the brink of planetary and human extinction, and we need to start working together like never before. That is our only hope. In a way it is a blessing. We are being more and more stripped of our egos. I find this concept of dropping our egos very important. I believe that at the root, all that will matter is if we can work together and stop this system, or not. 

    I am as much of a perpetrator of this bullshit as anybody. I have gotten really mad at pro-technology people. I have walked away in arogance and anger feeling like other people don't get it. It is a waste of time, and now I see I was only priding myself. The point is: Do I know what is going on? Yes. Do I care? Yes. What is the best way that I, who I actually am, can help change it? Am I getting more people on board, or am I pulling away from people? We need to have this dialogue. We need to come together. It is the only way.

 

Ok friends, tonight I have an awesome video from this amazing French rap artist that I lately have been obsessed with, Keny Arkana. Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

 

Jenny

    These are images of a tattoo my friend recently gave me. It is a memorial to a woman whose life experience changed my life.

    When I was a teenager I went to my Oma’s (German for grandmother) house in the Bronx for summer vacation. When I arrived I found my Oma quite distraught. She told me she had lost her long and dear friend, Jenny. She told me that she was put in charge of selling Jenny’s house, and asked me if I would go there with her the next day to help her clean up.

    And so the next morning my Oma and I started driving to Jenny’s. I had never really paid much attention to my Oma’s stories, and didn’t think I was going to listen to this one either (we did not get along at all for over a decade), but she started telling me about this woman and her life, Jenny. The daughter of a shoe repairman and a horror of a father. As a little girl Jenny was only able to play in the backyard. The front of the house was the shoe repair store, and the room behind, a very small room, was where the family lived. As a teenager, she was not allowed to go hang out with her friends. Going to school was her only freedom, and the only time my Oma would see her, because my Oma started hanging out with other friends who were allowed to go out, who were allowed to be teenagers. As an adult Jenny was not allowed to date anyone. She lived her whole life, and never knew the touch of a lover. Imagine, to die never knowing the touch of love?            
    She stayed and worked for her father, repairing and shining shoes. She never left that house, my Oma said, until her death. Her family members had all died off, but Jenny remained alone in the house that was her cage for all of those years.

    My Oma becomes quiet and I feel the car come to a stop. “Here we are.” All of a sudden my soul is trembling. I got lost in the harsh pain of Jenny’s story. But it was just a story. A sad one, but almost not real to me. And here we were, in front of her actual house. A house that looked like it was beaten by time. The door window had a faded logo of a shoe repair emblem. We walked in. Broken shoe repair supplies that looked like they hadn’t been touched by a human since1940 were on the ground everywhere, covered in cobwebs. My grandmother pointed to the next room. The door was open and I could see an old bed sticking out. “That is where she slept and died. This neighborhood got really bad in the last few years, and Jenny would pretend to stay asleep while burglars would break through her window and steal her jewelry”, my Oma told me. I was heart broken, and felt like I couldn’t move any further, until something caught my eye. A stack of framed portraits stood against the wall in the corner. I immediately went to them and started flipping through each one. Old family portraits and photos. I kept flipping through, and one stopped me dead. A beautiful and stunning little girl, in a flowing white dress. Her face was sweet and reassuring. Untainted and full of love. It was Jenny. My heart wept. But at the same time it wept it filled my soul with conviction.

    This was not an isolated incident, a lone story of a great girl with an abusive father who destroyed her life. No, this is the story what our culture can do to human beings. This is the story of power and patriarchy. This is the story of how our desire for freedom and love is systematically stamped out of us. We are all taught to be good little girls and boys and never question why life is so unfulfilling. This is the story of a death culture, a culture that destroys innocent life, just because it has the power to do so. This is the story of the very society we live in and are a part of, a society that I hate and will spend my life fighting against until I am dead.

     It is also a story that can help us remember. It so often happens within this culture, that people’s life experiences are buried and forgotten. Vaclav Havel once said: “The struggle against oppression is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” We must never forget what this culture does to people, and what it does to the natural world. We must fight to see through the cultural ambitions and symbols of success we are taught to pursue, and come out on the other side with our own caring, individual selves in tact. We must honor our hero’s and heroines from the past. We must honor Jenny, and fight for a world where we could have possibly saved her from this evil misery.

Fight For The Life Left In You

    The is an image of Sid Hatfield the brave, the chief of police of Matewan, West Virginia, who in 1921 was murdered by coal company thugs because he had the balls to defend the miners from the vicious criminal coal syndicate. One of the only law enforcement officers of that time who fought for what was right, Sid shocked the coal companies who usually could buy off (or beat into submission if money didn't work) just about anyone they wanted to.

    I have been reading a fabulous book, When Miners March, by William C. Blizzard. The 1920's saw one of the largest internal armed rebellions in U.S. history, the battle of Blair Mountain. The coal companies worked hard to keep southern West Virginia from unionizing, and the United Mine Workers of America worked even harder. The ladder went like this: the J.P. Morgan dynasty at the top, trickling down to several giant corporations, then trickling down to coal company C.E.O's, who treated their miners like absolute shit. They made below poverty wages, and were forced to spend their earnings in coal company owned stores, so the coal companies would get all of their money back anyway. Basically they were slaves. The miner's called for general strike many times, and struck through horrid conditions. In the bitter mountain cold of winter, miner's families would survive in small makeshift tents, with nothing but overalls on for most. But they hung in. They refused to sell their integrity. They tried everything. The police were against them. The governor turned his back (while being paid by the coal companies). And so, they united together and created "The Redneck Army", thousands of miners armed with rifles and a few machine guns, wearing red bandanas around their necks. They marched to Blair Mountain, and battled there with the police and hired thugs for days. Hundreds died fighting for their rights and the rights of their Union brothers. 

    The camaraderie that existed between the Union miners must have been tremendous. I am constantly inspired by stories of people who against all odds unite against a common foe. It is what must happen now. The planet is being destroyed, and we are supposed to be uniting together to stop the global elite from making this situation terminal. But most of us have very little time to even clearly look at this impasse, and for most the rest of our time is distracted by entertainment/consumption culture. 

    The United States of America represents 5% of the human population on the planet, and we consume 25% of the earth's resources. I am disgusted by the spoilage of our culture, and my own spoilage living in it. I want to die like a warrior, like Sid Hatfield. I want to die knowing I gave every fucking thing I could to making people aware of how insane and wrong this culture is. I so often forget this, by why else are we alive? We cannot turn our backs to what this culture has been doing to the planet, and it's people, for hundreds and thousands of years. Our lives must somehow be integrated into this reality, but this can be so hard to do when we live in the most developed entertainment driven culture that has ever existed. Yes, I fail at this task everyday, but god dammit I have to die with some fucking teeth. Let us help each other rise out of the teachings of this bullshit liberal culture, and find strength on the other side. 

 

    I don't have a video tonight. Sorry to all the people who read my blog for not doing a post for a while. I will get back on this. Keep fighting friends. 

Allegiance

 

   Lately I have been reading an absolutely outstanding book, The Spell of the Sensuous, by David Abram. Abram does a brilliant job revealing just how deep modern man's isolation from the natural world goes. He explains how all early human languages were based on what humans experienced around them, the animals and natural elements, i.e., the real living world. However, during the time of the Greeks, language changed from an oral tradition inseparable from the living world, to a written language developed completely anthropocentrically. Ancient words and letters were for the most part symbols of animals or elements, what early humans saw and interacted with and were a part of every day. The Greek civilization converted these traditions to what you are reading now, letters completely designed by humans, because, hell, that is what civilization is. We have created a world that is fit only for us, consisting only of us. And if you think I am wrong, please explain to me why 150-200 species go extinct every day, when that average used to be four a year.  

    These kind of things just blow me away. It has been a huge blow to me in the last couple of years to really learn and understand that modern human culture is literally murdering the planet. I believe I have felt it throughout my life, but I never really understood how extreme the situation really is. And then I come across philosophers like Abram, and it just gets deeper and deeper for me. How do we reestablish a relationship with the natural world? How do we get enough people together who are willing to defend it from insane, greedy humans? How do we retrain ourselves so that we ourselves aren't insane greedy humans? 

    A couple of nights ago, I went to a wonderful anti-natural gas drilling meeting in Monroe County. They had a woman that came out from Wetzel County to speak. For the last 4 years, Wetzel County has been being destroyed by the corporation Chesapeake Gas. The woman at the meeting gave a great presentation of how bad it is in her county, and told the people to fight like hell. It was very moving and heart wrenching. I was also impressed by the people of Monroe County at the meeting. They seemed passionate and focused. 

    There are people who care. There are many of us, who know what the fuck is going on. We know it has to fucking stop. We know that these corporations literally get away with murder. Oh, I wish there were easy answers. I wish voting really did work. I wish that living by example would actually change the minds of the power hungry. 

    Plain and simple. We have to get to work, in whatever way we can. We have to do everything we can for this planet and it's creatures. We have to get smarter, stronger, more cooperative, more decent to our friends, and more stern against our foes. We have to redevelop a relationship with, and make an allegiance to, the real living world. 

 

    My friend turned me on to this band, Cloud Cult. So far I really like their stuff, and I really liked this song. Keep thinking, feeling, and fighting. 

 

Psychopaths

 

    Here is an image of a West Virginia stream filled with poison after a natural gas corporation came in and had it's way with the area. A couple of nights ago I watched an excellent and terrifying documentary, Gasland. I have written a few articles here before about the natural gas industry, about hydraulic fracturing, about the 496+ lethal chemicals that are contaminating water bodies across this country, making many people sick, and murdering countless numbers of animals. If you want to know more about it, please watch Gasland. Director Josh Fox runs it all down brilliantly. I found out later the documentary made one of our children cry, as he watched the corporate criminals literally get away with murder, as he watched good people feeling absolutely helpless to stop them. For myself, I mostly felt anger. To see what these people get away with makes me fully support forms of militancy against the system. There are brave people out there who have the guts to stand up to these mother fuckers. Arsonists, saboteurs, etc. Right now there is a man that keeps destroying pipelines in Canada, demanding that the gas corporation Encana get the fuck out of the area. They have yet to catch him and are offering a reward of over one million dollars for his capture. These activists are heros, willing to risk decades in prison for the earth and it's people.   

  Why not support militancy? What other options are we given? The powers that be literally get away with poisoning children! Most environmental militants go out of their way to make sure their actions do not harm any human beings in any way. On the other hand, the people that run this system have so much blood on their hands its unbelievable. The U.S. sanctions on Iraq from 1990-2003 killed over 500,000 children! Who the fuck are the terrorists?!?!?

God damnit I can't stand how fucked up and malevolent this system is. Bear hunting season has begun here in Pocahontas County, WV. Yesterday morning we here at the farm woke early to work on a fencing project, and while working heard the sounds of barking dogs and vehicles tearing through the woods behind our property. Now, I am not against hunting at all. I personally eat meat and have been involved in the slaughter and dressing of some of our animals here on the farm. I absolutely despise industrial factory farming, but I do believe you can kill and consume an animal with respect. But back to the bear hunters, a good chunk of them hunt in the most diabolical of ways. They sit in their trucks while their dogs, who have radio beacons hooked up to their collars, chase a bear, sometimes for tens of miles. The bear runs for it's life for hours until finally, when the creature is just too exhausted, the hunter shows up and blows it away. Some fucking hunter.

I think there are many beautiful human beings all over the world. Unfortunately, there are also complete psychopaths. There are power hungry, murdering, lying, cheating, double dealing, sick men running around all over the planet looking for the next innocent life form to destroy, to rob, to cheat, to exterminate. 120 species go extinct every day. This is such a large and serious problem, and I have no idea how to stop it. The world really is run by psychopaths, and I believe if we don't stop them somehow, they will destroy almost all life on this planet. We have to band together and stop this. We have to. 

    Stopping them can involve a lot of things. I am not at all Mr. Pro-violence. They must be stopped in as sane a manner as possible. I think it will take many different efforts coming together to actually save the planet, from internal philosophical change in human beings to physical change of the current power structure. But I will support those who stand up to power in whatever way I can. 

This post has two videos. The first is a very serious clip from a new film coming out called End : Civ. It deals with the seriousness of this situation and what we should do about it. The next video is a trailer for Gasland. Stay well friends. Keep thinking, feeling, and fighting. 

Seeing Through The Insanity

 

    This is an image of Ground Zero, and today marks nine years since the attacks on September 11, 2001. Sadly, and unfortunately, this horrible event seems to have created only more mass American ignorance. In the last few weeks the United States has witnessed a handful of anti-Muslim hate crimes, one of the more infamous ones being the Gainesville, Florida church that wants to ritually burn the Koran on this 9 year anniversary. In a country where most of the media coming at us teaches us of a freedom loving, democracy spreading, benevolent, altruistic, American war machine that only sometimes makes some mistakes, (Hey, c'mon now, freedom isn't free!) it is extremely easy for an ignorant American to hate an entire religion and it followers for "wanting to destroy our free way of life and holy Christian values." There have been huge mass protests in Afghanistan sparked by this Koran burning church in Gainesville. 

    The level of stupidity is terrifying. It is so obvious to me that the conflicts in the Middle East have been a war of elites. Why do so few see this? It all comes down to business deals, power mongers deciding the fate of people, both from the Middle East as well as the U.S., depending on where the flow of profit takes them. It is a world of criminals shedding the blood of the masses for their own gain. From Bechtel to Halliburton, to the well funded Taliban leaders, it is just another war story where the rich make enormous profits off the blood of innocents. The whole thing is fucking sham, and the only way I could believe that it isn't is if there weren't these corporations over there making billions of dollars off the war. They don't even bother to hide it anymore.   

    However, these criminal syndicates (i.e. the corporate elites and the governments that serve them) are also extremely cunning, and know exactly what they are doing. For example, I just learned that the entire Tea Party movement is funded by the Koch brothers, two brothers who own Koch industries, the second largest private company in the U.S. They have made over 30 billion dollars running oil refineries in Alaska and elsewhere, and are currently funding the Tea Party movement to try to give Obama some hell for what little environmental legislation he is attempting to approve. Trust me, I am by no means pro-Obama, but I think it is tragically silly and shocking to find these racist movements being funded by corporate elites. I mean, c'mon, Obama is a socialist? He is just as much of a corporate puppet as Bush was. If he were a socialist, he would probably have a lot more balls. 

    There is so much human anger and rage out there that is being completely misdirected to keep the public in line and profit makers happier and happier. The U.S. has a beautiful history of social movements banding together to stand up to the wealthy elite. I pray that somehow more people will see through these corporate propaganda campaigns and start to see what is really going on. The church goers in Gainesville who want to burn the Koran have more in common with the Muslim masses than they do with the masterminds of 9/11, and the U.S. imperialists that provoked them (at the same time making business deals with them). They will never see this, because their minds are poisoned with the insanity that is this culture's teachings. Humanity is extremely damaged, and those of us who can see a bit clearer have a lot of work to do. We are the only ones who can possibly turn this thing around. We are the only voice standing between the murderous corporate empire in power, and a dying planet. It is up to us.

  

If you haven't seen it yet, this is the footage that the brave U.S. soldier Bradley Manning, along with the heroic activists at Wikileaks, released of U.S. forces killing unarmed civilians in Baghdad. Watch with caution, for the footage is quite brutal. Take care all.

 

     

Courage

 

    This is an image of the great Anarchist, Emma Goldman. I have been reading some of her very powerful speeches from the early 1900's, and have been moved to tears. The woman spoke defiantly against U.S. imperialism and domestic oppression for 27 years, until she was eventually deported to Russia for being an anarchist, albeit an effective one. She said this to the jury in her case, shortly before they decided their guilty verdict (This was said after she had already been in prison for two years for organizing an anti-conscription movement during World War I): "Your verdict may, of course, affect me temporarily, in a physical sense - it can have no effect whatever upon my spirit. For even if I were convicted and found guilty and the penalty were that I be placed against a wall and shot dead, I should nevertheless cry out with the great Luther: "Here I am and here I stand and I cannot do otherwise." I can't wait to read her biography. What guts she had! 

  I have also been reading about the Spanish Anarchist movement in the late 19th and early 20th century (which Goldman joined later in her life). There was so much courage, solidarity, and organization amongst the Spanish Anarchist movement that their general strikes would shut down entire cities. At one point during a 5 week strike in the city of Saragossa, the strikers, suffering from the rigors of poverty during the strike, let 13,000 of their children be transported by a fleet of taxis, to be taken in by the Anarchists in Barcelona. What beautiful solidarity, that the ideal was held close enough to one's heart as to trust other Anarchists with their children's lives. 

In one of the last great gatherings of the CNT (the name of the movement), the Spanish Anarchists began to lay out the foundation for what their new society would be based on. It included a respect for the natural world, respect and equality for women, and the right for all to pursue love freely. This was in the 1930's, in a deeply repressed parochial society. Sadly, shortly after, General Francisco Franco took power in Spain, and crushed the fierce Spanish Anarchist movement. 

These people are so inspiring to me, and at the same time it is so heart wrenching to see people work so hard and know how much things haven't changed a damn bit. I mean, don't get me wrong. I do recognize their accomplishments. Because of the Spanish Anarchists, Spain was the first country the put the 8 hour work day into law. These same laws were incredibly difficult to implement in the U.S. as well. People gave their blood for the human freedom that we have now, and that work should not be forgotten. But it brings me to anger and tears to see that the same power mongers control everything. I don't have half the courage these brave souls had, and things are worse now then they have ever been. We have the knowledge and information to know that the planet is being rapidly destroyed, and yet it seems some of the best efforts made now are purchasing a permit to protest for 5 hours knowing the cops will be friendly, as long as you don't throw rocks and are off the street by 5 o' clock. I am not speaking from on high here; I don't feel I am effective either. I don't know what the fuck to do really. 

But I do know that I cannot spit in the face of my courageous heros from the past. If my greatest weapon right now is education, then I will work my ass off to fire that weapon as much as possible. These stories need to be heard, and we need to think about them long and hard. Of course, we cannot do the exact same thing, or our fate will be the same. We have to find new ways to subvert the system, and end corporate destruction. But I am also only human, and so I will chip away in whatever way I can. The corporate industrial infrastructure has to go to have a livable planet, plain and simple. And yes, I am as scared as you are.   

I am bringing back a video I have shown before made by my online friends, The Filthy Politicians. Very moving. Goodnight for now my friends. 

Invisible Violence

 

This image is from Haiti. It has been over 6 months since the January 12th earthquake that killed over 300,000 people, making it one of the worst natural disasters in history. Now, six months later, 1.7 million people are still homeless, and thousands of bodies still lie beneath the rubble that has not been removed because the country is too poor to afford it. The country was promised 11 billion dollars in aid, and has received less than 10% of that. Also, of that 10%, most of the money went to the U.S. military to pay for their brief and dramatic entry into the country shortly after the earthquake happened.

Haiti is in ruins, the people live in fear and poverty, and what is the U.S. response? Expand Haiti's sweatshop industry. Mr. Bill Clinton and his lovely wife Hilary are currently working to set up "free enterprise zones" in Haiti, bringing in more sweatshop companies in to the country, and further exploiting the people of Haiti. The average Haitian gets paid $3.09 a day working under horrible conditions for very long hours. The corporations that come in are companies like Gildan, a Montreal based company that is known to move constantly throughout South America, moving their operation to the least costly areas they can find to produce their t-shirts. If the workers unite and demand an even semi-reasonable wage for their work, the company abandons the factories and moves on to their next victim, leaving the people behind to die in impoverishment. 

Haiti has been a long time victim of U.S. imperialism, and what should be a country rich with its ability to grow food year round, is in reality a country of horrible poverty and death. But this death doesn't matter to we fat Americans. In fact, we can't even see it. We don't even know it is going on. We can all walk to our dresser drawers right now and find a stack of clothes that are made in Haiti. We are children of a murderous empire, and somehow this shit has to fucking stop. 

How racist can you get? Why is it that just because I am an American white male, I deserve a better life than a Haitian, or a Nigerian, or a Rwandan, or an Indonesian? My middle class upbringing sickens me, and I will work for the rest of my life to rid myself of this spoiled conditioning as much as I can.

We have to see that our country, and the greater world globalized system in general, is run by criminals, and these criminals dangle their entertainment and shiny goods in front of our faces to keep us addicted to their system. We are participants in their horrific schemes, because we don't do a god damned thing to stop them. Our compliance allows them to continue. Plain and simple. 

But before we can stop them, enough of us need to recognize what they are doing, and what we are doing by complying with their system. We have to see the blood in our dresser drawers, on our plasma screens, in our ballot boxes, on our hands. It is not our fault, we did not set up this system, but the blood is certainly there. If we do not see the blood, then we are only half aware, and only half alive, and we will go down with the most destructive culture in the earth's history.

    What this culture does to human beings is beyond horrific, and the criminals who run the culture care even less for the natural world than they do for humans. They are committing a global assault against all living creatures, and we have to wake the fuck up enough to even be able to respond to it. This work is difficult, but if we can start to really depend on each other, we may have a chance at one day actually stopping these mother fuckers. We must create a culture of mutual aid and cooperation, with both humans and the natural world. It is a dream that must become reality. The planet will not take much more. We have to choose. 

    For my video in this post, I want to share an extremely beautiful and intense reading by Wulf Zendik of his powerful poem, Quince. Please watch, and let it in. Goodnight friends.