Inequity, War and Civil Disobedience

I finally got a real post done for World Wide Hippies (When the Political gets Personal) .  During this process I learned that it's harder to write for other sites than it is to write for my own.   Over here, I say whatever comes into my head with minimal fact checking.  Over there, I have to research and verify.  For example, I was trying to find current statistics on Wealth Distribution in America, and although plenty of people toss around numbers, it's practically impossible to find consistent percentages.

I finally abandoned the post about Smurfette and the Patriarchy because I got bogged down in researching the Constitutional Congress and Slavery, which was only remotely connected to Smurfette in the first place, but I was making a point.  I'll make that point another day.  Today I've got to go up to Tree Hugger again to pick up Velvet.  Normally he'd ride home on the bus or the train, but he's been sick.  The health center told him it was a virus, and he's feeling better but I still hate to think of him all wheezy with a fever blister on the bus until midnight.  Some might say I'm coddling Velvet, but he is my baby for all that.

Fortunately, I'll be back in time to go see Davis Fleetwood aka Dennis Trainor who is doing stand up Tuesday night at the Gotham Comedy Club.  I'm not sure that I'd even go get Velvet if it meant I would miss Davis Fleetwood because meeting Dennis/Davis is important for The Resistance.



In this video, Davis says:

. . . The disparity between the rich and poor is not acceptable. Health care for all, while cutting out the profit based insurance companies- is a non negotiable. Expensive, illegal wars of aggression must end. On these and so many more issues, there is no middle ground. There is no compromise. And unless you look at the world through confederate flag lenses . . . you know this. It is time to start fighting for it.

He's not recommending violent revolution.  He's thinking more along the lines of Progressives need to leave the Democratic party and create our own or find another alternative.  At World Wide Hippies, I recommended participating in Buy Nothing Day - a simple, comfortable, individual way to engage in sociopolitical activism.  I actually said that we all have to stop buying stupid shit we don't need every single day of the year.  When Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel and his wife each contributed the maximum amount to Michele Bachmann's campaign allowed by law, it's like you're handing a dollar to the Teabaggers every time you walk into Target or Best Buy. 

Anyway, I'm feeling like it's time to step away from the computer and into the Real World.  Inequity in the United States is becoming a matter of life and death.  Suicide rates have been rising since the recession began (Brain Physics 7/27/2010) with a 36% increase to suicide hotlines in 2008 and another 15% in 2009.  Couple that statistic with the fact that suicides account for nearly as many military deaths as the battlefield in Afghanistan (NPR) and we can see that our government is squeezing the life out of its citizens.  And for what? Corporate Profits.  

I'm only a preschool teacher and don't pretend to know what to do about the government, but I'm thinking we should look at the 1968 Democratic Convention for some ideas.

This video is tremulant444 's 2007 project for history class.

An essential difference between life today and in 1968 is that as a result of right wing policies in Education and in Economics, the all-volunteer military has become the only career path available to disenfranchised segments of our population besides a life of crime - which suits folks like Dick Cheney fine since they make as much money off prisons as they do off war.

If people were being drafted today to die in Afghanistan, even Jon Stewart would agree that the sane response to this government is civil disobedience.