Do It Your Way

Where We Are, Where We Are Going (?)

In the 1930s, Langston Hughes wrote a poem, "Lenox Avenue Mural":

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore-

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over-

like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

The following is from the compelling book, "A People's History Of the United States" by Howard Zinn.

With the Establishment's inability either to solve severe economic problems at home or to manufacture abroad a safety valve for domestic discontent, Americans might be ready to demand not just more tinkering, more reform laws, another reshuffling of the same deck, another New Deal, but radical change. Let us be Utopian for a moment so that when we get realistic again it is not that "realism" so useful to the Establishment in its discouragement of action, that "realism" anchored to a certain kind of history empty of surprise. Let us imagine what radical change would require of us all.

The society's levers of powers would have to be taken away from those whose drives have led to the present state-the giant corporations, the military, and their politician collaborators. We would need-by a coordinated effort of local groups all over the country-to reconstruct the economy for both efficiency and justice, producing in a cooperative way what people need most. We would start on our neighborhoods, our cities, our workplaces. Work of some kind would be needed by everyone, including people now kept out of the work force-children, old people, "handicapped" people. Society could use the enormous energy now idle, the skills and talents now unused. Everyone could share the routine but necessary jobs for a few hours a day, and leave most of the time free for enjoyment, creativity, labors of love, and yet produce enough for an equal and ample distribution of goods. Certain basic things would be abundant enough to be taken out of the money system and be available-free-to everyone: food, housing, health care, education, transportation.

The great problem would be to work out a way of accomplishing this without a centralized bureaucracy, using not the incentives of prison and punishment, but those incentives of cooperation which spring from natural human desires, which in the past have been used by the state in times of war, but also by social movements that gave hints of how people might behave in different conditions. Decisions would be made by small groups of people in their workplaces, their neighborhoods-a network of cooperatives, in communication with one another, a neighborly socialism avoiding the class hierarchies of capitalism and the harsh dictatorships that have taken the name "socialist."

People in time, in friendly communities, might create a new, diversified, nonviolent culture, in which all forms of personal and group expression would be possible. Men and women, black and white, old and young, could then cherish their differences as positive attributes, not as reasons for domination. New values of cooperation and freedom might then show up in the relations of people, the upbringing of children.

To do all that, in the complex conditions of control in the United States, would require combining the energy of all previous movements in American history-of labor insurgents, black rebels, Native Americans, women, young people-along with the new energy of an angry middle class. People would need to begin to transform their immediate environments-the workplace, the family, the school, the community-by a series of struggles against absentee authority, to give control of these places to the people who live and work there.

These struggles would involve all the tactics used at various times in the past by people's movements: demonstrations, marches, civil disobedience; strikes and boycotts and general strikes; direct action to redistribute wealth, to reconstruct institutions, to revamp relationships; creating-in music, literature, drama, all the arts, and all the areas of work and play in everyday life-a new culture of sharing, of respect, a new joy in the collaboration of people to help themselves and one another.

There would be many defeats. But when such a movement took hold in hundreds of thousands of places all over the country it would be impossible to suppress, because the very guards the system depends on to crush such a movement would be among the rebels. It would be a new kind of revolution, the only kind that could happen, I believe, in a country like the United States. It would take enormous energy, sacrifice, commitment, patience. But because it would be a process over time, starting without delay, there would be the immediate satisfactions that people have always found in the affectionate ties of groups striving together for a common goal.

All this takes us far from American history, into the realm of imagination. But not totally removed from history. There are at least glimpses in the past of such a possibility. In the sixties and seventies, for the first time, the Establishment failed to produce national unity and patriotic fervor in a war. There was a flood of cultural changes such as the country had never seen-in sex, family, personal relations-exactly those situations most difficult to control from the ordinary centers of power. And never before was there such a general withdrawal of confidence from so many elements of the political and economic system. In every period of history, people have found ways to help one another-even in the midst of a culture of competition and violence-if only for brief periods, to find joy in work, struggle, companionship, nature.

The prospect is for times of turmoil, struggle, but also inspiration. There is a chance that such a movement could succeed in doing what the system itself has never done-bring about great change with little violence. This is possible because the more of the 99 percent that begin to see themselves as sharing needs, the more the guards and the prisoners see their common interest, the more the Establishment becomes isolated, ineffectual. The elite's weapons, money, control of information would be useless in the face of a determined population. The servants of the system would refuse to work to continue the old, deadly order, and would begin using their time, their space-the very things given them by the system to keep them quiet-to dismantle that system while creating a new one.

The prisoners of the system will continue to rebel, as before, in ways that cannot be foreseen, at times that cannot be predicted. The new fact of our era is the chance that they may be joined by the guards. We readers and writers of books have been, for the most part, among the guards. If we understand that, and act on it, not only will life be more satisfying, right off, but our grandchildren, or our great grandchildren, might possibly see a different and marvelous world.

Percy Shelley was a radical poet, polemicist and political activist. Jacqueline Mulhallen traces the revolutionary thread that ran through this extraordinary writer’s life and work;

Rise like lions after slumber

In unfathomable number

Shake your chains to earth like dew

That in sleep have fallen on you

Ye are many, they are few.

That verse is perhaps one of the best known pieces of poetry in any movement of the oppressed all over the world. The Chartists knew it in the 19th century and so did the striking women garment workers in 1909 New York. It was chanted on demonstrations in Tiananmen Square (1989) and Tahrir Square (2011).

Rise like lions after slumber

In unfathomable number

Shake your chains to earth like dew

That in sleep have fallen on you

Ye are many, they are few.

A History Lesson

Hadrian deemed Antinous to be the most beautiful young man in all the Roman Empire. Sadly, Antinous drowned mysteriously in the Nile River. Hadrian deified the youth after his untimely death, and Antinous was worshiped as a god; whole cities were founded in his name. As a result of his popularity and statues created in his likeness, the face of Antinous became one of the most recognizable faces in antiquity. 

The Temple and Life of Antinous

From Kurt Cobain's Journal

"I like to complain and do nothing to make things better. I like to blame my parents generation for coming so close to social change then giving up after a few successful efforts by the media & government to deface the movement by using the Mansons and other Hippie representatives as propaganda examples on how they were nothing but unpatriotic, communist, satanic, inhuman diseases, and in turn the baby boomers became the ultimate, conforming, yuppie hypocrites a generation has ever produced."

“No amount of effort can save you from oblivion.”

Diverse Relationships Are Noted in the Bible

"It is obvious to scholars (and some religious leaders) that the Bible endorses a wide range of relationships. However, professors are fearful of the potential backlash that might result from opening a dialogue about these relationships."

The Bible's definition of marriage is not so simple

Gender and Sexual Diversity

“LGBT became LGBTIQQA — adding Intersex, Queer, Questioning and their Allies — which was still very limiting,” Davies says in the video. “It still excluded a lot of groups. People who might be asexual, members of the BDSM/kink community  people who were in  non-traditional relationships that might be polyamorous or swingers. A whole batch of people who didn't feel able to go to mainstream counseling organizations and also wouldn't necessarily be welcome at LGBT counseling organizations.”

Replace “LGBT” With More Inclusive “GSD” ?

Lazy in America

Depraved Sex Scenes from Cultural Myths

Plague Doctor

and the Bird Mask

Death Mask

Pastor: "Jesus Was HIV-Positive"

A pastor in South Africa shocked church-goers with a sermon Sunday by claiming Jesus was HIV-positive.
While some are outraged at South African Pastor's Xola Skosana's words because they portray Jesus Christ as possibly being sexually promiscuous, the pastor told followers that Jesus frequently put himself in the position of the poor or sick population.
Skosana also said he used the example to illustrate the stigma that HIV/AIDS still has on South Africans and people around the world.
"Of course, there's no scientific evidence that Jesus had the HI virus in his bloodstream," the pastor said according to the BBC. "The best gift we can give to people who are HIV-positive is to help de-stigmatise Aids and create an environment where they know God is not against them, he's not ashamed of them."
http://hivplusmag.com/NewsStory.asp?id=22044&sd=11/01/2010

"New Moon" Lifestyle Choice line

I was a little taken back and a little offended by this line in the movie and yes I too was trying to understand the point in such a thing being said and what it was using as a comparison.

Posted on Advocate.com November 29, 2009
Twihards, Jacob and a Lifestyle Choice

By Advocate.com Editors
Much fuss has been made of Twilight author Stephanie Meyer’s relationship with the Mormon Church and its financial backing of Proposition 8 in California and Question 1 in Maine, stripping those states of legal same-sex marriage.But a line from the film adaptation of her book New Moon is raising even more eyebrows. In the film, Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner) attempts to explain the fact that he is a werewolf to Bella (Kristen Stewart) by saying: “It’s not a lifestyle choice, Bella. I was born this way.”The scene goes down differently in the book, and the line, presumably written by New Moon’s screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg, draws obvious parallels to the oft used script for coming out.The line hasn’t gone unnoticed in the press. The Contra Costa Times called the exchange “cute” while the Dallas Voice literally refers to it as Black’s “coming out scene.”An article for Examiner.com points to numerous bisexual and homoerotic undertones throughout the film while the sci-fi website The Geek Files suggests the film’s wolf pack is really just an extended metaphor for being gay. From the Times Online: "The rest of New Moon concerns Bella's growing relationship with local beefcake Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner). The latter though, in another telegraphed allegory, is struggling with his sexual orientation and eventually rejects Bella for a foursome of local rowdies in cut-off denim shorts and baby-oiled torsos. 'It's not a lifestyle choice, Bella! I was born this way!' he says, before fleeing into the woods with the beefy boys -- they are also werewolves.”

Twihards seem to have mixed response to the line. While many seem oddly titillated at the thought that the werewolf subplot might just be a metaphor for being gay, others are insulted the line even appears in the film. “It’s ridiculous people are even discussing this line,” a commenter posted on the movie review website RottenTomatoes.com. “It’s clear Jacob isn’t gay and people are spending way too much time reading into this line.” The number of people commenting on this comment? One-hundred and thirty four -- and that’s just in the first hour after it was posted. Meyer and Lautner have yet to comment on the line in an interview, and the former, at least, has only granted one in depth sit down since the film’s release, amounting to half an hour with Oprah Winfrey. So the line’s true intentions, much like those of Meyer, may well continue to be a mystery.     

Muslims in the US Military

"It is simple -- Muslims should not be allowed to serve in the military. You can not rightly be in the U.S. military and also believe in the Koran. What the US military is called to defend and what the Koran prescribes are based on contradictory sets of beliefs...Israel does not allow Muslims to serve in the army, which is a sensible move on their part. However, the Israeli army does allow gays to openly serve and here in the U.S. we don’t. We allow these barbarians to serve but not gays and it’s the exact opposite in Israel. Who do you think is making the smarter decision?"
- Excerpted from a blog posting by Michael Lucas regarding the recent tragedy at Fort Hood.
   www.lucasblog.com/archives/michaels_daily_entries/index.html

This is an interesting perspective. However, I do not necessarily agree nor do I condone calling Muslims "barbarians".