Some thoughts on Occupy and Creation Spirituality from Matthew Fox

DEAR FOLKS, I am introducing you to one of the wisest men I have had the privilege of knowing and teaching with for many years. In l981, I met Matt when he was then heading a graduate program at little Mundelein College, now part of Loyola U on our North side. I taught with him through l982, then he moved to Holy Names College, Oakland. His course was called Creation Centered Spirituality. There I also met Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry who eventually wrote The Universe Story. Brian has made a movie called "The Journey of the Universe" and now a book of that name.  Work with these people, including eventually the so-called "witch" Starhawk provided me with some of the most creative and spiritual experiences of my life. John G

Some thoughts on Occupy and Creation Spirituality from Matthew Fox

Spiritual Dimensions of Occupy

Dear Folks, Some interesting responses to Occupy Wall St (OWS) have, recently, been spiritual in content. A few weeks ago, the Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire told Rachael Maddow that, after talking to many occupiers, he noted an underlying thceme that has been missing in our political life, that these people are experiencing community and with it a shared concern for one another, in contrast to the growing narcissism from the Right that says, I made mine; you make yours. If not, then fail, and even die in your uninsured condition. Last night I heard on MSNBC that the Archbishop of Canterbury said, "If Jesus were alive today, he would be with the 99ers." A small article appeared in the last few days in the Chicago Tribune pointing out that many Christian churches in both New York, in Portland, Ore, and other towns have opened up their church buildings and other buildings to the 99ers. An editorial in the National Catholic Reporter, Dec 8-22, first notes "Truth is the superich and the superinfluential have walked off with our government....The rest of us have largely lost our voices... The OWS protests have put front and center the growing divide between two classes of Americans --the one percent superrich and the other 99 percent....Maybe,just maybe, by November 20l2 enough of us will have had enough to demand a radical reordering of an election process that has stolen our voices and government."

A Must Read Article

'How to Occupy the moral and political high ground' by Naomi Wolf

Some Facts on Occupy in the Net

Dear Folks, I sent the following to Michael Moore in reply to one  of  his pitches for the Occupiers.

Dear Michael, You are certainly one of my heroes. Your books have given me a strong voice Now OWS has given you, I and millions a public voice we have desperately needed. Is there a plan for an Occupy Congress? In a Friday November 25th page A 20 New York Times article, entitled, "Protesters look for ways to feed the web." I read there of a national day, Dec. 6th to protest foreclosures. This is the kind of focused agendae we need. In this article, leaders of the movement hold that building "a large network on social media sites" needs also the "on the ground face to face actions" to buttress the growing network info. Agreed. However it is worth noting, as this article points out, that video on YouTube helped enormously to spread the word and pictures of the U of Calif Davis pepperspraying of peaceful students. YouTube is "now a formidable digital presence with l.7 million videos, viewed 73 million times....tagged with the word, 'occupy.' ....in the YouTube's News and Politics category." Also, "The movement counts more than 400 Facebook pages with 2.7 million fans around the world." People can go to such sites as above noted YouTube site, as well as Tumblr.com and GlobalRevolution.tv and finally 140elect.com

OWS - Some perspectives

Dear Folks, I want to share some perspectives on OWS. For one thing, I get irritated when individuals say, "Its objectives are vague." My response is simply: "Its the economy and its injustices, stupid." The disperity between the rich and the poor is the greatest since l928. However, then, we did not have a supreme court made up of five mental dunces that have declared corporations and unions "persons" and so controlling the money they spend politically is against the first amendment's free speech. Put these two realities together and we face a danger to our democracy that our founding fathers never fathomed.

Deep down millions of us know this and about l00,000 are now voicing their voices on the streets of cities on various continents. Here is an irony, however, as Robert Reich recently talked about at Univ of Cal, Berkley, where he was asked to speak, honoring Mario Savio, the voice of the l950-and l960s Student Freedom Movement that then morphed into Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam. All of these issues are dwarfed by our present threat to democracy. Yet, says Reich, even as one hand the supreme court gave to corporations such a powerful voice, we watch as Mayors and cops are thwarting the voices of all of us, who have lacked a collective voice.

The Economists and Paul Volcker

Dear Folks, We always need clarity in this confusing world. The economy has crushed billions of people. Two corrections are needed: (l) Bringing more and more of the Wall St criminals to justice and supporting the Occupy Wall St movement. Its vital power is based on the enormous sense of injustice that has befallen so many and has left unpunished the mighty few. A turn around is coming, via two Attorney Generals, both from states where so many of the big corps have their headquarters, New York and Delaware. They are on the attack. The AG from Delaware is Beau Biden, son of Joe. He is initiating a suit that will have a sweeping consequence for many of the Wall ST. companies.

Wall Street Protesters

Dear Folk, How long will the American people tolerate the absurd inequalities that our wall street traders and banks have laid on the American people. As Nicholas Kristof has written in the New York times this Sunday, the inequalities that they and conservative politics has spawned since Reagan do not only damage billions but may do damage to the very essence of democracy. There are reasons to ask, therefore, that the what the protesters are now saying in hundreds of cities and towns not only this country but throughout the globe, represents a need for a fundamental re-structuring of our very democracy. The forces that played out in the great depression are occurring in this very time: immense wealth piled up for a few. Yet when these few fail, we the many have had to bail them out. These same destructive forces also has made it possible now for 400 families and individuals to control the wealth of l50,000,000 of us and the top ten percent, 90 per cent of us, as noted to day in Kristof's article. Add to these realities the power of five men in the US Supreme Court who have made it possible ---as already seen in the 20l0 election, for conservative forces to now paralyze Washington and in many states seeing these forces seeking as many obstacles to prevent people from voting, which strikes at the very core of a democracy.

Occupy Wall Street

Dear Folks, This is a historic time, The anti-wall street movement is very understandable. We middle class people have now for thirty years lost our status as the core of any democracy and the authentic basis for a solid economy. Why because we use our money for goods and services, which makes us customers and a which causes industry large and small sell and so hire more workers. But when l percent of our population owns 40 percent of the wealth, comparable to the lowest l50,000,000 million of us, we have been significantly diminished in both voice and spending power. So what is happening all over the country is what is happening all over the world when autocracy drowns out the voices and the hopes of a people. This is a legitimate surge of strength and energy, that frightens the power brokers and their political supporters such as Erik Cantor who called the protesters a "MOB." These folk in Congress and also Fox News said this also of the people in Egypt, and other awakened populaces. We are no longer sitting home alone. We have found a common voice, that first must get the attention of those in power and then must lead to policy changes. They must be big ones: change in the electoral process in which candidates both in Washington and in the States receive public money in elections. This will offset the Supreme Court decision that opened up unlimited monies for corporations to win elections, which they won in droves in 20l0 in states. This is it. Spread the word. I believe the internet has a declaration from the Wall St Protestors. John G

AND I WELCOME THEIR HATRED

Dear Folk,

I wrote Obama after reading an article in New York Times Sunday review, entitled "What Happened to Obama," by Prof Drew Westen, Emory U, and author of The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation. Because of the brilliance of his article, I am going to buy his book though I have stayed away from any more political books. He writes that Obama has not told the right story. 

The author writes what the story should have been: "Dear citizens, I know you are angry and frustrated because of loss of jobs and homes, etc. The collapse was not natural; it was done by Wall St. and conservatives who eliminated regulations and rewarded the greedy and the reckless. 80 years ago (the great depression) we learned what to do, by first putting people to work with public programs (remember what FDR did: WPA and CCC put millions to work). We will also restore integrity to the financial market (recall that FDR took over big banks for a while)."

The above story would have powerfully impacted all of us, so that the President would have had more leverage in exposing the Republican minority in the House and Senate, both of which were the absolute party of NO, as you recall. Also, because of the stupid functioning of the Senate, Republicans there used used the Filibuster over 120 times in contrast to previous annual averages of about 40. As a result, 400 plus bills died in that ineffectual body.

Unlike FDR and Martin L. King, Obama did not face the bullies, which in both cases made "the bully show his true and repugnant face in public." He did not say, as did FDR, about his opponents: "They are unanimous in their hatred of me" and then he, like Thunder said (I watched this on TV): "AND I WELCOME THEIR HATRED" and the listeners yelled a great approval.

Crucial, says author, how he handled the stimulus. Instead of listening to Nobel-prize winning economists --one I know Paul Krugman, and other named Steigler --the amount spent was meager and "diluted it further with tax cuts."

I wrote him, saying, that I had read every word of his life story, Dreams of My Father.  I felt it was an authentic story. Now, I said, tell the authentic American story. It is not too late. Lay out the truth and force the basters [sic] to show their true face.  - John G

The Wrong Worries

Inspired by my father, here are my own two cents. 

As the global financial system sinks, as every single person I know in the know about ecology and peak oil and sustainability has been correctly predicting for a long time...

Krugman writes about The Wrong Worries in the New York Times (see link).

However, he also has the wrong worries....  as he implies that there is a way back to jobs and 'growth' and business-as-usual.

There simply isn't.  Not in the framework, the worldview, nor according to the priorities or ideas of this 'mainstream' thinking; this corporate agenda, capitalist nonsense.

Capitalism has become 'non sense' because it does not observe the world, the Earth as a whole system, and all of its wholeness. 

If the world's non-renewable resources, its health, human population numbers, biodiversity and so on are all strained way beyond their limits; if we are living beyond the world's carrying capacity; if we are, in a word, living 'unsustainably', then, logically, inextricably, this situation is...  unsustainable.  It can't go on.  The game is up. 

When will the mainstream get it? 

Krugman hasn't at all hit on the bigger picture.  He too believes that some miraculous recovery can occur if Obama and Co just get it right and do the right thing. 

Well perhaps.  But it better involve:

•     Developing the Green Economy
•     Supporting the Local, Ecological, Sustainable, Creative, Supportive, Spiritual...
•     Building Community Resilience
•     Celebrating our Shared Human Values (across religions, cultures and borders)

Hopefully,

Martin (John's son)

To Obama [Unedited]

DEAR FOLKS, SEE BELOW MY LETTER TO WHITEHOUSE. YOU CAN WRITE THE WHITEHOUSE ON WEBSITE / CONTACT ALSO CALL 2O2-456-1111.

Critique of Supreme Court [Unedited]

Dear Folks, this is the strongest and longest letter I have ever written to a
government body. I have no idea whether any of it will sink in, but
represents my greatest concern about the condition of our nation today.

Power Wins over Compassion and Common Sense

Dear Folks,

These are recent impressions about destructive power dominating our country: last night, I saw an ad by the oil industry, each big co. making billions and with billions of tax breaks, arguing that increased taxes on them would raise oil and gas prices. I watched Rachel Maddow wailing with John McCaine's daughter through this great gathering of gun buyers: mostly big men looking at assault weapons, and then a switch to a Pittsburg alderman taking Rachel to the street which at one time was considered the most violent street in the nation. Instead now we see literally miles of boarded up six and eight flats. In his area, five thousand houses are boarded up. All of this happening because of gun wars, with assault weapons dominating.

He says: "We are powerless because now our state legislature is totally controlled by the gun lobby."

In Newsweek, March 28-April 4, "What's Killing NPR," NPR top reporters such as Steve Inskeep and Ira Glass are arguing that its management has lost its guts, that it's not fighting for its moderate stance and caliber of programs that service the conscience and common sense of our nation. Same issue, "Obama's War on Schools, " He's still allowing The No Child Left Behind Act to stand even if "it has been deadly to pubic education."

I know several creative teachers, some here in our new system. One recently went to a conference of art teachers, 3,500 in number on West Coast. They feel that they have to be subversives in our school systems, in order to awaken the imagination and the critical thinking of their kids. Each of us are challenged to speak up.

Danger: we will drown as a democracy in a sea of money and power.

John G

The Bipartisan March to Fiscal Madness

By DAVID A. STOCKMAN, Reprinted from The New York Times, 24 April 2011

IT is obvious that the nation’s desperate fiscal condition requires higher taxes on the middle class, not just the richest 2 percent. Likewise, entitlement reform requires means-testing the giant Social Security and Medicare programs, not merely squeezing the far smaller safety net in areas like Medicaid and food stamps.

Unfortunately, in proposing tax increases only for the very rich, President Obama has denied the first of these fiscal truths, while Representative Paul D. Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, has contradicted the second by putting the entire burden of entitlement reform on the poor. The resulting squabble is not only deepening the fiscal stalemate, but also bringing us dangerously close to class war.

Good and Bad News

Dear Folks,

As to the good news. I watched C-Span 3 this morning, featuring student awards for the value and meaning of government. First prize won by a teen girl on the importance of Obama saving the auto industry. She interviewed people, showed evidences of small towns that would have fallen completely apart if their car industry there had collapsed, and gave example after example of specific families that would have been all out of work if
agencies and related businesses had been lost. The negative is frightening indeed.

Some of you may have watched Rachel last night. Without getting into details, she reported on almost half of the states planning to restrict what ordinarily is a simple process for registering to vote: showing your id and address. In many, people will have to show their birth certificates, etc.

In several states beyond Michigan and Wisconsin, the governors have promoted legislation that enables them to take over towns that are in economic troubles. Benton Harbor in Michigan has already been taken over by the Gov.  He replaces duly elected officials with a economic czar who rules the city in every respect. As Rachel points out, the party of small gov becomes the party of autocratic big gov when Republicans take over: from Reagan to Bush II and now these governors and their legislators doing these draconian things.

We must alert MoveOn.org and ethnic churches to alert their people right now, as well as democratic parent their children who will vote to be certain they have their birth certificates. I'm going to push this in every avenue I can find, including Obama's group, Organizing for America. AMERICA HAS TO WAKE UP.

Libya and the Lost US Narrative

Dear Folks,

I am in support of what is happening in Libya for humanitarian reasons. However, my worry is that we might get stuck there. According to the War Act or a name like that a couple of decades ago, the president has a right to begin a war wit these provisos: he must immediately inform congress and his action as such is limited to 60 days, at which time the Congress must decide.

I have two concerns: this war could be incredibly fruitless for two reasons: there is a likelihood that Gadaffi survives and the rebels are too disorganized to set up a government in East Libya.

I have a greater concern: this war overshadows the serious loss of the correct American narrative about our fiscal concerns. The correct narrative is as follows: In 2008 thousands of perverse, greedy and ignorant traders and mortgage brokers literally destroyed the economy of our country and many others. These rich bastards gave out millions of weak mortgages and then packaged them into derivatives, producing what became a roughly 7 trillion "casino," at our expense. Further the big companies now are making big profits and paying big salaries to thousands of execs, they have offices overseas and so most of these companies including the big banks, such as the Bank of America, pay no taxes.Further, along with the these companies in finance, many such as Lockheed are deeply wedded to the military and its money-making wars Finally, we have a Republican Party, both nationally and in the states giving millions of tax breaks to potential companies that have moved into their states amd on the other hand are taxing the middle class and destroy middle class power in unions.

Instead of this narrative, the Republicans have substituted their narrative consistently of blaming and then taxing ordinary folk and destroying their unions. They have even bamboozled the Democratic Party and the White House in this regard. The narrative should be simple and constantly repeated by the latter: quick summaries of the party of the elite rich and the military industrial complex verus the needs of a middle and poor class that needs jobs and human help of every kind so that a true economy might again be realized: an economy that trickles up from folks working and spending and not a trickle down economy in which the wealth move their monies from their hands into their pockets and savings instead of creating jobs. We learned this during 8 years of Bush.

LETS ALL FIGHT TO GET THE CORRECT NARRATIVE BEFORE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE -- NOW AND NOT WHEN WE'RE NEAR NOVEMBER 2012.

JOHN G

A Wake-up Call to Democrats and Concerned American Citizens

Depressed by final verdict in Wisconsin [stripping state employees of collective bargaining rights] and encouraged by the national response: the Democratic base is wakening up a bit.

Depressed by Rep King focusing on Muslim "danger" but encouraged by the fact that he is as stupid a person you can imagine, as reported by a fellow student at Notre Dame.

Depressed by this statistic in latest NewsWeek article entitled "2405 Shot Dead Since Tucson."  Encouraged by an aroused public that might eventually wipe out the NRA Power over Congress, a power comparable to the biggest corporation.

Frightened by the power of corporation in its use of money. How else do we account for all these new Republican governors and State Legislators.  Somewhat encouraged that an aroused populace --encouraged by the response to Wisconsin --may awaken a sleeping political giant.

We all need to write the White House and the National Democratic Committee to develop a simple message showing over and over how the Democrats are the party for the people and the Republicans are the party for the wealthy.  We must keep this narrative alive on the grassroots but also at headquarters.  When we lose this narrative who are blamed:  unions and ordinary workers and citizens.  The reality is very clear:  if we are not aroused we will experience the fatal blow that might leave us asleep for along time; that our country has become infected with a new-fascist disease.

- John G

Peacefully - Take to the Streets

Dear President Obama and Administration:

The events in Egypt and our present crisis have inspired these remarks. I am concerned about the condition of
our democracy, given now the power that is in the hands of the few who have the power of money. Will we as a people have to take to the streets in order to recover an authentic democracy or will you, Mr President and your team, begin to articulate what we would say and demand in the streets: We the people want our country back, over against a fascist-like overlay of the wealthy and a Republican party whose philosophy is to serve the few. We demand a clear and consistent statement and implementation of a philosophy that reclaims a government that is by the people and for the people. This philosophy should be driven home day after day, while clearly pointing out the danger posed by the present wealthy/Republican coalition.

Otherwise, Sir, we citizens will have to --peacefully-- take to the streets, and I, an 89 year old man, will be with them.

Sincerely,

John L. Giannini