Dear RN, Richard's posting from earlier today is already receiving accolades; I hesitate to send you yet another lenghty posting but this is good too! Since this posting is so long I have edited it drastically. Worth it I think because it reminds us to distinguish the important from the urgent, in other words, to build and protect life and beauty and justice/shalom and to remember that trying to be right or better than someone else is a bit of a waste of time! I'm also posting it because one of our regular contributors, Mark D. Whitaker, wrote earlier that we should not be too quick to cut down the "anarchists" who commited acts of vandalism. This posting is the first that really showed me the wisdom in what Mark pointed out. So much I might want to say to you, as we cross into the 2000's. For now, how about an electronic "group hug" and good wishes to all of us and all those we care about, which I think might just about include every being in the universe :)! all the very best, Jan ****************************************** Date: Wed, 29 Dec 1999 22:21:46 -0800 From: Randy Schutt <•••@••.•••> Subject: A View of WTO from a Cultural Transformation Perspective Friends, Here is another view of WTO (and many other things) from Vicki Robin, co-author of the bestseller YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE. Though Vicki is very wise and experienced in cultural change (especially in the voluntary simplicity movement), it sounds like she is relatively new to political and social change, especially nonviolent direct action. So this essay has a different focus and tone than others I've read. <snip> <--Randy Dear friends, Gratitude first. Gratitude to all of you who responded from your hearts to my last letter about September in India. I felt deeply met and encouraged by all of you. These update letters have grown from sharing my "unedited life" with a close circle of amigos to messages that are hopscotching through cyberspace to friends of friends of friends. <snip> I feel you out there - and it feels good. These last two months have been so rich that one letter can barely contain it all. So I'm breaking it in two. This letter will be Vicki trying to make sense of the vast event focused around the WTO Ministerial Meeting in Seattle. In a subsequent letter I'll makes sense of the rest of the richness of the past two months. From now on I will be posting these letters (perhaps with some edits for brevity and clarity) on our web page (http://www.newroadmap.org ). You can forward them to friends if you like, or just direct them there. Daunted by the sheer volume of this letter? Here's a map: 1. WTO AS MIRROR 2. WTO AS WTO 3. WTO AS MANIFESTATION OF A WORLDVIEW 4. WTO AS A FRONT FOR THE TEN TON GORILLA: OVER-CONSUMPTION 5. WTO AS THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK 6. WTO AND ANARCHY 7. WTO AS WAR? 8. WTO AS INFOTAINMENT Okay, let's roll… WTO AS MIRROR <snip> WTO AS WTO For an excellent summary of the WTO, please go to http://www.rachel.org "Making Sense of the WTO" #679. An interesting factual account of the command chain that led to the police action can be found at http://archives.seattletimes.com/cgi-bin/texis.mummy/web/vortex/displa y?storyID=385a0a046&query=WTO. Beyond this, you're on your own. I'm sure you have your own sources and are forming your own opinions. Rather than offer another personal account of events I want to make three simple observations. 1. THERE ARE THOUSANDS OF ALTERNATIVES The WTO thrives on selling the idea that there are no alternatives to globalization. It's an ideology nicknamed TINA - There Is No Alternative (Trekkies, sounds like the Borg, doesn't it?). It's ironic that the acronym turns out to be a woman's name. Most women I know are much more inclusive of a range of opinions than TINA is. The world I live in, however, could be called TATA (There Are Thousands of Alternatives - a term used at the IFG teach-in). I like that. It sounds like a kindly grandmother. And it is. I admire and participate in a myriad of successful, common sense design strategies for a world that works for all of life. I'll name a few to indicate my meaning, but the list only points a finger to a rich, diverse and densely populated territory. The Natural Step. Ecological Footprint. Non-violent Communication. Barter Networks. Indigenous wisdom. Meditation. Engaged Buddhism. Appropriate Technology. Results. Mindful Markets. The Universe Story. Beyond War. Holistic everything. Natural foods. Community Supported Agriculture. Biointensive Gardening. Permaculture. Citizen Juries. Consensus. Home Schooling. Ecological Economics. Town Meetings. The Genuine Progress Indicator. Ballot Initiatives. Boycotts. The Ceres Principles. The Earth Charter. And yes, Your Money or Your Life. You get the drift. Globalized free trade could be seen as putting the economy on steroids and amphetamines. TINA is having delusions of grandeur and is in the midst of a serious psychotic break. If "she" were a person, we'd institutionalize "her". The lock-out of the WTO in Seattle was the beginning of her lock up by the citizens of the world. TATA is respectful, humble, curious, sincere, ethical, devoted to the common good - in other words, sane. The teach-ins, marches, rallies, workshops and NGO meetings in Seattle marked the beginning of the many alternatives finding one another and making common cause and commons sense. Hallelujah! Every place I went I met wonderful people, heartened to know one another. We listened to each other's views, learned, shared stories, exchanged email and web site addresses and generally shifted from the loneliness of the long time-frame critic to the knowledge that we are legion and we aren't gonna let TINA run the world by default. There is every indication and reason to hope that a new global grassroots citizens movement was born at the end of the second millennium. 2. GLOBALIZATION "R" US <snip> 3. WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE UNITED NATIONS? <snip> WTO AS MANIFESTATION OF A WORLDVIEW One of my favorite teaching tales: Two monks sat in contemplation by a river. Suddenly they heard the cries of a baby and saw the infant struggling for breath as it floated by. They waded in, brought the child to shore and revived it. Satisfied, they returned to their peaceful state. Again they heard cries, saw a struggling infant, fished it out, revived it and settled down for meditation. But the tempo of drowning babies increased. Both men shuttled from river to shore, saving babies as fast as they could. Soon they were soaked and exhausted and totally out of peace. Suddenly one monk ran away. Now the other was REALLY out of peace, angry at being abandoned. Hours later the stream of babies stopped as mysteriously as it had started. Then the second monk returned. "Where were you," cried the first monk, "when I really needed you!" "I went upstream to see who was throwing babies into the river," the absent monk replied. Fishing out babies is a front lines holding action, necessary for immediate survival. Such actions take courage, commitment and a willingness to get waist deep in the torrent of the times. A great deal of activism is just this sort of heroics. Shutting down the ministerial meeting was, among other things, a holding action. It was like lying down in front of a tank or climbing a tree in a threatened forest. As I said, many times during the week I felt the tug to this moral high ground, but I was there on another mission. For years I've "battled" the blindness and manipulation at the heart of overconsumption. It's as far upstream as I could go. I have been deeply distressed by the whole tempo of trashing the planet to fill the pockets and presumed needs of those who already have more than enough. <snip> The WTO is merely the handmaiden of a worldview that is: 1. materialistic (profit is our most important product, economic growth = well being) 2. undemocratic (of, by and for the people with wealth) 3. cut-throat (do what you have to do to compete successfully today - even at the cost of compromising the future - or you're history) 4. cynical (purporting to be for the poor - a rising tide lifts all ships, y'know - but actually fueling the increasing rich/poor gap) and 5. sociopathic (greed is good; altruism is suspect; cynicism is de-rigeur). It is a self-organizing system that would, from its own point of view, work better without the constraints being placed on it by worry warts. It has removed as many natural and artificial controls to its ascendancy as possible, against all good sense. Money isn't tied to any form of natural wealth. The natural world is a subset of the economy and, if any natural limits are transgressed, technology is called in to fix it. The ability to overturn national laws that limit free trade is a completely coherent demand of such a worldview. Never mind that global warming, water shortages, loss of topsoil, overpopulation, rising inequity, collapse of fisheries are flashing "red alert". The worldview cannot let this in without cracking its internal logic. My favorite recent example is that Clorox, the leading global manufacturer of dioxins, has purportedly bought out Britta, the counter-top water filtration system to make our drinking water pure again. Do I hear double speak? Hate is love. War is peace. Instead of "polluters paying" (a sensible principle of ecological economics), polluters can profit from both ecological destruction and remediation. We need this world view like we need another hole in the head. But, as Seattle demonstrated, worldviews die hard. Think of it this way. If you are a farmer and your farmland is taken away, you don't only lose your land and your livelihood - you lose your identity. Even if you are given a job in the new prison facility built nearby or given a pension for the rest of your life, a hole in the center of your being has opened up. And if you are a rich person profiting from the Industrial paradigm you will be hard pressed to change. Even if you have no time for your family. Even if you have had to do things that violate your original sense of fairness. Even if your doctor says you have to slow down. Even if you learn that your company's product is doing harm. In fact, I suspect that the faithful followers of the dominant economic paradigm are as much its victims as are the voiceless. The managerial class is being milked for its productivity like forests for their logs and chickens for their eggs and sweat-shop workers for their labor - and they know it. Perhaps this is why YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE appeals to people in every income bracket - it's a defector's manual. Yet, if you are a winner in the casino where the future of the biosphere is being gambled away, it's still hard to push away from the table. Aside from people influenced by compelling moral figures like Mohandas Gandhi or Jesus, few privileged individuals in history have voluntarily given up their advantage. So, in my view, the materialistic mindset is what's throwing the babies (living systems) in the drink. The WTO is just a visible representation of a mindset that puts profits over people and the planet. The emergent worldview, in my opinion, has it all over that old one. It starts in the vastness of the unfolding story of the Universe, cracks open the future by showing that evolution is still going on. It affirms that spiritual values are as determinative of outcome as material ones. It lifts up the non-economic side of life (laughter, generosity, dance, intimacy, caring, art, music, philosophy, inquiry) and embraces the economic side of life like a cherished younger brother. It wants the economy to do what economies do well - meet real material needs. And it wants the rest of life to flourish. It honors democracy, decency, civility and law as part of what it takes for humans to live together. It honors the earth as the home of all life, the only home we have. It is practical, sane, common sensible. In terms of worldview activism, I believe that my recent choice to devote more time to writing will be my primary form of demonstration. But I'm not sure. Is the keyboard mightier than the sword? Or, for that matter, than the commercial culture… WTO AS A FRONT FOR THE TEN-TON GORILLA: CONSUMPTION <snip> As we face this as a culture, I imagine we'll indulge in blame ball for a while. Blame ball? That's when everyone will want to shed the full weight of responsibility and toss blame to another party. The rich. The poor. The government. Advertising. The corporations. Inflation. Truly, since over-consumption comes out of a paradigm that's dying (there's always more where that came from) we're all innocent and we're all to blame. The question is: Who will have the strength and sanity to say, "the buck - literally - stops here." Will it take breaking the eco-bank before we face our predicament? If I fault myself seriously for anything, it was not seeing how necessary this point of view was to the whole challenge to the WTO and at least passing out some printed jeremiad on street corners. Because at one level, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that as people and as a planet, we need to live within the means of our productive capacity. And it's obvious (to me, at least - what about you?) that the less dependent we are on the economy, the more we can challenge its core premises. Remember, no matter how much we criticize the global economy, we are tied to it. Fans of Monty Python may remember the scene in THE LIFE OF BRIAN, set in the time of Jesus, when the small political cabal is stoking their revolutionary ire. "What have the Romans done for US anyway???" one cries defiantly. "The aqueducts?" another tenders, sheepishly "Yes, but besides the aqueducts?" "Sanitation" "Yes, but…" "Education" "The roads" "Yes, but besides, aqueducts, sanitation, education, the road, what HAVE the Romans done for us." What HAS the global economy done for us, anyway? It turns out it's done a lot, and not just for us but for many people in the two-thirds world as well. We need and appreciate some commerce to support ourselves and meet our needs. But what needs is the economy - global or local - good at filling and for what needs is it just gross and clumsy? For some things I need money. I won't bore you with an accounting of how I spend my $850 a month income. I know that even if I were more of a gleaner or gatherer than I am, I would need aspects of the money economy to survive in today's world. Many other needs, however, are met by my own self-responsibility, creativity, struggle to learn, willingness to feel, and, of course, by my relationships. Once basic needs are met, most real human emotion is centered on the joys and sorrows of living itself. Birth. Marriage. Death. Overcoming challenges. Missing out. Achieving. It's more about love than a Lexus, no matter how much advertising tries to sell the latter with the former. In YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE, a daily practice is established of distinguishing between purchasing to meet real, tangible needs and buying to try to fill non-material needs. Quantity is differentiated from quality. Calculating real hourly wage and the fulfillment curve (simple analytic tools used in YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE) illuminate the true cost of the product-intensive American way of living. That's why people's expenses drop like a rock. What if we could energize such a process globally? What if we put serious restraints on advertising (c'mon folks, that ain't free speech!)? And what if we taught media literacy so that even toddlers could differentiate between commercially stoked needs and a wet diaper? What if we reclaimed some of the air waves from commercial interests, used them to inspire, inform and empower, and made citizenship a better game than "more" (consumerism)? What if we established a really progressive income tax again, just like in the good old post-war days when the poor were getting richer faster than the rich were? And what if we actually started a national and international dialogue about the big "R" word - redistribution of wealth? What if we overturned the Supreme Court ruling that gave corporations the rights of personhood to corporations? Initiatives in all these areas are already underway. So this isn't idle chatter. Now, what about the two thirds world where basic needs are still not met for billions and those that are entering the middle class are clearly better off. Am I advocating voluntary simplicity for the poor of the world who've had their appetite for consumption whetted by our media? Am I saying that the billions of poor shouldn't have their crack at the good life? Fortunately, a great deal of research has been done about how to provide room for the poor to expand their consumption while the rich moderate theirs. Studies by Friends of the Earth Netherlands, among many others, reveal that consumption fairness can be achieved while still giving the wealthy (us) as high a standard of living as we had, say, in the 1950's. Implementing such a system, of course, will take much political will and courage, but in times of real need people have shown a remarkable willingness to pull together for the common good. Do you think polluting our scant water supply, for example, might be a crisis worthy of making some adjustments? WTO AS THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK My favorite chant in the marches was, "This is what democracy looks like!" Free speech. Right of free assembly. Freedom from cruel and unusual punishment. Of course democracy is more than marching in solidarity against the WTO alongside people who might disagree with you on a host of other things. But there was a whiff of citizenship in the air - especially heartening during the Christmas shopping season in a country where consumerism has all but supplanted the quaint virtue of civic participation. <snip> The police and National Guard, in their frightening array of force, was the old paradigm baring her teeth. The temporary loss of democratic rights in Seattle demonstrated vividly the undemocratic nature of the world order the WTO is designed to enforce. It was the WTO's version of "This is what democracy looks like." Of, by and for the people who have the wealth (and want more of it). I've designed a test for WTO supporters (up to and including Michael Moore) who tell me they're doing it all for the poor, who still believe in the trickle down theory. Let's have a lottery, monitored by the likes of Vaclav Havel, Desmond Tutu, Thich Nhat Hanh or other respected moral voices. Every child between the ages of 10 and 13, say, will draw the name of a family somewhere in the world and go live with them for a year. Suburban jocks could end up in a barrio in Mexico City. Indian farm kids might join city sophisticates in Paris. And maybe some of the millions of kids who die daily of malnutrition diseases could end up dining for a year at tables heaped with luscious, plentiful food. The kids might all love it. But what adjustments might the well-heeled parents in the North make if their own children were the recipients of their corporate policies? The problems weren't specific bad cops or "anarchists". The problem is that we thought we had a democracy and we may not. Worse, I think many of us have forgotten how. I've not thought much about democracy, just like I hadn't thought much about the economy until 10 years ago. I learned in 7th grade that we have one and left it at that. Now, I'm reassigning myself to Poli Sci 101 (I actually never took that class in the first place). The beauty and hope from all this is that there are, I believe, millions like me who have been rudely awakened from a civic laziness. My guess is that once I catch hold of what democracy really is, I will be in awe of its beauty and proud to be part of the species that invented it. WTO AND ANARCHY Luckily I had a couple of anarchist friends staying with me or I might have dismissed their cause as incoherent at best and counter productive at worst. We stayed up late into the night talking. Amber saw in anarchy a utopian ideal - self responsible, aware people making considered choices that benefit the whole. She was quite aware that pulling off a functioning anarchist society would take a level of maturity that humanity might never achieve, or only after some profound growth at a species level. Mike saw anarchy as an appropriate response to an insane world. "I don't have to understand the phonebook-fat trade regulations to know they don't work. Just look around. Injustice. Unhappiness. Uncaring corporate power." For him, crimes against property aren't like crimes against people. Only those corporate outlets that exploit people and nature had been targeted. Their property, in his view, was ill-gotten. Those plate glass facades literally come out of the hide of underpaid workers and abused ecosystems. I thought of my own sentimental affinity for Luddites and Monkey Wrenchers. If I believed that smashing things would actually work, I might do it. But I'm just far enough along in life to know that in some perverse way such acts are good for the GDP (the clean up and repair WILL happen) and ultimately bad for the natural world (more resource consumption to tidy up the mess). But what struck me about Mike's argument was the fact that the world he's expected to inherit and uphold makes no sense to him. He doesn't want it. And he's no "trust fund hippie." He rides the rails, dumpster dives and plants trees for money - embracing a marginal existence as the only thing that's consistent with his stark view of reality. While the ones who did the tagging and window smashing were few, I suspect there are many Mike's out there, and this is as much a by-product of the consumer society as deforestation. <snip> WTO AS WAR? A dear friend of mine - a man enamored of truth and beauty who happens to be a Republican - wrote me last week saying: "The worst thing about highly contentious situations is that they can come between friends." People I cherish are strung out along much of the spectrum of opinion about the WTO. I wonder who might feel required to distance themselves from me because I haven't taken quite the right stance. During the year I lived in Spain, I remember long, eye-opening conversations with an older friend over Galoise-like cigarettes. She told me about her recollections of the Spanish Civil War. There was no electricity, much less telephones, in rural Spain at that time. News of the war filtered into the hinterlands via word of mouth. And people, who'd harbored ancient enmities, having nothing to do with the issues of the war, grabbed the occasion and started killing each other. That image of war releasing the beast of hatred has always stayed with me. Listen to the rhetoric. The Battle of Seattle. The war being waged by the global corporate and financial institutions. These are fighting words. <snip> I recall the woman in a "WTO for Beginners" workshop with me who on Monday hadn't even heard of the WTO. She'd been at a bus stop and struck up a conversation with someone who gave her an earful. By Tuesday she was at every teach-in she could find. By Friday she was in the March. By the next Wednesday she was front row center with her tape recorder at the first City Council hearing. She'd gotten radicalized - along with many other people on the streets and in front of their TV's that week. And I recall an old folk song about the civil war: "Which side are you on? Which side are you on?" If lines get drawn and sides picked, which way will all the people I know and those I met on the streets go? Something in me wants to stand up for the perfection of the whole pageant and all of the passion and outrage and courage that flushed the old paradigm out of hiding. I want to stand up for the camaraderie and bridge building I saw happening outside the "war zone." I want to have those who were locked down give respect to the people for whom the greatest act of courage was just to show up at a rally. I want us to celebrate those who were disobedient and got arrested, to remember what we learned dutifully in American History books - it was the SHOT heard round the world, not the teach-in or march. At the same time, I want all of us who protested to remember the humanity of the delegates and ministers. I want us to heed people like Holocaust survivor Elie Weisel and playwright Anna Devere Smith who have had the patience and vision to tell the whole stories of horrors like the Holocaust and the LA riots. I want the precious possibility of new alliances to flourish and not get beaten down by ideological hair splitting. If "Turtles and Teamsters" are going to have more than a fling, they will need all the courtesy and respect they can muster to deal with their real differences. I'm not just being nice in this call for respect. I'm being practical and fierce. And true to my own conviction that all elements have information that will lead to unheard of solutions - if we will listen deeply. Demonizing is running rampant now, filling column inches and email boxes globally. It won't help. Having trained in many forms of Aikido, on and off the mat, I am deeply concerned by my colleagues demonizing the WTO and what it stands for. I was especially troubled when this attitude spilled over into subtle and not-so-subtle put downs among the broad range of citizens and NGO's who formed common cause for a few glorious days. A few folks engaged in direct action seemed to be wearing a bit of "You Wimp" cologne that the rest of us could smell. Any choice short of battle mode was capitulation. But there was other polite sniping going on. I literally fear that after years of careful work we will arrive at the crest of the hill, see the "whites of the eyes" of the old paradigm, stand up and turn our guns on one another for some obscure differences of analysis and strategy. (Monty Python could do this skit up good.) The battle lines need to be drawn between paradigms, not between people or preferred tactics for change. We are choosing the rules for the future. Let's do it eyes wide open. In a way, the ideology of greed and growth thrives because it is simple-minded and single- minded. How can we, diverse as we are, be of one mind too? Some of the people who impressed me most for their inter-NGO bridge building were representatives of Alliance for Democracy, United for a Fair Economy and Sustainable America. They said… We need to watch out for the turf and leadership and funding wars that break us apart in petty ways. We need to take reflective time to scout upstream for the source of drowning babies so we don't repeatedly solve the same problem. And we need to keep our eye on the prize - healthy people on a healthy planet - and not just the next phone call or campaign. Can we do these few simple things? WTO AS INFOTAINMENT I have annoyed my enviro friends by asserting that the future belongs to the press agents. Surely science, public policy analysis or ethical debates should guide our cultural conversations. But they don't. Publicizing YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE taught me that the media mediates reality and bestows validity much as the church or royalty did in bygone eras. If it's on TV, in the papers, in a book, well, it must be true - or at least worthy of forking over some my limited attention span to consider. <snip> The media isn't recognized as a player in these pageants, but it's got the central role. In this century's revolutions, guerrillas have learned that they must capture the media if they want to capture the state. Campaign finance reform is really media manipulation reform - politicians use soft money to capture the minds the media is adept at delivering. How can activists for the "new paradigm" capture at least their fair share of the media? How can we cut through the palaver and trivia that the media churns out? "Alternative" media is marginalized and serves only the already converted. Mainstream media seems to be such a huge fortress with commercial interests in every gun turret (as well holding a pistol to the heads of Station and Program Managers). So part of a measured, coordinated strategy post WTO Ministerial meeting has to be, dare I say it, a good media strategy. YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE was, in a way, a media strategy. A life free of financial constraints yet strangely dismissive of traditional wealth and status symbols had enough curiosity to capture media attention. It irked and attracted people all at once. And I got hundreds of hours of air time - very frugally I might add. Then I used my thousand hours of fame to educate people in a new way of thinking about money, success, savings, status, freedom, purpose and stuff. Ironically, I would gently use the sponsor's ads on interview programs to enhance the points I was making. Somehow, no one recognized this work as subversive. And somehow I have a feeling that this experience has educated me in as yet untapped ways for the kind of transformation I believe we all yearn for. Many friends call me when they want media contacts (especially Oprah!). But that's not what I am talking about. Rather than getting our messages out singly, we need a two-prong media strategy. We need the grit and moxie to reclaim some rightful space on the media for the leading cultural edge. AND we need to Aikido the current sick set-up to give us power (air time) using the very tools (shock, celebrity, style, sound and video bites) they use to make news. We can change the rules by playing their game better than they can. I know we can. I already know people who are doing it. WTO AND SPIRITUALITY Say what? Where's the link? I only bring it up because I am determined to integrate my devotional side and my activist side. And, as I do that, to seek this reconciliation in outer events. We all look with dismay on how religion and war have made common cause with every side claiming God is with them. Result: a lot of suffering. So what is the role of spirit? I am not a contemplative; I don't believe that prayer alone is sufficient to change the course of events. I am also not a materialist; I distrust any process conducted in the absence of the sacred. Perhaps it is with the natural love of a mother for a newborn that we need to hold the affairs of the world. His Holiness the Dalai Lama, when asked about evil in the world, spoke about the centrality of teaching happiness. Everyone wants it, yet to achieve it ultimately requires that everyone's happiness be assured. Peace Pilgrim, our American "saint", said, "Overcome evil with good." Saint Paul said love was the greatest force. So perhaps along with all our strategizing, we need to just love the shit out of the WTO. Here's a wonderful story I recently got over email: In the Babemba tribe of South Africa, when a person acts irresponsibly or unjustly, he is placed in the center of the village, alone and unfettered. All work ceases, and every man, woman and child in the village gathers in a large circle around the accused individual. Then each person in the tribe speaks to the accused, one at a time, about all the good things the person in the center of the circle has done in his lifetime. Every incident, every experience that can be recalled with any detail and accuracy is recounted. All his positive attributes, good deeds, strengths and kindnesses are recited carefully and at length. The tribal ceremony often lasts several days. At the end, the tribal circle is broken, a joyous celebration takes place, and the person is symbolically and literally welcomed back into the tribe. I can see the faint outlines of Direct Spiritual Action. Blockade the entrance. Form a human chain. Then praise the WTO functionaries for all the good the global economy has given us and for all their hard work in making it happen. Thank them for the cell phones and computers that make our civil society hum. For the planes that brought us to the demonstrations. For donations to Universities where we got the training in law and medicine that allowed people to be protected and defended and healed on the streets. For the factories that make the bricks and mortar that make our homes. For our cars and trains and televisions, because we use them to bring us together and bring our message to the world. For providing some of the food we cannot grow ourselves anymore. For their good intentions. For being parents who want the best for their children. For standing up for their belief that they are doing the arduous work of stitching together the world economically so it doesn't fall apart politically. For every unknown act of kindness and courage they have ever done. For… Too improbable. Too idealistic. Every religion teaches such love. I suspect it will take incredible courage for me and everyone else to be boldly wise and fiercely loving in the face of all that needs repair in this world. AND SO IN CONCLUSION… <snip> With love, Vicki
