yesterday morning i watched Jon Stewart's and Stephen Colbert's "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear." it was three unpredictable hours. there were some funny moments. there were a few moments that fell flat. there was some nice music. there was a bit of mysterious praising (Kid Rock is an "amazing" artist?...really?) but all in all, i thought it was an excellent use of satire to make a basic, but profoundly important, point. and it was made eloquently by Jon Stewart at the end of the rally:
like i imagine most of you, i listened/watched in horror as the events of the Fort Hood shootings unfolded. i happened to be at my desk when the news started breaking on twitter. those are the moments when, in my opinion, twitter is at its best...when it's a valuable information-sharing tool in times of energency. the tweeting in my stream (including by me) wasn't speculation on motive or what the ethnicity of the shooters might be (at the time reports said there may have been three)...rather we were trying to stick with the facts as they were being reported by the major news outlets and by officials. (i follow the Army account.) there were tweets coming from Texas that blood donations were desperately needed at a hospital that had several of the victims. and the Red Cross tweeted a number where people could check on their loved ones and/or report that they were okay. a little later there was a hotline number that had been set up by the base which was extensively retweeted. I could tell by some tweets that others were seeing some pretty hateful and ignorant comments in their Twitter streams. i retweeted something that ABC reporter Jake Tapper tweeted which summed it up perfectly for me:
"This is a time for the best in Americans to come out, not the worst. Let's donate blood, pray, have well wishes, stick to facts."
I didn't watch the TV news or any cable pundits. I was on Twitter for about an hour while the story broke and then I laid down with a book of poems and took a nap.
I had Facebook open while I was on Twitter and would occasionally pop over there as the news was unfolding to see what was happening. given that I was off FB for years, it was my first experience of it during a tragedy/emergency. I updated a couple of times there about the shooting (just a couple of sentences apiece)...but NO ONE i follow at FB said one word about it. that sort of blew me away, especially since Jeffrey's FB community had offered him so much support when his brother died recently. it was particularly heartbreaking to read the tweets of those who had loved ones and friends at Fort Hood and were unable to reach them to make sure they were okay, so it sort of stunned me that i was reading such an outpouring of support and thoughts and prayers on twitter...and on FB it was all Farmville and funny videos and silly chatter. i really don't get Facebook. i'm sorry if this offends anyone, but it sort of reminds me in a strange way of this town where we live. it seems cool on the surface, but once you really get settled in, you find it's not really very welcoming, sort of clique-ish and leaves me kind of clueless as to how to maneuver my way through since it doesn't feel like just being myself is acceptable. it feels like there are some sort of rules that everyone knows but me. maybe i'm just so used to experiencing so much twitter-love that FB seems like a cold, distant relative in comparison. :)
so tonight, post-nap, after checking in at Twitter for the latest developments, i sat down to watch a little CNN and thought maybe i'd make another collage at the same time. i gave myself the challenge of using just one magazine. it's not that i don't have several at my disposal, but rather than clipping images out of several mags to get the 'best' ones, i wanted to see if i could look a little deeper to create from what is. (because that's a lesson i'm trying to play out on several levels in my life.) the magazine i grabbed at random was a Time with a cover story about exercise. i knew sort of where i wanted to go with the collage, but couldn't imagine how i'd do it with the issue in my hand. but as i listened to former soldiers talk about how in the military they're taught to not seek mental health help, i felt really sad that we train our soldiers to be killers and ask them to perform extremely violent acts...and then tell them afterward to just 'suck it up.' that's a really broken system, if you ask me...and i started thinking of all the ways in life (both personally and communally) that we could really use a big, fat RESET button.
there weren't many images in the magazine that appealed to me, but i did clip a few. and just to let you know the kinds of thoughts that were roaming through my head as i listened to coverage of the shootings while flipping through the magazine, i'll share a couple. that photo of the empty Congressional chamber that i placed upside down (and doesn't it sort of look like a Pharaoh's crown?) has the word "love" at the end of the aisle. that's to remind me that even when we're 'across the aisle' from someone...even when we feel our beliefs and ideology are the complete opposite of someone else's...there's really only one true path in life that supercedes all that head stuff, which needs to be turned on its head anyway...and that's love. i placed the "RESET" button at the base of that figure because i think that when we really want to impact fundamental change within ourselves, we must start first with our baser instincts. i put a suit jacket on that beautiful man to remind me that even in our most rigid roles, we have the opportunity to be beautiful warriors...but not warriors for fighting...warriors for love...with the ultimate endpoint to get to a place where we can feel even just a tiny bit (that's why the type is small) more evolved...
Everywhere we turn these days, there's 'bad' financial news--bank bailouts, corporate greed, staggering numbers of unemployed workers, businesses filing for bankruptcy or shutting down altogether. It feels to me like we're (and I don't just mean Americans) standing at the threshold of enormous change. And change--really big, profound, life-altering change--makes a lot of people very nervous. So we seek out scapegoats and hoard our money and lie awake at night wondering how we'll pay our bills and worrying about "what if's."
The powers that be (who are quickly becoming the powers that were) set up a system where a small group at the top get the most and the rest of us are supposed to just be grateful for whatever we can grab for ourselves as their overflow trickles down. Much like the pyramid on the back of our one-dollar bill. Now that system is failing, or at least it appears that way on the surface.
Whether your frame of reference is the grassroots or netroots or Obama nation or something similar, it seems pretty obvious that 'the people' are ready to start taking back their power. It seems like it's time to turn that damn pyramid upside down.
Today I watched this short interview of Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammed Yunus, the founder of Grameen Bank, and a pioneer in the field of microcredit. Take a look, if you can spare 3 minutes:
"They own the bank." Nearly every country now has some form of microcredit, yet it's still not part of the mainstream financial system. Two-thirds of the world's population has no access to a structured financial system because they're "not credit-worthy." Yet the repayment rate among microcredit loans is 98-99%. Kind of shoots that theory all to hell, doesn't it?
In America, at least, we've been shackled by a system that's all about making the wealthy even wealthier. We're bailing out banks left and right, yet the banks are taking those bailout funds and doing with them what they wish. We're bailing out the top of the pyramid when we need to be bailing out the bottom of it. And we don't even need to think of it as a bailout. As microcredit has shown, if we invest even a tiny bit of money into someone's dream, it pays off.
The problem in America, as I see it, is greed, plain and simple. From Wall Street CEO's to consumers hell-bent on buying tons of stuff on credit they can't afford, the appetite for material consumption in this country is gluttonous.
Some are starting to turn the standard profit model on its head. Like this Portland coffee house that's not just going non-profit, it going anti-profit. The four partners are going to keep just enough money to cover their living expenses and give any remaining profit to local charities.
Free is now the new black. More and more, artists, musicians, writers, filmmakers, media companies, etc. are giving away product in the hope that consumers will later buy something else. It seems counter-intuitive at first glance, but it seems to be working for a lot of folks. As Martha Beck says in Steering by Starlight, "...as they never told you in school, last things first." Free is no longer the last resort, it's the first step.
We have so many FREE social media tools available to us to get the word out about whatever kind of life/work we want to be living/doing. It's time the bottom of the pyramid got to speak up. The old models are broken, and those who are going to thrive in the coming days are likely to be the ones who are willing to leap into big change, creating new models along the way.
These are just a handful of images from the last two years of watching and following this Presidential election...
In his speeches these days, Barack Obama talks about how during the summer of 2007, when he was so far behind in the polls and everyone was counting him out, he put his faith in the American people...and they didn't let him down. Two years ago, I put my faith in Barack Obama...and he hasn't let me down. That doesn't mean that I've agreed with every single decision he's made. It also doesn't mean that I've put my faith in him in any sort of idolized fashion. Because two years ago, I could see and feel that Obama's candidacy wasn't really about him--it was about us. He's not the change--we're the change. He's just the change agent. Here's the poem I wrote 20 months ago about that. (That was so long ago that the site I reference there doesn't even exist anymore.) ;)
I can hardly believe we're just one day away from this historic election. I'm excited and filled with anticipation and a little bit nervous and very emotional. Anyone who visits here regularly knows what this election means to me--I don't have to tell you. I simply have to encourage you to go out and vote on Tuesday (if you haven't already). Whoever you choose to vote for, be an active participant in our democracy and make your voice heard. Let's take back our country. After all, it belongs to us.
Two years after signing Sen. Dick Durbin's petition encouraging his fellow Illinois Senator to run for President, I can hardly believe we're only 10 days away from Election Day. Whoever you choose to vote for in this election, the important thing is that you VOTE. Make your voice heard! This country belongs to all of us, and I believe it's high time we took it back.
I wanted to share some of my favorite political videos from recent days. First up is a fabulous animated one accompanied by the song, "Maverick John McCain"...
Remember the famous "Wassup?" commercials? Here they are, 8 years later...(I think this is brilliant)...
My Twitter pal, Lee Stranahan, has been doing a video a day for the last 30 days before the election. He calls the series, "30 days | 30 reasons" and you can watch them on his YouTube channel here. This, in my opinion, has been one of his most brilliant: #18: Larry Lessig (creator of Creative Commons and a Stanford professor). Lee did it in the style of a Lessig video and if you've ever seen one of Lessig's videos, you'll see that he nailed it...
And just for kicks, Amelie in an Obama avatar. Lest you think I'm pimping out the grandbaby for a candidate she might not support, the other grandparents are also huge Obama supporters. (And step-grandad is an election official.) ;)
I simply can't overstate how much I've fallen in love with Twitter. A couple of blogging friends sent me Twitter invites in April of '07, but I checked it out and thought it was the stupidest thing ever. "What am I doing?" Who cares?! :) I finally signed on last May 10th. As I near my one-year Twitterversary, I thought I'd share a sample of what I love about it.
* I've been saying for years one of the primary things I love about blogging is that it flattens hierarchies. Where else am I gonna talk pot with 10 Downing Street? Or get a direct response from John Edwards' campaign manager about what he thinks will happen in NC and IN today?
* As I've probably posted before, even though I'd been on Twitter for months, it was the night of the Iowa Caucuses that got me hooked. Following a tip from a fellow Twitterer, I began following @IowaCaucuses and started seeing results showing up in my Twitter stream minutes before MSNBC announced them.
* But it's not just election news--Twitter's often now the first place I see breaking news. And it's become a valuable tool during natural disasters.
* Although I've yet to use it this way, Twitterers often ask for assistance on Twitter and get immediate responses.
Here's my fave find of the day. How'd I find it? Someone I follow Twittered the link. I think Tom Waits is GENIUS and PEHDTSCKJMBA is gonna be my new mantra... ;)
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