Article: Impure Tea Party Absurdity

There is an amazing thing about grassroots organization; it could lead to populist change. The grassroots is the place where you find fresh ideas brimming from personal experiences. It’s how women obtained the right to vote, how segregation ended, and how the Vietnam war ended. More often than not, grassroots organizations have been the forerunner of social change in the United States.

This notion has been tarnished by some recent rash actions. The so called “tea parties” that took place on April 15 were far from the principles present in the Boston Tea Party in 1773. The Boston Tea Party was a rejection of the massive corporate tax cut the British government created for the British East India Company, the largest corporation in the world at that time. The colonists – knowing that the BEIC would put them out of business – revolted against the tax by dumping the tea into Boston Harbor. The tea parties of 2009, on the other hand, were gross misrepresentations of this historic event.

Although the organizers of these “tea parties” claim that it was in the spirit of the original tea party, there were many discrepancies that would say otherwise. For one, these events were virtually sponsored by the biggest corporate news spin machine of them all, Fox News. In the week leading up to the “protests,” Fox News would run on-screen prompts revealing locations of the protests as “Fox News Channel Tax Day Tea Parties.” Although this “news” network claimed they had no sponsorship of the event, they continuously claimed ownership of the events with these on-screen prompts.

Another large discrepancy between the two events is the organizers of the events. The Boston Tea Party was carried out by angered colonial merchants. The new tea party was organized and funded by the right-wing think tank Freedomworks whose founder is far-right conservative Dick Armey. Freedomworks gets their funds from the likes of Steve Forbes and ExxonMobil who has contributed up to a quarter million dollars a year.

This, “representation of the people,” seems to me like less of a true grassroots movement and more like a corporate puppet scheme involving hundreds of thousands of US citizens. I can understand one supporting the principle of these protests – lower taxes – but I urge people to understand where something is coming from before they jump on board. If this were a true movement for the lowering of taxes on families, it would include an increase in corporate tax to make up for the loss of tax revenues from the family tax cuts.

This movement was truly absurd. It was advertised as a “populist” uprising of people who reject tax hikes while in reality it was an orchestrated scheme by right-wing businessmen and politicians to smear the Obama administration. So as many donned the phrase, “Don’t tread on me,” in reference to the American fight against their colonial ruler, the power elite push their corporate agenda with Americans as their pawns.

As Jane Hamsher puts it, “Before any media covering these events accept the idea that this was just a grass roots outpouring of populist sentiment, they ought to take a look behind the curtain -- where Dick Armey is laughing and counting his cash.”

-mike

Reflection: Green Teen Community Garden Project

April Eighth. Two Thousand and Nine

In the Green Teen Community Garden, in their, in the works, Green house, I Helped my good friend Zenote with Green Teen Tenoya build a temperature regulator, swing open window. Tenoya is skinny, light as a feather, and likes building and architectural design. Her sole volunteering for this construction-nature of work over cleaning or gardening revealed her confidence in the defiance of societal gender norms. Right away it seems as if I had admired her for that. Zenote and I had her hammering, lifting, moving, and holding boards for us while we circular sawed them. She flowed so well with us. So cooperative and quiet, happily and genuinely interested. The clouds were dark and the weather was stormy. At one point it snowed snowflakes. Before I found gloves in the shed, my fingers became red frozen. Lengthily into the path of our project, Tenoya found her way into another garden project where constructively we observed her contributing, so we let her be and returned to work, to finish the window installation, and drill in green house structural frame supports. Within a short while, Zenote’s partner, Green Teen Coordinator, Bria White slyly asked us for our help to cut open a surprise birthday cake for our Green Teen Educator friend Robin. We lit up a double chocolate frosted with candles and song-ing for her, “Happy Birthday,” the Stevie Wonder version. We warmed her with hugs and positive vibrations. There was a true sense of love, happiness, and unity in the community when all this was happening. In need of a way to get Vassar, Zenote asked me if I could help him by riding with him to Vassar for the purposes of returning Bria’s Volvo wagon to the Family Partnerships Center. We shared a hemp waffle, avocado, coconut butter, and banana sandwich humoring about riding on bicycles locked into bike racks on top of cars. Zenote is a shining spirit. He genuinely thanked me for my help and presence. We hugged long before the fork on our path would have us traveling in different directions. Zenote left me with a feeling of true friendship, wanting to be nearer to him, especially through more Green Teen garden days. This project is a continuation of cultivating relationships whose seeds have been planted more than one year ago by now. I feel it is vitally, healthily, and meaningfully important to engage in projects and relations on the long-term rather than short-term level to allow for the various potential fruitions and blossoming to occur. Staying with Green Teen last spring, and in the summer at the Poughkeepsie Farm Project, to this springtime again, I can feel the interwoven-ness of connections that have evolutionarily developed, and are ever evolving. Returning Bria’s ride to FPC, I ran her keys up three flights of endless marble stairs to meet her at the Green Teen office room. Bria and Robin always greet you with some of the biggest smiles that you had ever seen. They told me that there was one piece of chocolate, chocolate cake with my name on it if I would like. “Of course!” Indulging, it was delicious, “They treat you well here,” is what my mind-heart said. I cleaned up the dishes and composted the fruit peels from inside my backpack. Bria was off to make a vegetable-ly dinner for Robin, so I walked her downstairs on our way out. She told me how good it was that Zenote and I connected that day. “He’s out of work, and up and down all the time lately.” She mentioned his down transforming into an up when we essentially reunited with each other out there. Zenote greatly inspires me. He is a hardest working construction worker and he is a spiritual, folklore, cultural, singer guitar player performer. I have witnessed him carry exhaustive amounts of food from his far away house down to the river to cook dinner for us with, he has told me great stories of him walking alone at night through the wild great distances, and I have crossed paths with him on his knees on the New Paltz sidewalks playing Spanish guitar with soul-force energy as if it were our last day here on earth, with two pizza slices that he had gotten, one for me, and one for my love Ella, “Hey, Come stay, sit down, eat, listen,” welcoming us he would say. And now he is in need of work, with out work, and he is helping with his hands, heart, and head to build a community garden green house for assessable to all, fresh local food access. “Is this what people are going to start doing exponentially more often, when the jobs keep vanishing, corporations poisoning our Mother and us in our food, and the scam of loans->money creation out of thin air->inflation->debt->slavery comes to an end?” Scarcity over needed resources often means war in the greed driven chase to control over them, but at the same time a common coming together, to make a better livable world possible, is another possible, possibility. This is how I see the relevance in Green Teen. There are too many oil petroleum stocks at Wall Street at stake, so the media is silent, but we are deeply listening and we an hear Mother Earth and all her creatures. They are asking us to live differently, so we, are voluntarily, adopting the lifestyle practices, of living simply so that others may simply live.

-anthony

Holocaust Rememberence Program

On April 16, the Praxivists attended Marist's annual Holocaust Remembrance Program featuring speaker Ed Lessing a Holocaust "escapee" from Holland. The Praxivists painted a mural of the "arc of justice" which is depicted in a few pictures below. Here are some other pictures of the event as well. -mike



Top left: Professor Mar discussing some of the principles of justice. Top right: The Praxis I/II class listening to Professor Mar. Middle left: A picture of the mural made by the Praxivists. Middle right: Mural painters Colleen, Anthony, and Mike. (Kelly not pictured). Bottom: Andy and Mike hamming it up a bit.

Reflection: Food not Bombs

Tonight was Praxivist’s third Food Not Bombs. Christian at Earth Goods donated it food and drink for it. Mar helped to her surprise with the refrigeration. Earlier at six o’clock, I brought twelve eggs over to Emily’s to cook them there. She shared her time, her kitchen, plastic cups, granola bars, and bread. We made twelve golden browned egg sandwiches. They finished miraculously just minutes before meeting up with Alanna, Sam, Sam’s friend, Lauren, her sister and their friend. The coordination of all this just fell smoothly, right into place. Everyone showed up timely; we had slightly enough room in the two cars, and gracefully, an array delicious nourishment diversity. We dove on roads, through signs, through lights, then parked the cars beside the Millhouse Panda. Opening of trunks unveiled our abundance. We are privileged. We are in abundance. What are implications onto others with this abundance that we are in? Others do not have because of our abundance. We know where the food is, and we know who is, and where they are without access. Therefore it is our duty, our moral obligation, and our niche to reduce suffering, to not waste and feed the hungry, empty bellies. Arms fully full carrying boxes and bags in between traffic; we survived crossing the highway-natured street together. On a brick ledge before the grass of the First Baptist Church, we laid out the spread. Pizza squares and circles, garlic knots, pasta, breads, chips, orange juice, raisins, yogurts, granola bars, and egg sandwiches. I went up to the church steps to embrace and welcome the community there to join us. They receive us kindly, friendly, and gratefully here. The unexpectancy of it all must feel like some kind of surprise party. Within minutes people were accumulating and congregating, uniting through meal sharing. Food brings us together. Sharing it, eating it together breaks down barriers. Barriers of society’s accepted versus society’s rejected, higher class versus lower class, have versus have not, color, gender, sexual orientation, and age. The solution to many of our problems, crises, and suffering exists in un-separation, in inter-relations, inter-dependence, and interconnectedness. From far away I noticed a familiar face from crossing paths before. It was O.T. Not “Old Timer,” but “Otis Thomas.” I love that name. He is fifty-seven, sleeps beneath the walkway over the Hudson in the trellis. “Who is that? Woody the woodpecker?” He once yelled out in a disturbed sleep from jackhammer thundering construction out there. O.T. is my favorite person to see on the streets. He is lively in his energy, always with a story. This time he told me that he has been collecting cans, hiding them like squirrels do their nuts, scattering his can, bottle stashes around Poughkeepsie. For breakfast he gets a bagel and a coffee from recycling them. How earth friendly I thought. O.T. is happy to live, but ready to die. He believes in the Lord Almighty, he believes in angels, “and there are devils, so look out!” is what wisdom he gave me. I saw the cosmos mystery in his eyes. He remembered me from the last time we crossed paths on the crossroads. “Cross-roads, you get it? I’ll see you at the cross roads.” He said, looking at me with eyes that knew, that had seen, and had met. We hugged in his departure, as he left to catch the bus. All men, we are brothers. In some way, in some form I will meet him again. Many who are homeless are college educated, were skilled dedicated culinary artists, professors, or servers on tropical cruise liners. Then outsourcing happened, 9-11 happened, the economy happened. Jobs are scarce and the times are hard. People shiver around nights in the dead of winter, in countless layers. The homeless shelter does not welcome all. Sometimes there are less beds the number of heads who are in need, so cocooned outside is where some sleep. How is one expected to stay sane, to keep cool, live rightfully in health, under such societal rejections, trials, and tribulations? In retrospect, I reflect and tonight was beautiful, insightful, sunny delightful. It is clear to see that we are welcomed and appreciated by this beloved community. The dynamic is angelic. I wish to be here more often. I intend to do this again. The energy is right, and all the people are nice. All the leftovers are donated to the shelter. What would have been wasted attains meaningful purpose. Beings with gifts, gems, and high potentials are in a homeless situation. Society deeming them waste, I can only rest my head and pray for the day, which like the food, that they to will be given the opportunities, recognition, and means to attain theirs to, their accepted, meaningful purposes.

-anthony

Reflection: Food not Bombs

Our first Food Not Bombs adventure of the semester. I was able to talk with two veterans, both homeless. One fought in the Vietnam War. I heard fragmented pieces of what he experienced: Holding together the torn arm of one of his dyeing friends. Warning another soldier not to pick a child up, because once the kid’s feet were off the ground, a bomb would be triggered. “I just knew how to blow stuff up,” he declared. He showed me his faded military picture he kept safe in his brown leather wallet. He was seated in uniform, with an American flag behind him. Land of the free? “So I guess it’s really me that should be thanking you guys,” I told him.

It is easy to ignore the homeless. To draw a line that separates you from them…the poor…the other. But in reality, we are all on the same side. I told one of the men that I am doing a project about homelessness in my social work class. “What would you like me to tell them about the homeless population?” I asked. “Just that they know that we are the same as them. We are smart people,” he replied.

-Sam

The Civil Disobedience of Henry David Thoreau Blossoming Gandhi-an Satyagraha

Coined by Gandhi in Africa, to describe the non-violent, civil disobedient, independence movement in India, “Satyagraha” is truth-force. Seeking and teaching. The soul-force. Spirit invisible. Roots of the fruits are self-discipline, self-control, and self-purification. Con-version not co-ercion . Transformation and Liberation… all of wrongdoers. “Satyagrahi’s” are fearless lovers. Self-suffer-ers and self-sacrifice-ers. Evil eradicators. Community servers and unjust authority resisters.

In the words of Gandhi…”Why, of course I read Thoreau.” “I actually took the name of my movement from Thoreau’s essay, ‘On the Duty of Civil Disobedience.’

Thoreau and Gandhi… similar-ly rejected, and protested, and criticized interpretations of the Hindu Bible, The Gita, as a means for violence justification. Reading them often, in prison, in his newspaper, called Indian Opinion, Thoreau’s words spoke deeply to Gandhi. Impressively. Enormously. Inspirationally. Thoreau was one who also entered jail willingly, “for the sake of his principles and suffering humanity.” Thoreau philosophized that the true place for a just man is also in prison, under a government, which imprisons unjustly. Divinely, it is our duty, to resist against oppression, slavery and robbery. We should all realize this responsibility, then pledge ourselves independently. Let us not have, any longer, such evil-ous machinery.

Gandhi teaches us that being in jail is “of one’s good fortune” and in good name of one’s country and one’s religion. Going to jail is a season, for undergoing suffering, a place for fasting. For Reading, and writing. Meditation and reflection. Ultimate happiness in privation. Opportunistically a time for the purpose of perceiving the machine from a different perception.

For Gandhi, Henri. David Thorreau was a man who’s beliefs he practiced, guided by his consciousness, who confirmed the effectiveness, of societal and governmental defiance, non-violence, and non-cooperative, unjust law resistant, civil, disobedience. Thoreau was Gandhi’s encouragement, his nourish-ment for the move-ment, for the Salt March, that in flower-nature blossom, manifested… India’s Independence.