What to do: Five simple ideas

What to do: Five simple ideas that can bring about revolution.

The state of the nation seems to grow more desperate with each new headline. Honest republicans will admit that George W. Bush landed in the White House under dubious circumstances. Anyone to the left of what used to be the centerline in this country has been aghast at the administration's pullout of the Kyoto protocols, the tax breaks for the wealthy, the continued plundering of third world economies and environments for the benefit of the corporate elite, the plundering of first world economies and environments for the benefit of the corporate elite and a blind adherence to a foreign policy strategy that pushes war and empire at the expense of this nation's security and indeed at the expense of the world's sanity.

The Bush administration is gaining amazing power through its projection of fear across the nation. Terrorists have taken center stage among a long history of bogeymen that have continued to batter the American psyche. But the supposed terrorist threats are not the only source of fear. With passage of the Patriot Act and the Homeland Security Bill one cannot but help wonder how much of the script the current administration has borrowed from George Orwell's "1984". Many on the left grow more apprehensive with each vote of congress as our constitutional rights evaporate under the hazy doublespeak promise of increased security.

And because the media has been doing its supposed 'patriotic duty' in the post-9/11 era, the biggest power grab I have yet to witness in my lifetime is taking place in plain sight of the whole country without so much as a whimper from the mainstream media. The thought police have eliminated even the idea of tough questions from the media. The kid gloves are on. Indeed the media have pulled up a chair and are listening obediently to stories of goats while the military fails to respond to a known and recognized threat of suicide airplanes. The media are reporting obediently about snipers and shoe bombers while the powers that be steer this nation straight down a course of suicidal economic policies known as neoliberal globalization.

A bumper sticker has shown up recently that sums it up: "If you're not outraged then you're not paying attention." Those paying attention shudder at the frightening turn that politics has taken over the past two years, or is it two decades. Unfortunately there are far too many who are not paying attention.

And thus the question: what to do? The Congress, the White House, the Supreme Court, the media are all controlled by a power-elite that is anything but democracy "by the people, for the people." It is more than evident that we the people either fix this mess the hard way or it doesn't get fixed at all.

Indeed history tells us that the hard way is the only way. When Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus on December 1, 1955 the powers that be did not just excuse themselves for their lack of understanding and amend their racist laws out of good will. Ms. Park's stand was just the beginning of a long bus boycott. Blacks in Montgomery took to the streets and walked to work, showing that they had the power to lay claim to the justice that they deserved. With the example of Mahatma Gandhi and with the guidance of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. the people of Montgomery embodied the change that they wished upon themselves through nonviolent civil disobedience. Even in the face of overwhelming political and economic power they brought about justice because their disobedience was compassionate and their cause was righteous.

We must yet again show that we have the power to bring about justice. This power must come collectively from our integrated individual actions. These actions must embody the vision of a world in which life is valued over profit. Greed and violence must give way to justice and peace. We have all imagined a world in which compassion, integrity and wisdom join forces to bring about a global society at peace with itself. It is simply our task to make that vision a reality.

Let us start with these five simple ideas.

1)Compassion not greed.
2)Community not corporation.
3)Walk not drive.
4)Think not watch.
5)Democracy.

1) Compassion not greed.

We are taught from early childhood to treat our brothers and sisters with compassion. Yet somewhere on the road through adolescence our culture teaches us that we must put greed before compassion if we are to be successful in this life. We learn of the invisible hand of capitalism that is supposed to steer the world toward greater good if only we all look out for our own self interest. It is only when we grow older and wiser that we realize that in surrendering to greed we let people like Dick Cheney determine our world. We see that he and his secret energy task force are secretly shaping our energy policy and thus our economic policy. We see that the secret handshakes of those task force members have become the invisible hands of capitalism that shape our future.

Each individual must step away from the short-sighted pretense of greedy self interest and realize that one's personal well-being and the well-being of the world are one. The wisdom of this idea is a differentiating mark of a mature society. The time for our society to step away from adolescence and into adulthood is now.

A society that embraces compassion before profit is a society that cares for its people. Let us place the value of our society's health care over the value of the car that we drive. Let us see that everyone has enough food to eat and a shelter over their head before anyone gets to grab for fancy toys or a mansion in a gated community.

Let us measure the health and wealth of our communities by the quality of the relationships between people within those communities. A society that embraces compassion knows that to be human is so much more than merely to be a consumer. A compassionate society realizes that there is a tremendous payoff for every person in a community when each person in the community is able to live with dignity and respect.

2) Community not corporation.

A healthy community relies upon a healthy economy. The health of an economy is determined by the buying and working habits of its citizens.

The modern United States economy is built upon a framework of corporations. The typical modern American citizen does the vast majority of his or her economic activity with giant corporations. Yet corporations by definition epitomizegreed. A corporation is after all an institution that takes value from a worker and gives it to a person who does no work. We are a nation that has come to despise the welfare recipient because he or she does no work for his or her money. Yet we hold in high regard the corporate stockholder who does no work for his or her money.

Money is power in our economy. Those who have money have the power to make decisions about how that money is spent. We commonly exchange this money and power in one of two ways, either through the buying and selling of goods or through the exchange of labor for money. Thus each time we choose to spend money or to work we are also choosing with whom we exchange money and thus power. We can either choose to exchange money with people within our own community, in which case all of that money gets recycled back to the people around us, or we can choose to exchange money with a corporation, in which case a certain portion of each transaction leaves the community going instead to the stockholders and the executives of that corporation, most of whom do not live in our community.

To the extent that our money leaves our community, our power leaves our community. This dynamic is most readily seen in third world countries where corporations have set up free trade zones in which they get labor extremely cheaply but contribute very little to the health of the local community. In these communities the standard of living is very low because all of the work is contributing to the bottom line of the absentee-owned corporation. Money leaves the community very quickly, resulting in very little support of schools or health care systems or the elderly or the arts. This exploitive dynamic is magnified when the production of the corporation's product involves the destruction of the local environment. The absentee-owned corporation reaps the profit from the often toxic destruction of local communities yet does not have to live with or pay for the resulting dangerous environment.

A healthy economy is one in which money and thus power stays within the community and is circulated over and over again. It is time to build healthy and powerful local economies based upon a framework of local businesses and organizations. Let us give our money to businesses that will work with us to support the local environment and will provide comprehensive health care, good quality education and other needed services in our communities.

Sociologist Helena Norberg-Hodge has stated that today's military-industrial complex could not even exist if the people of this country were to all receive their food from local growers and producers. The issue of supporting local community agriculture is itself pivotal enough to drive the nature of our entire economy and thus the nature of our national political policy. Community centered economies such as the local food economy that Helena Norberg-Hodge envisions will exist when each one of us decides to spend our money in and contribute our labor to our local community.


3)Walk not drive.

One only has to look at the top of the Fortune 500 list to see the significance of automobile transportation on America's corporate economy. Exxon Mobil is number two on the list, followed by General Motors and Ford Motor at three and four respectively.

One has only to list the private careers of the top officials in today's government to realize the influence of the economics of oil on this country's power elite. George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Condoleza Rice are but the most notable government figures to come from energy corporations.

One has only to step outside one's own home to see the pervasive involvement of the automobile in the lives of most people in this country. Many people in this country will not even buy a gallon of milk without driving their car.

And yet we rarely stop to assess much less honestly debate the real impact of all of this driving on our lives. The potentially catastrophic issue of global warming has not been openly and honestly debated in the American public arena. The Bush administration pulled out of the Kyoto protocols as soon as it assumed power without a clear discussion of the merits of the action. The Cheney energy task force has kept its documents secret from the American public. We are told that North Korea has a much greater capability of producing and deploying weapons of mass destruction than Iraq yet our government is pushing for a supposed preemptive attack against the oil rich nation of Iraq. Why is it that the invasion of Iraq is never debated in terms of this country's energy policy? Our invasion of Afghanistan was similarly touted as part of the war on terrorism. Almost completely ignored in that debate was the fact that the conquest of Afghanistan gave the green light to the construction of an oil pipeline across that country that will give United States and British energy corporations access to the rich oil reserves in the Caspian Sea region.

We must stop pretending that our oil consumption is without great costs to the world and thus to ourselves. We must realize that each dollar that is spent at the gas pump is a dollar in support of our destructive energy and foreign policy. It is time to stop waiting for those in power to act against their private interests to bring about a sane energy policy. It is time to start voting with our dollars and bring about sane policy through massive action at the consumer level. It is time to ween ourselves from the automobile, time to embrace more humble means of transportation: walking, biking, public transportation.

4) Think not watch.

An overwhelming majority of today's media market is controlled by just a handful of corporations. In many cases the same corporation that has interests in the military industrial complex has control of our media channels. We need to stop pretending that these media sources are acting in our best interest. They are not.

It is time to step away from the influence of corporate media. It is time to turn off the television, to stop listening to corporate sponsored radio news (including National Public Radio). It is time for every person to look critically at their news sources and to evaluate the willingness of those sources to give accurate and independent coverage of the issues important to our communities. The television simply is not telling the truth. It is time for us to think for ourselves.

The Bush administration would not have the power it has today if our media were truly a democratic media. George W. Bush would not have been able to steal the 2000 presidential election. An independent media would not have let James Baker spin the national debate the way he did in getting the U. S. public to believe that the votes were fairly counted in Florida. An independent media would have reported in a timely manner on Katherine Harris' and Jeb Bush's roles in taking many minority voters off of the voter roles, a story that was broken in England much earlier than it became known here in the states, and that still has not received widespread coverage. Finally the Supreme Court would not have dared to pass such a corrupt ruling as it did in Bush v. Gore. Such faulty reasoning would simply not have survived in an environment where the media is democratic.

The Bush administration would not be pushing their current agenda of war if our media were democratic. A democratic media would have asked the questions that many private citizens are asking about the administration's involvement in the attacks of 9-11. Questions such as: Why were standard operating procedures violated and no military jets went to intercept the attacking airliners? Why were government officials talking before and as the attacks were taking place to the man that ordered $100,000 be sent to Mohammed Atta, a supposed lead hijacker? Why did the secret service not wisk President Bush away from his publicized event as soon as they realized that an attack was taking place? Did they have special knowledge assuring that he would not be a target? Why did the administration state that they did not suspect such an attack would take place when in fact they had taken precautions against precisely such a scenario
in Genoa Italy within a year prior to 9-11? Certainly an independent media would consider and air these important questions. And in such a democratic atmosphere the people of this nation would have demanded that these questions be answered before consenting to kill thousands of people in Afghanistan in response to the terrorist attacks.

I have heard it said by a foreigner to this nation that the mind control in this country is very strong. One only has to look at Europe where hundreds of thousands if not over a million people have marched in the streets to protest the war that the United States government would like to wage against Iraq. Yet the largest march as of early January, 2003 in this country has only reached maybe a couple of hundred thousand people in size. We are the ones who should be sending millions upon millions to the streets to protest the corrupt warmongering policies of our government.

We must realize that our media has enourmous power over the thoughts and attitudes of the people of this country. We must strive to bring back independenet media. We must strive to diversify, not consolidate our current media options. We must again vote with our actions and stop watching, listening to and supporting corporate media.

5) Democracy.

The United States of America was founded upon the ideas of democracy, that human beings are born with certain inalienable rights, that government rule should be derived from the power of the people and should carry out the will of the people, that it is the right of people to abolish tyrannical governments.

While we still pride ourselves on having elections that decide our governing officials, one does not have to dig very deeply to see how flawed our system of democracy has become. Throughout our systems of government it is readily apparent that those with the real power in our country are the corporations who through their financing of our elections see to it that corporate friendly candidates have all of the benefits of running well-funded campaigns.

Remember that one of the motivating factors in the creation of this nation two centuries ago was the backlash to the power of the East India Company. How ironic that corporations today have established the right of
personhood under our constitution. Corporations have, despite all of its safeguards, gained much of the power that the constitution was expressly designed to thwart.

Corporations supposedly established the right to personhood via the Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad Supreme Court case of 1886. What is peculiar about the Santa Clara case is that the justices, in making their decision, took deliberate care to avoid the issue of corporate personhood. They were very clear in their decision. They decided the case upon a narrower scope of law and stayed away from the question of whether corporations have the same rights as people. It is only in the 'head notes' of the case, written and released by the court reporter some time after the case was decided, that there is a quote of the chief justice stating that it was the opinion of the justices that corporations deserved the same rights as persons under the Fourteenth amendment. (Thom Hartmann covers this subject very well in his book "Unequal Protection," published by Rodale, 2002.) Thus while the justices expressly stated that they did not wish to decide the issue of corporate personhood in the case, the Santa Clara case is the one that is cited when corporations claim their rights as persons.

This turn of judicial events has proven quite profitable for corporations and quite devestating for human beings. Campaign election laws, union busting practices, the evisceration of states' abilities to control corporations, environmental destruction and global trade issues are but a few of the arenas in which corporations have assumed the rights of human beings under the United States constitution, opening the door to abuse of human rights in pursuit of corporate profits.

It is time for human beings in this country to take back democracy from the corporations. We must declare that corporations are not persons and follow through on that declaration. We must demand real campaign finance election reform and see to it that our governmental officials are representatives of we the human people. We must stop assuming that our system of government works just because we go to the ballot box every other year. We must fill the streets when injustice reigns. We must start taking part in local government, taking a personal stake in the passage of laws and the allocation of funds. We must stop relying on the media to carry on the political debate and start becoming the debate ourselves. We must stop pretending that we live in a democracy and start acting like we want a democracy.

In looking over these five simple steps that I propose one sees a common thread. Human beings and communities must take back their rights to determine the nature of the world around them. This will occur when people stop doing business with corporations, when people stop paying attention to the corporate media and in the end when people stop believing in the corrupt corporate paradigm of greed and neoliberal capitalism. Every major religion warns against greed. It is time that we heed this wisdom.

Let us follow in the footsteps of Gandhi and King. Let us realize that if we want to see a revolution then we must be the revolution. Let us each start individually with these five steps: Compassion not greed, community not corporation, walk not drive, think not watch and democracy. If each one of us finds our own way to make incremental headway on each of these ideas then we can collectively take the power away from the corporate elite and make a change in our world.

But let us not insist that we change everything today. For this would be impossible, would only lead to our feeling helpless and result in our giving up. Let us instead look at our own habits one at a time and make gradual changes. Let us examine the issue of greed one action at a time so that we begin to know intimately what it is to be compassionate. Let us make the economic switch from corporation to community one purchase at a time. There are certain necessities that we simply cannot obtain from our own communities simply because of the recently overwhelming influence of corporate globalization. Let us change our purchasing habits as appropriate and allow the pressure of our purchases and the voice of our activism to bring about the long term change we wish to see. If we take an average of fifteen car trips a week right now then let us reduce that down to fourteen or ten trips a week in the near future. Change truly takes time. If we allow ourselves to change gradually we will indeed see that change. If we allow the world to change gradually we will indeed see that change.

I was struck by a statistic today. In Botswana forty-five percent of the people are infected with HIV. That is a truly staggering statistic. What is more infuriating to me is that in this country we pretend that it is not our problem.

If we learn one thing from the attacks of 9-11 let us learn that the world's problems are our problems. The power elite in this country are very aware that the world's problems are knocking at their doorsteps. That is why they are busy consolodating power and building fortresses and shadow governments that will protect them as the world disintigrates under their globalization paradigm into greedy and needy chaos. The rest of us must realize that this power grab is happening. We must not pretend that we can ignore it.

We must instead take it upon ourselves to see that another paradigm of existence rises up on this planet, a paradigm that throws greed out with the bathwater, trusts in the goodness of people and celebrates the ability of communities to look out for their own well being. We must promote a paradigm that understands that each individual action that each one of us takes does influence the reality of the planet and that each one of us has a solemn responsibility to take care of our world.

Human beings instinctively show compassion for each other. Human beings also have an instinct for survival. Popular United States culture teaches us that these two instincts naturally work against each other. We must shed this adolescent belief and trust that these two instincts struggle in concert with each other. We must listen as our instincts of compassion and survival call out for a world in which caring, integrity and wisdom join forces to bring about a global society at peace with itself.

Let us understand that our world will only change when we change. Let us take responsibility and get started. It is that simple.