(con't) I think my critical realizations from all that were, first, THAT'S MOSTLY ALL I CAN DO, i.e. my influence extends to my home, my friends, and what I can touch; and second, the personal is political. In carefully choosing my path, I can effect larger change by adding the right drops to the right buckets every single day, and importantly, I think that this is now more useful than signing petitions and yelling online and voting and campaigning. I don't think they're mutually exclusive, mind you, nor that people should stop doing those things or that they're wasting their time -- just that our current political/governmental system is so broken that for me it's really more useful to the entire planet to be mindful of how I live my own life.
I look forward to what's coming. It may be violent and ugly -- the Tea Party reminds me of this very real possibility -- but I am hopeful that, especially in Cascadia, we'll end up with a system where people can live their lives in a peaceable way and much more sustainably than most of us do now. Hopefully many of us will end up, or our children will end up, much more connected to nature and the food cycles and life cycles than we are now, even if we live in the city. The ideas of permaculture interest me a great deal.
Regarding the police, I was at the action at Jamison Square which happened here after you wrote your message. A lot of OWS people are hyperventilating about the "horrifying brutality" of the Portland Police, which just makes it clear that they have never seen social unrest on any kind of scale. While I do not applaud the cops merely for refraining from cracking heads, and while I favor vast increases in police oversight and generally don't trust them further than I can throw them, I have not been afraid to publicly point out that the Portland Police did their jobs the way they should have and did not violate my personal high standards of police conduct. Further, I saw some fairly shameful behavior from some of the more aggressive demonstrators which was frankly unwarranted -- and they didn't even throw rocks or bottles.
I look forward to what's coming. It may be violent and ugly -- the Tea Party reminds me of this very real possibility -- but I am hopeful that, especially in Cascadia, we'll end up with a system where people can live their lives in a peaceable way and much more sustainably than most of us do now. Hopefully many of us will end up, or our children will end up, much more connected to nature and the food cycles and life cycles than we are now, even if we live in the city. The ideas of permaculture interest me a great deal.
Regarding the police, I was at the action at Jamison Square which happened here after you wrote your message. A lot of OWS people are hyperventilating about the "horrifying brutality" of the Portland Police, which just makes it clear that they have never seen social unrest on any kind of scale. While I do not applaud the cops merely for refraining from cracking heads, and while I favor vast increases in police oversight and generally don't trust them further than I can throw them, I have not been afraid to publicly point out that the Portland Police did their jobs the way they should have and did not violate my personal high standards of police conduct. Further, I saw some fairly shameful behavior from some of the more aggressive demonstrators which was frankly unwarranted -- and they didn't even throw rocks or bottles.
There's usually truth on both sides.
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