In today’s edition of Planet Waves FM, I am joined by the mayor of Kingston, NY — Shayne Gallo. This is not your hard-hitting kind of interview; rather, it’s a conversation about civics: being involved in society.
We start with a formal definition of what that means, the one you may have read in the Boy Scout Handbook, and then start to account for how weird the world is right now, and how much counts for involvement, and why it’s so important right now for both individuals and society. Note — the interview is in stereo, so if you cannot hear one channel, make sure you have both speakers plugged in or put your system onto mono.
I introduce the program with Venus stationing direct Wednesday at 11:06 am EDT. This has been the most eventful Venus retrograde since the dinosaurs were around. It’s included two eclipses, the transit of Venus, Uranus square Pluto, Saturn opposite Eris, Jupiter square Neptune (all slow moving aspects), along with the solstice and a good bit else. All of that, contained within the time structure of Venus retrograde.
On Wednesday that energy releases, and we get to see what else was behind the veil. One thing coming down the pike is the decision on the health care reform act of late 2010. That is expected Thursday and we’re getting ready to assemble the pieces of that story, come what may. In any event this is going to be an historic decision with many implications and a real test of the functioning of our government.
We go without a music break this week however — I am looking for a music editor to help coordinate that part of the program, and to evolve a spinoff indie music hour. Write to me if that turns you on.
Your program will appear on iTunes and the Old Player on Wednesday morning.
With love,
Planet Waves FM is presented without commercial interruption. We are in actual fact sponsored by your product purchases (see options on the right) and your subscriptions to Planet Waves. If you like Planet Waves FM, you will love being a subscriber for two reasons — how amazing our service is, and because if you learn and grow from being here, it feels really good to be contributing your energy to what we’re doing.
Coming through now fully. don’t know what the problem was. Thanks.
and while appropriate to keep the specifics off-PW-line —
An add to Mysti’s Jump Up and Celebrate Us moment: a larger than life Thank You to our PW community and to Eric for giving us Space to connect and Create Larger than we otherwise could.
This IS the good side of our Macro-Connectedness, yes?
Love, Light, Blessings and huge Thanks to all of you – to all of Us – here at PW!
Mystes, girl, you got the M-power.
Thanks for shakin’-n-bakin’ this one!
🙂
BR — note above: “Note — the interview is in stereo, so if you cannot hear one channel, make sure you have both speakers plugged in or put your system onto mono.”
Well, Toto, seems like we’re not in Chinatown anymore.
PW’ers just raised $500 for aword’s son’s housing deposit. We did it, made pixels and megabytes and bandwidth turn into helping a kid find his path.
(Was someone saying something about the Net not dealing with the Real World?)
Yay, us!
M-state
***
**
*
BR, Podcast was loud and crisp and clear for me. Maybe it’s something as simple as balance on your speakers? Do try to download it again. It’s one of Eric’s really great discussions.
JannKinz
I wonder why I couldn’t hear a word the mayor said. You come through loud and clear, Eric. Barely an echo of the mayors voice, however, for me.. I am really happy you are covering this topic of local citizen involvement. Thank you as always.
Eric, Thank you for the interview with Mayor Shayne. What a refreshing voice in the political arena. I look forward to more from him – and not just at Planet Waves. We need more like him to be involved. And, as the conversation brought out: we need more people to be involved, especially young people. Awareness, consciousness, selflessness -certainly wasn’t much that was left out of that great conversation.
I think that part of the role and purpose of us “dysfunctionally content old farts” is to mentor civic involvement, with a sense of history (so as to not repeat it), to bring ideas from the Uranus Pluto conjunction in Virgo to the present and empower younger people with their skills to move forward. Or so I tell myself each day, to keep from running and hiding.
Thanks to Mayor Shayne as well.
JannKinz
Wow! Thank you for bringing Mayor Gallo on, it’s very interesting to hear his take on everything going on in the world today.
I’m still struggling with the issue of, what do we DO. The mayor spoke alot about influencing young people as a way to save our culture and country, but right now – it feels like that’s going to be too late, like there’s not going to be anything left to save by the time they grow up.
I don’t understand (and was hoping the mayor might address) how we, as individuals, can have an effect on the current government when it seems to be so far out of control and so deeply screwed up. I think people used to believe the remedy was “vote the bad guys out”, but what do you do when there don’t seem to be any good guys left (or any that are willing to run for national office)? What do you do when faced with an election where none of the choices seem good, when you’re forced to chose the lesser of two evils?
I suspect part of the answer lies in “community”, in the sense of organizing people to protest as a larger group. But, how do you do that when (as you mentioned) many people just don’t care, and many people (including me!) have quite a bit of fear around standing up to the government (if they can sexually assault just for buying a boarding pass on the plane, what can they do to you for actually daring to protest?). How do you do that when the government officials really don’t care about protests and people, but only about getting more money for their next campaign?
And, for the record, it sounds like Mayor Gallo IS one of the good guys (thank you Mayor Gallo). I love that he talked about how he really considers how his decisions are going to effect people.
My question for him would be: what things that people are most effective in getting your attention, or in influencing you? For example, would you rather someone organize a petition and get thousands of signatures, or research and send you detailed information to persuade you on an issue? Do peaceful protests get noticed and influence you, or is a storm of angry calls to your office a better plan? Or is there something else? What things can ordinary people do that actually influence your thinking and decisions on an issue?
Oh! And on that note – Eric, have you ever considered starting a forum for your website? You do such an amazing job of bringing up all kinds of issues, it would be great to have a place to start serious discussions of how to get involved, how to solve different issues, and what would our ideal world look like. I haven’t really found any other good place to discuss this stuff (though I’m very open to suggestions.)
Thanks!