Dear Friend and Reader:
Here is an interesting bit my friend Tracy dug out of the universe.
Today’s eclipse of the Moon was at 20+ Leo; the last time there was an eclipse in that degree, was 19 years ago to the day, on Feb. 9, 1990. Nelson Mandela’s release was announced on Feb. 10, 1990 and he was released on the 11th. This has obvious relevance to Barack Obama now. I suggested in a recent essay that there was a time when a dark man took over as king and healed everyone; this would be Nelson.
Throughout my childhood, knowing he had tuberculosis, I wondered if he would ever see the day when he would be let off of his prison-island. It never occurred to me that he would be president of South Africa.
For those too young to remember or so old they have forgotten, South Africa’s apartheid system was for decades one of the blights on the world conscience. It was a legally sanctinoed system of absolute segregation of “blacks” and “whites,” and as part of this program, Mandela, the black leader, was imprisoned for decades. It took a global movement of cities, towns, companies and institutions withdrawing their investments from companies that so much as did business with South Africa to end that system.
This movement was called divestment. It was like a mass, populist economic blockade. For example, in the mid-1980s, student protests at the State University of New York (SUNY) forced the system’s Board of Trustees to divest. This was one of the truly great student victories in SUNY history, led by then-president of the statewide student association Jane F. McAlevey.
Current political events, also focused on a black leader, seem to be arriving with a demand to end a form of economic apartheid where a minority class of Caucasian cronies have plenty of everything, and the rest of us who are wondering how we’re going to pay basic medical bills. There are millions of black men in jail in the United States, far disproportionate to the population and in obvious exclusion of all the Wall Street crime that has been going down lately, and for that matter, forever.
While it seems impossible that we could ever get bankers to give up their half-million dollar bonuses and chauffered Mercedes, one thing to remember is that the rear guard will hold on until it is flushed out of its last lavish corner, never conceding that it did anything wrong. Therefore it seems prudent to keep the heat on as high as we can, even with the propane running low.
Yours & truly,
Sun /Chiron/ Neptune / North Node constellation for a whole generation born in early fifties: what does that mean? Opposite that moon.
Also: the Wall St boys still award themselves high amounts…111 million for 15 JPM executives. 7 million per person, for the year. The numbers in this game are so beyond beyond. I want normal capitalism back.
Hi Eric. . .Would you write a piece on Nelson Mandela’s birth chart? He was born July 18, 1918 in Umtaba, South Africa. I enjoyed this article very much because it made me aware of the similarities between the apartheid government and what has happened here in the U.S. I didn’t know that he had TB either.
e:
Thanks for this. It reminds me of what kind of energy we had to create to get this to happen. And so on now for the injustice that remains on the planet, not the least of which socio-economic, and which crosses races, ages and genders.