By Judith Gayle | Political Waves
There’s a revolution brewing and we all own a piece of it. That’s because we collectively created the conditions that have proven so catastrophic to a nation struggling with poverty and joblessness, growing in rancor and division. Slowly but surely, as the trappings of daily life we’ve depended upon shift and dissolve, we’re changing our minds about how we want life to look. What’s political about that — a new iteration of human experience dropping down in the birth canal, positioning for entry — is how to go about reconfiguring the legal and ethical limits of government. We’re not there yet, but we can feel the waves of movement pushing us along.
All creatures eventually outgrow who they have been and transition into something else: we call that evolution. We are poised on an evolution of consciousness, letting go of what used to serve us to allow for a new sociopolitical understanding. The channelers have it that we’re going to accomplish this shift of Ages without taking the world’s population down to scratch, as has evidently happened in epochs past. With climate change looming, one might wonder about our ability to survive, but still, there is an indefinable “something” that pushes back fear and seems to inform this period from deep within the soul.
What is new is coming into view, slowly shaping itself in our mind’s eye and encouraging us to keep our hearts open as it reveals itself. What is old and known is no longer useful to us. We’re moving past the old way of perceiving things, reconsidering the old ways of doing things. Let’s be sure to remember what we’re being called to do. Let’s remember that “the way we’ve always done it” is yesterday’s news. We must walk a high wire between the pragmatics that drive us forward and the idealism that inspires us. We must make this a spiritual endeavor if we are to have the needed spiritual result for which our hearts thirst.
Because of the astrology tying this period to the dramatic struggles and cultural revolution of the 1960s, we have looked to the Tea Party as this season’s version of the hippie. Suddenly appearing last summer like a new and unexpected brand of conservative, the t-evangelicals were sold as a populist movement, which they aren’t, independent of the Republican party, which they aren’t. They are neither populist nor independent, but are regressive to the point of anachronism and express their collective outrage to the point of psychopathy. The Baggers have hostility all sewn up, gun-carrying revolutionaries willing to break with the republic as currently drawn. Compare them, if you will, to the Wall Street occupiers who have a library, a newspaper, and the likes of Deepak Chopra leading protesters in meditation.
There is a basic and decisive difference between the way a conservative and a progressive see the world. Let me give it to you, short form: conservatives are all about property rights while progressives value human rights. It comes down to people vs. property. Heart vs. head (wallet.) The founders would have understood these differences, which are neither Republican nor Democrat but older and more defining of consciousness than of politics. This is the difference between Jeffersonian politics designed to aid and protect the commonwealth and Federalism’s defense of states’ rights and the might of privilege (property owners.)
Perhaps that’s why the loud and furious Tea Party hasn’t shown up to shake a fist at Wall Street, or why Herman Cain, front-runner in at least one presidential poll, has called the occupation “un-American.” The right seems to think that this protest against unscrupulous banksters and fraudulent finance is an attack on capitalism itself, and they’re partly correct: it’s an attack on rogue capitalism that takes no responsibility for its actions nor counts the human cost of its fraud. It’s a cry against the financial victimization of the public that began well before the Enron era and continues today as a self-indulgent explosion of fiscal recklessness. The arrogant traders and speculators looking down on the crowd in Liberty Plaza are the ones who must now be called to pay the piper.
The voice of protest will only become more demanding, despite Bloomberg’s police presence. This is a growing movement. Our lethargy has been broken by the success of the occupiers. As the movement spreads, it is welcomed by those who consider themselves among the 99% whose interests are not represented by Wall Street, and let’s face it — that’s just about everybody. In Los Angeles, mayor Antonio Villaraigosa handed out rain ponchos to the group that has been camped out at the city offices for several days. Villaraigosa backs the protest, as do seven of 15 city council members who supported a resolution for the protest as “a peaceful and vibrant exercise in First Amendment rights.”
Maybe the Baggers aren’t the new version of hippie after all. Maybe the new social disrupter is the young and disenchanted holding a college degree, unable to find a job, quietly buoyed by those who remember the majesty of flower-power. Maybe the corporate-busters of this period will be the underappreciated veterans and overextended householders, union workers and school teachers, fire-fighters and airline pilots, encouraged by the virtual march of those who support them, projected onto the side of a building.
Ultimately, this wrangle between Dem and Pubs isn’t really political, it’s emblematic of the divisions of human consciousness. Conservatives do not want big government to come between them and their money. Progressives simply want their government — an organizational instrument to assess public needs and provide for the national good with public funding — to be competent, ethical and unbiased. A nation of 300 million people simply can’t sustain itself with minimal government and a capitalistic wet-dream of privatization; those days are long gone, if they ever existed.
If you are NOT part of the 99% protesting what big money and power have accomplished in the last 40 years, you are backing the wrong horse and denying your own good. We should all, to borrow a phrase from MSNBC’s Jason Likins, object to “bought government.” And it must be evident to everyone by now that unless we are able to get money out of government, we will not be able to break the momentum of greed that has us in a stranglehold. That’s the finish line, far from sight but acknowledged as the ultimate goal. When the piggy bank is no longer considered the highest power in the land, we will have accomplished our shift.
Balancing precariously on this high wire, we need to practice our activism with a serious intention for loving interaction and mature understanding. It’s difficult to face hostility and still keep our peace, but we must try. It’s harder still to proceed without an enemy, but if we do not stop that kind of thinking, we are destined to repeat this process again and again. Should you wish to explore that concept further, I recommend reading The Big Picture: A 40-Year Scan of the Right-Wing Corporate Takeover of America, an article by Don Hazen and Colin Greer, especially the last few paragraphs, where Greer discusses how his need for political purity wounded and limited the very movement he nurtured. I see us repeating that now, on both the left and right, and it worries me. We need to be bigger.
We have allowed our idealism to grow flabby, our ethics to flag and fail. Far too many of us no longer love justice in this country, nor do we attempt to hide our selfishness or cruelty. For too long we allowed ourselves to go along to get along, ignoring the growing disparities that divided us. Now the progressives are sandwiched between the gun-toting Baggers on one side and the arrogant upper class on the other, squeezed until our voices can be heard howling up the canyons of New York’s most expensive real estate. This situation can no longer endure, and it’s up to us to change it. We are bigger than this challenge. We’re wire walkers.
We have not come so far to face one another as we did at the Democratic Convention in ’68, bloodied and bruised. The revolution must look different, feel different, be different. Neale Donald Walsh tells us, in his book The Storm Before The Calm, that this is “a revolution in the mind. It is our thinking we must change.” Following the dictates of our heart, we must bring our courage to this uprising to face what Van Jones calls “the dream-killers on Wall Street.” Who knew this end-game would be about the most mundane of human emotions: greed? This is a clash, says Jones, between “the most selfish people in America, and the most selfless.” This really isn’t political, of course. It’s a spiritual throw-down with our most ego-centered fear and desire in order to create ourselves anew.
We may not feel we’ve done this before, not the exact thing we’re called upon to do now, but we can’t sit this one out, can we? Somewhere, sometime, we’ve walked this wire before. Even if we’re not sure what to do next, intuition will push us along as we put one foot in front of the other. I urge you to visit Van Jones and listen to his call for sane reclamation of the American Dream. I urge you to keep a positive vision, let go of any old thinking that is hindering your progress, and keep yourself from the vanity of creating an enemy. I urge you to love more, keep courage, and forget what you think you know: your heart will do the rest.
Thank you writing this article, I feel that the occupy movement has a lot of potential to catalyse some much needed transformation and I am excited to see where this takes us.
I would like to challenge all of us to practice deeper realizations of your charge to: “love more, keep courage, and forget what you think you know: your heart will do the rest.”
Particularly when it comes too the grass roots level of the Tea Party.
I moved from the Pacific North West to rural Louisiana a year ago. While my political philosophies are much more inline with the PNW I am constantly surprised at how much *more* we have in common than not.
In my experience, the grass roots level (and this is an important distinction) of the Tea Party have a lot of the same frustrations and share a lot of the same grievances as the rest of the country. Unfortunately, and the occupy movement can learn a lot from this, the energy of the Tea Party was co-opted to advance the political and financial agendas of the status quo.
Corporate media uses labels to disenfranchise legitimate anger and grievances. If the (grass roots) Tea Party can be labeled as just a bunch of “gun-toting, money hungry racists” than their potential to upset the status quo is effectively neutralized.
Same goes for the corporate media trying to find and pin labels on the Occupy movement.
Every single person is worthy of our love, compassion, and respect. All of us suffer from our fears. To label anyone as “them” or “other” and to judge people for their fears is to perpetuate the imbalances that have caused uncountable suffering. *All* of us are in this together and it is up to us to “love others and forget what we think we know”.
Thank You,
let’s start the soundtrack of the revolution off with this:
http://vimeo.com/17627120 – Electric Pow Wow Drum
seeing as how First Nations (Cdn lingo) or tribes (as they’re known in the States) were the first ppl here
more at http://soundcloud.com/a-tribe-called-red
(and more in the comment below, once it gets approved – but ATCR isn’t featured in the link there)
the unfortunate phrasing of ‘occupy’ wall st has been used as an educational opportunity to raise awareness to the fact that New York, and all of the United States, is already ‘occupied land’, and thus calls to ‘decolonize wall street’ are starting to resonate within the collective conscioussness
here’s a decolonization soundtrack 🙂
http://bermudaradical.wordpress.com/2010/03/16/music-for-decolonization-2/
here’s a brief summary:
Let’s begin by approaching the name of the first encampment, Occupy Wall Street, by stating what we feel should be obvious: every city on the continent is occupied indigenous land. Wall Street was built on Algonquian land, and has been occupied ever since. After African slaves built Wall Street for European settlers, it was home to the slave market, and eventually became an African burial ground for up to 20,000 bodies. Since its arrival on this continent, capitalism has always been a system of exploitation based on race. Wall Street is one example of usurped land and slave labor, stolen to quell the desires of European colonizers. To attempt to create a movement that ignores this reality is fundamentally flawed, and it is not clear to us that it will ever move forward.
…
This blog seeks to aggregate radical critiques about Occupy around the continent (including Canada, of course). We’ve begun posting links to some of the most relevant existing analysis from people of color who have been disenfranchised from this movement, but we’re also seeking your links and/or direct entries to this blog.
http://disoccupy.wordpress.com/
Beautiful words of encouragement.
Much needed, especially today, so very much appreciated.
That OWS chart is just the BEST bedtime story for an old dot-connecter like me, be! Talk about perfect! Thanks for sharing that.
I had the TV playing as background last night, GaryB, and the Steve Jobs story (made for TV, I think) was on. The soundtrack was sprinkled with offerings from the Guess Who, who were Right Up There on my favorites list: Share The Land, American Woman, Time, Bus Driver. Got me to thinking about how MUCH great music we were blessed with then — and movies, too, before they went corporate cookie-cutter. I’d suppose we shouldn’t try to compare this time with that, but I’m with you — I’d like to think the Muse will visit anew to bring us music and art that will define this period and take up permanent residence in our minds/hearts.
As well, you named one of my concerns involving End Times preoccupation, the specter of Armageddon looming and asteroids colliding. This kind of crap not only poisons consciousness but draws in dark energies to feed and grow stronger. Think about the damage a movie like “Contagion” can do! These things, literally, turn my stomach. So unnecessary to retard our progress with paralyzing thoughts of things that go bump. Boo hiss!
BUT (big but) we … each one … magnetize to us what we will entertain in consciousness; peoples experience of the same thing can be diverse depending on what they bring to it. I think the Highest energies are more powerful than the Lowest, ultimately, especially in a time so critical. I affirm that the meek shall inherit the Earth and that we are NOT required to suffer unless we take that on consciously or karmically; and either is for purpose. Ahhhhh, well …
And — goodness me — for all the nice things said, dearhearts, my appreciation.
Judith,
With all of the end of the world attention I get the feeling that it will be all or nothing for some factions and they will enter and change the game from peaceful to aggressive hostility. Let’s hope for the higher path to transformation.
Brilliant!
Thanks Judith,
Now Please bring on some of the Great music to define the era like the 60’s.
I dunno Jude, when you are good you are great, but when you’re very very good you are incredibly edible. So many juicy phrases today that I want to remember, and so many links to followup on. Will you leave me no time for chores?
You have such a grasp on the panorama of what is happening and such a down-to-earth way of communicating it, we are all blessed because of your abilities to translate the gods and guide us through the jungle of confusion. Thank you from my heart which opens even more today.
Here’s a bit of astrology to chew on from the birthchart of Occupy Wall Street. Born 9/17/11 at 12 Noon in the Bowling Green Park by the statue of the bull, there’s the obvious and the not-so-obvious clues to this movement in it’s timing.
For an example of the non-obvious, the pattern of (major) planets in the OWS chart is called “See-Saw” by it’s developer, Marc Edmund Jones, who says “The seesaw temperament has its existence in a world of conflicts, of definite polarities.” He further says that a focal determinator (planet) of the chart, if there is one, will make it more dynamic and increase the chance of success. This chart’s focal point is the Sun at 24 Virgo in the 10th house.
The Moon trines this Sun at 22 Taurus in the 6th house, near the cusp of the 7th, who is meeting transiting Sedna at 23 Taurus retrograde, and she is conjunct the U.S. Sibly chart’s asteroid Atlantis at 23 Taurus. This is a message from the people (Moon) who have experienced the pain of being foresaken by their father (US) in order to save himself, as Sedna’s father did when she tried to hang on to the boat but he broke her grip causing her to drown. That the U.S. chart’s Atlantis further’s the message with the reminder that a country that neglects the concerns of its people will sink into oblivion, is prophetic.
For emphasis on that point, this chart’s Saturn at 17 Libra in the 11th house (we the people) is joined by asteroid Juno (the unequal partner) at 17 Libra and Atlantis 17 Libra. The structures (Saturn) that deny equality (Juno and Libra) to all the people (11th house) will see their foundations crumble (Atlantis) is the wake-up call.
That this Sun is in Virgo and the Moon is in the 6th house is a message of healing as well as a call for a loosening of purse strings (Wall St.) in order that the people may share and for creating jobs among other things. That the Sun opposes Ceres retrograde is a reminder that balance must be achieved or Ceres will deprive us of nourishment until we do.
Of course, the ruler of the Scorpio-rising chart, Pluto in Cap, is in the 2nd house and he is square Uranus in Aries in the 4th house, and they are the driving energy of this period of time, but in this chart Venus in Libra tightly opposes Uranus and squares Pluto from the 10th house, the same house as the Sun. Can it be any plainer than this chart of what is at risk and what we must do?
be
“I urge you to love more, keep courage, and forget what you think you know: your heart will do the rest.”
I love your article, Jude, and this particular phrase spoke to me loud and clear as something we can apply anywhere and at any time that we choose to.
Thank you!
Thanks Jude….!!
We … The People……
Just an update…… UK Sky News television is carrying 15 minute items about the New York Sit-In ….”leaderless protest……soon to be politicised … as the wider community begins to understand its legitimacy”………..
Murdoch only has 30%……………
And breaking…..Defense Secretary Dr. Liam Fox has been caught with his pants down………his best man has been trading all area access at Defence for snouts in the trough…..
I find the idea of Warsaw Ghetto like enclaves around the Western World a real possibility…… equalising with the squalor that has been inflicted on 3rd world countries…
We shall indeed be tested as a global community seeks to integrate
“We The People”
Deliver us from Belief and Give Us Faith!
Paul Hill
ps on the ‘difference’ between ‘conservatives’ and ‘progressives’
i saw Chris Hedges on CBC – Canada’s public broadcaster
(the interviewer called him a ‘left-wing nut bar’, literally)
but Hedges – who is a pretty good writer with pretty good analysis –
said that actually, the ‘occupy’ protesters are conservatives, in that they are advocating for the rule of law, as opposed to the investor elites, who are just doing all types of illegal shit and getting away with it
i don’t know, i wouldn’t divide it ‘conservatives’ and ‘progressives’,
more like, the ruling elite and everyone else
hey, i had to smile when you wrote “if you’re not part of the 99% protesting…”
i guess that’s where ‘brand’ breaks down, cause most people aren’t protesting, yet do they all fit in 1% ?
there was an article today in Canada’s national newspaper, title: “The Occupy Wall Street protests: Who are they and what do they want?”
– made me think that, yes that’s how the media do it – it is ‘them’ protesting (and thus implicitly, the reader is not) … but also, i would guess that a lot of readers would actually feel that way (even though the top voted comments on the site were all pro-occupy)
so i read your suggested article, at least the last little bit of it (it was 9 pages! 🙂 … so i just wanted to offer some counterbalance (b/c, if the problem is ‘political purity’, then what’s wrong with the ‘tea baggers’? ‘republicans’? … ie where are you drawing the line?)
– first, the book “The Non-Profit Industrial Complex: The Revolution Will Not Be Funded”, would be a good start to see how a lot of what he is talking about is actually funded in order to coopt truly radical (aka addressing the roots) initiatives
– second, how about this article?
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/oct2011/nati-o07.shtml
basically talking about how these ‘progressives’ (they give a good example from The Nation magazine) are ready to jump in and channel the occupiers energy into maintaining a slightly-reformed version of the status quo. and of course, ‘The Nation’ has a lot of sway, so maybe they’ll pull it off and we’ll still all be getting our happy meals from mcdonalds but the billionaires will now be taxed at the same percent as us (instead of less or not taxed at all) so we can all be happy
– third, how about this one, for all the ‘tea bagger’ derision:
http://www.reddit.com/r/occupywallstreet/comments/kyjo2/an_open_letter_and_warning_from_a_former_tea/
I actually don’t know what to think about it, it even introduces itself saying ‘take with a grain of salt’, but hey – maybe it’s true, maybe initially the tea party movement actually had some good values, but it was only when it got coopted/corrupted and incorporated into a funding machine and a political party, that it became what we all now ‘love to hate’
– fourth, from a link in that last one, is the documentary ‘Lifting the Veil’
http://vimeo.com/20355767
awesome movie – and definitely reveals the problems with the kind of thinking proposed by Hazen/Greer
– which btw i find incredibly ‘mixed messaging’ … check out this quote, with me just taking some relevant bits in order (all from the last bit, the part you suggested was most important):
“That’s the opposite of compassion; that generates fear. … we should give serious thought about the impact of colluding in the electoral defeat of this president by undermining him publicly and reducing his viability as a candidate. The alternative is truly dangerous. … It’s time to name what is happening in our country without hysteria”
aka we must not base our politics on fear – but we should be scared of not supporting Obama
and we should publicly keep our mouths shut about anything he might have done wrong – but it’s time to name what is happening in our country
that movie is perfect counterbalance to that kind of ‘prop up the system’ kind of thinking, although i must admit i didn’t watch the whole thing (was in and out a bit while it was playing, and heard some criticism about the solutions that were presented in parts) but i’ve watched the previous two films from Metanoia and they’re pretty spot on