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![\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/fe-logo-13-feb-09-250-px1.jpg?resize=250%2C133&ssl=1\" "\\"Fe\\"")
<\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\nTime is a river that sometimes\u00a0lulls,\u00a0though often moves like white water rapids. We’re from the Pluto in Leo generation, Boomers —\u00a0highly idealistic, believing we could — and did, change the world. For us, the rivers of time were fast. We drew on the inspiration of students in Paris protesting the French war in Algeria, horrified by the Buddhist monks setting themselves on fire to protest the French regime in Indochina. The years 1965-66, the last time Uranus was exact in its alignment to Pluto, were followed by our own forms of campus unrest in the United States over the war in Vietnam.<\/p>\n
Throughout the years\u00a01960 to 1972, the long arc of Uranus-Pluto’s last\u00a0conjunction revealed itself.\u00a0 It flowed\u00a0with the breakneck pace of change: pressure by the people created the Civil Rights Movement, the Equal Rights Amendment, the environmental movement, Roe v. Wade, the War on Poverty, Medicare and the Environmental Protection Agency.\u00a0 We know from these efforts — where in some cases lives were sacrificed —\u00a0what lives were changed and saved, ultimately saving the future. It is\u00a0now this list of hard-fought accomplishments that form the checklist for everything corporations, religious conservatives and the interests benefiting from the military industrial complex are working\u00a0tirelessly to erode and dismantle.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In 2008 when I first\u00a0started writing about election politics for Planet Waves, I began by addressing the first stirrings of the Uranus-Pluto square far off in the distance. Back then, I only had\u00a0a vague inkling of what kind of revolutionary epoch\u00a0Uranus-Pluto\u00a0would bring, imagining that the election of the first African-American president of the United States would mark the start of it. Well it has started, but in a way I thought wouldn’t happen. The middle and working classes of this country\u00a0are on a long, slow waltz over the cliff. This is\u00a0a war\u00a0being waged to divide\u00a0the working and middle class from each other across the country, regardless of race and gender.<\/p>\n
It started slowly, beginning with anti-tax uprisings,\u00a0the ‘war’ against gays, women’s birth control and the virulent defense of the sanctity of marriage. Look at recent history from Anita Bryant\u00a0to Phyllis Schafly\u00a0to Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann. There has been a unrelented dismantling of the rights and freedoms gained from the last time Uranus and Pluto met, and a yearning for the racist, mono-cultural,\u00a0knowledge-refuting and sexually oppressive vision of a world long ago dead.<\/p>\n
The Tea Party movement was yet another instance of that conservative wave as ‘revolution’ in packaged form, branded 100% pure grassroots and brought to you\u00a0by the makers of Dixie Cup. They don’t\u00a0just want\u00a0the Sixties\u00a0over and done with, they want it crushed and removed from our cultural memory.<\/p>\n
We should know by now, the louder they shout about homosexuals, Muslims, terrorists and\u00a0unborn fetuses\u00a0that some sort of thievery is taking place in the background. It’s\u00a0no surprise that\u00a0the economic psy-ops perpetrated on America from 1974\u00a0to the present day\u00a0has\u00a0successfully\u00a0insinuated itself into our subconscious, using everyday language, brands\u00a0and names to create pictures of us and each other that are lies: from\u00a0Social Security\u00a0to ‘entitlements’, from the poor to ‘welfare queens’.\u00a0The face of shame and ridicule was put on those of us who continue to deserve our compassion, who are distanced further and further away from ever being viable in society again. It’s a desire to return to the 1930s<\/em>. What we thought we worked hard to earn — our retirement and pensions — are belittled as privileges,\u00a0and are now ripe for the picking.<\/p>\n
We’re\u00a0being asked to serve a moneyed-class few, created by this movement of the last thirty-odd years,\u00a0who have the largest share of the world’s wealth. Now they want even more: our country. This little rant is not about returning\u00a0to America of the 1960s. There was relative comfort then.\u00a0This is about preventing us from becoming a banana republic.<\/p>\n
“What world am I leaving my granddaughter when I promised her a new one was coming?” my friend asks.<\/p>\n
James Baldwin said, “When they come for us at night, be sure they will be at your door by morning,”\u00a0 Well, morning has come. What place will\u00a0my friend’s granddaughter and any woman\u00a0have in the world when an unborn fetus is asked to speak<\/a> before a state legislature while its mother has to remain silent?<\/p>\n
If you think I’m trying to force you into taking up the placard and marching grimly out into the streets to mau-mau the flack catchers, you can tell me to fuck off.\u00a0Its your right, and frankly I don’t blame you. It’s just that it’s pissing me off that we not only have to reverse the wheels currently in motion, but\u00a0also rebuild what took so long to gain. This is not what I envisioned my golden years to be. But my friend’s granddaughter, my niece and my nephew deserve this place we call home to be better when we leave it,\u00a0like my parents did for me during and after World War II.<\/p>\n
Being emeritus revolutionaries isn’t a bad path ahead. Keeping with the historical patterns of Uranus-Pluto alignments, the people of my generation who heard the music and the call to walk the revolutionary road during the Sixties are being given this upcoming Uranus-Pluto aspect to finish the job. Just watch for us:\u00a0the silver and spike-haired gypsies coming at you.\u00a0We’re here to help advise all those young people willing to listen who are so good at their phone apps, video cameras and tweets. They have seen the writing on the wall and want to do something about it.\u00a0Maybe we can compare notes, share tips, history, information, and resources. Time is ripe for a little generational mingling of minds.<\/p>\n
…but I do know one and one is two, and if this one could be with you, what a wonderful world this would be.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Yours & truly,<\/p>\n
Fe Bongolan<\/strong>
\nSan Francisco<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“I stay awake at night, wondering what kind of world I will leave my granddaughter.” That’s what my best friend of many years — an African American woman — said to me the other night while sitting together at her kitchen table. It’s a familiar scene of our friendship — laughing, drinking a “couple of … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,1788,52,1054,910],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34682"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34682\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}