![\"Eric](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/planetwavesweekly.com\/resources\/images\/eric_nov2008.jpg?resize=158%2C210&ssl=1\")
<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nWhen I showed up at the window in the city comptroller\u0432\u0402\u2122s office, they already knew my name. \u0432\u0402\u045aAre you Eric?\u0432\u0402\u045c The personal treatment was disconcerting. I said hello and then politely added, \u0432\u0402\u045aI just have a few questions.\u0432\u0402\u045c<\/p>\n
\u0432\u0402\u045aOkay,\u0432\u0402\u045c said the clerk.<\/p>\n
\u0432\u0402\u045aDo I have a right to plead not guilty?\u0432\u0402\u045c<\/p>\n
\u0432\u0402\u045aNo,\u0432\u0402\u045c said the clerk.<\/p>\n
\u0432\u0402\u045aDo I have a right to an attorney?\u0432\u0402\u045c<\/p>\n
\u0432\u0402\u045aNo.\u0432\u0402\u045c<\/p>\n
\u0432\u0402\u045aDo I have a right to a trial?\u0432\u0402\u045c<\/p>\n
\u0432\u0402\u045aNo.\u0432\u0402\u045c<\/p>\n
Then another (apparently senior) clerk added, \u0432\u0402\u045aIf it gets to this point where your car is booted, you\u0432\u0402\u2122ve lost all your rights. Your tickets are past 45 days, notices have been sent out, you had a chance to do everything you just talked about doing, and you haven\u0432\u0402\u2122t done it.\u0432\u0402\u045c<\/p>\n
The legal logic here is: We arrested you (or at least your car), so therefore you\u0432\u0402\u2122re guilty. I proposed an alternate scenario, that I learned in school: innocent until proven guilty. Even if you rob a bank and go on the lam, you still have the right to a lawyer and a trial if you\u0432\u0402\u2122re caught five years later. One lady laughed; the other reiterated that I used to have that right, but because I ignored the tickets for a while, I had lost it.<\/p>\n
\u0432\u0402\u045aThere are a lot of dead patriots buried by the Old Dutch Church who gave their lives so we could have our rights,\u0432\u0402\u045c I said. The women were silent for a somber moment. I paid cash under protest, took my paperwork, and walked away. I felt that I had got my money\u0432\u0402\u2122s worth having been told by a city official, openly and notoriously, that I had no rights.<\/p>\n
What is the truth, and does it matter? I say it does matter, if we value our freedom. I don\u0432\u0402\u2122t mean to make a parking meter a bigger deal than it is, but most people don\u0432\u0402\u2122t think that federal wiretaps or the \u0432\u0402\u045afree-speech zones\u0432\u0402\u045c that are set up to contain protesters are an especially big deal either.<\/p>\n
We were all told we live in a country where we have rights, and where we send people abroad supposedly to die for our freedom. I\u0432\u0402\u2122ve heard this about a thousand times since September 11, 2001. We have rights for a reason. For example, what if my car had been booted by mistake? Would I have to admit that I was wrong and pay the fine with no further recourse in order to have the boot removed? Then it doesn\u0432\u0402\u2122t seem like such a small matter; we all use our car to get to work, buy food, and get the kids to school.<\/p>\n
When my local city councilman, Tom Hoffay, came into my office at Dominick\u0432\u0402\u2122s Cafe a few days later, I asked him what someone would do in that case. He said they would have to file what\u0432\u0402\u2122s called an Article 78 proceeding, a lawsuit compelling the city to follow state law. Out of politeness, I didn\u0432\u0402\u2122t laugh. I may be the only person outside the legal community and state government who even knows what that is. It\u0432\u0402\u2122s not the kind of thing you can do during lunch.<\/p>\n
We wonder why government so often acts on its own behalf, or those of its biggest constituents (lately, the banks) and ignores the needs of the people who created it and pay for it. We wonder how we get taxed and taxed and have so little to show for it. We wonder why people can attack nationalized health care as wasteful when they support nationalizing the banks for many times the cost. We need to look no further than the refusal of most people, most as in the majority, to be aware and to get involved in their communities.<\/p>\n
I have seen numerous instances where the moment actual citizens get involved and show up at city hall or at the state legislature or a student association meeting, and mysteriously the right thing happens. All of us in the past decade seen how, when we ignore our rights, we supposedly lose them\u0432\u0402\u201djust like the clerk at City Hall proposed. In that sense, she is correct. If you don\u0432\u0402\u2122t exercise your rights, you lose them.<\/p>\n
For example, when we didn\u0432\u0402\u2122t protest a stolen presidential election in 2000, we had another one stolen in 2004. If you recall, Al Gore got more popular votes in \u0432\u0402\u212200 and yet Bush took office. We know the rules about the Electoral College, but personally that is something that I never thought possible, though I\u0432\u0402\u2122d considered it many times. Bush taking office was like putting the boot on the White House; he had it, so he was right.<\/p>\n
The election fraud issue is something that\u0432\u0402\u2122s not being talked about enough. I keep hearing people say that if Barack Obama gets 60 percent of the popular vote, we\u0432\u0402\u2122re safe\u0432\u0402\u201dthen they can\u0432\u0402\u2122t steal the election. Remember, the current president, who mainly presides over the disaster area the federal government and national economy have become, lost the popular vote. Now we need 60 percent to win? I think this shows you how slanted the playing field is.<\/p>\n
Obviously, voting is not enough. The problem with voting is not that we do it or don\u0432\u0402\u2122t do it, but rather that we think it\u0432\u0402\u2122s enough; we think it\u0432\u0402\u2122s sufficient participation in society. It is supposedly more than a symbolic gesture, but it is starting to seem like going to church.<\/p>\n
What is enough? Someone I know recently spouted out the idea that the American public is defined by what it does not know. Since you are someone who is reading something, you personally may be defined by your curiosity and your concern about the issues of our very strange time in history. However, knowledge of the world is entirely abstract if it does not correspond to some inner knowledge; a sense of self and a corresponding sense of ethics.<\/p>\n
We\u0432\u0402\u2122re transitioning into the beginning of a crucial era, in fact we\u0432\u0402\u2122re meeting this thing we\u0432\u0402\u2122ve been calling 2012. In addition to a major change in the Mayan calendar (the end of the 13th baktun) in that year, the planetary astrology\u0432\u0402\u201dbeginning this month, with Pluto entering Capricorn\u0432\u0402\u201dbuilds to a crescendo, complete with social upheavals that will make the Sixties feel like a rehearsal for the high school pageant.<\/p>\n
Change is not comfortable for most people. We would rather have things be just so, and we\u0432\u0402\u2122ll do almost anything to keep them that way, including deny our own growth, health, liberty, and sanity. We will stay with people who we don\u0432\u0402\u2122t love or barely care about. We will keep jobs we hate. Most of all, we will refuse to face our pain. We\u0432\u0402\u2122ll do all of this for the illusion of stability. Or maybe it\u0432\u0402\u2122s preserving the illusion of stability that protects us from the scourge of freedom.<\/p>\n
As society goes into its gyrations and birth contractions and we are compelled to recreate ourselves as we explore our relationship to the whole, you can be sure that many will be struggling with an adaptation process, and with what feels like an inordinate amount of growth. We will not have much time for regrets. We will not have time to ponder whether we\u0432\u0402\u2122re ready for a new way of relating to one another, be it through community, new models of relationship, or more functional ideas of family.<\/p>\n
There will be many people who feel that they are retarded because others much younger have done some of the work, and figured out how to stand on their own and as part of a group.<\/p>\n
Those of us in the helping professions are going to have plenty on our hands, and our own healing process will accelerate as a result. Most of us already have plenty to do, and we need to start organizing support networks so that we can keep the sanity we\u0432\u0402\u2122ve worked so hard to gain, and not get dragged down by so many unusual demands on our attention.<\/p>\n
I have suggested on a number of occasions that if you want to see what material you\u0432\u0402\u2122re going to be working with during Pluto in Capricorn, study the era from late 2001 through 2005 and investigate what that tells you. Decide what you accomplished, what you did not accomplish and most of all, what you learned.<\/p>\n
And please consider this equation, from my article \u0432\u0402\u045aHow To Be Your Own Lover,\u0432\u0402\u045c that deconstructs guilt\u0432\u0402\u201dthis emotion being the lifeblood of all oppression, inner and outer.<\/p>\n
This brief segment was co-written with Joseph Trusso, my longtime holistic therapist and mentor. In taking on Pluto in Capricorn, we will need to challenge and overthrow the guilt of our families, and of our society, which we carry internally. We carry it as guilt about sex, freedom, happiness, and even love; I believe that guilt is the essence of what Freud called Thanatos, the death urge. It is what is paralyzing us against standing up against injustice, against the lack of emotional freedom we feel, and ultimately it\u0432\u0402\u2122s what\u0432\u0402\u2122s going to mess up our children. It is up to us, you and me, to break the cycle.<\/p>\n
\u0432\u0402\u045aFritz and Laura Perls, early pioneers of Gestalt therapy, taught that guilt is resentment turned against itself. Generally speaking, children, being the powerful yet powerless little critters they are, take upon themselves the notion of \u0432\u0402\u045afault and blame.\u0432\u0402\u045c They cannot imagine adults (who are personifications of the gods and goddesses) making an error. If they do, it\u0432\u0402\u2122s still the \u0432\u0402\u045afault\u0432\u0402\u045c of the child. \u0432\u0402\u045aIf only I would\u0432\u0402\u2122ve done this or that, Daddy wouldn\u0432\u0402\u2122t hit me.\u0432\u0402\u045c \u0432\u0402\u045aIf I were quieter, Mommy wouldn\u0432\u0402\u2122t drink.\u0432\u0402\u045c And so on. Since they are at \u0432\u0402\u045afault,\u0432\u0402\u045c they are \u0432\u0402\u045aguilty,\u0432\u0402\u045c and since they cannot rage against the adults very successfully or have a real impact on the direction of events, they turn the resentment at being pruned, modified, corrected, disciplined, strongly directed or dictated to, back at themselves.<\/p>\n
\u0432\u0402\u045aThat is guilt. It\u0432\u0402\u2122s fair to say that our lives, so often filled with the idea that we cannot influence the direction of events, so often caught in the web of control, of bosses, of taxes, of children, and, yes, of our sexual relationships, are often holographic copies of these original crushing relationships with parents and teachers. Yet as adults, the programming, the patterns, are contained within us. They are internalized. Check it out: Do we have especially creative jobs? Dare we say what we feel, go where we want, be who we are or have sex with who we desire? Or are we pruned, modified, dictated to, and denied out of existence by our own self-control?\u0432\u0402\u045c<\/p>\n
That is the question, and if we can ask it honestly we may find the source of our real human wealth as a bunch of bankers and unelected bureaucrats try to steal the rest.<\/p>\n
Dear Friend and Reader: MY CAR GOT booted for unpaid parking tickets the other day, so naturally I went to Kingston City Hall to clear the matter up. Because the governments and the banks are in the process of stealing our money, I had some cash on hand (my accountant suggested this). The city government … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[52,35],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5536"}],"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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5536\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Eric](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.planetwavesweekly.com\/resources\/images\/sign_white.jpg?resize=185%2C45&ssl=1\" "\\"Planet")
<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"