December 2008 Archives
section of peace mural by the artist Huong.
Dear Friends,
We applied for the Armory for an inaugural event, and we applied to do a movement choir in the Inaugural Parade, but it seems the inside Washington crowd is not quite ready to mainstream celebratory activists!
The Obama Inaugural folks snapped up the Armory, of course--it was not going our way once they realized they had to raise every penny and were not going with high-end corporate donations for fancy ballrooms. And so we have had to come up with alternative plans.
HOWEVER, there is STILL an event to say thank you to all those who have found their voices over the past eight years, who have spoken up and out in support of true democracy and justice, and who wish to invoke the spirit of Martin Luther King and Gandhi in the new administration.
Not TOO tall an order, right?
DANCE-OBAMA: The Pulse of Peace is now the name for a NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL event: one we plan to broadcast online, if not in real time, soon after.
We are working with several organizations: the Democracy Cell Project is the fiscal sponsor [a 501(c)3] and is partnering with the Peace Mural Organization, the American Dance Therapy Association, the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies, and (possibly) the National Dance Education Organization. The event is a participatory celebration of movement and music; one that we are hoping will take place all across the country (one is forming in NYC, for example).
In Washington DC, the event will take place on Monday January 19, 2009, from 4-6 pm (and possibly, weather permitting, into the streets and beyond) at the Peace Mural Gallery in Georgetown: 3336 M St. NW. Food and drinks will be served. There will be a DJ playing energizing inspiring celebratory music, African drummers, and a movement choir: a participatory devised and improvised series of SIMPLE movements that result in empowerment and what Barbara Ehrenreich calls "collective joy".
TICKETS are donations-based: $15.00 advanced donations can be made at the Democracy Cell Project website (click on the Donations button on the top right of the sidebar) or you can go directly to: http://tinyurl.com/9ufnvk
Specify that you are donating to the Inaugural event.
We want this event to be inexpensive, open to all ages, no particular dress code (although you will want to be comfortable!) and ENERGIZING. We'd also like it to be large enough to get the attention of the mainstream media (who will be searching for VISUAL stories about people who are NOT sheep, but who are positive and pushing hard.
And what happens at 6:00 pm, you may well ask? Well, there are lots of evening events (Netroots Nation has a ball in Clarendon that evening, I believe), Busboys and Poets (local lefty restaurants) will be open 24 hours for food, open mikes, and readings, many organizations are doing trainings that day, etc. But I myself would like to move through the streets of Georgetown, reminding people that the streets belong to the people and in a democracy, honest caring voices do matter, and do make a difference.
And, of course, that we are the ones we've been waiting for.
Please join us and spread the word.
There are many positive messages to put forth today but this is instead a warning of what we have become, and what needs to change, starting with today.
By a vote of 180 in favour to 1 against (United States) and no abstentions, the UN sponsored a resolution on the right to food, by which the Assembly would “consider it intolerable” that more than 6 million children still died every year from hunger-related illness before their fifth birthday, and that the number of undernourished people had grown to about 923 million worldwide, at the same time that the planet could produce enough food to feed 12 billion people, or twice the world’s present population.
I was reading this article about Cheney in the Atlantic and was reminded of Nixon, who has been talked about more recently because of the movie "Nixon/Frost" and the death of "Deep Throat" from the Watergate era. Here is an excerpt from 1977 Nixon/Frost interview in which executive power is discussed. FROST asked NIXON about the Huston Plan, which advocated wiretappings, burglaries (black bag jobs), mail openings and infiltration against antiwar groups and others. Nixon approved this, though it was illegal. Both links contain longer more excerpts, and consider when reading and looking at the photos that Cheney and Rumsfeld absorbed Nixon's ideas about power when they were relatively young.
FROST: So what in a sense, you're saying is that there are certain situations, and the Huston Plan or that part of it was one of them, where the president can decide that it's in the best interests of the nation or something, and do something illegal.
NIXON: Well, when the president does it that means that it is not illegal.
So now we have Wallace/Cheney (Cheney is not President, but is said to be "the man behind the throne" and took the job after being on the "search committee" for VP):
WALLACE: This is at the core of the controversies that I want to get to with you in a moment. If the president during war decides to do something to protect the country, is it legal?
CHENEY: General proposition, I'd say yes. You need to be more specific than that. I mean — but clearly, when you take the oath of office on January 20th of 2001, as we did, you take the oath to support and defend and protect the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
The irony seems lost on him. How can the suspension of all laws into the power of the executive branch in wartime be seen as a defense or protection of the Constitution? Perhaps for a brief amount of time in a dire emergency, after which there would be a thorough accounting to the Congress and the Courts. But indefinitely? As inherent in the office? And with jurisdiction over the entire United States as well as the world? With "enemy combatants" defined as anyone the president calls an "enemy combatant" and no distinction between citizen and non-citizen? Including the right to torture? Indefinitely? What Cheney has advanced is that the president has the right to dissolve the constitution permanently. That he has the right to commit war crimes with impunity. That there is no legal authority to which he is ever required to pay deference in a war that is his and his alone to declare and end. Now when you consider that, in Cheney's view, these war-powers are limitless, and that war is declared not by the Congress but by the president, and can be defined against a broad, amorphous enemy such as "terrorism", and never end, you begin to see what a dangerous man he is, and how much danger we have all been in since he seized control of the government seven years ago.
Tagging on to DiAnne's excellent piece on musicians taking back their music, I have been thinking a great deal about the power of dance and movement to change hearts and minds. I've been thinking about this especially because my choreography students just finished a semester in which they studied war and created at least a sketch for a piece about war. In their final journal entries, they struggled with the difficulty of the process of creating anything as a group, much less such a loaded topic, but they also expressed a deeper understanding of what it is to be "at war" than they had at the beginning of the process. They learned. And they learned to be bolder about choices in general, to speak up, or at least question why they were not speaking up. tis makes me feel much better.
Because I am uneasy these days. I worry that we are spending too much time worrying about the wrong things, or less important things: Obama's not-so-helpful choices for positions, Christmas presents, what to make for dinner, etc. Not that those are unimportant and not that we don't need to be conscious of all the changes coming our way. We do. But while we are concerned about the things that matter less or that we have no real control over, I am worried that fear is retaking us.
I went back to an old DCP post I did in 2006: http://www.democracycellproject.net/blog/archives/2006/03/fear_up_all_ove.html
In it, I wrote about how the powerful consciously work to assure we stay fearful, because that keeps us from finding our voices, from asking the tough questions up close, and from believing that we are the change agents.
On January 19, I plan to host a dance event that I hope addresses the issue head-on. Through the power of movement and rhythm and voice, I want to create a choir that resonates in power: individual and collective. The goal is not to celebrate the Obama victory, although that is the context under which the event will occur. The goal is to celebrate the power of community and action and voice to overcome fear and to illuminate darkness.
Watch this space for more information, but know that the sponsoring organization for this event is the Democracy Cell Project: educating and activating our way into hopeful transformation.
First off, I believe misuse of music is a fundamental violation of nature and spiritually very wrong.
Neocon wackos used artists' work without authorization and in conflict with the artists' values during the last election. Now, as part of our foreign policy, US jailers, such as at Guantanamo and in Iraq and Afghanistan, have been using music as torture.
They have blared Nine Inch Nails, AC/DC, Queen, Pantera, Slim Shady, Dr. Dre and more - for days, weeks, months - the same thing over and over twenty hours a day - til some prisoners have become suicidal or screamed and banged their heads against the wall.
According to the article, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, then the U.S. military commander in Iraq, authorized it on Sept. 14, 2003, "to create fear, disorient ... and prolong capture shock."
Imagine those who are not used to such music culturally, or to loud music at all (the Taleban prohibited music.) Imagine the music being blasted full volume while you are shackled in an excruciating position with no blanket and only a jumpsuit and flipflops on and cold, blindfolded. According to the article at the link, the musical torture has stopped at Guantanamo but could be used in the future (assuming the damn place isn't closed soon.) An FBI memo includes an interrogator from Gitmo bragging that he can "break" a prisoner in four days by alternating 16 hours of music and lights with four hours of silence and darkness.
Not all of the music is hard rock. Christopher Cerf, who wrote music for "Sesame Street," said he was horrified to learn songs from the children's TV show were used in interrogations. "I wouldn't want my music to be a party to that," he told AP. .. or ..
Bob Singleton, whose song "I Love You" is beloved by legions of preschool Barney fans, wrote in a newspaper opinion column that any music can become unbearable if played loudly for long stretches. "It's absolutely ludicrous," he wrote in the Los Angeles Times. "A song that was designed to make little children feel safe and loved was somehow going to threaten the mental state of adults and drive them to the emotional breaking point?"
I agree with Morello, from Rage Against the Machine, who proposed leveling Guantanamo except for one small cell where Bush is blasted with hard rock. I'm glad I've never heard the music of Drowning Pool, who have performed in Iraq and recorded "Bodies," which they are proud has been used in torture.
A member says:
"People assume we should be offended that somebody in the military thinks our song is annoying enough that played over and over it can psychologically break someone down. I take it as an honor to think that perhaps our song could be used to quell another 9/11 attack or something like that."
Sick. This is one of the most mobilizing articles I have read in a long time, the type that feeds the anger to "rage against the machine."
The moon is closer to earth than it's been all year (221,560 miles.) It's 14% bigger and 30% brighter, as far as our perception, than some other full moons from this year. It was the biggest at moonrise. The tides are unusually high, which will lead to more polluted beaches.
Enjoy! Howl!!
This morning, I received the same article from several people via email, but first from my uncle. The article was called "U.S. Loses 533,000 Jobs in Biggest Drop Since 1974." The article cites an unemployment rate of more than 6% and a foreclosure rate approaching 10%.
My uncle wrote:
they're lying.....it's actually more like 12%.....did you know that Greenspan and the fed changed how the cost of living was computed when house prices were going up because homes were worth more and people had more wealth? Didn't they also remove food and clothing or something else from the core inflation rate and all kinds of paper shuffling and shell games?"
I replied, "I suppose so, because I seem to remember when the Government decided to include McDonald's jobs in with "manufacturing" data, since they "make" hamburgers."
I had to dig a little to find that one, but here it is:
Building Blue Collar .. Burgers
The outgoing administration wants to look as good as they can. That's why we've had Rumsfeld writing OpEds at the NY Times and Rove talking about Bush's "legacy."
Times are hard! A friend who goes to the DailyKos "garden blog" each Saturday talks of people losing their gardens because they are losing their houses! Every other "recommended diary" is a sad story about hunger in America (not just Zimbabwe, where people are eating bugs) or job loss or foreclosure. Obama must plan but wait, just as FDR did, and every day of the countdown is excruciating. We have gone from listening to pundits talk about whether we will have a recession, to how long we have actually been in one (now said to be a year) to whether we are heading for a Depression (my Financial Planner thinks there is a 30% chance.)
How are people coping, especially with the holidays approaching? Any ideas for how to be strong and to survive and work toward the future would be appreciated!
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