Labor Struggles

¡Hola! Everybody…

It is Labor Day -- people died so you could have this day off; for the right to bargain collectively, for the 40-hour week, and paid vacations. People died so that you could enjoy workplace safety and work while maintain at least a semblance of human dignity and living wage. The freedom to work with human dignity, and more, is what is under attack by the conservatives seeking to take us back to a time that never existed and into a neoliberal global slum.

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-=[ The Ludlow Massacre ]=-

Fascism should be more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.

-- Giovanni Gentile

Happy Labor Day, and I hope that you have had an opportunity to gather with friends and family to observe the many that died in order to make fair wages, the 40-hour week hour week, and vacations a reality.

Not familiar with the history of labor struggles? That’s OK, our Corporate Media and their bland whores -- the well-paid, hair-sprayed teleprompt readers -- would never focus on such a history. No, I don’t blame you for forgetting about Labor and its impact on our lives. After all, there’s much more important stuff to think about.

The history of Labor in the USA is one that is rarely ever discussed and until recently, you would be hard put to find any historical documentation on the history of Labor. There is a good reason for this: it’s not a very pretty history. For those of us of a conservative orientation mouthing empty clichés about the “good ole days,” well, Bubba, they weren’t so good.

Not unless you consider child labor, or the lack of responsible overview in the workplace, as good. One school teacher, Samuel Yellin, wanted to teach Labor history to his high school students but was unable to find a textbook, so he wrote his own, American Labor Struggles. Until Howard Zinn and others who would come after, this was the only book that documented the history of the US government’s and Big Business’ vile response to the Labor movement.

One of the more heinous of episodes in the history of Labor struggles, The Ludlow Massacre (click here for a more in-depth treatment), reads like something out of the history of a fascist state -- which is what corporatization (rule by corporations) is, in fact. When I first read this as part of a deal I made with my then high school-aged son, I was shocked that such things, with all our lip service to individual freedom and fairness, happened in the United States:

On April 20, 1914, 20 innocent men, women, and children were killed in the Ludlow Massacre. For some time, coal miners in Colorado and other western states had been trying to join the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) for years. They were bitterly opposed by the coal operators, led by the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company.

As a result, for their striking, the miners and their families had been evicted from their company-owned houses and had set up a tent colony on public property. The ensuing massacre was a carefully planned attack on the tent colony by Colorado militiamen, coal company guards, and thugs hired as private detectives and strikebreakers. They shot and burned to death 20 people, including a dozen women and small children. Later, investigations would reveal that the tents were intentionally set on fire. The miners had dug foxholes in the tents so the women and children could avoid the bullets that the corporate-hired thugs would randomly shoot through the tent colony. The women and children were found dead, huddled together at the bottoms of their tents.

The Baldwin Felts Detective Agency had been brought in to suppress the Colorado miners. They brought with them an armored car mounted with a machine gun (the Death Special, they called it) that roamed the area spraying bullets. The day of the massacre (April 20^th), the miners were celebrating Greek Easter. At 10:00 AM, the militia ringed the camp and began firing into the tents upon a signal from the commander, Lt. Karl E. Lindenfelter. Not one of the perpetrators of the slaughter was ever punished, but scores of miners and their leaders were arrested and black-balled from the coal industry.

A monument erected by the UMWA stands today in Ludlow, Colorado in remembrance of the brave and innocent souls who died for freedom and human dignity.

Today, people enjoy taking potshots at Unions. Much of this is the result of a media controlled by the very forces that opposes unionization; some of it is the result of bonehead actions taken the union leaders themselves. However, the only thing standing between you (if you’re not a CEO) and complete servitude are unions, which is why conservatives abhor the Labor Movement.

I find it hard to write about individual improvement when there is so much denial going on in our country. To stay quiet during times of atrocity is to be complicit in its crimes. This is true of almost anyone who lived in Nazi Germany. Most of those people weren’t evil, they simply didn’t act. Like us today in the USA, there was too much to do, they were too busy, going about the time-consuming activities of daily living, to speak out. So after they came to get the butcher, then the teacher, and finally the neighbor, there was no one around to help when the same forces came for them because there was no one left to speak out against the evil.

In the past, people have asked me to write about actions we can take to improve things. That comes later. Before we can act, we must become aware. I write in the hopes that even one person can gain some awareness. Mass movements of social change are founded in this notion of enlightening one mind at a time. History shows us, as Margaret Meade observed many years ago: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.” The fact remains that the same mindset that is the cause of the problem can never be used to bring about a solution. Solutions require a change of mind, an evolution of the individual and collective consciousness.

I will leave you with the words of someone who was a lot better at this than I will ever hope to be:

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty,” Edward R. Murrow said in 1954. “We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.

“We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular.”

Remember to give thanks to all those men, women, and children who had the fuckin’ cojones to lay down their lives for their convictions so that we could enjoy better lives.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

Excavating the Future

¡Hola! Everybody...
The alternative online magazine, Subversify, has published my reflections on Wisconsin (click here). Feel free to go there and comment. The following is somewhat of a follow-up to that article...

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-=[ The Future is Now ]=-

A public union employee, a tea party activist, and a CEO are sitting at a table with a plate of a dozen cookies in the middle of it.

The CEO takes 11 cookies, turns to the tea partier and says, 'Watch out for that union guy. He wants a piece of your cookie.'

I was raised to believe in the American Dream. I believed that if I worked hard enough, if I was smart enough, if I got good grades in school, went to a decent college, played by the rules, and worked really really hard, that I could grab at least a measure of that American dream. When I was a child, I was assured that the depth of American ingenuity and expertise would save us all and that we would become an enlightened society pursuing the further reaches of human nature with the increase of leisure time, as technology and human evolution converged to create a more noble model of society. A great society preoccupied with eradicating poverty, hunger, and disease.

I believed in an American future in which we would conquer space, where solutions for previously untreatable diseases were right around the corner. I was assured that the tension between technological innovation and the environmental havoc it sometimes caused would be resolved.

I believed in this dream because so many people were actually out there on the frontlines fighting to ensure such a society. Everywhere people were engaged in critically questioning the status quo. People of color, women, and people of different sexual orientation were fighting and challenging the oppressive institutionalized systems that kept us from becoming a greater whole. And in spite of all the conflict, there was the real sense of hope in that people were doing more than talking about it -- we were all somehow engaged in ensuring the American Dream for all people.

When I was a child, I was assured that we would develop viable alternative energy sources. Lies. A cure for cancer. Lies. I was told of a future wherein people -- for the first time in human history -- could commit the bulk of their lives for their intellectual, spiritual, and material benefit. Lies.

Welcome to the future, my friends. I live in a city where it is illegal to be black or brown. Here the color of your skin, not your grades, determination, or educational attainment, matters most. Today, being smart is considered elitist. Worst of all, today you work longer hours for less money -- if you’re fortunate enough to be working at all. You’re less likely to be able to have access to decent health care, if you have any health care options.

Welcome to the future, it is now -- a future of disappointment. And the only reason you haven’t noticed is because you’re too busy jerking off to the latest online celebrity sex tape or watching “reality” shows of “celebrities” whose talents apparently have more to do with sucking NBA cock than being able to actually sing or dance. Or perhaps you’re too busy watching American Idol or Snowdrift Snookie’s latest idiotic political pronouncements. Either way, we’re amusing ourselves to death.

For the past few weeks, regular, working-class people in Wisconsin have been staging mass protests in numbers that dwarf anything the Pee Farters -- with their access to billionaire dollars -- could only dream of. Sustained, mass protests fighting for the right to bargain collectively, arguably one of the main reasons we ever had a middle class of any worth in this country.

Sadly, the “libruhl” media (inexplicably owned by a handful of multinational corporations) has effectively ignored, misinterpreted, or downplayed this moment in history. God forbid some dimwit neocon Medicare recipient farts at a town hall meeting and the same quiescent media will stampede over itself to cover it, dissect its fragrance ad nauseum, and pontificate endlessly on its meaning.

The major economic theory of the past 30 years, the trickle down theory, is not just a cruel hoax, but most of the good industrial jobs have left the country, and the middle class has been disemboweled. There is no free time. You’re fortunate if you can get a job whose major requirement is knowing how to ask, “Want fries with that?”

Still, while you and I struggle to make ends meet, living lives of quiet desperation, the wealthiest Americans have quintupled their net worth, even in the midst of an economic disaster that only a fool would label a recession.

Here is the American Dream of the future today: no jobs, no prospects, no leverage, no short-term solutions, no long-term plans, no big ideas to save us. While the bottom four-fifths struggle to stay afloat, and the upper one-fifth cautiously tread water, the top 1 percent continue to accumulate wealth at a rate not seen since the Gilded Age.

In the future of today, CEOs earn monster salaries, corporations receive taxpayer welfare, and we have half the U.S. Congress boasting of being millionaires. Meanwhile, medical liabilities bankrupt the rest of us at record levels, one person in ten is out of work, and food stamp usage sets new records every month.

Even with near-record unemployment, the Department of Commerce reported in November 2010 that U.S. companies just had their best quarter... ever. Businesses recorded profits at an annual rate of $1.66 trillion in the third quarter of 2010, which is the highest rate (in non-inflation-adjusted figures) since the government began keeping records more than 60 years ago.

Shrinking incomes, fewer jobs... but bigger corporate profits. Not a good sign. Somehow, many of you have been convinced that the answer is doing more of the same: give more to the rich and we’ll all benefit from the resultant odiferous trickle down. What’s obvious is that the rich are not only dedicated to hanging on to what they have (duh!) but also committed to accumulating more, gets maybe a yawn from the dumb-down, apathetic American voter. In fact, our country's concentration of wealth is worse than Egypt.

This is nothing but class warfare and when you try to show, whether through charts and graphs or real-life examples, that the system is rigged in favor of the wealthy and powerful, you’re labeled as unpatriotic, a socialist and/ or communist. What often happens is that, instead of yelling back, “Hell, yes, we’re talking fucking class warfare!” liberals usually fell over themselves in apology, vehemently denying the accusation. They react as if talking about class warfare is tantamount to treason. Center-right politicians like Obama get spooked and fall in line, saying “Look, Eddie, we can’t do social engineering through the tax code. And there’s no reason to declare class warfare.” It’s pathetic.

The wealth gap has become so alarming that even billionaires like Warren Buffett acknowledge that the Bush-era tax cuts should be allowed to expire. In fact, Buffett contends, the wealthiest Americans should pay even more in taxes. The people in Wisconsin, representative of the majority of Americans, that bottom 4/5 who are barely keeping afloat, are now fighting this fight and it barely registers a yawn from many of you.

Someone suckered us along the way. The future we bought into was great until we fell asleep and woke up to find that at some points the future becomes the present, and the fact that it was once the future doesn’t mean it’s all fucked up once it arrives.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization...

The Myth of Freedom

¡Hola! Everybody...
The midterm elections are coming up and I fear too many people fail to understand exactly what hangs in the balance. In a very real way, how we define freedom and the kind of sciety we want to create is what is at stake. I know many so-called progressives are angry and even disillusioned, but disengaging from the political process is no different from cutting off your nose to spite your face. More on freedom tomorrow on Subversify...

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-=[ The Myth of Freedom ]=-
“A man is either free or he is not. There cannot be any apprenticeship for freedom.”
-- Imamu Amiri Baraka (1934 –)
American playwright, poet, novelist, essayist

I once became lost in a national park in Connecticut many years ago. I was about 19-20, a busload of us city kids planned a trip, and we all trekked up to some park in Armpit, USA. I am a dyed-in-the-wool city boy. And when I say city, I mean city. Please, I’ve traveled around this country and some places that use the term “city” are laughable. Yes, I am a NYC snob: anything above 14^th street for me is Hicksville. Anyway, grew up in the city and the first time I saw a hog live, I thought it was a cow! When I thought of pigs, what came to mind was that pig Arnold from the 1960s TV sitcom, “Green Acres”

Whatever… always the adventurous one, I convinced another poor soul to go “exploring” with me. We got lost for close to 48 hours. LOL! We kept walking in circles. There was this lake not too far from our campsite, you see, and I (being the “Brainiac” of the two) surmised if we followed the lakeshore, we would eventually end up where we started. The thing is we kept walking in circles, not around the lake, but within a confined space. We realized this after hours of walking because we kept seeing a rock formation that looked eerily familiar. The reason for that was that it was the same rock formation! LMAO! By this time, it had gotten dark and there was a pronounced early October chill. Too add to matters, my poor friend had inadvertently fallen into a cascade that hid a cave – he was freezing, but we thought the cave was the best place to stay for the night.

We had nothing – no matches, flashlight, compass, food – nada. We had to stop because of that annoying tendency towards complete darkness in the country. I mean, you can’t even see your own fuckin hand in front of your face. Sheeesh! More troubling, I swore I heard a wolf’s howl. I’m serious! Now, I don’t know if wolves actually exist in some Connecticut state park, but to this day, I swear I heard a howl! In addition, I didn’t make things better by voicing my conviction that the cave we had taken refuge in was some Grizzly bear’s home.

So, there were, hungry, cold, and lost.

Eventually, we somehow found our way to a road the next day, but they had a whole posse of people looking for us, which ruined the trip for everyone else. We walked down the road until we came upon some ranger in a car who then proceeded to ask us if we had seen two Puerto Rican kids walking around lost… DUH?!?! Hellloooo?!?! Fuckin’ hicks…

Of course, being the philosophically inclined one, I found all sorts of metaphors and meaning behind our little adventure, while my companion, who was freezing to death, cursed me the whole time. Still, it fascinated me that, left to our own devices, we kept walking around in circles. Shit, we tried to walk differently, making lefts, where we had previously made rights, and still we walked in circles. What does that say about our own habitual patterns, I asked my friend, as he conjured new swear words in my honor.

For the next fifteen years of my life, that incident was to become a metaphor for how I lived: doing what I wanted, how I wanted, when I wanted, and mistaking that for freedom. I think many people mistake “following their bliss” for freedom when in actuality walking around in circles without a compass is the ultimate prison. It’s the ultimate prison because we can’t see the bars, for they exist in our minds. We’re all “doing time,” when we come to think of it.

True freedom, for me anyway, takes practice. Actually, it takes a set of practices that serve as a guideline and map to freedom. Walk around rudderless without direction long enough and you’ll find you’re creating the same wreackage repeatedly.

Habitual Patterns

I like to joke that I became free while I was incarcerated but this is very true. Many years after that incident in the woods, I found myself at a maximum-security “facility.” LOL! I’m not proud of that, but I have to admit there’s some irony in this story -- at least for me there is, so I find some humor in all this now. when I became free, it was early spring, my favorite time of the year, and I was in a prison yard looking at some mountains and feeling really depressed about being locked up.

Then the realization hit me... I was actually free. Just like that. I realized that though I was physically incarcerated, only I could give anyone permission to imprison my mind. It may not sound like a lot to you, but for me it was transformative experience. The fact that I could choose to be free no matter where I found myself was an option I had never entertained and it literally blew me away.

Looking back, I understand now that this shift in consciousness didn’t happen all at once, that my epiphany that day wasn’t something entirely spontaneous. I understand now my realization came about because of the inner psycho-spiritual work I had put in, but it hit me that day like a bolt of lightning in the middle of a completely dark country night: I was free. Free, right then, at that very moment.

It was an amazing realization. I could choose to be free. a part of me struggled with this -- this couldn’t possibly be so simple and so true. Nevertheless, I felt it in the very fiber of my being, this freedom was real, palpable, a part of me, an uncovering of my heritage as a human being. When I went back to my cell later that day, I shared my revelation with my neighbors and they all started laughing at me. They were like, “Eddie, you in jail, bro!”

And they were correct, of course, I was in prison . However, my realization was that while I could be coerced into prison physically, only I could give another permission to incarcerate my heart and mind. What I saw clearly for the first time in my life was that I was giving the prison authorities this permission to take my mind, to imprison my heart. From that day on, I became free and my life, even within the prison walls, changed dramatically. I no longer was at the mercy of sadistic prison guards or all the other insanity that goes on in prison. From that day on, I was free -- really free -- and all my interactions reflected this realization of freedom. What happened was that people began responding to me differently: guards, who previously were able to press my buttons, didn’t know how to deal with the newer, free me, leaving them confused and anxious.

Other inmates would ask me why I “looked” different: was I exercising more? did I gain weight? Eventually, freedom would influence my immediate surroundings and those in contact with me began doing their own inner work, in the process transforming our collective prison experience. The effect was so palpable that I was eventually transferred from that location because I was deemed too dangerous. LOL! But by then it was too late, even in solitary confinement, they couldn’t take my freedom away.

I became free that early Spring day and though there are times I choose to give up my freedom -- especially when I come into contact with people with hate in their hearts -- I have chosen freedom more often than not these past nineteen years. My personal liberation, I have found, is not individual, dedicated solely to me, but instead it comes with a responsibility and an awareness that it affects everything around me. That other prison we all share: the myth that we are separate from others, has also dissolved and as a result your personal liberation is also important to me.

Ultimately, I have learned that my freedom demands I choose happiness. I never even knew I had that choice. It is my responsibility as a human being, actually, this choice. This is why I always say that everything we ever need for our happiness exists right here, right now, this very moment… this very life. This is true whether your prison is made of concrete and bars or psychic cockroaches.

May you all know true happiness… and freedom.

Love,

Eddie

Vincent

¡Hola! Everybody...
Caution: you may not want to read the following story. Seriously.

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-=[ Letting Go of Guilt ]=-

I have written about guilt before. In a way, I believe guilt (along with ignorance) should be considered one of the deadly sins because it’s responsible for so much suffering.

I usually make a big stink about my birthday -- celebrating it and letting as many people as I can know about it, but it wasn’t always that way. Many years ago, my stepfather, Vincent, a man I loved and saw as a surrogate father, committed suicide in the early morning hours of my birthday. He put a gun to his temple and pulled the trigger. Just like that...

I’m asleep in a drunken stupor. I’m vaguely aware of someone trying to shake me awake. I think it’s Vincent, but I’m not even sure if it’s him or a dream. Annoyed I shrug him away and tell him to leave me alone, and I crawl back under his car. He tells me he really needs to talk to me and I tell him, or the dream, that it can wait. To leave me the fuck alone.

It was the day before my birthday and we were living in Houston. It was Friday and my stepfather had picked me up from work and I asked him to stop by the liquor store to stock up for our usual Friday family get-togethers. In retrospect Vincent seemed a little different that day, more pensive, and we spoke on the way home. He told me a lot of things: how he was feeling pressure to maintain the quality of life; he spoke of disappointments -- he spoke about a lot things.

I was surprised because Vincent was the type of man who never complained. He was cut from old school: never let them know how you feel. He was a rock. He was a worker. Vincent was made of the stuff that made this country. He got up in the morning worked very hard, and he provided. That’s what he was taught a man was supposed to do. But he would never really talk about what was going on in his mind. He was a stoic in that sense. He did what he had to do without complaint.

On the way home that day we talked and we explored how maybe we can do things differently. I was working and I could help him financially (he wouldn’t accept money from me) and that he should let my mother know about the financial problems and stop trying to put up a façade that everything was fine.

When we got home that day, there was no one there -- everyone had left to go fishing. My mother’s an avid fisher and it wasn’t unusual for her to round everyone up and go crabbing or fishing. At the time, my sister and brother, as well as myself, were all staying in the house. My sister, had a live-in lover, as did my younger brother. Actually, my sister had only recently moved out, but she was there all the time. My other sister, lived nearby and was always around. We were a tight-knit extended family that spent a lot of time together.

That day, when I got home and went to wash up, I found a bloody pair of panties that had been left in the wash basin by my brother’s live-in girlfriend, whom I couldn’t stand. I showed this to my stepfather, who was outraged and it just fueled the whole conversation about letting people know there things were going to change, blah, blah, blah.

And we drank…

Towards the end of my drinking, I became what’s called an “ugly drunk.” I could get confrontational and say and do and say spiteful, hurtful things, and start shit, and that day was no different. By the time the rest of the family showed up, both Vincent and I were well into a quart of Bacardi and I was in rare form. Before the night was over, my brother and I almost came to blows (he took exception to me calling his girlfriend a pig), and Vincent argued with moms. Finally, my mother threw me out of the house because, “ I was acting like a garbage can.” Actually, she tried drop-kicking me but I was too fast for her. I don’t know where she found the strength, but she picked up this huge potted plant and threw it at me, barely missing my head.

I went to my sister’s house which was nearby in the same sub-division and started talkin’ shit there until, mercifully, I went to sleep under my brother-in-law’s car in the garage. No one knew I was there.

I am awakened by a cousin. “We’ve been looking for you, Eddie! Something terrible has happened! It’s Vincent! Hurry!”

I wake up thinking there’s been a fight or major argument but I’m completely unprepared when I see my mother’s eyes -- I see it all in her eyes and I’m wrenched into sobriety. My mother only manages to say, “Oh Eddie… ” or something like that. Nothing prepares me for the next time I see my dear Vincent, an incongruously neat bullet hole in his temple. I scream out in denial because I can’t accept this -- this can’t be... And I hold his head in my hands and beg him to wake up.

Outside the hospital, my brother challenges me yelling out, “It’s your fault! If you wouldn’t have been startin’ your shit this would’ve never happened… ” And he goes on a harangue for what seems to me too long and all I can do is stay quiet. And every word is like a knife into the very heart of me. When I try to form the words, nothing comes out, I have nothing, I’m empty inside, as if the very life force of me has been sucked out.

The details are hazy, but I remember someone trying to wake me up. I thought it was Vincent. He kept calling for me to wake up and he tried to take my arm, but I shook it off, telling him to leave me alone. I’ll never be sure if this really happened because I was so drunk. Was I dreaming? Was it really Vincent trying to wake me up and telling me he wanted to talk to me, or did I make the whole thing up? I don’t know…

All I know is that sometime in the night one of my cousins found me and told me to get up quick because something terrible had happened. I looked at my cousin and she saw my anger and said, “Get up, Eddie, Vincent shot himself.” I’ll never forget those words.

They rushed me to the hospital and the last time I saw Vincent he was already dead. A part of my mind couldn’t wrap itself around that. There was my mother crying and everybody else and there was Vincent dead, having shot himself in the head in a drunken stupor/ rage. What’s worse, he did it in front of my youngest brother, his son Vinnie, who was maybe 5-6-years-old. He locked himself and my little brother in his car and blew his brains away.

At the hospital, it got ugly. My brother confronted me and told me that it was my fault because I had gotten drunk and instigated a series of events that ended tragically. Vincent wouldn’t have shot himself if it weren’t for me, he said. And I looked around and while the rest of my family didn’t say it outright, no one disputed it either. I jumped at my brother, the rage welling up in me was uncontainable.

Looking back, I can’t blame my brother. Our lives were irrevocably, senselessly changed that day, and it was something unfathomable, it was impossible to make any sense of it. I know that in my own heart I also felt Vincent’s death -- it was my fault.

They say that all suicides are accompanied by a psychological phenomenon known as psychache. Psychache refers to the pain, anguish, and psychological hurt in the psyche, the mind. Truth is, Vincent had attempted suicide before, but was unsuccessful. Sometimes when he drank, he would lose it completely. There were demons inside of Vincent -- who knows what lurked in his mind? What traumas he harbored? And while things weren’t all that smooth, he was experiencing the most success ever.

But I took my brother’s words to heart and I couldn’t forgive myself for Vincent’s death. From where I stood, I killed him. I created the circumstances leading to his suicide by fighting and inciting Vincent. Vincent’s actions that night almost destroyed my family; the repercussions would be felt for years. It was my fault as surely as if I had put that gun to his head.

Tragically, suicide is not as uncommon as we think. Within the United States, suicide ranks as the eleventh leading cause of death among the general population, the second leading cause of death among 25-34 year olds, and is the third leading cause of death among 15-24 year olds. Of the 240,000 annual suicide attempts, most do not end in death and despite the frequency of suicide, there is a huge social stigma attached to it.

I left Houston as soon as I could, returning to New York and distancing myself as much as I could from my family. I was unable to face the hurt, the destruction, but no matter how much I ran, I lived with that guilt in my heart for so many years. I can honestly say that Vincent’s suicide marked the beginning of my personal descent into hell. For many years after, I became more and more self-destructive, gradually surrendering to my dark side, throwing myself into an addiction that knew no satisfaction. And whenever I thought about changing, or doing something to save myself, my guilt was there, something I could flagellate myself with, ensuring that I would never feel worthy of some measure of sanity, some peace of mind.

I like to say that feeling fucked up is habit-forming, and it is -- you can rewire your brain for misery if you feel fucked up long enough. I couldn’t change in part because I didn’t feel worthy. I was unworthy in all areas of my life. I was a failure as a father, as a son, a lover, a brother, I was someone who never fulfilled his potential -- all these things drove me and my addiction. Most of all, I felt so guilty for my mother, who suffered so much.

Guilt is a completely different thing than remorse. In our culture, “guilty” is a verdict hammered out by a judge in court. And if no one else punishes us, we look to punish ourselves, in some way or another. Guilt for me meant punishment deep inside my psyche. It created in me my own psychache.

Today I know that Vincent’s suicide wasn’t my fault, but it took me a long time to get here. I also had a lot of support and did a lot of “inner” work therapeutically and otherwise. And still I almost didn’t make it. I too attempted suicide once and when that failed, I tried to get others to do it for me. But I’m here today, and I can celebrate my birthday and not be angry with Vincent for taking what I thought was the easy way out. For so long, I was so angry with Vincent. How could he do such a thing? How could he leave us? I still miss Vincent, and today I still love him…

Today, I know I can never really know why Vincent did what he did. Today, I try to honor Vincent’s memory by remembering all the good he did while he was here: his selflessness, his compassion, his commitment to providing for us -- five children, four of whom weren’t even his own.

Vincent always encouraged me to use my intelligence. He would take me to his co-workers when I was a child and announce, “This is my son and he’s real smart. Ask him any question -- go ahead.” LOL! It was a lot of pressure and I hated it when he did that, but nine times out of ten, I would get the answer right and Vincent would beam with pride. He paid for my cherished encyclopedia Britannica because, although he never had a formal education himself, he understood my intellectual curiosity needed to be nurtured. My greatest hope is that he really understood what he meant to me -- to all of us.

I guess the most difficult part of my journey was convincing myself that I deserved forgiveness and absolution. For so many years I lived with this crippling guilt. Then one day, I realized that if I wanted live, I would have to let go of the guilt -- forever. That was the day I broke out of my inner prison.

Love,

Eddie

Sunday Semon [Fundamentalism]

¡Hola! Everybody…
I passed by Ground Zero yesterday and the deluded were out in full force. Why would you wear a t-shirt calling everything you disagree with an abomination?

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-=[ Delusion ]=-

Man is the only animal that has the True Religion – several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself, and cuts his throat if his ideology isn’t straight.
-- Mark Twain

What I find interesting when engaging the “holy rollers” is that it always comes down to this: I’m going to hell daring to challenge their beliefs. I’ve had some actually say that (for my sake) I had better be right, because (presumably) God is gonna have his vengeance on my blaspheming ass. LOL! It has been my experience that “true believers” are more interested in defending dogma rather than actually living what they purport to believe. If you’re a Christian and you find a measure of justification in your belief that your God will sentence me to a hereafter of eternal damnation, then what kind of Christian are you?

Beliefs can be a nuthafucka sometimes… SMDH

As a matter of habit, I do a “belief spring cleaning” at least once a year. What that means is that I regularly taken an inventory of my beliefs and dump the ones that have no real foundation. Now, this is no easy feat. Over the years, I have had to throw away some really cherished beliefs. One such belief was my belief in me! I used to believe that “Eddie” existed, but when I sat down to look for “Eddie,” I couldn’t find him. What I found instead, when I looked closely while suspending my belief, was an on-going process -- a series of beliefs -- which I managed to cobble together to create this entity we’ve all agreed to call “Eddie” (as well as some other choice names). In fact, what I found was an amalgam of defense mechanisms, beliefs, fears, personality quirks, that when run really fast, looked like what I consider my personality -- or “Eddie.” It’s a lot like a film. A film gives the viewer the illusion of movement and substance because the individual frames move at a very fast rate through the projector.

But when I sat down and slowed the process down, suspended my belief system, what I saw wasn’t “Eddie,” but a bunch of different components that added up to what I call an “Eddie.”

At first that was a fucked up revelation. How could it be that I don’t exist?!! I must be seeing things wrong, I surmised to myself, so I began researching this. After all, I was very much attached to the “Eddie” I had created.

But nowhere could I find the basis of Eddie. From a science perspective, I discovered that the brain/ mind has no specific function that creates “Eddie.” There’s central processing area in the brain responsible for the creation of a personality -- an “Eddie.” It’s all made up! At first, this was a very scary revelation. I mean, how will “Eddie” go to heaven if there is no “Eddie”? But then, upon further reflection, I realized that this kinda/ sorta liberated me. I mean if “Eddie” was something I made up as a way to cope with life, then that meant I didn’t have to defend myself as much. “Eddie” was a story I made up in order to explain shit, but it wasn’t really who I was. Sure, I use “Eddie” for stuff like paying the rent and crossing the street, but “Eddie” is still just a story, a movie I made up.

And that’s how I lost “Eddie.” Or my belief in it.

Another belief I lost early on was the hand-me-down belief in a God that lived in the sky somewhere and who either punished or rewarded one according to behavior. That one was a lot easier than losing “Eddie.” I realized that belief in Divine Hierarchy that needed to be prayed to in order to curry favor was pretty much juvenile. And that shit about the world being created in seven days? Yeah right! And why He gotta be a man?!! What’s up with that? What I came to experience and realize was that we’re all part of the Divine Spark, that God isn’t somewhere out there, but here inside of me (and everyone else). And some day, who knows, maybe even that belief will be discarded.

Any hand-me-down belief system is a subtle appeal to your deepest fears and longings. It’s like a parasite that wraps itself around your mind -- almost like a demonic possession.

Don’t get me wrong, certain belief systems contain important truths, questions, and sometimes even answers. Yet, at a very deep level, they are not your truths, questions, or answers. An unquestioned belief system is like eating free bread, it only masks the real hunger we have for spiritual fulfillment. This basic human hunger can only be satisfied by our own efforts, by the planting and cultivation of our questions, by the harvesting of our own answers, and by coming to our own truths. Only then will you earn the right to live consciously, mindfully, and call yourself truly alive.

Blind faith is, well, blind.

Hand-me-down beliefs are a lot like spiritual refuse: easy junk-food handouts offered to us by outdated belief systems and thought constellations that keep us dependent on the spiritual dole, rendering us incapable of fending for ourselves, incapable of becoming who we really are. If we, in our thirst for spirituality, agree to drink the Kool-Aid of guilt, shame, and fear they serve us, we will live as zombies -- dead from the neck up.

Face it, most belief systems are the rotted remains of what one person did in deliberation and mindfulness for themselves. Will you be content to live on the rotted meat of their long-lost labors?

The unexamined life is a second-hand life. It is second hand because it is dependent on other things for meaning. Take away the hand-me-down beliefs and you take away meaning. An examined life is meaningful because it is the examination and personal exploration that gives it genuine meaning and grants dignity. Do you really believe in or want off-the-shelf, one-size fits-all truths, or are you going to explore and discover your own?

The choice has always been yours.

Love,

Eddie

Labor Struggles

¡Hola! Everybody…
It is on days like today that I miss great Americans like Howard Zinn, who never failed to remind us never to forget…

* * *

-=[ The Ludlow Massacre ]=-

Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.

-- James Baldwin (1924–1987)

I hope that you have had an opportunity to gather with friends and family to observe the many that died in order to make certain things we take for granted today. Stuff like fair wages, the 40-hour week hour week, and vacations, for example, are a reality today because people fought for those rights.

That's OK, our Corporate Media and their bland whores -- the well-paid, hair-sprayed teleprompt readers -- would never focus on such a history. No, I don’t blame you for forgetting about Labor and its impact on our lives. After all, there’s much more important stuff to think about.

The history of Labor in the USA is one that is rarely ever discussed and until recently, you would be hard put to find any historical documentation on its history. There is a good reason for this: it’s not a very pretty history. For those of us of a conservative orientation who like to mouth clichés about the “good ole days,” well, they weren’t so good.

Not unless you consider child labor, or the lack of safety in the workplace leading to disease and death, as good. One school teacher, Samuel Yellin, wanted to teach Labor history to his high school students but was unable to find a textbook, so he wrote his own, American Labor Struggles. Until Howard Zinn and some others, this was the only book that documented the history of the US government’s and Big Business’ shameful response to the Labor movement.

One of the more heinous of episodes, now known as the Ludlow Massacre, reads like something out of a fascist government -- which is what corporatization (rule by corporations) is, in fact. When I first read this as part of a deal I made with my then high school-aged son, I was shocked that such things, with all our lip service to individual freedom and fairness, happened in the United States:

On April 20, 1914, 20 innocent men, women, and children were killed in the Ludlow Massacre. For some time, coal miners in Colorado and other western states had been trying to join the UMWA for many years. They were bitterly opposed by the coal operators, led by the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company.

As a result, for their striking, the miners and their families had been evicted from their company-owned houses and had set up a tent colony on public property. The ensuing massacre was a carefully planned attack on the tent colony by Colorado militiamen, coal company guards, and thugs hired as private detectives and strikebreakers. They shot and burned to death 20 people, including a dozen women and small children. Later, investigations would reveal that the tents were intentionally set on fire. The miners had dug foxholes in the tents so the women and children could avoid the bullets that randomly were shot through the tent colony by company thugs. The women and children were found huddled together at the bottoms of their tents.

The Baldwin Felts Detective Agency had been brought in to suppress the Colorado miners. They brought with them an armored car mounted with a machine gun--the Death Special-- that roamed the area spraying bullets. The day of the massacre, the miners were celebrating Greek Easter. At 10:00 AM, the militia ringed the camp and began firing into the tents upon a signal from the commander, Lt. Karl E. Lindenfelter. Not one of the perpetrators of the slaughter were ever punished, but scores of miners and their leaders were arrested and black-balled from the coal industry.

A monument erected by the UMWA stands today in Ludlow, Colorado in remembrance of the brave and innocent souls who died for freedom and human dignity.

Today, people enjoy taking potshots at Unions. Much of this is the result of a media controlled by the very forces that opposes organized labor; some of it is the result of bonehead actions taken the union leaders themselves. However, the only thing standing between you (if you’re not a CEO) and complete servitude are unions, which is why Corporate Christianity abhors the Labor Movement.

I find it hard to write about individual improvement when there is so much denial going on in our country. To stay quiet during times of atrocity is to be complicit in its crimes. This was the example of the Wiemar Republic -- the epitome of Western Civilization. Most of those people weren’t evil, they just didn’t act. There was too much to do, they were too busy, going about the time-consuming activities of daily living to do anything. So after the butcher, the Jew, the homosexual, and then the teacher were gone, there was no one around to help when they came for them.

In the past, people have asked me to write about actions we can take to improve things. That comes later. Before we can act, we must become aware. I write in the hopes that even one person can gain some awareness. Mass movements of social change are founded in this notion of enlightening one mind at a time. History shows us, as Margaret Meade observed many years ago: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”

I will leave you with the words of someone who was a lot better at this than I will ever hope to be:

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty,” Edward R. Murrow said in 1954. “We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.

“We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular.”

Remember to give thanks to all those men, women, and children who had the fuckin’ cojones to lay down their lives for their convictions, so that we could have better lives.

Love,

Eddie

Sunday Sermon [Anger as Ally]

¡Hola! Everybody…
I have to admit that I derive a measure (sadistic) pleasure from puncturing the over-inflated egos of the arrogant. LOL!

* * *

-=[ Anger ]=-

Anyone can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person at the right time, and for the right purpose and in the right way - that is not within everyone's power and that is not easy.

-- Aristotle

I often warn people they shouldn’t fuck with my Changó. In the Yorùbá religion, Changó (also spelled Shango) is the god of thunder and lightning. I always associate the energy of this orisha (deity) with penetrating awareness. You don’t mess with him. He is a major symbol of the African Diaspora resistance against an enslaving European culture. Generally, he rules over male sexuality and human vitality. He is the owner of the Bata (3 double-headed drums), as well as the arts of music, dance and entertainment. In some ways, Changó can be said to be the product of logic and passion forged to achieve a strategic goal. This tension between cool reason and fiery passion forms the foundation of Changó's character and nature.

In the Puerto Rican vernacular, Changó is often associated with anger and impetuosity. To call someone un changó is to point out their unruliness, their brattiness, impetuosity, or something like that. LOL

Anger is probably the most misunderstood emotion. We spend an inordinate amount of psychic energy trying to avoid it: “venting it away,” suppressing it, indulging it, struggling with it, over-analyzing it, projecting the soap opera we attach to it unto others, blaming it for our problems. We rarely take the time to welcome it, and just be with it -- to actually feel our anger without the narrative. Anger, for many of us, is an unwelcome but powerful stranger in our lives. It’s there, just underneath the surface, lurking in the shadows, waiting to sabotage your ass, often bubbling to the surface at the most inopportune moments.

And please: I was there when you wished death on the driver that cut you off the other day. I was inside your head when you got angry at all those Mexicans coming here to destroy Western Civilization. In fact, I know you got pissed when I called you out on that bullshit about being for war though war mostly kills innocent children and women. You got pissed when I pointed out the weakness in your political analysis, or because I’m too mutherfuckin profane.

Yes you.

LOL!

Anger, or rather, mindless anger, is an occupational hazard for me. My work involves promoting social and economic justice and I am often thrust against really ugly shit. It’s a difficult realization not because it’s hard for me to own up to it, but because it lays bare how much work I have ahead of me.

My work, however, has also taught me how to make anger an ally, a tool. Anger, clearly felt, without the attendant recriminations and self-justification, leads to a clear, discriminating awareness. It can become the impetus for just action. When I first went about picking up the pieces of my life, I decided I wanted to get a formal education. Someone I love dearly told me not to waste my time, that I was too old, that I should drop immature fantasies and concentrate on gaining a skill and toiling somewhere for a living wage. I was so angry, so hurt that this person would tear apart my dream just like that. But I took that anger and I channeled it, used it to motivate me, not in the sense of “I’ll show him,” but as a way to focus my energies on what I had to do to make it from point A to point B. Drawing from anger, I was able to pinpoint my focus on what I needed to do, and that anger eventually morphed into my passion for knowledge.

Truth is a loving thought. Every thought based on love is a truth. Everything else is a desperate and sometimes dysfunctional cry for wholeness. And the question remains of how I should respond to anger. How can I be justified in responding in anger to an injustice? The answer here is clear: the only appropriate response is the willingness to give with an open heart.

This doesn’t mean, however, I passively allow an insecure bully to attack me, or to accept institutional injustices go unchallenged. On the contrary, living mindfully means I feel fully and act justifiably. It also means I don’t allow myself to be smeared by the mindless fears and ignorance of those that would champion injustices. It does mean that my motivation must be based on what’s loving and true. This is hard path to tread because the temptation for moral indignation is great. But this isn’t rocket science, we all know what’s fair and when people are being unfairly treated or scapegoated. Most of us who are willing to take a look know when the game is rigged and rigged in such a way that we benefit at the expense of others. The trick is not losing my heart when coming up against the mindless fear and ignorance of those that would deny it.

Love,

Eddie

Sunday Sermon [Independence]

¡Hola! Everybody...
It’s summer, I live in the greatest city in the world, and I’m single... Life is good!

I hope you take even a little time today to reflect on what it means to be a citizen in a representative democracy. Hint: It's more than yelling "We're no. 1!" Happy 4th of July...

* * *

-=[ Power, Questions & Democracy ]=-

There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous.
-- Hanna Arendt

As in Emile Zola’s parable, our society resembles passengers on a runaway train, asleep or oblivious to the fact that the conductor and engineer have killed themselves.

No. You will not find yet another blind "rah rah rah" 4th of July post here. Instead, what I hope you will find here is an indictment of a nation plagued with a collective resistance to change and a tolerance for inequality. All compounded by a blind adherence to dogmatism and an dangerous intolerance toward ambiguity.

And it is threatening to kill whatever freedoms we can still claim. All while you're grilling and commiserating with your fellow compatriots.

In order to have a democracy, there has to be a vibrant, critically thinking populace. An important component of thinking critically -- I would say the most important component -- is the ability to form questions. I have written about the importance of questions in the past. Almost every act we take is an answer to a question. Sometimes we forget the questions, obsessing as we do on answers, and our thoughts and actions take on a mindless (uncritical?) quality. In my experience, questions have always been about power. Asking them enabled me to overcome the many challenges I faced as a young man -- especially challenges regarding where I “belonged” (or didn’t). This link between questions and power is at the heart of our democracy -- or what is left of it.

With the market controlling almost every aspect of our society, globalism shrinks our world, our power as citizens of a democracy will come from our ability and willingness to ask the right questions. To question our government, our educational system, our communities, ourselves. And by questioning I don’t mean merely questioning, but learning to look for and ask the unasked question. Inquiry is more than asking the obvious (often too simple) questions that come with yes or no answers. The art of the question is a process of discovery, asking, re-asking, synthesizing, and evaluating until we have come to an of uncovering of the truth. Or at least something approximating it.

Inquiry is more than an act, it is deeply embedded in the values and idea of a democracy. In turn, I define democracy as more than representative government; it is also a system that values equality, justice, and the peculiar idea that every member of a group has something of worth to offer the whole. In this context, a democracy requires a people that pays attention, thinks critically, and analyzes information effectively.

People love to beat up on teachers and schools, or try to lay the blame of our current educational standards to lazy or apathetic parents. This type of thinking (if it can be called as such) is exactly what I am talking about here. In attempting to find the one answer, we miss the forest for the trees. As in all social policy areas, the solutions education calls for are complicated, multifaceted. But we have a society obsessed with answers at the expense of first asking the questions. In that way we assure that nothing of worth gets accomplished.

We teach our children that the answer is all that counts. We test students to death, reinforcing the idea that correctly filling in bubbles on a piece of paper is the same as learning. Our educational system has become an assembly-line factory dedicated to the cause of test preparation while we throw out the guiding philosophy of critical thinking -- that we must discover, ask questions, accumulate evidence, make determinations.

We like to wrap ourselves in the flag on the 4^th of July and crow that “we’re no, 1” but we don’t trust that our young can question the way our communities work, so we disinvest in education and the teaching of civics. Instead, we encourage our young to become mindless consumers so that they can better serve the ideology that the market is the answer to everything. We don’t teach them to question it, we teach them to follow it blindly. Not too much difference between that and fundamentalist blind faith, is it? We urge our children to choose better, but not in the creation of those choices.

This obsession to answer is what plagues our nation, as so many look for confirmations of their biases rather than an actual personal and collective exploration and exchange of ideas. How many times have you witnessed someone cutting-and-pasting a link and use it in lieu of real debate? Oftentimes, these links haven’t been questioned, nor consumed. Textual regurgitations I call them. This is what we teach our young. The fact is that I derive more intellectual pleasure in speaking with young people. Young people are naturally curious beings, full of awe and wonder, but we’re sucking this natural wonder out of them.

Like good educators, good societies understand the limits of absolute knowledge; they don’t try to teach everything there is to know. The best we can do for our children is to cultivate in them the habits of mind of inquiring, critical thinkers. They won’t get their critical thinking skills through rote learning, ideology, or group-think. Answers are not retrieved, they are constructed.

What would happen if Google took a day off?

Someone once asked the great Indian civil rights leader, Mahatma Gandhi what he thought of western society. His response was, "It is a great idea." I feel the same way about the nation I was born in and love. Every year, on the 4th of July, I am sadly reminded of the potential of what we can become. But we will never fully realize our potential as a nation if we stay asleep...

Love,

Eddie