Humboldt Revolution

If you would like to see police review commissions become a reality in Humboldt county you will be interested to hear that the Coalition for Police Review is trying to do just that. They will be meeting at the ACLU’s digs here in Eureka at 917 3rd street suite F on March 2^nd.

If you have ever tried to file a legitimate complaint concerning police misconduct you will know that the usual government run around is amplified exponentially with a dash of intimidation thrown in. If you feel that law enforcement agencies are too busy acting as political hit men or bullying the weakest members of our society to protect you then this is for you. The grand jury or the State Attorney General will never do anything about the most blatant abuses. try it.

 We hope to post more here soon. A lot more…

Monday Feb 27th 9 AM The Scotia SLAPP* trial is beginning. Please be there. Court room 1 The jury phase is in progress at this point and the defendants are up against a large corporation and it’s high priced attornies. The legal system in America is almost exclusivly a form over content operation where the most money and political influence wins. Money for attornies, money to get evidence into court and accepted etc. etc. Right and wrong, innocence and guilt are virtually irrelevant. Show up in court to support the defendants. It will be the best thing they have going for them against the worst sort of bullies.

I will ammend this post as I get dates, times and courtroom numbers among other things. 

*SLAPP An acronym for “Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation”. These are suits designed with the sole purpose of circumventing a persons first amendement rights of free speech which also makes it an assualt on democracy which is, by definition, freedom to speak, be heard and participate in the governance of our country. 

Officials say “Trust Us” When Very Basis of American System is Distrust!!

By Paul Lehto

2/21/06

http://tinyurl.com/m79qw

(This is about the design of checks and balances eliminating trust as a grounds for operating government. They have no right to ask us to accept unverifiable voting, secret budgets, or anything else that we cannot fully examine.)

We Dare Not Speak Its Name

by Rev. Rich Lang

Revolution #035, February 19, 2006

http://rwor.org/a/035/we-dare-not-speak-name.htm
(These are great words from a Reverend calling fellow preachers to speak the truth about fascism from their pulpits).

We Don’t Consent!       It still sticks, right?
       So we’ve got  a little to do to  keep this  going.  Input here is encouraged!  Yet the web is only  one tool for an activist.  It branches out quickly to more personal e-mail and phone calls and of course get together’s and actions as we grow closer.  If we’re good at this, there ought to be organic growth beyond any controlling influences of a so-called  starting  circle of folks,  ’cause, there ought to be non violent Revolutionary Councils in every city and town. Right?                                                                                                

     Thinking about a meeting March 11, so let’s see what we can do here and by
e-mail,  for getting a core of  us folks together for organizing  it.                                                                        

      1) What stands out  boldly from our meeting 2/11 (for starts) is need for the most  fundamental  agreements in working together as  a movement, a tribe…..and  other vitally needed  skills which almost immediately pop up, once we’ve got the basics down.   Such  digging will uncover incredibly useful and humane tools, kinds of  alternative activities communities sorely  need and can thrive on.
          People don’t work together long, who don’t find the affinity.  ‘Cause it’s never  just   issues , but  why we know we can trust one another to do it!  Such  humility helps marginalize attitudes and  all the personal freedom extraveganzas  ‘taken for granted’, the bad habits formed in the “system” !    What’s the use  fooling ourselves about any kind of nonviolent revolution, unless we’ve gone right down and found solid ground to stand on together?   We all feel  it and somehow know a cultural revolution  wouldn’t be a bad  idea, the  place to start,  particularly since  “system”  has never found it’s integrity, has  almost altogether  lost it’s spiritual objectives,  is rapidly driving  the entire world to industrialize ……and thus is determined to take  all us species and/or a destroyed environment down!  Solid goad for  taking ourselves seriously. 
   
     2)  Better communications and some methods for doing so,  were mentioned at the Town Hall  Meeting. We can do this. And  it’s also crucial   to be  deciding what specifically we intend to bring to the  Peace March………Sat.  Mar 18th!  A ripe place for more solid messages and commitments.  3,000 peoples annual two hour outing “doth not make the activist”  nor  change  a thing in the long run.        
     
      Many of us  have worked  hard, and long for what we believe, soul searching and struggling in coming to grips with  such unprecedented times, overworked and sorely needing others to jump in and help!   It’s always, about  what  we offer, (more exactly what  it  is we’re  good at ! )  We have  integrity, but it’s marginalized a bunch by our consumptive habits and distractions.  We’ve got to look  hard at  all this and redefine what works, what’s liveable and will serve both us and our children!     People want  something better and why they should  join us in helping our movement  grow. This would be a good start!  But it’s all about how all of us feel and how much we all want it.  Isn’t that right?
                          

We all know that we are ahead of the curve here and that our work needs to have ripple effects that will encourage other communities to follow our lead. I have made several posts with this in mind in the GuvWurld Blog as well as at discussion site Democratic Underground. Most recently, last night at DU someone posted an e-mail circulated by John Kerry as a fundraising announcement. The letter is below, followed by my contribution to the thread which had until then been only encouraging remarks as if Kerry was doing anything more than blowing hot air about perpetuating the status quo.

http://tinyurl.com/9fwbs

In the last 24 hours, we’ve seen troubling reports that Dick Cheney directed “Scooter” Libby to release classified information to discredit critics of the war in Iraq…we’ve heard hard-to-ignore accusations from a former top CIA official that the White House “cherry picked” intelligence to make the case for war…and we’ve received stunning evidence that the president sat on his hands and did nothing for 12 hours after the White House had been informed that the levees broke in New Orleans.

Enough is enough.

Contribute Today to Break Their Grip on Power

Yesterday, we launched our nine-month Break Their Grip on Power campaign and thousands of people from all across the nation have already acted. Add your voice to our efforts right now.

Let’s expose the culture of corruption that has engulfed the Republican Congress and the culture of incompetence that has swallowed up the White House. Let’s get the focus back on solving the enormous challenges the people of this country are facing because of lack of leadership from Washington.

Contribute Today to Break Their Grip on Power

Every step of the way in 2006, we’ll support Democratic candidates - giving them the help they need to break the Republicans’ grip on power.

And, when the Republicans and their henchmen launch their vicious attacks on our candidates, we’ll fight back with force and redouble our support for any candidate they target.

That’s what it’s going to take to win - nine months of relentless effort. And it has to start now. Let’s go to work.

Sincerely,

John Kerry

http://tinyurl.com/82uqt

Enough is enough means now. Not nine months from now. Immediately. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.

How can we accept any more of this, loss of innocent until proven guilty, loss of privacy, activists regarded as terrorists, protesting from “free speech zones” where government-paid reporters won’t cover us, destruction of the environment, bankrupt economy funding immoral and illegal wars, using depleted uranium (Mr. Bush’s slow motion holocaust).

Do you understand that the Bush/Hitler comparisons aren’t apt but only because Bush has sentenced to death far more than Hitler ever killed?

Bush and Cheney will never stand for impeachment. Despite the long shot, it is conceivable that impeachment proceedings will be brought. But at that time, do you think that this cabal will suddenly begin to live by the rule of law?

You know they hold power by whatever means necessary and will simply not allow themselves to be put on trial for their lives. Oh yeah, remember, if relevant matters of impeachment are openly discussed we will not lose sight of the War Crimes Act of 1996 which makes it a crime punishable by death to violate or order others to violate the Geneva Convention. These war criminals will literally never stand for an impeachment trial.

And Kerry’s message isn’t talking about this anyway. It also isn’t talking about the fact that there is no basis for confidence in the results reported from our elections. Paperless electronic voting, and even secret proprietary machines with a paper trail, are not verifiable. Under current conditions, we are going to continue having “elections” with inconclusive outcomes - where there is not unanimous acceptance of the results.

Whose reality do you want to live by? You know what problems we’re facing. John Kerry is talking to you in a way that is meant to create some kind of empathy - he feels your pain and wants to address the same things you do. But then he doesn’t even come close to addressing them. We must do better. Non-violent revolution has become necessary, NOW!

humboldtrevolution.org

It is too often the case that organizing around the Political is the most conservative of categories. Political people are pragmatists by and large. I am one of them - a self described Anarchist Opportunist. But like the Groucho whose Marxist I have always been, I eventually came to the conclusion, after so many forays onto community liberal turf and nonprofit building, that I would no longer join groups that I could guarantee I would be thrown out of after the group got well established.

The gathering of Humboldt Revolution which I estimated, counting by tens, to be 150 people at its crest, was a political gathering par excellence. But this was not a gathering of the usual opportunists but one of the  Highest Pragmatism, so to speak. While the greatest number of people I meet think at best that suffering dutifully through Amy Goodman every day is all the politics they are called to, I was heartened to spend hours with a group that is called to a deeper politics.
Club Mud on Monday played a taped memoir of Coretta Scott King commemorating her life which rang with the kind of experiment in truth worthy of a Gandhian.  She describes MLK speaking at the beginning of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, emphasizing that the time for Patience had  passed. The relevance of King’s moment to today’s situation was real and inspiring to me  - as totally out of patience with the US political scene as I am.

King had a favorite text he used concerning Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle. King says that when Rip went to sleep,  the portrait of George the Third was on the wall and when he woke up, there was a portrait of George Washington.  Rip van Winkle, exclaims King, had Slept through a Revolution. And King pointedly tells his audiences, the time is now, Don’t sleep through this revolution.

A generation later, King’s revolution is as current as ever and the government  - the pire - forces which killed him are as ruthless as ever. The match up is again inevitable - not because we are so together and ready to roll. Rather, as my friend Father Flotsky used to say - The revolution begins when the government attacks. And the government - the Empire - must attack and attack and attack, opening up fronts no sane person would expect - all in order to survive.

These are Caesarian gamblers who know its all or nothing if they are to have another century. They are heedless of defeats. These are merely opportunities for more reckless dice throws. They think we are all bluff. They don’t realize that we too are determined to survive. But, unlike them, survival  is  not the only value we serve. After all, we are many and survival in our terms, I think, means continuity of a way of life that only a people and not an elite can sustain.We are canaries in the coal mine who are determined to fight back in the nonviolent manner of  Latin  American  peasants that been called  Relentless Persistence. The resistance of a people who will not be eradicated is the natural antidote to the madness of an elite divorced from the natural world it seeks to totally dominate.
After 9-11, I became reconciled with the flag. I actually publically carried one as a two mile part of an idealistic young woman’s healing cross country ceremony. The flag wasn’t “them” to me anymore. 9-11 made me realize the depth of the betrayal of “my people” by the government - the Empire. I realized that “my people” - Americans - had no natural defenders anymore.

Of course, my political life had been a testament to the fact that the government - the Empire - did not serve the values it claimed. But somehow I bought the division between my politics and those “fellow Americans” who supported the government - the Empire - in large numbers.  But now I realized like I had never thought it before - that when the government - the Empire -  betrayed the values of our way of life it also betrayed those “fellow Americans.”  The government - the Empire - had no right to that flag.  It used the flag, the constitution, history, religion to distract us from the fact that it served nothing but a so small elite.
The US has always been an occupied country.  In conquering this continent, it was conquering its  “own” people. That’s when I came to see that the 5 illegitimate  years of this particular Bush regime added up to 5 centuries equally illegitimate. That precisely at the moment 5 centuries ago when Europe had set out to conquer the world it had also already lost its soul. It served no God but Mammon and a materialism that declared war on life itself.
The most alienated and oppressed people - Native Americans, Afro-Americans, Women, Indentured Wage Slaves, among many -  had told me nothing else but the story of this wouless conquest and I thought I got it. And maybe I have  - in fleeting epiphanies. But now it seems to be an indelible mark on my mind, or maybe a ringing in my ears that won’t go away.

One of our speakers quoted with great effect a pertinent Dylan song.  I have another that is as pertinent to me now as it was at the end of the Vietnam War -”It’s All over now, baby blue.”  I’ll find the text to print because we are at the moment of the government’s - the Empire’s - next great defeat.  Our moment is coming around on the guitar again, I think.

Thanks for the opportunity to think it.  Paul Encimer