Coretta Scott King: What Is Violence?

Deprived: Images of abject suffering and deprivation on the Gulf Coast were laid bare by Hurricane Katrina, but, in Mississippi alone nearly one third of all children were poor even before the disaster struck. Most still are.

I must remind you that starving a child is violence. Suppressing a culture is violence. Neglecting school children is violence. Punishing a mother and her family is violence. Discrimination against a working man is violence. Ghetto housing is violence. Ignoring medical need is violence. Contempt for poverty is violence.

- Coretta Scott King

'Making the Invisible, Visible': Haunting pictures of America's most vulnerable people shot by photojournalists against poverty:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2117997/Making-invisible-visible-Haunting-pictures-Americas-vulnerable-people-shot-photojournalists-poverty.html 

Khalil Gibran: The Teacher Who Is Wise

The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of 

his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind. 

~ Khalil Gibran

 

Joseph Campbell: The Privlege of a Lifetime

The privilege of a lifetime 

is being who you are.

― Joseph Campbell

 

Joseph Chilton Pearce: Seeing Within

Seeing within changes one's outer vision.
 

― Joseph Chilton Pearce

 

Edward Said: No One Is Purely One Thing

Zolashine - Changu Narayan, Nepal 
https://www.flickr.com/photos/zolashine/

No one today is purely one thing. Labels like Indian, or woman, or Muslim, or American are not more than starting-points, which if followed into actual experience for only a moment are quickly left behind. Imperialism consolidated the mixture of cultures and identities on a global scale. But its worst and most paradoxical gift was to allow people to believe that they were only, mainly, exclusively, white, or Black, or Western, or Oriental. Yet just as human beings make their own history, they also make their cultures and ethnic identities. No one can deny the persisting continuities of long traditions, sustained habitations, national languages, and cultural geographies, but there seems no reason except fear and prejudice to keep insisting on their separation and distinctiveness, as if that was all human life was about. Survival in fact is about the connections between things; in Eliot’s phrase, reality cannot be deprived of the “other echoes [that] inhabit the garden.” It is more rewarding - and more difficult - to think concretely and sympathetically, contrapuntally, about others than only about “us.” But this also means not trying to rule others, not trying to classify them or put them in hierarchies, above all, not constantly reiterating how “our” culture or country is number one (or not number one, for that matter).
 

― Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism

 

Edward Said: Criticism and Dedicated Consciousness

We can not fight for our rights and our history 

as well as future until we are armed with weapons of 

criticism and dedicated consciousness.

― Edward W. Said

 

Robert Thurman: We Must Become Mindful

On the collective level, we have unwittingly shifted from being a nation of liberators, defenders of freedom, into becoming a nation of arms dealers and mercenaries, fabricating our own weapons of mass destruction and arming tyrants with the tools to oppress their own people. Within our own society, we jail more prisoners than any other country in the world, 85 percent of them people of nonwhite races — red, black, brown, and yellow. We are one of the few nations that still indulge in the death penalty for increasing numbers of these prisoners. We must become mindful of these negative things, since we need not support these actions of our nation to be affected negatively by their evolutionary impact, unless we mentally, verbally, and ultimately physically, disassociate ourselves from them.

- Robert Thurman

Robert Thurman with the Dalai Lama

 

Imagine Peace

Photo: Facebook.com/roycehalltheartist

This lovely woman is smudging with sage, which is a cleansing ritual to clear negative energy. It is something I have done for many years now, as do many of my friends, and is a common and ancient tradition among indigenous peoples.

Bless this beautiful woman. Bless us all. Peace is possible. And it is up to each of us to commit to increasingly, one day at a time, to live and be the peace we yearn to see in the world. heart emoticon

Molly  

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Why Bernie Sanders Running for President Is Great News for Democrats

 By Gregory Krieg

A one-horse race no more. 

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will formally enter the Democratic presidential primary contest Thursday, as firstreported by Vermont Public Radio. He plans to release a brief statement in the next 24 hours with a campaign kickoff event to follow in the coming weeks. Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats on Capitol Hill, has been publicly flirting with a decision since the end of last year.

Sanders' arrival on the trail represents the first meaningful challenge to Hillary Clinton and her rich, barnstorming campaign. It also means the former secretary of state will be buffeted on the left by a formidable and popular liberal opponent. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley is pursuing a similar route, but has failed to crack 1% support in the early polls and seems disinclined to criticize or question Clinton head-on.

For Democrats, Sanders' decision to join the fight guarantees at least one fiery progressive foil will be sharing the debate stage with the frontrunner, as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), another grassroots favorite, seems content to have her say from the peanut gallery.

Why he's running: Speaking with Bill Moyers in October, Sanders, though still undecided at the time, laid out his argument in stark terms. 

"Things are getting worse," he said. "When you look at this campaign, and you realize the enormously serious issues this country faces, right — we got a collapsing middle class. We have more wealth and income inequality today than we've had since the 1920s. We have all of these enormous issues. And what big money can do is put an unbelievable amount of TV and radio ads out there to deflect attention from the real issues facing the American people."

Those "real issues" include, to wit: moving past Obamacare to single-payer health insurance funded by tax hikes on millionaires and billionaires; free college for anyone who wants to attend; a radical redrafting of trade policies he believes devalue American workers; and a new push for a constitutional amendment that would reverse the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, which Sanders blames for shifting the balance of electoral power to "billionaire families now able to spend hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars to purchase the candidates of their choice."

Sanders is betting his popularity with liberal activists — and their willingness to take him on as the closest thing to Warren, who is not running — could goose a campaign that will come out of the gates with only about 6% support in the most recent polls. The self-described independent socialist has a strong following online and will fundraise aggressively across the grassroots progressive community. 

"He knows how to do the organizing that's required,"  Tad Devine, a Democratic strategist and likely bet to lead Sanders' campaign, told the Washington Post last fall. "As a mass media person, I also think he would be a great television candidate. He can connect on that level."

Against the odds: "I realize I'm not a household name," Sanders told the Charlotte Observer in August 2014, but "I think the average American is a lot more frustrated with the establishment than a lot of people perceive. I think there's receptivity for voices that are going to speak for a working class that is being battered."

Sanders is going to give those voters all the liberal red meat they can eat. But more importantly for Democrats, his arrival means Clinton will have no choice but to sink her teeth in too.

Please go here for the original article: http://mic.com/articles/116827/why-bernie-sanders-running-for-president-is-great-news-for-democrats

Perspectives On Crime In America

Photo: NY Daily News

Black Crime = Gang Violence

Arab Crime = Terrorism

Hispanic Crime = Illegal Immigration

White Crime = Self Defense

This is brilliant and illuminating. And each time dark places are illuminated, change and healing and transformation becomes more possible. Bless us all. We are all related, and all in this together.

Peace ~ Molly