Evolution, Revolution

Can't have a revolution without an evolution. Just changing the name plates on the doors don't change the conditions in the streets of the cities and roads of the towns.


Do we really want freedom for all or just have our voices heard over the voices of all the others? The right wants to shut up the left and left wants to shut down the right. And hungry kids and out of work dads don't give a shit w...hat you all say because nothing's changing for them. Raped, battered and oppressed women don't care about all the rhetoric and ideologies. They just want to be safe somewhere.

The clerk at 7-11 and holding down a second low wage job at some gas station charging 4 dollars a gallon... and helping make big oil billions... isn't going to march or rally. There aren't enough hours in the day.

Anybody knowing the Maslow hierarchy knows people need to have basic needs met before they can be part of any movement seeking revolutionary change. Food Not Bombs understands the concept quite well. They were at Katrina before the Red Cross at many sites.

Philsophical and intellectual mind fucking might make for good theater but it doesn't help the starving kid pay attention in the classroom that's overcrowded. Or take weapons away from child soldiers and give them refuge.

Churches calling for faith lack credibility in their rich temples with luxury cars in the parking lots. Does God or Jesus or Allah really think you deserve to have so much more than the impoverished? And priests raping kids and bishops covering it up make any authority they think they should have over the choices of women ludicrous and invalid.

There's so much God-damn misery in the world caused by fat cats and politicians along with ideologues spouting this "ism" or that "ism" it seems impossible to list it all let alone try to remedy it all.

And yet we try. And some beautiful souls like Kathy Kelly, Dhar Jamail, Stan Goff, Larry Hales, Zoe the Medic, Kelly Dougherty, Garret Reppenhagen, Jeff Englehart, Dahlia Wasfi, Abdul Henderson, Val Phillips, Paul and Mary Ellen Garrett, Carolyn Bninski, Claire Ryder and so many others fight past the despair of our world attempting to create the evolution needed for true revolution.

My wife, Pam, has been in healthcare 35 years and every day fights against the madness of a broken system to bring care and comfort to her patients.

I don't know exactly what I do or where I fit. Caught up in the anger of past times or outraged about present times? Sitting in my four cornered room afraid or ambivalent about leaving or facing off cops bent on harming me and others for practicing freedom?

I do recognize the extraordinary people that have somehow crossed my path in life. And look forward to meeting up with those I've yet to meet but for some reason reach out to me on places like this.

Once met an old guy climbing on a mountain trail leading to a 14,000 foot peak. He seemed way too old. He moved slow. And yet he had made the top and was on his way down. I asked him how he did it. "Perseverance", he said.

I think about that old guy, who long ago left this world, quite often. Some words like "perseverance", "resistance" "justice" and "revolution" just seem much more powerful. They make my mind think of the posssibilties.