A Global Network for Enlightening Peace Activism - Humanity Unites Brilliance
Update from New Orleans - August 2007
Okay, time to start writing. It has been hard knowing where to start. I learned about Ning.com through the New Orleans Voices For Peace network (neworleansvfp.ning.com), which I discovered in July. Since then, I have been encouraging different community groups in New Orleans to create ning pages for their groups, in hopes of getting New Orleans activists to see Ning.com as a valuable grassroots organizing tool. I have started a Ning page for my Freeskool Songbook Project, and I have created one for Food Not Bombs, and I am trying to encourage the New Orleans Food Coop to create an account for themselves here. But it has been hard to get these new projects started. Maybe I should start by investing some time into this "Peace Portal" network. It seems that this group is already off to a good start, and I have already met some really inspired and driven people through this site....maybe this can be a good starting point for me.
Maybe I'll make this a weekly checkin, which I will edit over the period of the week.
Every week I can upload a different series of audio recordings, and use the weekly update to write a paragraph about each of the recordings I upload.
This morning I uploaded a Malcolm X speech called "Human Rights", where he talks about the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, and where he encourages black people in America to stop thinking in terms of "civil rights" and start thinking in terms of "human rights".
I also want to upload a recording of Arrundhuti Roy, about the importance of the American civil society and of independent community driven media in building a true grassroots resistance movement in the United States.
Also, I am uploading an excepert of a speech from Colman McCarthy, taken from a speech I recorded off of C-Span in 1996 called "How to radicalize your life". The excerpt is about Jenet Rankin, the congresswoman who voted against entry into both World War I and World War II, saying both times "You can no more win a war than win a hurricane."
It is hurricane season in New Orleans. The two year anniversary of Katrina is coming up. Hurricane Dean is headed this way. It just passed over Saint Croix, in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
"You can no more win a war than win a hurricane". I am interested in the similarities between natural disasters and man-made disasters. Is there really any difference? Can wars be studied and tracked and predicted, the same way we predict earthquakes and hurricanes and avalanches?
I think about the man-made hurricanes raging all over the world, and I think about the hurricanes raging in my head. Every night as I try to fall asleep, they are the last thing on my mind. And every morning when I wake up, they are the first thing on my mind. I spend every single fucking morning of my life tending to my internal hurricanes, similar to how the Little Prince had to clean out the volcanoe on his planet every day so that it wouldn't erupt.
I've been reading Thich Nat Hahn lately. What I refer to as hurricanes, he calls "internal formations", or "internal knots". He says that the key to mindfulness is the practice of STOPPING....of not getting carried away by a stream of discursive thoughts, and of "getting to the other shore", so that you can watch the thoughts flow by without getting carried away by them. So you can observe the pain and anxiety and suffering in your life and in the world, without getting carried away by it....without drowning in the noisiness of it all.
I spend most mornings in silence, unable to speak. My ability to speak comes back slowly throughout the course of the day. On good days. On bad days, I struggle the whole day to find a voice; to find an outlet. I am desperatly struggling to build a piano classroom for myself for this September. And I am looking for ways of overcoming all of the miscommunications and misunderstandings in my day to day life.
This morning I am writing here, just to feel sane... to apologize to the world once again for a lifetime of awkward misunderstandings and miscommunications; to apologize for my own wrong perceptions and my own stupidity and cluelessless. I hope today is less akward than yesterday.
I really need a fucking vacation from New Orleans. I am trying to get to Tenessee on labor day weekend for the Highlander Center's 75th Anniversary party, and I am trying to get to Boston to see my family. I hope have a piano classroom establised before I leave town, so that I will have something solid in place to return to.
Right now I'm on my way to work...dishwashing at an Italian restaurant in the French Quarter. I llike my job because I don't have to speak to anyone, and I can be left alone with my thoughts. But on days like this, being left alone with my thoughts can be a curse and not a blessing, unless I take great care before hand to clean out my volcanoes and tend to my hurricanes.
Fuck the cafe closed half and hour ago, I'm the only one here. It's 3:30...
time to begin my day I guess.
Maybe I'll make this a weekly checkin, which I will edit over the period of the week.
Every week I can upload a different series of audio recordings, and use the weekly update to write a paragraph about each of the recordings I upload.
This morning I uploaded a Malcolm X speech called "Human Rights", where he talks about the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, and where he encourages black people in America to stop thinking in terms of "civil rights" and start thinking in terms of "human rights".
I also want to upload a recording of Arrundhuti Roy, about the importance of the American civil society and of independent community driven media in building a true grassroots resistance movement in the United States.
Also, I am uploading an excepert of a speech from Colman McCarthy, taken from a speech I recorded off of C-Span in 1996 called "How to radicalize your life". The excerpt is about Jenet Rankin, the congresswoman who voted against entry into both World War I and World War II, saying both times "You can no more win a war than win a hurricane."
It is hurricane season in New Orleans. The two year anniversary of Katrina is coming up. Hurricane Dean is headed this way. It just passed over Saint Croix, in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
"You can no more win a war than win a hurricane". I am interested in the similarities between natural disasters and man-made disasters. Is there really any difference? Can wars be studied and tracked and predicted, the same way we predict earthquakes and hurricanes and avalanches?
I think about the man-made hurricanes raging all over the world, and I think about the hurricanes raging in my head. Every night as I try to fall asleep, they are the last thing on my mind. And every morning when I wake up, they are the first thing on my mind. I spend every single fucking morning of my life tending to my internal hurricanes, similar to how the Little Prince had to clean out the volcanoe on his planet every day so that it wouldn't erupt.
I've been reading Thich Nat Hahn lately. What I refer to as hurricanes, he calls "internal formations", or "internal knots". He says that the key to mindfulness is the practice of STOPPING....of not getting carried away by a stream of discursive thoughts, and of "getting to the other shore", so that you can watch the thoughts flow by without getting carried away by them. So you can observe the pain and anxiety and suffering in your life and in the world, without getting carried away by it....without drowning in the noisiness of it all.
I spend most mornings in silence, unable to speak. My ability to speak comes back slowly throughout the course of the day. On good days. On bad days, I struggle the whole day to find a voice; to find an outlet. I am desperatly struggling to build a piano classroom for myself for this September. And I am looking for ways of overcoming all of the miscommunications and misunderstandings in my day to day life.
This morning I am writing here, just to feel sane... to apologize to the world once again for a lifetime of awkward misunderstandings and miscommunications; to apologize for my own wrong perceptions and my own stupidity and cluelessless. I hope today is less akward than yesterday.
I really need a fucking vacation from New Orleans. I am trying to get to Tenessee on labor day weekend for the Highlander Center's 75th Anniversary party, and I am trying to get to Boston to see my family. I hope have a piano classroom establised before I leave town, so that I will have something solid in place to return to.
Right now I'm on my way to work...dishwashing at an Italian restaurant in the French Quarter. I llike my job because I don't have to speak to anyone, and I can be left alone with my thoughts. But on days like this, being left alone with my thoughts can be a curse and not a blessing, unless I take great care before hand to clean out my volcanoes and tend to my hurricanes.
Fuck the cafe closed half and hour ago, I'm the only one here. It's 3:30...
time to begin my day I guess.
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