2 minutes

In the US alone.

1) Check your labels:

Fair trade foods and items are usually marked.  Purchases like clothing usually aren’t, but a good rule to live by is if it’s cheap and doesn’t mention fair trade, it probably isn’t.

2) Research the places your buying from:

The anti-slavery movement is becoming more and more popular.  Everyone has their favorite stores and brands to buy, so why not jump onto your computer or smartphone and check the company’s ethics.  This is much easier than it may seem.  We’ll start with GAP stores

• Go to gap.com
• scroll to the bottom
• click on “Social Responsibility”
• Read and explore

Gap specifically mentions their social responsibility down to the factory workers.  It’s important to take note that they are making a conscious effort to take care of their workers, right down the assembly line, but taking a quick glance through their website, I didn’t see anything about how they obtained their raw materials.  Gap is a good company.  Not perfect, but good. It received a B on Free2Work.org, compared to Express that received an overall score of D — I’d prefer to buy my cardigans from Gap.  The grading details are listed on the website, but I’d highly encourage everyone who is a consumer to get the app on their smartphone and not to buy anything with a grade lower than a C.  There’s lots of brands listed and graded on the app and I’m assuming that most people reading this have smartphones.  If not, I’m no expert, but I’d love to try answer questions. Ask me!

3) Use your willpower!

Starting out on these things is like starting a diet.  Don’t begin by eating nothing but carrots — you’re bound to fail and carrots aren’t providing all the nutrition you need.  We live in a consumer driven society.  It’s hard to function without things like nice clothes if you’re working in a professional environment; but fair trade, professional-looking are expensive and I’m poor.  Start small.  Start with something like chocolate.  Ignore all the other rules and start buying nothing but fair-trade chocolate to get yourself into the habit of buying ethical products.  You’ll have to find another way to curb your cravings for Reese’s, but there’s recipes out there for homemade treats that will suffice just as well.  Yes, it’s more work.  Yes, fair-trade chocolate is a bit more expensive.  The payoff, however, is much more satisfying.

4) Get out of the “I’m just one person” mind-set:

No, you, by yourself, are not going to change the world by buying fair trade coffee, chocolate, tea, or clothing as “just one person,” but you are deciding how you are spending your money and what kind of company you are supporting when you go shopping.  A popular analogy is comparing your spending to voting.  Are you deciding on who is in going to be in office when you vote? No. You’re deciding on who you want to be in office. If enough people decide that it’s important to have more fair trade chocolate on their shelves, then it will happen — just like it did with Cadbury in the U.K.  If enough people start demanding that their products are ethically made, it will happen.  The consumer still has the power.  If we’re not buying it, they’re not getting the money to make it.

5) Last . . .

Remember that if you have a roof over your head, plenty to eat throughout the day, and clean water, you are a part of the advantaged few.  I don’t think anyone is asking you to give up your lifestyle, I think they’re just asking to help make someone else’s a little better by being conscious of where your money is going.  Everyone deserves to be able to work in healthy conditions to live a healthy life. 

Happy Freedom Sunday!

But not yours. No, at the end of the day, it’s more likely than not a malnourished, browbeaten underaged slave with no childhood and even less of a future who helped make the cheap candy you’re stuffing in your own child’s makeshift red paper heart bags.

They toil away in the West African sun, most of them between the ages of 12 and 16. Sold by circumstance into slavery and compelled to work in cocoa farms, from dawn until dusk they harvest the cocoa beans under insufferable conditions and relentless abuse. To be specific, they work 80 to 100 hours of work a week where their reward is paid only in beatings: they have no pay, no education, and no hope of ever seeing their parents again.

Some of them have never even tasted the chocolate that passes through their small calloused hands. Some don’t even know the meaning of the word!

Most are far from home, taken mainly from countries such as Mali, Burkina Faso, and Togo. Some were sold by parents made desperate by poverty, while others were simply kidnapped from their beds.

Many groups are incriminated. The governments of West African nations, such as the Cote D’Ivoire, where these cocoa farms abound. There’s the corrupted farmers themselves. And the foreign chocolate manufacturers who turn a blind eye as they tape their fancy labels on the work of children’s hands.

And us. The shoppers who browse the bakery aisles in blissful ignorance of the blood on our hands, as we toss our favorite brand of chocolate into our grocery cart.

“Fair Trade” is such a nice fuzzy word. Friendly, but vague, when really, it should be the non-fair trade chocolate that gets stuck with a label. Imagine the effectiveness of smacking a “Made by Slaves” sticker on that chocolate that stares you in the face at the grocery store.

I know you’re a good person. I know you wouldn’t buy it then.

But until the government musters the gumption to blaze that trail, it’s up to you. You don’t have to perpetuate the cycle of supply and demand that beats at these children’s backs. Armed with the right information, you can make the choice yourself, without being slapped in the face with the stinging truth of it.

You can make a choice this Valentine’s Day (and every day after that) to never make another bloody Valentine, by using Fair Trade Chocolate in all your recipes.

It’s more expensive, but isn’t a child’s life worth it?

I opted for the whimsical end of the spectrum (and the fast end, because I had to catch a plane this afternoon) and chose to make chocolate-covered bacon. These little piggy pops made the perfect crunchy holiday treat, not to mention they were a treat to make.

Here’s the recipe, with my modifications.

Main ingredients:

• About 24 thick-sliced bacon strips  (reeeeally thick)
• Just as many wooden skewers (you can get them at Whole Foods)
• Two fair-trade candy bars (I got these at Whole Foods, too, and double-checked their background)

Optional toppings:

• Chopped dried apple chips
• Chopped dried apricots
• Crystallized ginger
• Finely chopped pecans
• Finely chopped and unshelled pistachios
• Coconut
• Kosher salt
• Brown sugar
• Cayenne pepper
• Coarsely ground black pepper

Directions:

• Thread each bacon strip onto a wooden skewer.
• Place on a rack in a large baking pan.
• Sprinkle each piece with a helping of coarse ground pepper and brown sugar and maybe a couple with cayenne red pepper, if you want to give it an extra kick!
• Bake at 400° for 20-25 minutes or until crisp (will probably be ready by about 18, 19 minutes).
• Cool completely (to cheat and save time, I stuck them in the freezer!)
• Melt your chocolate in the microwave until it’s smooth.
• Use small pastry brushes to coat bacon on both sides with the melted chocolate.
• Smatter each strip of bacon with your favorite topping of choice. I tried to use each one of the listed suggestions.
• Arrange on waxed paper-lined baking sheets and refrigerate until firm.

You can catch a glimpse of the process on my Vine.co account right here!

… As an aside, I can’t emphasize enough that you must get the very thickest and biggest bacon you can find. For me, that was Smokehouse Apple Bacon. Just thick, fat, and juicy enough to hold all the goodies you want to garnish it with.

… and there you have it. But maybe you’re a veggie person, or you abstain from pig meat for religious reasons, or you’re just not into the other white meat. In that case, here’s a heap of other fair-trade friendly recipes, complete with helpful videos, thanks to CNN’s Freedom Project.

But whichever cocoa-licious recipe you serve your loved ones this Valentine’s Day, make sure it’s not one that a little child toiled all day to help you make. Unless it’s your own well-meaning munchkin.

Free-Them February is here and we have lots in store for 28 Days To Love. This month we aim to create awareness by attending events, writing, posting, texting and getting creative! Every day we have something going on, so check it out here: http://www.freethem.ca/#!__freedom-feb.

Day 12: Tell Us What Freedom Means to You.

We are all fighting for freedom, but “freedom” can be a subjective term. For a 9 year old, freedom may mean staying up 30 minutes late, but to an adult, freedom might translate into a dollar amount.

As a Freedom Fighter, what freedom are you fighting for and how do you express it? We want to hear from you, so please send your submissions to submit @ free-them. net.

For me, freedom is the ability to make your own decisions. To be able to choose from infinite possibilities and not have those possibilities limited by age/sex/race/species/sexual orientation/marital status/class/history etc. Slavery restricts a person’s realm of choices to one: the one they need to survive. I see it as the ultimate form of oppression, because I see a person’s ability to make decisions and evolve as the meaning of life. A slave has had this ripped away from them, thus negating the purpose of their life. In other words, their life has been stolen. To me, it is a fate worse than death.

I express my desire to spread freedom in my everyday life. I don’t believe in animal slavery, so I’m vegan. I don’t believe in sex slavery, so I blog and volunteer. I practice what I believe and hope to teach by example. In this way, I am a voice for freedom.

–

Carly Romano

Set down your coffee. You read the headline correctly. Free a village. Not merely a person. How would you like to help do that before you’ve even finished your breakfast this morning?

The idea springs from one of the least recognized but most prevalent forms of modern slavery: debt bondage. Also termed “involuntary servitude,” this corrupt phenomenon rears its end when an employer exploits the vulnerability of a group of people, thereby forcing them into bonded labor.

In many cases, immigrants make perfect targets for exploitation, cut off from their home culture and familiar resources as they tend to be. But even native communities can be manipulated into servitude, thanks to cultural acceptance of the practice. India is one area where–even despite its position as a democracy–debt bondage persists in abundance.

As usual, women and girls suffer most.

Whether they are offered up as nothing more than a debt settlement by a family member, or fall prey to servitude by their own money-strapped mistakes, female indentured servants are more often than not exploited sexually, as well.

In these cases where an entire community is enslaved by its own mentality, there is only one answer: free the entire community. But how?

As you might imagine, it’s even more expensive and complicated than saving a single soul. But you can help, in a couple of clicks. Today. By donating a few dollars toward the Free the Slaves Network and its local partners on-the-ground abroad, like I just did.

Let me tell you where your money is going, though, in 7 digestible steps, and using FTS network’s partners in India as an example.

1. FTS and its partners select a village. These villages on average will contain 25 families identified as enslaved by debt bondage.

2. The local partner sets up a low-cost transitional school in the heart of the settlement. The idea is to educate the children–teach them confidence, mutual support, and the hope to aspire for more. The secondary goal is to indirectly teach the parents, as well–by making them aware they have other options for their little ones, too.

3. At the same time, volunteers directly help the parents to acquire income-generating work.
Activists teach the adults–the women, especially–the skills necessary to acquire a real job outside of slave labor. This effort simultaneously teaches them they have the right to be paid in cash, not toil in endless debt to an unscrupulous landowner. They are receive lessons on saving money and negotiating loans with reputable local banks.

4. FTS partners help the community create a Community Vigilance Committee. What’s the point of this? It brings the community together as a unified resistance against the enslaving landowners, and holds people accountable to their new understanding of legal protections, government food distribution systems, etc., and not falling back into the old schools of thought.

5. Your funds go to help pay the activists and the school teachers. It also pays for school supplies for the kids and equipment for the newly trained adults, as well as legal and vocational training.

6. At the end of 3 years, an assessment study is conducted. Has the culture of slavery really been eradicated?

Now that you know where your money is going, will you join me? 

You can make a donation monthly, or just one time only–and help save a whole village, before you’ve even drained that cup of coffee I told you to set down.

(Full disclosure: I did one-time only for the smallest amount. If I hadn’t, I’ll be out of money before this month is over! Read about the beginnings of my February challenge here.)

Modern Day Slavery

            Many Americans think that slavery and human trafficking ended in the days of Abraham Lincoln. However, many people are still affected by modern slavery and human trafficking; it is a plight that affects an enormous amount of people in the world. Throughout the United States, there are thousands of people who prey on immigrants, illegal and not. Some prey on those trying to enter and some prey on the ones that have entered and are trying to find jobs.

Immigrants who try to enter the USA are generally not able to enter themselves, unless they manage to get a Visa or Passport. So, for the many people who are too poor to be able to afford these, they rely on human smugglers. These smugglers would rob the immigrants of all their money and put them into a tight, cramped space with maybe 80 other people. For instance, to get from Matamoros to Houston, some immigrants had to pay 1000$ up front. They would then transport those people into the USA using various methods such as trucks and ships, then make the immigrants pay another 1000$ upon their arrival. I find it amazing that people are able to rob others like that, legally or not.

So, if they go through this trouble and quite possibly pain in the process, do things get better for the people coming into the USA? Well, maybe for some, but for many, no. Some immigrants will be offered a job and a place to live by modern day slave owners. This is often called Contractual Slavery. Generally what happens is, the immigrants are approached by someone promising jobs, and shelter. Then, they will be crowded into another truck, taken to a restaurant where they can eat all they want, from the pocket of the person who brought them there. Then, once they get to the “shelter”, the migrants find out that the shelter wouldn’t even be fit for pigs. If they say they want to leave, the man who brought them their will say something like, “You cant leave; you owe me for your food and transport. Until you work off your debt, you’ll stay here, and you wont leave.” If someone tries to forcibly leave, they can be tortured or shot. (Bales 123) Other migrants end up as farmhands doing constant work in the field, never having one place to call home, as they have to go were the crops are to find work. Some even end as household slaves, forced to do menial tasks. If you disobey, you will be beaten. If you don’t work hard enough, you will be beaten. If you complain, you will be beaten. Its an ugly lifestyle, that exists even in modern times. Take Seba for instance, a former house slave in Paris. “I had problems with my teeth; sometimes my cheeks would swell and the pain would be terrible. Sometimes I had stomach-aches, but when I was ill I still had to work.”(Bales, Kevin). Thankfully, after a neighbor saw and heard Seba’s plight, they called the authorities and Seba has since then been released. It is amazing how heartless people have to be to put another through this.

The statistics alone are enough to convince a person that there are more slaves in the world then there were when slavery was popular. According to New Slavery, second edition, there could be as many as 27 million slaves alive today. There are also differences between the old forms of slavery and new forms of slavery: in old forms of slavery, legal ownership was asserted, there were low profits, high purchase costs and slaves were maintained; in new forms of slavery, legal ownership is avoided, there is a very low purchase cost, there are very high profits and slaves are disposable. Just by looking at what I’ve listed, you can see why the slaves are highly desired in this day and age. People are actually making more off of modern slaves than they did with old slaves. This is not very surprising because slaves have become cheaper, easier to find, and the slaves themselves have become more desperate. Some slaves will work for almost nothing in the fields, harvesting our food in return for almost no pay (Maxwell, Bill). For example, Abel Cuello was sentenced 23 months in Federal prison for holding over 30 tomato pickers in forced labor. He even went so far as to get one with his car and he later claimed that the laborer was his “property.”(Maxwell, Bill) My question is why did he not get more than 23 months? To hold so many people against their will seems to be a crime against humanity. What’s to say that two years is enough to discourage him from doing this again? This horrible crime is only one of many, that most people seem to be unaware of.

Living conditions for modern slaves and even migrant workers tend to be terrible. For example, “We used to have a bathroom in our house in Mexico, but here the bathroom is outside. One room has a shower and one has a toilet.”(Atkin, S. Beth) This is a quote by Manuel Araiza. He became an illegal immigrant when he was five because he was a bold over to his family by his father. At first they have lived in a trailer that had two rooms and then they moved to a smaller house. It had one room and kitchen. Once a building inspector came by the house, and because there are so many people living in one spot, they were told they would have to move. We never found out if they had to move or not, but the time he spent their, was used for hard work and labor. He helped his family pick strawberries. This seems to be such a crime, that a small kid should have to work out in the fields alongside his parents.

Another story of the living conditions of these people, would be the story of Seba; a beaten and abused house slave. When she was a little girl, Seba was taken from her home and was told she was going to go to Paris to go to school. However when she got there, instead of going to school she was forced to do anything that she was ordered to do. She would be doing chores of a housemaid, taking of children from school, scrubbing the floors and basically everything else that she was told to do. If she disobeyed or complained, she could be beaten or starved. Once she was late in picking up the children from school and her slavers were furious with her. They threw her out on the streets, and after she wandered around for awhile, the husband came to find her in his car. He took her back to the house and beat her using a broomstick with a wire attached. Sometime later, the children of the house found her and untied her; however she stayed on the floor, injured for several days. Eventually she was freed when a neighbor, after hearing the sounds of her being beaten, called the CCEM, the French Committee Against Modern Slavery.(Bales, Kevin) Not only does this harm the person physically, but it also harms the person mentally. When Seba came out of her captivity, she had less understanding of the world than most people do at five years old. She had no idea her birthday, she was baffled by the thought that she could choose for herself and she had almost no understanding of time. To her there was no such thing as seasons. You can see how damaging the effects were and are on modern slaves.

One of the absolute worst things about modern day slaves and illegal immigrants is that they have no voice. As I read, I find out that the slaves cannot speak out against their plight; they have no voice in the Congress or in the Senate. Therefore, their lives cannot always get better and the overall situation will never get better. For modern slaves especially, even if one or two are freed, there will be many more waiting to take their place. It’s a disgusting practice that almost everyone in the world today isn’t aware about. And even the people that have their suspicions, don’t want to admit to themselves, that it is possible for slaves to still exist.

As you have read to this essay, it is hoped that this essay has enlightened you to the plight of many people in this world. Without the help of the majority of the people in the world, this is a problem that will only continue to get worse. Speak up for those who cannot speak up for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute…. (Proverbs 31:8).

In that moment, we had indeed come far, and since then, we’ve come even farther. Me, I cried at both of Barack Obama’s inaugurations, whose election is commonly touted as a testament to our progression.

And don’t laugh at my nerdiness, but when I was a little girl, Black History Month was my favorite, right behind Christmas season.

I’m not kidding, and here’s why: First of all, I love history, and this is actually the only month we have in the US devoted to the subject. Frederick Douglass, Ella Baker, and Thurgood Marshall all became fast friends of mine. (Heck, my own name on Twitter is a nod to one of my favorite women in history, Sojourner Truth.)

Second of all, I admitted elsewhere on this site that I am easily incensed by stories of injustice, and therefore I am always drawn to any story that champions the underdog. And every single one of the stories highlighted by Black History Month is a triumphal testament to a person forced to surmount incredible odds to achieve their dreams–far more astounding than a more privileged person doing the same.

Moreover, it’s a celebration of the end of slavery.

Except that it isn’t.

Slavery still exists.

Right now.

Even here in America, right under our noses.

It’s simply gone into hiding. Which in some ways, makes it even more insidious than it has been before.

More people are, in fact, enslaved both in and out of the States than ever at any other point in history.

27 million human lives, to be exact.

Some more terrifying numbers: their average age is 12. Which is getting younger. Only one in 100 is ever rescued. Only one in 100,000 of their traffickers is ever convicted.

My care package, delivered today to a victim of sex trafficking in Bulgaria.

Manual, sexual. It takes many different forms:  Involuntary domestic servitude, sex trafficking, debt bondage, child soldiers. But when you strip right down to it, it’s simply this: the involuntary and heinous subjugation of a human being into hopeless bondage.

I know we’re already 11 days into February, but what if we made this month not just one devoted to recognizing history, but applying its lessons to the present?

Each day, for the rest of February, to the best of my ability, I’m going to post one deed–one action–that I’ve undertaken, myself, that very day, to help reduce modern-day slavery.

For my first deed, I am sending a care package to a recovering victim of sex trafficking in Bulgaria.

You can find more information on how to do the same, here.

Some of these will be very tiny, some maybe slightly more expensive than others. I’ll try to keep them doable, though. And I’ll keep track of them on my tumblr account, if you want to follow along more easily.

Will you join me?

Just for a month? Do you mind? Can you make the temporary commitment?

It simply seems ludicrous to me that here we are, honoring the end of slavery–when really, all we can commemorate is the end of blatant slavery.

Slavery still persists, but in secret. And it’s wreaking more pain and havoc than ever before.

We can’t allow this.

Journalist Brian Williams didn’t garner any new fans when he said the following, but he poses a good point about how we usually allot our time on the Internet. “If we’re all watching cats flushing toilets, what aren’t we reading? What great writer are we missing? What great story are we ignoring?”

And heck, I love me some cats flushing toilets. But imagine if for every cat video we watched, we also educated ourselves and spread information by watching and sharing videos such as the following.

Freedom is the right of every human being.

And the fight for it is not yet over. Let’s use this month to continue the good fight.

And yet for one of the slaves whom Skinner interviews, the realization that he would be a slave for the rest of his life, gave him a sense of peace. He would be safe from starvation and have a simple life. When I read this in A Crime So Monstrous, I was shocked.

I can’t even begin to understand the circumstances that allowed this man to accept enslavement peacefully. But it is not the nature of the person who is enslaved or the nature of their enslavement that is responsible.

It must have something to do with the nature of their other choices. As noted many times before, poverty holds an important and consistent role in slavery. And this poverty can be extremely brutal. And in poverty, starvation is a very real possiblity. Enslavement provides at least some food.

If slavery is to be truly eliminated, its alternatives must also be addressed. They must be improved or slavery will enivitably return.

A Crime So Monstrous

Next Sunday, February 17, is Freedom Sunday. It’s a day where faith communities around the world raise awareness and help stop modern day slavery. Not For Sale has some great resources that you can use next Sunday at your faith community, in your social media or amongst friends. Check them out by clicking here. Making a difference starts small. Be part of the solution.

The consensus seems to be that it was beautifully designed, and well organized which is impressive considering it was double the size from last year. Everyone was well dressed and the speakers were eloquent. I hear there were even some tearful moments when the survivors spoke. Through the heart wrenching reality of what these people went through, it was inspiring to hear their tale and feel connected.

The big unveiling (which is now somewhat history…my apologies) was that the Joy Smith Foundation is donating $5000 to Walk With Me. Thank you Joy Smith for giving Timea the opportunity to save more lives. Walk With Me also announced that they will be putting out a PSA and you can view it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjO7CIZlc2c

To top off the night, the silent auction had many items to bid on including golf gear, flowers, handmade jewelry, gift cards and lots of items to be used locally in Hamilton. Good times had by all. And of course, the Free-Them team made sure to make good use of the photo booth.

–

Carly Romano

I have been informed that the Transparency in UK Company Supply Chains Bill – the bill requiring companies earning over GBP100 million and operating in the UK to make public their efforts to ensure slavery is not in their supply chains – failed to clear its second reading in Parliament last Friday.

It is disappointing that TISCUK is not being given the attention it deserves. Without legislation like TISCUK, we continue to purchase products that may have been produced as a result of modern slavery.

Unseen UK say

The key is showing the PM that the people of the UK want a government that will make a stand against modern slavery. This isn’t about additional regulation for the business sector, it’s about eradicating one of the greatest human rights abuses of our time.

Time Out for Reason

It’s easy to become buried under the avalanche of bad news rushing over us; easy to become discouraged and fatalistic.  Shakespeare wisely and famously mused,  “To be or not to be, that is the question.  Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to bear the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to seize arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing, end them.”

The overall point of the exploration – from my perspective – is to know.  I’ve found that keeping the goal simple is best.  The persons benefiting from the robberies, rapes and murders do not care about any patterns or even predictable outcomes.  As long as they are profiting in some wise, the behavior goes unchecked.  As to the rest of us, we generally seem to suffer in silence until the pain becomes too great, and then we produce the predictable outcomes mentioned above.  I often think of Cassandra predicting the fall of Troy when I am contemplating the latest “I told you so” in the news.  Really bad case of “Nobody ever listens to me.”

I spent a few years, fifteen years ago, trying to inform the county commissioners of our great land that the West and Midwest are for sure running out of water.  The environment is observably in major transition and we are losing the human-friendly ecosystem that greatly enabled our planetary success.  Do we act to conserve what we’ve got?  No, of course not.  The powers that be commission studies to postpone action so that the last possible penny can be squeezed out of whatever the exploited resource might be.  Hence, I am contemptuous of the bozos that use the cliché, “Well, we lost ‘it’ in California (Birmingham, Detroit, wherever), but we still have a chance to save it here.”  I want to yell at them, “It didn’t need saving until you assholes showed up!”  Many also believe that someone or thing is going to save them before it’s “too late”.  They’re wrong.

I’ve gone back and forth on the meaning of life.  I conclude that Monte Python made the definitive statement on the subject: “Every sperm is sacred.”  That coupled with the Life of Brian – particularly the crucifixion chorus singing, The Bright Side of Life while hanging on their crosses.  There you go, all said and done.  Don’t even have to read Nietzsche or Sartre.  I prefer the light side to the dark, humor to grim acceptance (although there are times for each, I admit).  Still, I find myself more Zen than anything else, plus a strong, strong touch of Deist.  Don’t know if that latter is because of my erratic Roman Catholic upbringing, but I do believe in some sort of life force, great spirit, for want of another word, god.  For all I know though, god may be a composite of all souls, or a board of directors somewhere, or an alien playing space invaders.  Believing in a god doesn’t preclude the overwhelming sense that the world is one big turkey shoot and loony bin.  If the divine being has some sort of purpose, other than hanging out and looking at stuff, I have yet to discern it, but then who am I?  Moses, He talks to; Me, He doesn’t call, He doesn’t write…

Learning history has value in finding out that all the crap around you has happened in some form before you – not once but probably hundreds, if not thousands of times, or even more – and the world went on as if nothing mattered and there’s the key, I think.  As the in-country Vietnam vets used to say, “Don’t mean nothing.”  The insanity finally reaches a point of such overwhelming monstrosity that all one can do is cover up in the fetal position and whimper, or throw one’s head back and laugh like hell.

Everything we do is good and/or bad, it’s all interconnected, and each generation sees the world as new, and never before traveled – until it’s probably too damn late to correct for a wayward course.

Corporatists destroyed the New Deal and bankrupted the people of the United States, shoved them into war, and took their jobs and personal freedoms away.  Those of us who care, who are American, who are democrats – small “d” – are most in danger and must destroy the corporatists and re-instate the New Deal, or we are lost.  We shall be slaves of corporate masters for evermore.  We must live as if people mattered, not to protect stupid-ass property rights, or spend our lives at the level of swine.  Do you understand why their masters murdered slaves, serfs and peasants who learned to read?  The New Medievalism is just around the bend.

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