Dangerous Times Ahead

Enough goofy business. Hope you liked the Wisconsin Dancing Cowgirls. Now on to bigger and very dangerous things.

I have my headset on and am redialing the White House until I get a breathing person so I can leave a personal comment for the President regarding the debt ceiling crisis and the Republican demands for deep cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. I've written three or four e-letters but I just have to talk to a live human being. If you feel compelled to do the same here's the number to the White House switchboard:

1-202-456-1111

Andy just emailed me that all of Wisconsin legislators - with the exception of Paul Ryan - no surprise there! - and one other, have drafted a petition calling for the protection of Medicare and Medicaid in this state. Perhaps there is some small humanity left in Wisconsin after all. Perhaps the shadow of a moral compass has been cast across the state.

This is big, really big. Even the potential threat to cut deeply in to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security (still a solvent program!) while the wealthy in our country continue to receive bailouts, handouts, obscene bonuses, and tax cuts is class warfare in the extreme. Will the vanishing middle class and the poor bear all the burdens for the corporations and their bloated CEOs, for Wall Street, for those who consider a 6-figure income to be bare bones? It appears that is what is being handed to us Common People. Will we stand for this? Will you stand for this?

What will take us in to the streets? Will this do it? Will something even more drastic make that happen? What riles us to the point that we refuse to accept that we have become just so many wage slaves and begin the revitalization of our own selves as citizens of our country? I'm serious. What will get under our skin enough, happen to enough of our elderly relatives, kill enough jobs, take away enough health care, squash us enough that we stop consuming, stop watching movies, stop eating out, stop wanting more and more and turn our attention and energy to doing something real and constructive? Will it be this threatened loss of support structures?

One of the 14 Senators who fled to Illinois this past late winter to preserve what they could of our rights as workers was Chris Larson. Chris is Wisconsin Senator of District 7. He sends out a newsletter online to those who supported the 14 while they were gone. I am including the link to Chris' newsletter because I think it is important to hear the voices of others than media or Walker-backed-Ryan supporters. In this newsletter Chris takes up the topic of Accountability and Transparency in our state government. He calls Walker's moves "dangerous". I agree.

https://mail.google.com/mail/#inbox/1310ae1191dc3ac4

Although it might seem that talking about Chris and his newsletter is off the topic of Republican-led cuts in social programs, the very support structures of our society, isn't accountability and transparency at the root of much of our discontent? It begs a list of questions I think.

1. Are we holding our representatives and senators and presidents truly accountable on each and every decision? After all isn't that what participative democracy is all about?
2. Do we believe that our government and its decisions is as transparent as it can reasonably be?
3. Is the manner in which debate regarding the most precious of our supports handled with both accountability and transparency? Not to mention all other aspects that touch upon our daily lives, our well being, our natural resources and our wild lands.
4. What would each of us do if we could not answer these questions in a positive, completely honest way?

What do we do if the President and the Dems cave to the Republicans on this and say yes to cuts that will make a mockery out of my previous post on what will they do with Andy's elderly Aunt? What will I do? What will you do? Some thoughts on that...

When I went on a study trip to Mexico the point of that trip was to sensitize a North American to the systemic poverty that faces millions of people in the community of Cuernavaca. Along with 20 other North Americans, I spent two weeks in daily conversation with the abject poor, those living in railroad settlements in cardboard shacks with the printed names of American corporations stamped on the sides. And with men and women who had given their lives over to helping these compensinos. It was a dialogical constant, a daily interface with people who were rising up from extreme and crushing poverty to take control of their lives and build resilient communities. They were taking charge of their own food, their own health care and their own education. It was a liberating environment in which to spend those two weeks and it was very uncomfortable. After all, we 20 were privileged. We wore new clothes and fancy tennis shoes. Still, after the time was nearly up we all felt changed, deeply altered in our thinking and in the way in which we saw the world.

We are perched on the edge, as I have written before, of massive changes not only in our environment as global climate change unhinges our systems but also in our lives as citizens of every country. In the U.S. the changes will be difficult just like they were for those 20 of us in Mexico. We will need to be courageous, determined, vocal and smart. Our treasured Middle Class, the great We the Common People, is going to have to educate ourselves on what a much more local government looks like, how it works and how it responds. It's time for us to roll up our sleeves and get busy making our communities strong and healthy.

Call the President would you? While we begin the process of re-building our own communities in a more Common Way, we need to fight with all our might to preserve what we can for those who are in need.

Power To All The Common People!