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Global Feminism.
2001 Earth drawing by Lynette Yetter,
she transformed into a women's-symbol meme in 2020.
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A meme I just created with my 2001 Earth drawing is the woman's symbol above. This meme has many meanings: Mother Earth, and women as Earth's foundation--in other words, Global Feminism. Women's power and Mother Earth's power need to be the guides for human societies. That's my intention with this meme.
Here's some background on my earth memes. The earth drawing, I created back in 2001 just after the twin towers in New York blew up. I drew a new view of the world to promote mutual understanding of each other as family members on Mother Earth. I shrunk the Atlantic ocean so that New York and Afghanistan share the same side of the planet.
On the Saturday after the Twin Towers blew up I went to perform music with my panpipes and kena on the Santa Monica Pier, even though all large gatherings were cancelled due to fears of getting bombed by terrorists. To express my hope for world peace, I cut out my earth drawing and glued it on a tall blue candle in a glass--like the candles that usually have a picture of a Saint. I lit my candle and set it on my little table near my tip bucket and CDs for sale as I played to the massive emotional crowds roiling along the pier.
I printed my earth drawing on to greeting cards, with the caption, "Shine your light. Illuminate humanity."
Then I created the World Peace Flag project with this image, a community art project for all ages, which displayed in art galleries in Los Angeles. I'll dig in my website archives and find the page I made for this project, with downloadable earth to color with your hopes and dreams for the future, to add to the World Peace Prayer Flag Project. When I find that archived link, I'll post it here.
More recently, I re-purposed my Earth drawing into this meme for World Peace.
As you can see, I turned the south-pole up. And I titled it in Spanish, "Paz Mundial." I made this meme with the passion for people in so-called "developing countries" to be the voices, the agents, for world peace. The people that suffer the most from transnational capitalist greed and destruction need to be the people who define world peace--and how to get there. That is why the south is on top in my meme of World Peace.
What are your thoughts about world memes, world peace memes and women symbol memes?
So many changes happening, thanks to massive ongoing protests in the streets. One change was someone I used to argue with about values and money. He believed getting rich yourself had no connection to values bad or good. Well, this friend just emailed me that he woke and will no longer teach his lucrative online class on achieving financial independence. Yay!
He asked me (and others) for suggestions on how to rethink wealth in a racially just way. Here are some of my ideas:
What if we redefine wealth as happiness? Bhutan has done that. Instead of a Gross National Product index, they have a Gross National Happiness Index. Racial justice adds to happiness.
Developing compassionate action builds a wealth of happiness. You can check out some compassion research here: https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/the-compassionate-mind It turns out we (and baby chimpanzees) are happier when we altruistically give (or even see someone else give), than we are when we receive. This is assuming one has the basics of food, shelter, clothing, and money to pay the bills, clean air, water, soil to plant their veggie garden; and friendly people around in an atmosphere of mutual respect.
To start balancing the scales so everyone has the basics from which to altruistically give, Cameron Whitten two weeks ago launched The Black Resiliency Fund. Portland, Oregon Black folks in need receive funds donated by non-Black folks. In the first four days people's donations totaled about a quarter of a million dollars. At the two week mark, the total is half a million dollars and growing. Funds are getting disbursed directly to Black folks in Portland to pay for rent, utilities, internet, transportation, medical costs, student loan debt, credit card debt, child care, moving costs and more. The Black Resiliency Fund is compassionate action creating happiness for the givers and the receivers!
Along these lines, my book 72 Money Saving Tips for the 99% focuses on nurturing happiness by strengthening relationships and building local community (the real wealth!), while weaning away from corporations, and saving money in the process. (Thank you, Jerry Greenfield, co-founder of Ben&Jerry's, for endorsing my book!)
What ideas do you have for sharing the wealth?
"When I watched the video of what happened to Mr. Floyd ... I remember the big takeaway I had ... it wasn't the tactics, it wasn't the number of officers who were there ... it was really the lack of care and compassion. The thought that this is an idea that could exist ... it almost felt like you're not important. To me, the fight is not with each other. The fight for all of us is against that idea that people, institutions, agencies ... can harbor that feeling and it has bad outcomes for people."
Lovell is right-on
naming the root of racism and so many other -isms; it all comes down to
harboring a lack of care or compassion in one's heart.
How to change
hearts? How to remedy harboring "lack of care or compassion" in
people's hearts?
Many spiritual
teachings present tools for doing just that; it's sometimes called "The
Golden Rule"--treat others as you would like to be treated. And sometimes
we need a road map, a guidebook, an instruction manual for how to get from here
to there.
History presents
many examples to guide us, both negative and positive. U.S. history seems
rife with negative examples of what happens when we harbor lack of care and
compassion in our hearts (slavery, police brutality, wars of invasion and aggression, settler
colonialism, strip mining, clear cutting old growth forests, massacring
indigenous people, polluting industries, discrimination in all its forms, and on and on).
However, Portland
history also presents examples of people uniting together with hearts brimming
with care and compassion.
One such example is
the Free Medical and Dental Clinics founded and run by the Black Panthers and
staffed by volunteer doctors and dentists from OHSU.
(You can read all
about this inspiring time in Lucas Burke and Judson Jeffries' book The
Portland Black Panthers: Empowering Albina and Remaking a City.)
Although Black
Panther free medical and dental clinics were eventually destroyed by a series
of decisions by Portland city officials and urban planners (whose hearts
apparently harbored lack of care and compassion), now is the perfect time to
start fresh. Here's one way.
OHSU, I'm talking
to you. You can encourage dentists and doctors to once again volunteer to treat
folks for free. In addition to studying the Black Panthers' Free Medical and
Dental Clinics as a model of care and compassion, you can also emulate the
volunteer-run Haight
Ashbury Free Clinic.
Founded in 1967,
the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic's mission is "provide compassionate care
regardless of anyone's ability to pay." It was the Haight Ashbury
Free Clinic's volunteers who coined the now famous phrase, "Health care is
a right, not a privilege."
In conclusion,
there are many ways (beyond a major restructuring of how police behave) we can
nurture each other with hearts harboring care and compassion. One way is for
volunteer doctors and dentists from OHSU to ASAP staff free medical and dental
clinics in locations accessible for lots of Black folks and everyone. Follow
the successful models of the former Portland Black Panthers', and current
Haight-Ashbury, Free
Clinics. Quickly establishing volunteer-staffed free medical and dental
clinics is one of many ways to follow Portland's new police chief Chuck
Lovell's implied advice to harbor care and compassion in our hearts.
(El español sigue el inglés)
As we go marching marching
in the beauty of the day . . .
Blacks suffering extreme racist abuse, women treated like property, immigrants blamed for everything--yet we united 30,000 strong, demanded better wages, and though they tried to kill us, we won!
The New York Sun reported:
Never before has a strike of such magnitude succeeded in uniting in one unflinching, unyielding, determined and united army so large and diverse a number of human beings.
It was the spirit of the workers that seemed dangerous. They were confident, gay, released, and they sang. They were always marching and singing. The gray tired crowds ebbing and flowing perpetually into the mills had waked and opened their mouths to sing, the different nationalities all speaking one language when they sang together.
Give us Bread and give us Roses
The lesson here? More singing! Chants are good. Singing is better. Write songs. Sing songs.
The power of the powerless, writes Vaclav Havel, is to live in truth. When enough people live in truth, a society built on lies crumbles of its own accord. Faced with about 500,000 peaceful people in the streets of Prague protesting police violence (sound familiar?) in November 1989, the Soviet Government resigned. From night to day Prague went from authoritarian dictators to electing a playwright former political prisoner as President. Freedom and creativity flourished.
George Floyd memorial marches today
History teaches us--stay focused and peaceful. Stay united. Be specific in our demands. Give specific action steps to politicians that they can enact immediately. In a thoughtful hour-long press conference, New York Governor Cuomo spells out specific demands and articulates action steps--a primer for seizing this moment for making massive positive reform.
And sing!
As we go marching marching . . .
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