Duty to Warn

RIVERDALE, Ill. -- Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr., founder and president of Rainbow PUSH Coalition, announced today he will organize a national day of protest in 25 cities on Aug. 28, 2007, to rally support for legislation to restrict gun sales.

“We have the right to live safe and secure, no matter where we live in America,” Rev. Jackson said during a prayer vigil at Chuck’s Gun Shop in this Chicago suburb.

“Our marching does not kill people; people who buy guns from gun shops kill people,” Rev. Jackson said.

Chuck's Gun Shop sells more guns than any other gun dealer in the nation, according to the Americans for Gun Safety Foundation.

Current laws are not protecting the nation’s youth, Rev. Jackson said, as is clear from the fact that in Chicago alone, more than 30 young people have died this year from gun violence.

United for Peace and Justice held a workshop at the US Social Forum in Atlanta on Thursday, at which several speakers made some pretty amazing statements.

I get lots of letters from people in various corners of the nation who are hysterically disturbed by the continuing spectacle of suburban development. But instead of joining in their hand-wringing, I reply by stating my serene conviction that we are at the end of the cycle -- and by that I mean the grand meta-cycle of the suburban project as a whole. It's over. Whatever you see out there now is pretty much what we're going to be stuck with. The remaining things under construction are the last twitchings of a dying organism.

A dozen of us stood around a dead flower and a piece of bare sidewalk. There may have been more ho-hum in my heart than grief, at least at first, but slowly something started to break.

“Oh God, have mercy.” This is what we chanted.

I paw at hope as I write about this — hope for Chicago, where I live, hope for this country and hope for peace. I say those last words with humility and skepticism, aware of how small I felt as I stood in this group, but knowing I was only there because a large turning is in motion.

“Oh God, we come before you today, crying out for the shooting initiated by Anthony Morgan, which led to his death on this corner of our neighborhood Tuesday night.”

My friend Steve Cobble gave Kucinich a great introduction, receiving applause for each point he made about Kucinich's platform and past performance, arguing that Kucinich was right four years ago that opposition to the war and support for fair trade were key to winning, and that's how Democrats won in 2006.

Kucinich opened with the need to cut off the money.  He proposed simply not offering any more bills to fund the war.  Kucinich won huge applause as he shouted about the troops coming home, the bases being closed, the oil being left to the Iraqi people...

We must challenge the very idea of war in order to reconnect with the nations of the world, Kucinich said.  "I believe that the path to peace runs right through Jerusalem," Kucinich said, promising an even-handed approach.  He got loud applause for being the first to raise the topic.

We are all now desperate runners in the epic race between doom and boom. It's a global- warmed dead heat between apocalyptic ecological collapse, versus a Solartopian green-powered prosperity.

Defeat is defined by a death spiral that decimates our planet. Victory means the wealth, jobs and organic well-being that can come with renewables, efficiency and a post-pollution prosperity.

A middle ground is likely along the way, but would almost certainly happen by dividing humankind even further between rich and poor. That polarization is ultimately unsustainable, and will demand correction, one way or the other.

The "tipping point" where climate chaos becomes self-accelerating and irreversible may be as close as ten years away. Some believe we're already over the edge.

The global economy runs parallel. Any system addicted to huge inputs of irreplaceable, monopolized resources whose prices are soaring must soon collapse.

The cure is clear---a technological, economic and social revolution built around the transition to green power.

"Children are completely egoistic; they feel their needs intensely and strive ruthlessly to satisfy them."
--Sigmund Freud

Frightening as it may be, the Earth’s fate rests in the hands of children. With incredibly formidable military firepower at its disposal, the United States could catalyze Armageddon at any time. And while they may be adults chronologically, our sociopolitical structure is dominated by emotional infants.

Nietzsche once pronounced God dead. In the United States, we have a more readily demonstrable (and perhaps related) problem. Our collective id has rendered its governing superego impotent, and perhaps dead. Our prevailing moral standards, as inconsequential as they have become, are of the Jerry Falwell variety. They are mean-spirited, self-serving, judgmental, narrow-minded, selfish, and belligerent. As far as US Americans are concerned, Christ may as well have preached the Sermon on the Mount from the lowest recesses of Death Valley.

"Can't he make a living in a more reputable, less disgusting way, say, in child pornography?"

Randi Rhodes is asking you, Mr. Singer.  And we're still waiting for the answer.  [To hear the Palast/Rhodes report, click here.]

Paul Singer is a vulture. And a billionaire. And, with his underlings at Elliott Associates, the number one sugar-daddy donor to the presidential campaign of Rudy Giuliani, dropping $168,400 so far and, according to secret campaign documents, committed to raise $10 million for Rudolf the Great, Emperor of 9/11.

So who is this bird of prey Singer who holds Rudy in his beak?

Unlike feathered predators, Singer preys on the living.  Singer figured out a way to siphon off funds intended for debt relief to some of the poorest countries in the world.  Nice guy.

And by the way, I didn't come up with the moniker "vulture."  Just about everyone, from the new Prime Minister of Britain to the World Bank, calls Singer and his ilk "vultures." 

So we bomb a school and then are aghast when seven children die. “If we knew that there were children inside the building, there was no way that that air strike would have occurred,” a spokesman for what the media still bother to call “the coalition” said afterward, by way of explanation if not apology.

The public has mostly tuned out of these wars. Of those who still pay attention, many do so from behind Fortress Patriotism, with its ramparts of cliche: “freedom isn’t free,” etc. Thus when children die and it’s our fault and publicity is unavoidable, the media will usually remove the stinger from each tiny death, and keep the American conscience untroubled, by putting the deaths in the larger context of U.S. strategy or mission.

We bombed the eastern Afghanistan compound, which contained a mosque and a madrassa (Islamic school), this past Sunday because we were hunting insurgents who may have been involved in the massive suicide bombing of a bus a few hours earlier in Kabul, which had killed as many as 35 people and wounded 52.

Got it? Next question . . .

"Hip Hop Artists and Activists: Politically Empowering a Culture of Resistance" was the name of a panel at the Take Back America Conference in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. Cherryl Aldave from National Hip Hop Political Convention MC'd.

Speakers included Billy Wimsatt from the League of Independent Voters in Chicago, D Labrie from Hip Hop Congress in the Bay Area, Jay Woodson from National Hip Hop Political Convention in Philadelphia, Dave D from HardKnock Radio in Oakland, J Period - a Hip Hop DJ from Brooklyn, DJ Chela - a Hip Hop artist from Brooklyn and North Carolina, Wise Intelligent - a Hip Hop artist with Intelligent Music, and GRIME - a Hip Hop artist and activist and student and MC.

GRIME: "Hip Hop really did save my life. There were songs that made me care about history and about people. Hip Hop is the reason that I'm not dead or in jail, which is where a lot of people are who came from the community I came from." GRIME said he became a student activist but wanted to reach more people and turned to Hip Hop. That's what a lot of us are doing.