View "How the idea for #OccupyWallStreetEVERYWHERE was born " on culturekitchen

One of the biggest sources of frustration for many who support #OccupyWallStreet is their inability to come to NYC even if it is to bear witness of the occupation. So my very smart tweeps came up with some excellent ideas and "ensmartened" me enough to come up with one of my own: Occupy Wall Street Everywhere.

For some time now, there has been an ongoing group-protest on Wall Street and New York’s financial district. The protesters are mainly young Caucasian brothers and sisters, who are totally fed up with where society, capitalism and democracy have been heading for too long now. It is no secret that significant numbers of enlightened folks nationwide are fed up with the many ways money corrupts the political system; and the many ways greed, connections, influence, self-over-indulgence, indiscretion, recklessness, power, unethical behavior and the like, corrupts the economic system. It’s becoming clearer everyday that our nation’s political, economic and social systems are devolving into places where we really shouldn’t want to go. Morality is now a matter of convenience and not consistency. Morality is no longer about values and ideals, but about personal gain and/or self-aggrandization.

We are a nation in crisis. To read the newspapers and/or listen to the network news it is all about economics: the “great recession” to be exact. But it’s not. It’s way beyond that. It’s way beyond greed and corruption. It’s about so many other things. It’s about over-consumption and waste. It’s about the natural and political environment. It’s about a legacy of racism and the attendant ills: caused by racism’s octopussian-tentacles protruding into every aspect of American life. It’s about racism’s denial by most Americans (black, white and other) and the fact that there are real problems therein. It’s about an education system that fails to graduate most citizens, and then set them all up for a life of moral failure. And by morality -in this particular context- I am talking about the way we interact with, are predisposed to, accept, respect, treat and deal with other human beings; especially people who don’t look, dress, talk, worship, sound, believe, and/ or act like we do.

It’s about the five hundred families whose total wealth surpasses the combined wealth of over 250 million people here (that’s 250 million folks/try to wrap your head around that). It’s about the cavernous gap between rich and poor. It’s about the widening wealth-gaps between black and brown and white.  read more »

I want to preface this article by saying that Councilmember Brad Lander has been doing some good things recently which I want to acknowledge before I lay into him on this issue. In particular I want to re-emphasize the good work Brad Lander has been doing with the Center for Anti-violence Education (which my wife teaches at) to get self-defense classes for women in the areas where there have been a spate of assaults on women. I should note fellow Councilmember Steve Levin has NOT been involved in helping the community on this issue. Councilmembers Brad Lander, Sara Gonzalez, Tish James have and they deserve credit for it.

But there is another issue where Brad Lander and Steve Levin have made, in my mind, a serious error.

It all started with my building's resident Yenta (by her own admission) asking me why 7th Ave is no longer being cleaned up. Until recently, she observed, men in blue outfits (a collaboration between the city and the Doe Fund aimed to help the homeless and parolees transition back into society and employment) would help the city empty the garbage and clean the streets. Recently those blue-uniformed men disappeared from 7th Avenue and in their place garbage piled up everywhere adding to what my wife already referred to as the "7th Ave. Stink." I have to say 7th Ave. smells worse on average than any other street I personally walk down in Brooklyn or Manhattan. And now that the Doe Fund people have disappeared from 7th Ave. the stink is getting worse.

To me this is not, however, primarily about the cleanliness of our neighborhood. It is about a program that is one of the most successful in the nation in getting homeless and parolees back into society. Here is the description of the Doe Fund from their website:

Ready, Willing & Able is The Doe Fund's holistic, residential, work and job skills training program which helps homeless individuals in their efforts to become self-sufficient, contributing members of society. Ready, Willing & Able has helped more than 4,500 men and women become drug-free, secure full-time employment, and obtain their own self-supported housing. The program targets the segment of the homeless population considered the hardest to serve: single, able-bodied adults, the majority of whom have histories of incarceration and substance abuse. Criteria for acceptance into the program is that the applicant be ready, willing and able, both physically and mentally, to work and maintain a drug-free lifestyle.

Folks, this kind of program saves taxpayers money in the long run. Like vaccinations and education, programs like this are one of the best investments society can make with taxpayer money. And, like cutting education, cutting this program is one of the dumbest moves a government can make because it will COST us all money in the long run.  read more »

Truth by its very nature is controversial. And that’s probably because truth has always been subject to individual interpretation. Despite varying perceptions from individual to individual, one can always arrive at the objective truth through common-sense, logic, science, investigation, analysis, reason, technology, and a few other valid and time-tested means. So you see; the truth cannot be hidden all the time: that’s very difficult to accomplish.

Nowadays in the USA, it appears that the search for objective truths isn’t a pursuit of the most fanatical members of the present apology for a Republican political party. It’s ostensibly worse yet, if you are a card-carrying-member of the intellectually-challenged appendage of that entity: the Tea Party. That’s when insincerity, dishonesty, mendacity and the like, become the primary tactics for justifying attempts at political chicanery. That’s when common sense, humanity, moderation and reason flee to brutish beasts.  read more »