The Machinery

Hola mi gente,
The time for appeasement and “getting along” has long passed. It’s time to throw your body onto “the gears of the machinery.” And it’s not Trump -- we are responsible.

Operation of the Machine

“There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part! You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels… upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!”

-- Mario Savio, speaking on the steps of Sproul Hall, on December 2, 1964

It’s time… 

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization… 

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Reflections on Revolution

Hola mi gente,
I attended a coalition meeting this past Saturday and it compelled me to write to short pieces. One I posted yesterday and this one -- a reflection.

I can’t stay quiet and I abhor when conscious communities stop questioning assumptions. 

It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.
 -- Assata Shakur, An Autobiography

The following is a work in progress. Assata’s words bring to mind what I call conscious radicalism. A method of inquiry and practice that questions everything and takes nothing on face value.

It is our duty to fight for freedom…

It’s winter in America, as brother Gil Scott Heron noted. But there’s a new resistance here… 

Rather than passively accept second class status, movements for the liberation of people of color (and our white allies) are defining, resisting, and rising against white supremacy and its many tentacles that have been choking our people for centuries. Unfortunately, I might add (fuck it, I’m keeping it real), some social justice organizations have become part of those tentacles. This newer resistance, however, composed mostly of young black and brown people, is involved in the struggle to be free from subjugation, oppression, and domination. Its pursuit is the manifestation of a truly just, sustainable, and equitable society.

It is our duty to win…

The sheer weight of the task of unravelling a massive social habit of and addiction to violence and injustice cannot be underestimated. It comes with the convenient amnesia about historic transgressions of such enormity it overwhelms the mind. It proves daunting at the least, stunningly and increasingly destructive on mental, physical, material, and psycho-spiritual levels. Even as the effort is meant to liberate, its current methodology was for the most part forged within the same construct it seeks to undermine: competition at the cost of collaboration, power over equality.

We must love each other and support each other…

I am no longer surprised to the degree of chauvinism in the nonprofit sector when it comes to self-care. We work long hours with little pay. The boundaries between our personal lives and mission-related work have become blurred or have ceased to exist at all. In fact, I have observed many within the social justice field take pride in how much they can do without. I get it, this is hard work, and much of my personal mission is closely tied to my collective endeavors. I understand how easy it is to be obliterated in all the mess. But this serves no real purpose. 

Keeping it 100, this is a reflection of the oppressive forces under which we labor. We mirror the same power dynamics of the larger dominant society. We earn little, work long hours, and have even less to show after decades of doing this work. How is that justice? If this set of circumstances was being played out by corporate interests, we would be (rightfully) outraged. Yet we do it to ourselves. We adopt the same oppressive hierarchies that keep us down and then we expect change. We run our organizations and our movements just like corporations and we inflict the same harm, with just a few reaping even a decent living.

Yet I do see a change coming. I see young people seeking a different form of consensus or at least attempting to define a consensus that is truly equitable. Liberation can only come about through love and until we do away the master’s tools, we will continue to flounder. For too long our methodologies have been forged within the crucible of the dominant mindset of colonization, capitalism as religion, corporations as demigods, domination of people and planet, zero-sum mentality, rape and plunder as spoils of victory, human and natural resources taken as objects of subjugation to the very few privileged -- the one percent.

I am taken aback to how easily we fit into our internalized oppression. Even when we are conscious of how the structures we resist can manifest in our work: suppression, depression, martyrdom, and simply taking the abuse until there is no room left in our bodies to contain all that destruction. Eventually, it turns inward and, like the disease that it is, eats at us from the inside-out. Without the habit of questioning our most cherished assumptions, and the practices of self-awareness, and undoing vicarious trauma -- in other words, without love -- the degree of suffering we will unwittingly bring upon ourselves will be too much.

We have nothing to lose but our chains…

Conscious radicalism is about bringing a focus and a method of inquiry that keeps us aligned with our missions. In the final analysis, this movement isn’t about a particular legislation, incremental or revolutionary change, a particular jail closing, or even mass incarceration. This is not about subject and object, practitioner and observer. This is about liberation. A liberation that is both personal and collective. It is not about branding, or taking photos with people in power, or sidling up to the symbols of our oppression. It’s about leadership predicated on the models passed down to us by our ancestors, who have been resisting for centuries. This isn’t about seven effective habits, positive thinking, or prosperity gospel. This is about love in the service of true freedom.

We all bear the scars and wounds of this struggle. Therefore, when we bear witness to this suffering writ large, we also bear witness to the wisdom of liberation from that suffering. And we bear it together.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization… 

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it, please consider helping me out by sharing it, liking me on Facebook, following me on Twitter, or even throwing me some money on GoFundMe HERE or via PayPal HERE so I can keep calling it like I see it.

Engaged Spirituality

Hola Everybody,
You have to stop blaming Trump. If you want an answer to your problems, a solution to your fears, look in the mirror. Trump isn’t possible without you. Remember that.

Engaged Spirituality

How do I bear witness to the unbearable? Why are people so deliberately cruel? How do I not bring more rage into the world?

I tackle these questions as a way of life. For years now, I have bore witness to enduring cruelty. Over the years, I have learned to be present -- listening. I have sat with a woman, for example, while she told of a gang rape -- something she had never shared with anyone else, except for her mother whose response was to blame her for being a “slut.” I have heard grown men and women tell stories of childhood abuse of such horror that some nights, I was so troubled by these stories, I couldn’t sleep -- forced to reconsider human nature. It got to the point where I didn’t want to hear any more stories. I couldn’t stand to hear one more horror. But when it got to that point, I would tell myself that if they had experienced it, then the least I could do was listen.

I have been to many conferences and speeches and have even delivered a few myself. Sometimes I feel I can’t listen to another summit or conference. We don’t need more sessions; we already know what we need to do: we have the solutions. Why can’t we use what we know already works? Where is the courage to stop doing what is destroying so many?

I committed to the path I walk to day partly as a way to stop from going insane in an insane world. I needed to be free from these cries of despair. I quickly realized I could never be free while the fate of the children of this country and of the world -- the legions of child soldiers, the children leading lives indentured to industry, the millions orphaned by AIDS, nine-year-olds as head-of-households struggling to keep their siblings together -- continues. We are not only silent, but also craven and brutal.

This is a world that does not care about its children… 

People not so engaged often ask me how I am able to sustain myself in the face of such horror. Sometimes my answer is that it’s increasingly difficult to keep my own rage from eating away at me. Sometimes I silently wonder how long I can continue to do this work. I especially become discouraged when so many people show such absolute indifference and ignorance in the face of the horrors of the world. There is a Buddhist saying that goes: For those whose hearts are closed, the world’s suffering is like sticking a hair in their finger: it is hardly noticed. But for those whose hearts are open, it’s like a hair stuck in their eyeball: it is acutely painful.

Only the very naïve or those steeped in a profound denial, believe that spirituality and politics don’t come together. One only has to look around in this country to see that we’ve become that runaway train in Emile Zola’s story -- we’ve become a “runaway society” in which our leaders have abdicated their responsibilities while we worry about finding “the one,” or getting that new gadget, career, car, or whatever, while trapped in an out of control train. And you know what? We can’t blame our children for the current state of affairs, though our collective narcissism compels us to use our children as scapegoats.

Profoundly spiritual people have midwifed some of the greatest changes in history. In Latin America often the only voice speaking out against US-controlled violence were priests and nuns who practiced “liberation theology” and sacrificed their lives and sanity in the process. I have a good friend, who’s steeped in liberation theology and he was part of a criminal justice reform campaign he created that drew on the resources of regular men and women spanning several states.

I don’t need to mention, Gandhi, MLK, and the many unknown, untold others -- all members of the “aristocracy of the considerate” -- who gave their lives so that we could enjoy ours. These are a different kind of soldier. They are spiritual warriors and their lives aren’t remembered by merely raising a flag because they transcended the imaginary borders of nation and religion.

I know deep inside I have no choice: I have to be a part of a change process because that is what life consists of: energies, processes. You’re either a force for positive or negative change, but you have to choose. You can’t be neutral on a moving (or runaway) train, as the historian, Howard Zinn, once observed. Some of us do what we can: donate to a cause we believe in, or walk, run, ride for one thing or another and I won’t belittle that. You do what you can.

However, walking/ riding/ running for breast cancer for example, doesn’t absolve us from accountability. There is a difference between blame, responsibility, and accountability, you know. We like to say, “Well, I gave at the office…” and then go on our blissfully ignorant way as though we were separate from the runaway train. However, it’s not that simple, shit still happens -- all the time. Right now, this very moment, some kid in some God-forsaken land just stepped on a landmine that was paid for by our tax dollars.

Blame is burnout and let's get it right: pointing out that something is wrong and the causes of that wrong are not blame. Blame is rooted in ego, outrage, anger. Many of my ex-lovers liked to blame me, but here we are all these years removed from not being together and they’re probably still blaming somebody.

And you might say that you’re not responsible for the way the world is today and you’re probably right. I like to make the distinction between responsibility and accountability in this way: if you were diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, you were probably not responsible for getting that disease. However, having been informed of that disease and then being educated in how to arrest that disease, aren’t you then accountable for your disease?

Accountability… what are you accountable for? What will you stand up be counted for?

I have ceased to do things with the hope of having an effect. I have to because hoping for results is a sure-fire way to burnout. Expecting outcomes or results is hell. The fact is that my work may not make a difference.

I remember being part of a huge protest rally in DC and walking next to an elderly woman and I asked how she could still do all this without being discouraged. Her answer is one I’ll never forget. She reminded me that we all have ancestors who fought against slavery though they knew they would probably never be free themselves.

That was a powerful reminder for me... 

The reality is that the work that I engage might turn out to be worthless and achieve no result at all. It might turn out that my energies will produce the opposite effect. Outcomes don’t matter. People do. The more I engage the work of my life, the more I realize that what matters are not so much the results, but the value, rightness, and truth of the work itself.

I had to give up trying to save the world. I had to give up hope and fear because once you hope, you bring fear into the process. Besides, hope is a piss poor strategy. Beyond hope and fear -- freed from the twin illusions of success or failure -- I am learning to act skillfully. I still get angry, enraged, and frustrated, but now I go back to that space beyond expectations and fear, and act rightly -- or as justly as I am able…

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

Seekin' the Cause

Hola mi gente,
¡Revolucion!

For those who don’t know, Miguel Piñero was one of the great Nuyorican poets. I perceive the Nuyorican Movement as part of an identity movement by NY Puerto Ricans that spanned all the arts and political activism. Nuyorican Poets and Musicians would change the art of the spoken word and music and influence many artists. For the most part Nuyorican poets were based in the neighborhood I was raised in, the Lower East Side of NYC’s Manhattan. The Lower East Side (or Loisaida, as we call it), was a neighborhood (since gentrified) that saw countless waves of marginalized groups claim it. When I was growing up there it was mostly a Puerto Rican neighborhood. It wasn’t unusual to see some of these poets on the street corners plying their trade. My father was part of and knew most of the early founders of the Nuyorican Poets.

If you’re ever in NYC, go to the Nuyorican Poets Café. The following is a clip from the film, Piñero, with Ecuadorian actor, Benjamin Bratt, playing the title role.

Seekin' the Cause

he was Dead
he never Lived
died
died
he died seekin' a Cause
seekin' the Cause
because
he said
he never saw the cause
but he heard
the cause
heard the cryin' of hungry ghetto children
heard the warnin' from Malcolm
heard the tractors pave new routes to new prisons
died seekin' the Cause
seekin' a Cause
he was dead on arrival
he never really Lived
uptown . . . downtown . . . crosstown
body was round all over town
seekin' the Cause
thinkin' the Cause was 75 dollars & gator shoes
thinkin' the Cause was sellin' the white lady to black
children
thinkin' the cause is to be found in gypsy rose or j. b.
or dealin' wacky weed
and singin' du-wops in the park after some chi-chiba
he died seekin' the Cause
died seekin' a Cause
and the Cause was dyin' seekin' him
and the Cause was dyin' seekin' him
and the Cause was dyin' seekin' him
he wanted a color t. v.
wanted a silk on silk suit
he wanted the Cause to come up like the mets & take the
world series
he wanted . . . he wanted . . . he wanted . . . he wanted
to want more wants
but
he never gave
he never gave

he never gave his love to children
he never gave his heart to old people
&
never did he ever give his soul to his people
he never gave his soul to his people
because he was busy seekin' a cause
busy
busy perfectin' his voice to harmonize the national anthem
with spiro t agnew
busy perfectin' his jive talk so that his flunkiness
wouldn't show
busy perfectin' his viva-la-policia speech
downtown . . . uptown . . . midtown . . . crosstown
his body was found all over town
seekin' a Cause
seekin' the Cause
found
in the potter fields of an o. d.
found
in the bowery with the d. d. t.'s
his legs were left in viet-nam
his arms were found in sing-sing
his scalp was on Nixon's belt
his blood painted the streets of the ghetto
his eyes were still lookin' for jesus to come down
on some cloud & make everything ok
when jesus died in attica
his brains plastered all around the frames of the pentagon
his voice still yellin' stars & stripes 4 ever
riddled with the police bullets his taxes bought
he died seekin' a Cause
seekin' the Cause
while the Cause was dyin' seekin' him
he died yesterday
he's dyin' today
he's dead tomorrow
died seekin' a Cause
died seekin' the Cause
& the Cause was in front of him
& the Cause was in his skin
& the Cause was in his speech
& the Cause was in his blood
but
he died seekin' the Cause
he died seekin' a Cause
he died
deaf
dumb
&
blind
he died
& never found his Cause
because
you see he never never
knew that he was the
Cause.

 -- Miguel Piñero

You can watch Benjamin Bratt performing the piece in the film, Piñero, here. He does a bang up job.

* * *

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it, please consider helping me out by sharing it, liking me on Facebook, following me on Twitter, or even throwing me some money on GoFundMe HERE or via PayPal HERE so I can keep calling it like I see it.