Como Tu, Like you, I love life, poetry and PTW

These are a few of my favorite things: Performing the World (Yes, I am reprising my Democracy session - stay tuned!!), Roque Dalton (one of my favorite poets -- h/t to Jan Wootten for this -- Roque is the progeny of a long line of American outlaws -- just doesn't get better than that for The Hankster) and estudio Espanol...!

 

I LIKE Performing the World.

And I like Roque Dalton.

Who do you LIKE? (Share at Performing the World.)

Like You

By Roque Dalton

Like you I
love love, life, the sweet smell
of things, the sky-
blue landscape of January days.

And my blood boils up
and I laugh through eyes
that have known the buds of tears.
I believe the world is beautiful
and that poetry, like bread, is for everyone.

And that my veins don’t end in me
but in the unanimous blood
of those who struggle for life,
love,
little things,
landscape and bread,
the poetry of everyone.

Como Tú 

Por Roque Dalton

Yo como tú
amo el amor,
la vida,
el dulce encanto de las cosas
el paisaje celeste de los días de enero.

También mi sangre bulle
y río por los ojos
que han conocido el brote de las lágrimas.
Creo que el mundo es bello,
que la poesía es como el pan,
de todos.

Y que mis venas no terminan en mí,
sino en la sangre unánime
de los que luchan por la vida,
el amor,
las cosas,
el paisaje y el pan,
la poesía de todos.

h/t to Jan Wootten at http://www.eastsideinstitute.org/

Sameh Abdelaziz: After Spring, any thing can happen!

by Sameh Abdelaziz

After Spring, any thing can happen!

Even optimists are starting to have second thoughts about the Arab Spring, which is quickly turning into blood showers. The numbers of dead and injured are astounding and the prize so far is confined to three bad possibilities. An extension of a dictatorial corrupt regime such as the case in Egypt, the election of an Islamist party that the West don’t understand nor trust, as the case is in Tunisia, or an endless insane killing as the case seem to be in Syria, Libya, and Yemen. This bleak picture is unfortunately true.

Consecutive American administrations based its policy in the Arab World, on the need for stable regimes that can maintain the critical oil supply, while ensuring the safety of Israel. The American partners in this policy have been corrupted and autocratic regimes that control their countries with iron fists.

The premise of stability was shattered on September 11. However, instead of reassessing our policies and trying to understand the cause and effect we started an endless debate about an imaginary clash of civilization. None of our think tanks stopped to argue that in the age of the internet there is only one civilization with different levels of restrictions imposed on its inhabitants.

This year, our politicians were shocked, as usual, to discover that the people of the Arab World, wearing headscarfs or jeans and sometimes both, demanded freedom and were willing to die for democracy. The so-called Arab Spring surprised the world and especially America.

In the case of Egypt, after a few days of confusion, the American government supported at least publicly handing Mubarak’s power to the second in command, a junta of Egyptian generals. In Libya, our government participated in the physical removal of Gaddafi. In Bahrain, Yemen, and Syria Obama’s administration shut in different degrees their eyes on the ongoing brutality.

Ten months after the initial spark, demonstrations are igniting once again in Cairo's Tahrir Square. The Syrian revolution that started peaceful is sliding slowly into an armed conflict, and Yemen is disintegrating. The Arab revolutions are moving to a next phase that is impossible to defined, but will clearly reshape the region and impact American interests for years to come.

The first step to deal with this challenging environment is to understand that stability built on autocracy is over, because the genie is already out of the bottle. The options left for America in the Middle East are either to stand idle, which will definitely elongate people’s struggles, or to support the revolutionary movements to the dismay of some old allies.

In such turning points, history can provide NO guarantees. But, logically an elongated struggle will most likely bring extreme religious factions. These extremists are already presenting themselves as the alternative to the secular institutional corruption supported by America and the West. On the other hand, a shorter struggle can enable the real actors of the revolution, mostly liberals and moderate Islamists, to provide a reliable alternative.

It is in America’s interest to support a peaceful and speedy power transfer.

America has developed the Egyptian military apparatus over the last forty years and even handpicked their leadership. This influence is the result of 1.3 billion dollars in military aid that goes mainly to buy loyalty through fancy long training engagements and huge commissions permissible by Egyptian laws. This is the time to use this capital.

I’m quite confident that the American administration is able, if not so willing, to advise/ pressure the Egyptian generals in private to share power with a civilian leadership representing all the major political factions. Such a move will bring immediate calm to the explosive situation in Egypt and should be a first step towards a complete and real power transfer to elected civilians. The new Egyptian administration might be less loyal to America than Mubarak and his cronies, but the people of Egypt and the rest of the Arab world can and will support America if the American administration is smart enough to support freedom and democracy.

A resolution to the Egyptian crisis will serve as a model to bring back stability to other countries within the region. America should support the Arab revolution because of principles, but it is also good for business.


Sameh Abdelaziz is an Egyptian American born in Alexandria. He immigrated to the US in the late eighties, and works as an IT manager. He blogs on OpEd News.

life goes on, people build community

This photo from Al Jazeera by a Reuters photographer. h/t to Amarji at blog Coveting Freedom with the following headline:

Community amid Egypt's chaos

United against their president, demonstrators in Tahrir Square have managed to bridge the country's political divides.

Third Party Rising, Tweeting (Which) Revolutions, and Human Development

INDEPENDENT VOTERS

• Third Party Rising (By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, NY Times) We have to rip open this two-party duopoly and have it challenged by a serious third party that will talk about education reform, without worrying about offending unions; financial reform, without worrying about losing donations from Wall Street; corporate tax reductions to stimulate jobs, without worrying about offending the far left; energy and climate reform, without worrying about offending the far right and coal-state Democrats; and proper health care reform, without worrying about offending insurers and drug companies.[
  
  

  • NOTE: Left blogs are aghast...  Nate Silver has tons of calculus to show that Odds Against Third-Party Bid Not as Long as They Seem...]
• Tom Friedman, Naderite? (Ezra Klein, Washington Post/Voices) The worst illusion pundits foist on the populace is the idea that if we just elect the right guy (or gal) to be president, everything will be fine. It won't be. If you don't like how our laws are being made, you have to change how our laws are being made. [NOTE: I agree -- we need structural political reform. I also think there's a real shot for the American people to elect an independent President. -NH]
• • • Independents not buying Dems' core messages (Greg Sargent, Washington Post/The Plum Line) A plurality of independents, 44 percent, agree with the core Dem claim that Dems are better for the middle class. Only 31 percent of indys pick the GOP.
• • • HALPERIN’S TAKE: The Third Man (Mark Halperin, Time mag) If unemployment's 10 percent and if it's Bloomberg-Petraeus against Sarah Palin and whoever against Obama, and Bloomberg spends $3 billion, who would you bet on?" 
      With VIDEO

OPEN PRIMARIES

• Independent votes should count (Rapid City Journal Editorial Board) The more people participate in elections, the more representative the government becomes.
• The process shouldn't involve manipulation. It shouldn't involve disenfranchising anyone who doesn't embrace a party line. Nesselhuf rightly observes that allowing independents to vote in either the Democratic or Republican primaries would provide needed balance.
• It should encourage an outcome that represents the will of the people, all of the people - or at least as many as possible - not a small minority that bothers to get out and vote.
• Secretary of State candidate calls for open primaries (Rapid City Journal - SD) The challenger in this fall's Secretary of State election is calling for the state to allow independents to vote in primary elections in South Dakota.

MIDTERMS

• Keep Murkowski (by David A. James, Fairbanks, LETTER Fairbanks Daily News Miner) Joe Miller’s supporters want a senator who consistently votes the party line. They have the right to feel this way. However, if I wanted a senator who took a predetermined position on every issue, I would vote for a robot. I don’t want a senator who does as told by party bosses. And given the fact that 52 percent of Alaska voters are unaffiliated with any party, I have good reason to believe that plenty of others agree with me.

POLLS

• American Values Survey: Religion, Values and the Mid-Term Elections (Public Religion Research Institute) Nearly half (47%) of Americans who consider themselves part of the Tea Party movement say they are also part of the Christian conservative or religious right movement.

CALIFORNIA

• Abel Maldonado for lieutenant governor (The Bakersfield Californian) Endorsement: Abel Maldonado risked his political hide to help California get a budget deal a year and a half ago, voting to accept a temporary tax increase -- since expired -- to help close a $42 billion deficit. In the process, he helped steer the Legislature away from its debilitating partisan extremes, convincing his fellow legislators, as part of his agreement to reach across the aisle, to put the question of an open primary on the June 2010 ballot.
• Independents Endorse Maldonado for Lt. Governor (H/T Jason Olson, IndependentVoice.org) Abel Maldonado proved he's willing to risk his political career and take on both major parties when he used his budget vote leverage to place Proposition 14, the open primary, on the ballot. Because of his courage, 3.4 million independent voters in California will have a full voice in our elections beginning in 2012.  That's the kind of tough and non-partisan leadership independent voters are looking for. 

COLORADO

• Political mailers full of believe-it-or-not gems (By Lynn Bartels, The Denver Post) When state Rep. Kathleen Curry left the Democratic Party to join the ranks of unaffiliated voters, plenty of party members begged her to reconsider. So the Gunnison lawmaker was both annoyed and amused when voters in her vast House district recently received a political mailer that she says insinuates Democrats rejected her.
• Big showing by Tancredo could hurt GOP and adopted third party (By Jessica Fender and Lynn Bartels, The Denver Post) "It would require huge percentages of unaffiliated and a vast majority of Republican voters. There's never been any indication in his career that he can do that," Ciruli said. "And there's going to be a residual vote for Maes hanging on there."
• 527 groups again active in area elections - House candidates seek to steer clear of smear campaigns (John Stroud, Post Independent Staff, Glenwood Springs, CO) A political organization that District 61 State Rep. Kathleen Curry of Gunnison once actively supported has now turned on her with a slew of negative mailers and robo-calls while she seeks re-election as a write-in candidate.

MINNESOTA

• Hein represents a new direction (LETTER Post Bulletin) Isn't it time to look at a candidate that promises reform in the form of term limits and open primaries where we all choose whom we elect? Join us and vote for Al Hein for the Minnesota House of Representatives.

NEW YORK

• Lenora Fulani Seems to Endorse Charles Barron, Freedom Party Nominee for New York Governor (Ballot Access News)
• Hoffman speaks (Maggie Haberman, Politico) “It was never my intention to split the Republican vote in the 23rd District. So today, I withdraw as a candidate from this race."
• Poll: Cuomo leads Paladino by 24 points (By: CNN Deputy Political Director Paul Steinhauser) Cuomo leads Paladino by 67 points among Democrats, 11 points among independent voters, and trails Paladino by 34 points among Republicans.
• Making 'Fair Share' Fairer (by Eddie Bautista, Gotham Gazette) In November, however, a new iteration of fair share will be on the ballot, and it is a proposal worthy of support. If approved, community districts overrun by private and public waste management and transportation facilities will begin to have a more complete picture of their environmental burdens. 
• Man of the People: The dodges and counters of Pedro Espada Jr. (Albert Samaha, NY Urban Policy Examiner)
• Paladino Blasts McCall-Cuomo Alliance (Adam Dickter, Assistant Managing Editor, The Jewish Week) McCall’s endorsement is important in helping Cuomo, the state attorney general, gain minority support as some, including Brooklyn City Councilman Charles Barron, accuse the Democratic nominee of ignoring African American concerns until shortly before the election. Barron, a former Black Panther, has launched his own campaign for the statehouse on the newly created Freedom Party ballot.

TECHNOLOGY
NOTE: I for one am grateful for Malcolm Gladwell's perspective in his article Small Change, and for his statement about Clay Shirkey's stupid and racist example of how social media helps mobilize people.  I also think Alan Rosenblatt makes a good point that "technology is a tool" in his very thoughtful piece. I couldn't help wonder in reading both these pieces if we need to be more clear about what we mean by the word "revolution" (as Rosenblatt suggests) and if indeed we might need to overthrow our way of thinking about what a revolution is. The internet, Twitter, connectivity, and all the other instruments and terms of the new technology, are way in advance of   human development. As human beings, we need to catch up with our own smartness before we do each other in. And while we're at it, you might want to check out Harry Kresky's "Political Reform and Human Development" -- somehow, I think this all goes together.

• SMALL CHANGE: Why the revolution will not be tweeted (by Malcolm Gladwell, The New Yorker) Article contrasts the civil rights movement of the sixties with today's social media "activism" -- "Social media can’t provide what social change has always required."
• Which Revolution Will Be Twittered? (Alan Rosenblatt, Huffington Post) Technology is a tool in the hands of the revolutionary. And while, as McLuhan wrote, technology is not ideologically neutral (and therefore favors some revolutionaries over others), it is the revolutionary's cause that drives the revolution. Without a cause that a mass movement can urgently organize around, there can be no revolution, in the sense that Gladwell describes it…. Revolutions of method are different from political/social revolutions.
• Online Party of Canada - OPC is not just another political party. It is a revolutionary introduction of Internet technology to the political process. (from a press release)

Conversations on the Post-Election Independent Movement Conference

About 600 independent activists and grassroots leaders gathered today in NYC to consider what we've achieved and where we're going as a movement.

I found what Fred Newman, my close friend and colleage of 25 years, had to say about Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness to be most provocative. Newman said we have to go beyond the American Dream. 

That simple and yet very demanding statement made me think about where we're at right now. I grew up in the South under segregation. My dad was a young Arkansas National Guardsman who was called to Little Rock to escort the Little Rock 9 into Central High in September 1957. I remember the "whites only"/"colored only" water fountains at the courthouse in the early '60s. I remember the day they did away with the poll tax that kept black people and poor people from voting.

I spoke to my father on November 4th, just after 11pm Eastern time, and we agreed that we never thought we would see the day that a black man was elected President of the United States. It's a very big deal.

It's part of the American Dream. The same American Dream that promised us a chicken in every pot, and a car or two in every garage.

But that American Dream is not only increasingly out of reach for most people, but also increasingly unhealthy and even inhuman on the global level. The American Dream, as beautiful as it is, requires that too many of the world's people be relegated to being poor, sick and dying.

We have to change the past if we are to move forward, Newman urged. And changing the past is not something that the "powers that be" take lightly. This is a fight.

But, as Newman said, we're a revolutionary country. Something about Americans -- we toil in obscurity, and we take big risks. We re-make ourselves again and again, through hard work. We are the folks who just changed American history by electing Barack Obama president.

Over the past couple of years, as independents were the first to speak out against the war in Iraq, and the first to step up to the plate for Obama against the Clinton machine, I have been reminded of the civil rights movement that I witnessed, and participated in, as a child. I hear the segregationists (and these were the good moderate ones) calling for "gradual integration".

Gradual didn't get it. Particle politics won't get us where we're going. We need quantum politics, and it's clearly independents who have the vision to make that leap. As Idaho activist Mitch Campbell put it, it's not fixing the problems we need, it's creating new answers.

It's clear from today's conference that this new creativity revolution is going strong. Now is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of their country. So pick up your development tools and pitch in. Let's build a new America, and a new world, and change the past.

-NH