Inauguration Day
by maria Brewer
Stretching dreams Pop into reality
and breathe deep. The air of now.
Grunting, emerging, we blink.
Anticipating beauty in the new expectation of fresh wisdom.
Layers of caring, and percolating joy, and
deep strength surge and we
Rush forward to meet the calm:
the sprout that pushes through the soil,
the Beginning.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
The American Dream is a noble ideal: equality and reward for hard work. Establishing values like fairness, independence, and empowerment, Americans have long sacrificed to better themselves. But in America, we have always dreamed of bringing along our communities: our palaces have been our public schools; our monuments not towering statues unless surrounded by broad public parks and playgrounds; our legacy is ensconced in public libraries, common thoroughfares, and rural electrification projects. As America grew in wealth, so rose our great middle class, all together as boats in a tide of public pride and progress. Today’s public pride is privatized, the middle class carved up with it: contracted out to the no-bid crony, with greed riding rough-shot over civic duty or service.
Take the 1.8b tax cut for Corporations in MI. A gift from Republican Governor Rick Snyder, courtesy of increasing taxes on old people & poor children's families. So the corporations can create jobs? Only if wages drop below poverty level and destroy the middle class. No weekends, no vacations, not a better life for our children. But that's nothing new. That economy "thrives" in shanty-towns all over the globe. The question for America is: do you relate to the middle class American Dream that is being destroyed? Or do you relate to an over-class living in a secure compound it calls home? If we start to aspire only to a gated ruling-class lifestyle, then our despotic future is here.
Greed has overwhelmed our dreams of community. Paranoia has made scapegoats out of teachers, enemies out of neighbors, terrorists out of worshippers. We citizens have taken our freedom for granted. Now we realize that we are only as free as we demand to be. Power, whether of kings, despots, or petty tyrants, whether monarchists or corporatists, has never given anything without a demand, not once. Unless we demand our liberty, we will not have it. Unless we demand our right to public education, to public infrastructures that better us all, to a just and equitable society, we will not have it.
Some elected officials act like winning an election is winning a crown to be queen or king for a day, or a even a legislative session. One of our Sumner County, TN Representatives is Debra Maggart, sponsor of the bill to outlaw Teacher’s Rights to bargain for safe and effective working conditions. Sadly, she has used her positions, both as our public servant and as Executive Director of the non-profit group Compass, to further her own self-serving goals, no matter whose privacy she invades or guidelines she breaks. In an email response to a citizen recently she sought input on the “Radical Right Master Plan.” An un-American plan that would presumably install a rich ruling class in perpetual security, while the rest of us only aspire to rise to the level of a middle class that no longer exists.
We deserve accountability from our representatives even after they have won an election. We don’t elect dictators, we elect servants. How many of our leaders have forgotten that our consent isn’t a one-time event.
Take the 1.8b tax cut for Corporations in MI. A gift from Republican Governor Rick Snyder, courtesy of increasing taxes on old people & poor children's families. So the corporations can create jobs? Only if wages drop below poverty level and destroy the middle class. No weekends, no vacations, not a better life for our children. But that's nothing new. That economy "thrives" in shanty-towns all over the globe. The question for America is: do you relate to the middle class American Dream that is being destroyed? Or do you relate to an over-class living in a secure compound it calls home? If we start to aspire only to a gated ruling-class lifestyle, then our despotic future is here.
Greed has overwhelmed our dreams of community. Paranoia has made scapegoats out of teachers, enemies out of neighbors, terrorists out of worshippers. We citizens have taken our freedom for granted. Now we realize that we are only as free as we demand to be. Power, whether of kings, despots, or petty tyrants, whether monarchists or corporatists, has never given anything without a demand, not once. Unless we demand our liberty, we will not have it. Unless we demand our right to public education, to public infrastructures that better us all, to a just and equitable society, we will not have it.
Some elected officials act like winning an election is winning a crown to be queen or king for a day, or a even a legislative session. One of our Sumner County, TN Representatives is Debra Maggart, sponsor of the bill to outlaw Teacher’s Rights to bargain for safe and effective working conditions. Sadly, she has used her positions, both as our public servant and as Executive Director of the non-profit group Compass, to further her own self-serving goals, no matter whose privacy she invades or guidelines she breaks. In an email response to a citizen recently she sought input on the “Radical Right Master Plan.” An un-American plan that would presumably install a rich ruling class in perpetual security, while the rest of us only aspire to rise to the level of a middle class that no longer exists.
We deserve accountability from our representatives even after they have won an election. We don’t elect dictators, we elect servants. How many of our leaders have forgotten that our consent isn’t a one-time event.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Original Poetry
To-Do List
by Maria Brewer
Be radiant
Always find connection
Burn through limits
Remain out of control
Demand the room to laugh
Have awe for the infinity that fills creation
Sanctify the utter void it springs from
Transfigure self, standing on the cusp of both
by Maria Brewer
Be radiant
Always find connection
Burn through limits
Remain out of control
Demand the room to laugh
Have awe for the infinity that fills creation
Sanctify the utter void it springs from
Transfigure self, standing on the cusp of both
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Take a Lunch with Democracy
Today is going to be Rally day on the steps of the Tennessee State House downtown. People are coming from all over Tennessee to be heard by their state legislators. And it's going to be live streamed at the website http://march15.info/
What's the use of a rally? Well, haven't you heard? This is What Democracy Looks Like.
What's the use of a rally? Well, haven't you heard? This is What Democracy Looks Like.
Devastation comes in small packages as well...
Since Friday's disaster in Japan began, we Americans have watched its unfolding. So far away, yet so close at hand; unimaginably vast disaster striking a society so much like our own. Many of the photos are of an unimaginable scale. The stuff of our civilization made wholly uncivil and unrecognizable.
Unlike most of the pictures from Japan, this picture of baby and mother being checked for radiation holds a kind of devastation we can't see. I'm not a nuclear power fear-monger, but I am a realist. We can do better. If we don't, it shouldn't be because profit-making corporations ruled our world and stole our potential.
These pictures comes from the NY Times photo record of the Japanese earthquake/Tsunami/radiation disaster.
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