Where Do You Start?

It is amazing that the likes of Sarah Palin or Glenn Beck can use their theatrics and phony behavior to lead people into believing that white is black and enslavement is freedom, but I guess anything is possible in America these days.  With the GOP finally giving in on debate on the floor on Wall Street reform, you have to wonder if this is just another smoke and mirrors show that will ultimately give them what they have wanted all along, just like the mandatory health insurance law in health care reform.  How do you combat a group of politicians, media idiots, and corporate powers that are determined to undermine this nation and lead her to destruction so they can make a few bucks?  Where do you start – to fight back, to get even, to stand up and be counted?  How do you take words that once held real meaning for people but are now twisted into something unrecognizable, and make the words whole again?

There are several things that are currently wrong in this nation, and everyday we read about them in the news, and on the Internet.  We have people whose sole source of information is a news network that would not know the truth if it walked up and bit them.  They talk about things like insurrection, and taking back our country from a form of government that our Constitution enacted (but of course they say that is not the kind of government we have).  They blather on about abortion and that a woman should be forced to carry a pregnancy to term without recourse because they do not care about the child or the mother, but rather the power to control someone else’s life in the most horrendous ways imaginable.  They talk about rioting in the streets and then are surprised when people become violent.  They talk about killing and then are surprised when someone does exactly what they said should be done.  This is the pattern of FOX News and it is both dangerous to people, and to our society as well.  Unfortunately, while they would deny others the right of free speech in disagreeing with them, they scream like stuck pigs if someone even suggests that they be shut down for acts of sedition or incitement to kill a President or Speaker of the House.

Words have power, and we as a nation have forgotten the power of words because we have forgotten how to use them.  We no longer adequately teach English in our schools – you know the kind of thing like parts of the language, sentence structure, constructing a research paper, reading comprehension – and instead, pander to groups who undermine our language programs because they claim they are discriminatory.  We have forgotten that the use of words correctly will allow a person to communicate ideas and ideals, create open discourse without misrepresentation, and lead to better public policy.  We must re-educate ourselves in how to use the English language.  That would be a good place to start.

Another place to start would be in teaching our children about history and our Constitution, and how our Founding Fathers were liberals – after all you do not start a revolution against the most powerful nation of your time without being a little liberal!  You teach them that this is not a Christian nation, and was founded by many Deists, not Christians, and it was control of the church by the state that led to many of the complaints of the colonists who were not Church of England.  It is important that they understand why this separation is so important in a nation where we have hundreds of different religious denominations or faith systems or religions  and that we recognize in our nation no one faith can dominate not only people but government.  That would also be a good place to start.

A third place to start is with local governments taking control of how their communities act, and working towards each community being independent from state or federal controls on such issues as education, energy, climate, food, transportation.  This is what the Transition Initiatives have begun to work on and it could be a very effective starting place.  But, it requires us to be pro-active in this process as community members, and that means we must turn off our TVs and start talking to our neighbors.  This would also be a good place to start.

But in the end, it all boils down to we must educate ourselves honestly and we must make sure that our children are educated with facts – provable facts – and taught to think critically.  We absolutely must work together to create a new type of nation where the people actually have the ability to control what happens, without mega-corporations or TBTF banks, and that means working at the local level to create a new approach to governance and community action.  And to do this we must educate ourselves and our futures depend on educating our children differently.  This is the first step in actually creating lasting, sustainable change in our society – and we must move now, even in these tight economic times, to do this.  We have no more time to waste – we are running like an out of control train heading for a wreck, and we must be able to take care of ourselves because no one now is going to do it for us.

I am working at trying to start a new type of school – videos about it are on YouTube under Devon Noll (Common Sense Initiative School Mission)- and reaching out to people to educate them on what our possible future may be if we do not envision ways that we can work differently and create something better.  This is not something that one person or even a small group of people can accomplish alone.  It requires each of us to come together and work as a collection of community members to change our communities and work to create new policies that make our communities independent.  Only when we have the ability to reach out in this manner can we find a common place to start to overcome the damage of the last 30 years of poor climate, energy, economic, and other policies that the dying world of the GOP right-wing are fighting so violently to hang on to.  We must determine where we are to start, and it starts with each of asking “Where do I start?” and then taking that first step.

See http://www.letfreedomring.community.officelive.com for more information on what I am doing.  Please post here what you might do in your community as your first step.  Good luck!