Author’s note:
As horrible and newsworthy as the events in Japan are, I hope that does not distract people from what has been accomplished in Madison, Wisconsin yesterday. Be sure to check out the slideshow at the link below.
Excerpt:
Madison, Wisconsin, a city legendary for its political activism, has raised the bar again yesterday with what may have been the largest political rally at the state Capitol in its history. While some estimates put the number of people that gathered for a pro-labor demonstration as high as 150,000, even the official estimate by the Madison police of 85,000 to 100,000 surpasses the numbers of the rallies at the peak of the anti-war movement in the 60’s. There were no arrests.
The people came to the Capitol from every corner of the Badger state – in cars, on buses and even on tractors. A few from Michigan, Minnesota and Chicago came to join the fight. Even the 14 democrats of the state senate, who had left the state in an attempt to slow down Governor Walker’s agenda, decided it was time to return.
And the message remains clear: “We, the people, have had enough!”
Despite a setback on Thursday with the passage of a bill that strips public employees of most collective bargaining rights, makes it illegal for unions to deduct fees from member’s paychecks and empowers the state to fire employees for going on strike, the number of demonstrators continues to grow.
With collective bargaining rights lost and the budget bill certain to pass, protesters are now chanting “Recall Walker!” instead of “Kill the bill!” In fact, the message has become clearer than ever. It is no longer just a legislative battle in a state with a progressive tradition. It is now, in a broader sense, a movement for democratic renewal.
The movement in Madison is seen by many as a resistance to a nation-wide assault on worker’s rights that began with the Reagan administration. The long term goal is to win the war on the middle class being waged by corporations, banks, mainstream media, Wall Street and the politicians that corporate money has bought.
The short term goal of the movement is to recall at least three, and up to eight, Republican state senators who backed the bill, shifting control of the chamber to the Democrats and restoring a system of checks and balances to what is now one-party government in Wisconsin. Ultimately, the movement seeks to remove Walker from office and set the tone for the elections in 2012.
Getting an early start, farmers from around the state arrived first, on tractors (see slideshow). The tractorcade was organized by the Wisconsin Farmers Union and Family Farm Defenders. John Peck, the group’s director, according to the Cap Times, says many of those coming to Madison are upset by the realization that Walker’s agenda is “sacrificing Wisconsin’s quality of life for everyone, not just unions.”
Next “Art Workers March Together” (a.k.a., “The Blue Tape Brigade.”) marched from the Overture Center to the gathering, decorated in painter’s tape, which was used to affix posters to the Capitol’s wall. The actors, painters, musicians and others, beating drums, carried possibly the largest and most elaborately constructed palm tree yet to the Capitol square. They were greeted with chants of “Fox Lies!”
Madison Firefighters Local 311 members then marched through the crowd, with bagpipes and drums blaring (see slideshow). The Rev. Jesse Jackson, actress Susan Sarandon and actor Tony Shalhoub (a Wisconsin native) joined the firefighters as they wove their way through a shoulder-to-shoulder crowd that filled the Capitol Square and several blocks of State Street.
Outside a hotel opposite the Capitol, the 14 state Senators appeared. The rally climaxed with speeches from a few of them. “Wow! You go away for a couple of weeks and look at what happened!” shouted state Senator Jon Erpenbach.
“We are going to take our state back. We are going to take our rights back,” declared state Senator Julie Lassa, a central Wisconsin Democrat who told the crowd, “I have never been prouder to be a Wisconsinite.”
Bob Jauch, a Democrat from northern Wisconsin told the crowd: “We did not weaken democracy when we went to the land of Lincoln. We strengthened it.”
Many Wisconsinites seemed to share that sentiment, as the overflow crowd greeted the returning senators like celebrities, chanting: “Thank you! Thank you!” and “Welcome home!”
The unity and solidarity, the signs and the numbers tell the story. Wisconsinites, most of whom are working class people, have been awakened, like “a sleeping giant” with a common cause reflected in a common chant: “This is what democracy looks like!”
Read more, get links, a slideshow and video here: Madison Independent Examiner – Largest political rally in Madison’s history yesterday
Total access: Using the other 90% of our brains
For years, scientists such as Albert Einstein and William James have been telling us that we human beings only use 10% of our brain capacity. Wouldn’t it be marvelous if we could use the other 90%? Can you imagine all the great ideas that we might be able to come up with?
Great literature — we’d all become Shakespeares!
Great art — I wanna be Michelangelo!
Great science — Einsteins on every corner, they’d run out of Nobel Prizes!
Great music — your child would truly be baby Mozart.
Great humanitarians — would you rather be Buddha or Jesus?
Or perhaps the opposite might happen and we’d end up with more Hitlers, Stalins, Atilla the Huns and Dick Cheneys. Oh crap.
But how do you go about accessing the other 90% of your brain? Meditation? Dreaming? Hitting the books? LSD? Peyote?
At one point in time way back in the 1960s, I ate some mescaline down at Big Sur — and it was immediately revealed to me that NATURE is the most important thing in the world. According to Mescalito, living within the context of trees and grass and mountain vistas and fresh air offers the most meaning to the human brain that there is. As the day wore on, however, both Mescalito and I began to think that perhaps pancakes were the most important thing.
But taking mescaline didn’t make me a genius either. Don’t try it at home.
“Go to college! That will make you smarter!” my mother always told me — back during a time when women were just supposed to stay home and play-act at being June Cleaver. So I went off to college. Got a masters degree too. But did that make me a genius? I wish. And it didn’t make any of those Yale and Harvard graduates who run the Federal Reserve into geniuses either. It just made them better crooks and liars and helped them to figure out new and better ways to keep their butts out of jail.
In these crucial times, it is so very important for the human race to use more of its brain capacity and to evolve. We have been basically thinking like cavemen for all too long. For instance, take the situation in Libya. When confronted with a desire on the part of his people to obtain more democratic institutions, Muammar Gaddafi responded exactly like the most primitive caveman might have. He started killing people, his people.
And what has been America’s answer to problems in Afghanistan, Tripoli. Washington, Wall Street and Wisconsin? Pissing contests that involve violence and threats. That’s not evolution or wisdom. That’s Neanderthal.
But perhaps the next generation will do better than our generation has done. To paraphrase one of my favorite bumper stickers which now reads, “Imagine a world where EVERY child is wanted, nurtured, protected and loved: World Peace in one generation!” — maybe if we want and nurture and protect and love the next generation instead of just stealing its future, perhaps we can also get more geniuses as well as just more whirled peas.
Jill Bolte Taylor is a brain scientist who was given a rather strange research opportunity: She had a massive stroke, and watched as her brain functions — motion, speech, self-awareness — all shut down one by one. Then she worked really hard to get all of her brain functions back. Maybe we can learn something from what happened to her and build on her experiences as well. http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html
I’ve also heard that art, music and other forms of creativity can also expand our brains — and make us better at math too. According to an article in the Harvard Educational Review by Eric Jensen, “Research from the studies discussed in [Arts With the Brain in Mind] and the experience of countless classroom educators support the view that visual arts have strong positive cognitive, emotional, social, collaborative, and neurological effects.”
And, given all this well-researched information, what are the powers-that-be in America doing with it right now? They’re making major cuts to funding for our art museums, school music programs and literature grants in order to have more Moolah to invest in their bloody, useless, uncivilized and paleolithic wars. Good thinking? Hardly.
Eating healthy stuff is supposed to be good for your brain too. Nothing processed. No sugar. No artificial sweeteners. Breast-feed your kids. That kind of stuff. http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2011/02/birthday-cake-blues-back-before-there.html
And while looking for ways to get a spacecraft to the moon, one NASA scientist used to deliberately work himself to exhaustion, fall asleep, dream about the answers to his problems, wake up suddenly, and have his wife hurriedly write down what he had learned from his dream before the solutions were forgotten.
But I don’t have a wife — so no deep thinking or going to the moon for me. I’m screwed.
PS: Speaking of music, I just starred — well, sort of — in a new punk-rock music video! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF2be3NBB2I