Welcome to the Good News

Evelyn is deaf and a musician. I cringe writing deaf next to her name because in her case the definition is simply not true. She hears differently, feels sound with her whole being.

Her music is touching, honest and profound. In Touch the Sound, the documentary about her work, I saw her fascination with music, her playfulness, humility and surrender.

She listens when she plays. Her appreciation and gratitude of what comes through her is palpable. Sometimes tears roll down her cheeks.

There is a door to inspiration and creation that Evelyn has opened, showing the way for everyone ready to listen.

Open your door today, for a minute, and surrender to your creativity. Feel it and receive it as the gift that you are.

For some, adulthood comes with full amnesia of what felt like fun during childhood and a full investment in preventing anything risky from happening. Not for this man and not for us, right?

What are the “dangerous” things you avoid playing with?

This is a comment from indymedia’s page showing the film of police attacking peaceful protesters in London at the G20 Climate Camp.

The cops are a sideshow

Published: Thursday 02 April 2009 23:50 by Cascadian

I’ve seen this again and again since the WTO conference in my hometown of Seattle ten years ago. There’s a confrontation between protesters and police, usually started by the police (but that’s ultimately irrelevant). People spend all their energy arguing who’s to blame and what tactics were or were not OK by each side, and the global powers that be mostly get forgotten.

At least in Seattle the non-violent direct action protesters and the sheer numbers in the streets that day actually prevented WTO business from going forward. Usually the meetings go forward as planned AND everyone wastes time arguing police vs. protester tactics.

The essential point is this: the cops are not your enemy, even when they’re going out of their way to beat you up. They’re just the instruments of power, designed to maintain the status quo and hopefully maintain order at the same time. Most of the individual cops don’t have an opinion about the G20 or the WTO or whatever it is at all. They’re a tool that either is used for you or against you.

Challenging the cops just makes it easier for them to line up for their appointed role as protectors of the status quo, which currently means the interests of global capital. The way you make revolutionary change is to bypass the cops, or if that isn’t possible, turn the cops to your side by changing the underlying balance of power. Except in rare circumstances property destruction and violence doesn’t change that balance of power, because the powerful will always have more tools of coercion. Instead, real change requires you to persuade enough people both inside and outside the existing power structure that things have to change. When that happens, all of a sudden the balance of power is on the side of the people in the streets, and it’s the bankers that have to worry about being dragged off to jail.

But that’s hard, and not as viscerally satisfying as chucking a bottle at a black-clad storm trooper.

What useless battles are you fighting? Re-direct your energy, focus on what is important.