Keeping it Cool

I spent my noon hour today as I have often lately.   I spent it singing with my friends.  Today was a little different though, a return for me after spending most of the week away.  The numbers of people in the Wisconsin capitol each noon hour are continuing to grow again.  Hundreds of people filled the building again singing and standing in support of the singers and the people's right to the capitol as a public forum.

Up north my friends are starting to get threats for their work against the proposed mine.  Unsigned messages left out in the woods threatening the women with rape and all with death.

I keep hearing messages of sadness and the fascist state that Wisconsin has become.  That makes me sad on some level.  On a deeper level though I feel the strength growing.  I see the people gathering.  I've been organizing for over two decades and I've never seen the people claiming the space like they are today.

There is fear.  There is anger.  There are heartless beings who have lost their connection to this place and think that the land is something dead for their consumption. They will strike out.

One man at the capitol today was taken to the hospital in an ambulance after his arrest.  He was struck by his own body.  His heart failed him.  It was not an action of billy clubs or tasers.  Maybe the police were negligent in their care for him.  I don't know. The violence that injured the pastor today was that of his own body.  Tomorrow that may not be true.  Tomorrow's violence may be external.  It may be the police or perhaps those heartless beings who have forgotten our connections to each other and this place and think only in dollar signs.

We must be prepared.

I ask all those out there who call themselves activists or organizers or just people who care take the moment.  Pause.  Do what it is that you do.  Call upon Allah.  Set down tobacco. Pray in any of a million ways or just simply breathe.

It is time to do something different now.  For generations those in power have shown us to meet violence with violence, to shoot faster and straighter.  What has it gotten us but dead?

The Anishanabe tell the story of the seventh generation.  We must hear that story.  We must live it in each action.  It's not some far away fairy tale.  It is real.

As you fall asleep tonight, as you wake in the morning, as you feel your rage rising within you, look inside.  Look down that long tunnel and see the baby that is our future, that child who is the seventh generation.  Ask yourself "will my words, will my actions or inactions today bring that child warmth, safety, food, and love?" Remember if your actions are right by that child they will be right today.

It is hard.  It is the hardest thing you may ever do to choose not to strike blindly in anger but instead to listen and stand strong in rage and revolution instead.