Hearing about the world wide movement to OCCUPY
has me inspired, and I am thrilled to find a way to participate. Briefly
I looked at airline flights to New York this morning, and then watched
the live stream of the fun going on there. The flights weren’t cheap,
and the clincher was that when I saw all those people standing there,
all I could think about was…where are they going if they have to pee? Oh
my. In my revolution there are clean bathrooms, or at least some woods.
The beautiful thing about this Occupation
is that it is taking place all over the world at once. It’s a grassroots
push up from the soil…and you get the feeling that where ever you
are…in a sea of people all waiting in line for one port a potty or at
home scrubbing the toilet… there is a shift in consciousness occupying
everyone.
Everyone has a pet issue in this
Occupation: Corporate personhood, human joblessness, monopoly over our
food supply, real food in schools. Accountability by corporations when
they are responsible for environmental disaster, government is too big,
government is too small, capitalism is diseased, capitalism is fine our
government is diseased. Politians are owned by corporations,
accountability by corporations when they are responsible for economic
disaster. Our health care system allows too many people to fall through
the cracks, our education systems are failing us. Our ability to stay
healthy is mitigated by our access to a clean, healthy food supply. Our
media isn’t telling us what is really happening because it’s owned by
interests that serve the corporations, not the humans.
The 99% represents everyone who wasn’t born
with a silver spoon in their mouth and a seasons pass to the G8. The
99% are not CEOs of Monsanto or inheriting a government contract from a
friend at the country club. Some of that 1% might have pulled themselves
up by their bootstraps, but most of them were born there. 99% are
people who want the Dream, to be able to work hard at something they
love to do and to provide comfort and security for their family. For
their children, the 99% wants a future where there is clean water to
drink, healthy food to eat and an opportunity to seek work that they
love.
So I start to really think about what can the 99% of us do to improve our lot?
There is so much! SO much we can do! And
that is what this occupation is about. We rally together…in places like
Wall Street and in front of the White House and all over the interwebs,
and we JUST BE TOGETHER!!!! We start a dialogue and we organize. We find
ways to promote our small local economies where humans are benefiting
from our efforts, not just corporations. We find ways to work with or
get past our politicians and our media to make a difference despite
them. We have power if we work together to make our collective consumer
dollars count, we can make them listen.
If you can Occupy Yourself, you can speak
your truth. You can seek the truth and you can speak the truth and you
can put your money where you see truth. You can find other humans in
your neighborhood and on the interwebs that share your truth, and you
can bask in that truth together. Imagine a world that is a better place
and talk about it, draw pictures of it, write about it, tell your kids
bedtime stories about it, write about it in your will.
Here is the thing. Enlightenment is not
going to happen for just a few of us and then change the world. It has
to be everyone, waking up all at once, to make a real difference. If I
stop driving my car and if I install solar panels on my house and turn
the thermostat down two degrees, who am I really helping? Change is just
going to have to be on a different scale. Public transportation has to
become a real option, local food needs to become the only real option
and farmers need to become heroes. Nafta did not work, the corporate
bail outs did not work, and the humans have just become more and more
apathetic. We need to make sure that when we fight we are fighting for
our better future, not just the short-term perpetuation of an
unsustainable now.
Remember that change is scary, that letting
go of the comfortable old way is hard! The unforeseen future is
terrifying. Then, when its happening, its beautiful like spring: new and
fresh and exciting.
So start something new. This will really
work. Please, by all means, go to Wall Street, go to DC. Write letters
to your editor, start your own paper if they won’t publish it. But do it
from a place of visualizing a better future for us and our kids. Take
the time to really imagine a future where conservation has left
resources for future generations and where people are fed with local
healthy food. Make space in your life to get at peace with yourself and
make decisions from that place. If everyone can find it in themselves to
do this, all at the same time, then we will have accomplished
everything. This will be the new beginning from which the solutions will
arise.
Peace!
Amy Potter
