Did you know that Martin Luther King was trying to organize an Occupy Washington DC in 1967? He didn’t call it that. It was called “The Poor People’s Campaign.”

1. What did Rev King say about corporations, about capitalism, about the 99%?
2. And what advice would he give Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Tacoma?

These are some of the topics I cover in this tribute to Rev King in my video, “What Dr. King Can Teach Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Tacoma.”

In 2010, for Martin Luther King day, I wrote a blog posting entitled “Martin Luther King Day, 2010”

In reviewing that posting, it becomes obvious that Rev King has much to teach us in the Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Tacoma movement. So, in honor of Martin Luther King Day, January 15, 2012, I revised the original post, updating it to apply Dr. King’s lessons to our movement. Rather than republishing it, I made a video of my speaking it.

You may refer to the original post for links documenting the facts and figure I use.

Regards,

Alan OldStudent
The Unexamined Life Is Not Worth Living — Socrates
My Web Site

Disclaimer 2: These remarks are not meant to criticize the Tacoma Police Department. To my knowledge, so far, Tacoma Police Department has respected the rights of Occupy Tacoma and has limited activities to legitimate public safety and law enforcement.

You can also read this article at Occupy Tacoma website

If, as Justice Brandeis famously said in 1914

“Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.”

Then millions of tiny video recorders cast the disinfecting glare of publicity upon those cops too fond of beating up peaceful protestors. Every time police repress legal peaceful dissent, dozens, even hundreds of YouTube videos of the events tend to go viral on the Internet. And boy, how those misbehaving cops hate cameras!

Rogue cops always have hated DIY photographers, even before the advent of the Occupy Wall Street movement. In fact, misbehaving police and sympathetic old-boy crony networks have been trying to swat those pesky videographer gadflies with their tiny cameras-stingers for quite some time now.

Did you know that videographers who film police activity often find themselves charged with felony crimes, making said movie-makers eligible for prison terms of many years? See below for more details.

The charge is usually “eavesdropping” under the theory that recording exchanges between 2 or more individuals without their express consent violates wiretap laws. Such wiretap laws are supposed to protect the individual’s right of privacy, but how can an activity or conversation held in public be private? That’s the question courts consider when they throw out convictions based on these laws. Courts have ruled that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy for activities occurring in public.

But since the beginning of the Occupy movement, oddly enough, one hears less of prosecuting photographers under “eavesdropping” laws. Perhaps that’s because it’s easier to hush up a felony charge against a solitary videographer than dozens of charges against a bevy of photographers participating in a mass demonstration.

Here are a few examples of what has happened in the recent past, before OWS (Occupy Wall Street) and related phenomena:

In 2007, Seattle resident Bogdan Mohora videotaped an arrest, and police seized his camera and arrested him. You can read the Seattle PI account by clicking here. They released him several hours later and never charged him. But he spent time in the hoosegow and police seized his camera. Seattle Police never apologized nor did they even file a legally required police report. Nevertheless, Mr. Mohora was lucky, compared to a certain Florida resident named Narces Benoit. At least Mr. Mohora later received $8000 damages the court ordered the PD to pay as the result of an ACLU suit.

On Memorial Day of 2011, Narces Benoit filmed police surrounding a car and firing over 100 rounds into it, killing the occupant. You can see his chilling video by clicking here. Alternet reports that police seized and smashed several witnesses’ cell phones, including Mr. Benoit’s. According to reports, police stomped on Mr. Benoit’s camera, smashing it, and arrested him, but not before Mr. Benoit surreptitiously rescued the SIM card and slipped it into his mouth. That’s why you now can view this video. The police responded by charging Mr. Benoit with eavesdropping—charges that carry a 15-year sentence in that jurisdiction. Click here to read Alternet’s story.

Then there’s the story of 41-year-old Michael Allison, who faced 75 years in prison, which at his age is a virtual life sentence. His crime? He’s in trouble for filming several of his encounters with police and one with a judge.

Another example: Police arrested Emily Good, a Rochester NY resident, for filming a police encounter between 3 white police officers and a black civilian that occurred across the street from her. She filmed this encounter from her front porch, on the opposite side of the street.

There are many similar horror stories and amateur videos of police misconduct floating around the web. The charges are usually criminal eavesdropping, occasionally inciting to riot, or interfering with police.

However, courts more and more are overturning these laws on the legal theory that video recording public activity in public places does not constitute a breach of anyone’s privacy.  Notwithstanding that, plenty of jurisdictions continue to charge the lone photographer and videographer with violating privacy and eavesdropping statutes for filming police activity that occurs in public.

But we haven’t seen a lot of that with the Occupy protests so far. How come? What’s the explanation?

Check out the picture right above. Just look at how many cameras and video-recorders there are in this demonstration, will you? That’s the problem for the misbehaving cop.

Mr. Policeman, Little Brother is watching your every move, from every angle, from every vantage point

There are so many cameras at these protests that police behavior will be recorded, and within an hour, these pictures flash around the world. The cops can’t seize all the cameras. They can’t avoid being photographed. The world is different from the days of Rodney King when few people had video-cameras or even thought of filming police misconduct. Nowadays, some of these cameras are networked to satellites in the sky and instantly upload graphic files as soon as the shutter is snapped! Technology makes it virtually impossible to censor videos and photographs of cops misbehaving.

The authorities don’t want the bad press associated with prosecuting hundreds of protestors for photographing the very scandalous police misconduct these videos expose. That’s just bad theater. Instead, too often police just single out photographers for arrest, beating them, even shooting projectiles at them, hoping to discourage their activity or frighten them off. That’s pure intimidation and legally sanctioned bullying!

To the rogue cops, I have this message: There are just too many cameras. You can’t smash them all.

The more you try, the more the Occupy movement will grow. The Occupy movement has no center, no hierarchy, no command and control. It’s too bloody decentralized for you to disrupt. The social networking sites and the internet appear to be incompatible with official old-school repression. The old paradigms have passed into history. This is a new world, the world of tomorrow.

So, to Riot Control Police who are to prone to riot themselves:

Beware the photographers and videographers.
Little Brother Is  Watching You!

Like Anonymous, they are everywhere
They are legion.
They do not forget.
They do not forgive.
Expect them.

To the brave photographers and videographers: Keep your wits about you and give no legal excuse to the cops to victimize you. Remember, the disinfectant of sunlight is our best antibiotic against the disease of police brutality, the megabucks public relations campaigns arraigned against us. and the official attempts to disrupt us with police infiltrators.

We are shaking the foundations of the empire with our mighty weapon, nonviolent mass action.

We are pitting a picture, an idea, a pen, and a thirst for justice against the policeman’s truncheon, his water cannon, his rubber bullets, his flash-bangs, his tear gas. That’s why we have the advantage in this battle, as long as we can remain unified and in solidarity with each other.

We are the 99% and the 99% are us.

Regards,

Alan OldStudent
The Unexamined Life Is Not Worth Living — Socrates
My Web Site

A fellow named Scott, who runs a personal website called A Dad First, had posted several criticisms on his blog explaining his opposition to the Occupy Tacoma and the whole national Occupy Wall Street movement from a conservative point of view. So I posted some responses to these criticisms on A Dad First, which Scott was gracious enough to allow to remain.

In those responses, I suggested biased media coverage may have unfairly distorted Scott’s impression of our movement. So I proposed to Scott that he come down to Occupation Park, let me introduce him to some people, and show him around. Then, he could gather his own facts, interview some occupiers, and form his own conclusions based on his own observations. I promised Scott that occupiers would be delighted to talk with him, to explain why we protest, and how we see our movement. I assured Scott that all involved would treat him courteously and with respect, despite his having written some fairly severe criticisms of our movement.

Last Saturday, November 12, my friend Jan and I met with Scott and his pleasant young kids at Occupation Park. We introduced Scott and his children to some occupiers, whom Scott interviewed, asking them many questions, respectfully listening to us all. Scott’s daughter videotaped one of those interviews.

Scott then blogged his impressions of this encounter on A Dad First, complete with an annotated videotaped interview, which you can see by clicking here.

It is apparent to me that Scott tried to be fair to us, and I really appreciated him taking the risk of leaving his comfort zone and coming out to our encampment. He is not accustomed to people like us, and he was a bit concerned about the possibility of an unpleasantly hostile encounter at first, although he quickly enough felt quite safe.

In his blog posting describing this encounter, Scott concedes OT’s (Occupy Tacoma’s) commitment to nonviolent political action and protest. He also noted that the Occupiers kept the encampment well organized and clean and tried hard to minimize damage to plants, as well as to maintain the park itself.

However, notwithstanding Scott’s obvious attempts to be objective and fair minded, I simply don’t agree with many of his conclusions if I understood his blog posting correctly after studying it.

Scott speculates Occupy Tacoma is somehow unique in that we are quite firm in our commitment to nonviolent protest. He seems to think that violent organizations and individuals with hidden agendas have likely co-opted, to some unspecified extent, other Occupy movements in such places as Portland, Oakland, New York, and so on. He’s not had the opportunity to visit those sites of course, and so he must be relying on media accounts, which can be less than objective.

Scott worries that such subversive elements may get a toehold in our Occupy Tacoma movement and negatively affect the local Occupy Tacoma community.

What Can We Learn From Scott

You should view Scott’s latest posting and his interpretation of his visit to the Occupation Park at 21st and Pacific. You should also view Scott’s videotaped interview of an articulate and well-spoken young occupier, particularly noting the captions Scott scatters throughout this video. You can do that by by clicking here.

Scott’s reservations and fears about the OWS (Occupy Wall Street) are similar to those of a sizable minority of the 99%. We must gain that segment’s participation in OWS’s activities if we expect to win our struggle. We need to find creative ways to cut through the propaganda and misconception that we’re unruly, that we destroy property, that we are violent and lawless. Another lie to counter is that we envy the 1 percent’s wealth. Those are the kinds of lies the plutocracy wants to discredit us with, to smear us with.

These lies distracts from our actual message, which simply stated is that we 99 percenters can break the plutocracy’s undemocratic stranglehold on political power, that nonviolent mass action can return democratic rule into the hands of the 99%.

Thus we must have zero tolerance to violence and destruction of property in our meetings and our encampments.

The principle of nonviolent mass action is not just a nicy-nice thing to preach. The truth is that we must help the American public understand that together, we can take back our democracy and achieve social justice for ourselves. That’s what we’re about. That’s what our message is.

The politicians and corporations won’t give us economic justice, social justice, democracy, and our rights, no matter how much we beg. It really does not matter which capitalist politician we elect.

Instead of relying on the plutocracy’s political representatives in the Democratic and Republican hierarchies, we who are the 99% need to stand on our own two legs, to rely upon ourselves. Whimpering and begging the ruling plutocracy or their political hacks for crumbs won’t work. Electing the lesser of two evils won’t work. The capitalist politicians don’t speak for us. They speak up for the corporate ruling class.

We need to have the audacity to seize economic and social justice for ourselves, in our own name, without relying on the elected officials.

Why? Because power takes a backward step only in the face of power, and our only possible power is the power of nonviolent mass action.

Getting the rest of the 99% to understand this is quite impossible until we earn their confidence. And we’ll never be able to gain that confidence or allegiance to the Occupy movement if we engage in the stupidly futile tactics of violence or property destruction. We must not make it easy for the plutocracy and their provocateurs to discredit us. We must be good and responsible citizens of the 99%.

What we seek is self-determination for the 99% instead of plutocratic control, because simple justice, the health of our planet, the wellbeing of our children and grandchildren demand it, and nonviolent mass action is our only viable method of seizing that power over our lives.

We need to communicate to Scott and others like him that we are nonviolent, that our interests are their interests, that they are us and we are them, and that we need to act together in our own self-interest.

That’s why provocateurs acting on behalf of the 1% infiltrate us. They try to get the less thoughtful OWS supporters to do stupid things. Or they try to get us arguing about whether or not to throw a rock at a bank window. Internet forum trolls try to get us fighting amongst ourselves or responding to their crudely vulgar, insulting forum messages and smears.

Although the principle of nonviolent protest has a considerable moral appeal for most of us (including me), nonviolent mass action also has an absolutely necessary, and practical strategic dimension. We simply cannot win the mass support necessary to achieve our aims any other way!

Here’s a concrete example

For over 20 years, Al Qaeda tried to overthrow the brutal Mubarak dictatorship in Egypt and failed spectacularly. Why? Because it relied almost exclusively on small bands carrying out isolated, if spectacular, acts of violence and terror. Such criminal behavior never did, nor could it ever, help Al Qaeda win over any significant support among the majority of ordinary Egyptians, whether they be Muslims, Christians, or Jews. The average Egyptian, as ordinary citizens, as ordinary human beings with normal healthy human sentiments, actually abhors Al Qaeda’s strategy of violence and terrorism as much as we American civilians do.

Compare how much more effective nonviolent mass protest was in toppling the Mubarak regime earlier this year. In a matter of just a few weeks, culminating in a rally of millions in Tahrir Square on Feb 4, 2011, a revolutionary nonviolent mass movement overthrow the Mubarak dictatorship and his phony democracy, something Al Qaeda could not even begin to do after 20 years of bitter struggle.

And the Egyptian masses made their revolution without breaking a single bank window, without throwing a single stone at cops, or setting a single trash-can on fire, and they did it in a matter of days! Can you imagine how those people in Tahrir Square would have related to people who counterposed the “militancy” of breaking a window or tossing a firecracker under a police car instead of going to Tahrir Square on February 4? How militant would that have been? The events at Tahrir Square were actually the final revolutionary blow against Mubarak and a fine example of the power of nonviolent mass action!

In fact, the Mubarak regime had used suppression of Al Qaeda cells in Egypt for years to bolster its legitimacy among the Egyptian masses. Those are the same masses who later overthrew Mubarak. It actually could be argued that Al Qaeda’s strategy of violence and terror was not only ineffective, it was reactionary because it delayed the Egyptian revolution.

Even more than in Egyptian society, nonviolent mass action is our only hope for victory in our struggle to take political power from the corporations and to empower the 99%. Factors that make it so are the history of nonviolent reform movements in the United States, this country’s well-armed military and police forces, this country’s media monopoly, as well as America’s advanced technology. Nonviolence is a core value in the historic consciousness of American protest movements, from the early abolitionists and Henry David Thoreau’s 1849 book “Civil Disobedience” which protested taxes to support the Mexican-American war, to Martin Luther King, who fought racial discrimination and opposed the Vietnam war, to the women’s rights and gay rights movements. These movements have all met with success insofar as they engaged in nonviolent mass action.

The videos and pictures of those brave young nonviolent Occupy activists camping out in the cold, getting evicted, and returning again and again in the face of police attacks and even police riots show us today’s true American heroes.  Police may try to disburse the camps and break our spirits, but our ideas alone are stronger than all their armed might. They can evict people from parks, but they can’t evict the spirit of rebellion sweeping today’s youth.

Though their hired police and thugs may force occupiers out of their encampments and disburse our marches, we will occupy their minds.

Though the rains of their smears may fall all around us, we will shelter in the tent of truth, to shield us from their bitter lies.

Though the icy blizzard of slanders and hailstorms of distortion pelt down all around us, we will wear our foul-weather coat of nonviolent resistance.

We will occupy everywhere while holding the shield of resistance in our strong and determined hand to protect us against the sword of greed, of ignorance, of obscurantism, of slander, of bigotry, of endless wars, of homelessness, of exploitation of children.

We will commit the ultimate act of rebellion: the act of educating ourselves about our true situation, how we can mount effective resistance to authority.

Self-education becomes the ultimate revolutionary deed as soon as the plutocracy strive to to dull our imaginations and keep us in ignorance of our power.

The 1% ultimately can’t defeat us if we remain united in resistance, though the battle will be long and hard, and many will suffer.

And so to the troublemakers and provocateurs who would torpedo our movement with such ineffective tactics as breaking windows, street fighting cops, setting fires, or intimidating people who come to counter-picket our encampments, and so on, we say this in the spirit of the hacktivist group Anonymous:

Today, right now, we’re witnessing the beginning winds of change blowing in the top of the trees, the winds that come before the storm that blows down the forest.

We are participating in the most profound and momentous political events of the past half century, events that will shake our world to its very foundations. What we do today, right now, will affect the this country for decades, perhaps even centuries.

Today, the fate of humanity literally rests on our shoulders, because America is at the belly of the corporate beast. Do we have what it takes to follow this struggle through to its conclusion. Are we going to peter out, lose interest, and fail?

Only you have the answer to that question!

In a later post, I’ll try to analyze and answer Scott’s objections to our movement, why his objections are mistaken, and what we can do to counter negative propaganda and thwart agents provocateurs.

Regards,

Alan OldStudent
The Unexamined Life Is Not Worth Living — Socrates
My Web Site

Kudos to OccupyAnimator. He’s only produced this one video, at least under the name OccupyAnimator. He is certainly talented, an asset to the Occupy Movement. I urge everyone to see it, pass it on, study it. Here’s his explanation for his video:

If you’re having trouble understanding what is at stake in the "Occupy" protests, here are some numbers that help explain the problem.

Regards,

Alan OldStudent
The Unexamined Life Is Not Worth Living — Socrates
My Web Site

Hello all!

My name is Alan OldStudent, and I love what I am seeing here today. You are great! You are amazing!

In my long life, I have seen many amazing things. I saw how a mass nonviolent movement ended the infamous Jim Crow laws, — laws that legalized racial segregation, — laws that made it a crime to marry outside of your race. And now, I am seeing a how a mass nonviolent movement is ending laws against marrying the person you truly love, even if that person is the same sex as you.

In the 1960s, many years ago, I saw how a mass nonviolent movement, which even included many military people, ended an unjust war in Vietnam.

In fact, it was mass movements, not politicians, not corporations, which brought about every social change that has benefitted the 99%. That includes:

• The right of women to vote, a right only gained in 1920.
• The right to join a union.
• The right to be able to use birth control, to plan your family size, and many other rights.
• The abolition of child labor laws.
• Universal education from kindergarten through high school.
• Social Security and Medicare, as well as many others.

It even was mass action that caused the founding fathers to add the bill of rights to the constitution, including the democratic right we enjoy to assemble here today.

Young people, such as so many of you, seized those rights and social gains and others like them. The 1% did not give them to the people. No, it was the people, especially the youth, who wrested those rights from the 1%.

HOW can we win against the most powerful ruling class in world history, the 1%?

We 99 percenters have no armies, no air force, no navy. but we have the power of our bodies, the power of nonviolent mass action.

The 1% know that their power is doomed as soon as the majority of the 99% mobilize.

THEY tremble when they see us out here.

THEY know they’ll lose their power to squash democracy, and:

• TO RUN our lives,
• TO STEAL our tax money.
• TO SEND our fathers, mothers, brothers sisters, sons, and daughters TO KILL and be killed IN FIGHTING wars for oil and money SO THEY can profit by poisoning our mother,THIS green and watery planet we call earth.

TO make us powerless to speak and to mobilize the rest of the 99%, the 1% want to discredit us so we can’t mobilize a mass nonviolent movement to make a real democracy.

In many cities in this country, they are infiltrating troublemakers into our movement to make us look bad. They are infiltrating internet moles into our online communities. We must guard against that trap.

• WE must not listen to the infiltrators who would urge us to engage in illegal or violent acts.
• WE must not feed the internet trolls by responding to their taunts. (Those are clickable links).

ANOTHER trap to avoid is the sandbox of electoral politics, of Republicans versus Democrats.

IF various capitalist politicians want to support us, fine. But we simply must not, as the Occupy Movement, endorse any particular capitalist politician because it only causes disunity amongst ourselves and cuts across building a mass movement, our only road to power.

Instead, we need to mobilize our fellow 99 percenters, no matter what party, into mass nonviolent action to seize power. Let’s not permit the corporate-bought and sponsored parties to coopt us.

TO THE young here, I have a special message: WE OLDER people support you.

BUT we are yesterday and you’re tomorrow. IT IS you who can and must change the world.

Believe! Believe!

• BELIEVE, that together, we can change the world!
• BELIEVE that together, we can fight injustice, war, racism, exploitation, AND create a decent world!
• BELIEVE, we can clean up the environment!
• BELIEVE we stop imperialist wars.
• BELIEVE in the power of unity, of nonviolent mass action!

It is we, not the 1%, who can build a new world on new foundations. The 1% won’t do it simply because building a decent world fit for us and our children is not a profit-making enterprise.

IF THE 1% could make as much money doing these things as they can make killing people in wars and exploiting us, they’d have done that 100 years ago. As a famous German opponent of Hitler once said:

So young people, do not let your elders say you’re naive and unschooled in the ways of the world because you believe in this revolutionary change and nonviolence. Don’t listen to them when they tell you that you just have to come to terms with injustice and violence.

Don’t let them make you believe that their rule is inevitable, that there’s no use in resistance! That you must accept their rule!

No! No! No!

INSTEAD, have the wisdom to understand that THE FATE of humanity rests on your shoulders today, that each and every one of you is a part of a world-wide revolt OF THE YOUTH against injustice, war, dictatorship intolerance, ignorance, and economic oppression.

SEIZE THE POWER because the 1% use power to oppress,
AND POWER takes a backward step only in the face of power.

SEIZE the power of liberation, THE POWER of freedom, OF democracy, OF nonviolent mass action.

IN THE words of an old anarchist and socialist hymn:

Regards,

Alan OldStudent
The Unexamined Life Is Not Worth Living — Socrates
My Web Site

My wife Margaret, whom I was with for the better part of 3 decades, recently died, around the middle of April 2011. I was her full-time caretaker for many months previous to her death, working at home nearly full time, leaving me little opportunity to blog. Although most called her “Miss Margaret,” I called her “Sweet Margaret,” because she had the sweetness of spirit common in young girls.

In the year or so before she died, she required a great deal of care.  I sometimes had to carry her to bed or to a chair or the couch. I sometimes had hand feed her, help her dress, help her with personal hygiene, and supervise her medications. She nearly died around September of 2010, temporarily lost mental clarity, occasionally hallucinating, all because of strong pain medication. While this was going on, I was trying to recover from joint replacement surgery on my hand for an arthritic thumb joint, which made caring for her more of a challenge.

Before she became ill about a year-and-a-half ago, Miss Margaret was strong and vigorous. We often walked for miles, and then suddenly she could barely walk. In her last year, she lost 50 pounds and shrank 4 or 5 inches from osteoporosis, becoming almost completely housebound. Gradually, I nursed her back to enough health that she occasionally was able to walk the distance of a block to get a coffee at a Starbucks with my assistance, although I had to call us a cab to get her home. Before her decline, she had been a regular fixture there, holding court, and young people loved talking to her,  confiding in her, finding her humorous tales and wise counsel amusing and inspiring.

Miss Margaret was a great assistance to me in my writing. She was both my severest critic and biggest booster. She read my drafts quite closely, making incisive comments. She asked what she called “needling questions” about my choice of words, my underlying assumptions. She was extremely analytical, a retired literature teacher of English, French, and Spanish, well read and perceptive, had a great ear for the rhythm and beauty of language.

I valued her comments greatly, even when I disagreed with them. When she read an inept turn of phrase I had written, she would grab her stomach, look pained, and said it gave her a “stomachache.” After I had finished nursing my wounded ego and grousing about her editorial comments, and when I had honed, pruned, and polished, ending up with something she considered to be a well crafted, she praised it, explaining why she thought it was better. She never said something was good for diplomacy’s sake. Therefore, her approval meant much to me, partly because she really believed in my writing talent, and partly because I trusted her instinct of language. She motivated me to polish and rewrite, to think deeply about what I had written and how I had said it.

Miss Margaret had that dry wit and blunt pithiness so many British intellectuals are noted for, and I learned much from her.  I could challenge her literary criticisms or opinions, and she could challenge mine. She was humble and understated. Despite her bluntness, she was kind and supportive, never cruel or degrading, saying that at my best, I was an excellent writer. She was a true teacher, as well as a wife, companion, and my lover. Together we did some ghostwriting, making a bit of money over the years.

Miss Margaret was a very well read and educated woman, spoke 4 languages, knew a great deal about Shakespeare, history, art, culture, and was an extremely wise and supportive friend. She was an impressive and charismatic woman of great wit and charm. She was also one of the most decent, ethical, and caring humans I have ever known.

And she spoke with such a musical and cultured voice, with a British English lilt and intonation. She really impressed everyone with whom she met with her bearing and graceful unpretentious dignity.

Some of her earliest memories were of being in London’s bomb shelters during the German bombing campaigns of World War II. This affected her outlook on life. She was a vegetarian (I don’t want to eat anything with a face and a mother), a lifelong pacifist, a humanist, a radical feminist, an all-around gentle spirit, anti-capitalist, and she died a socialist.  She was  an implacable foe of crudity, cruelty, crassness, bigotry, bullying , and oppression. She was a rationalist and placed great value on analytical thought. She was an expert in the history of art and fashion, and she had a passion for horticulture, the soul of an English gardener. She also had a passion for the languages she spoke, especially her beloved English tongue.

Miss Margaret fell in our garden about 6 weeks before she died and fractured her hips (both of them). When she fell, it was after a long period of disability. She had not been all that mobile when she fell, although by that time she had begun to recover a bit. I coached her in exercises. She was very brave and determined to recover if she could. I had nursed her to the point where eventually she was able to get up for half an hour or so at a time,  a personal triumph we both were proud of, and at the same time, a huge improvement.  So breaking her hips was quite a soul-crushing setback for her.

She spent some time in the hospital, recovering from bilateral hip surgery, and then was sent to an outpatient rehabilitation center with a plan for a 4- to 6-month course of physical and occupational therapy.

On the day she died, which was several weeks into her stay at the rehabilitation facility, she had been making so much progress that they told her she would likely be able to be discharged after 3 months, instead of originally planned-for 4 to 6 months.

Thus that particular day, she was quite excited and proud of herself, and she called me to tell me this news of a possibly earlier discharge. She thanked me for being her husband, telling me how much she loved me and how eager she was to return home, to resume life with me and our cat Puss-Puss. She talked about how kind the staff were to her in the rehabilitation facility.

Most of the staff had come to the US from former British colonies in Africa, had had a British style education, and identified with her. They appreciated this genteel elderly radical lady who had so much insight into the role of British imperialism in Africa and a sophisticated grasp of history.

About 9:30 in the evening on this last day of Margaret’s life, a nurse checked in on her, and they swapped jokes. The nurse then went to check another patient and returned to check again on Miss Margaret 20 minutes later. By then, a blood clot had dislodged from her surgical wound and made its way to her heart and lungs. By the time the nurse had returned, Miss Margaret was unresponsive and barely breathing. They evacuated her to the hospital emergency room, and I was with her there in the ER when they eventually pronounced her dead several hours later. But really, she was probably already dead when the nurse found her and they put her in the ambulance. After all, she had had a multi-minute anoxic (without oxygen) insult to her brain. Her brain wave monitor looked flat to me when they were giving her CPR, as I sat holding her hand, talking to her, stroking her, and sobbing my tearful goodbyes.

Miss Margaret probably knew she was dying when that deadly embolism struck, and no doubt she felt 30 seconds of sheer terror, air hunger, a  sensation of a crushing heavy pressure in her chest. Then her impressively huge brain and magnificent spirit winked out, extinguishing her consciousness, snuffing out her life in any meaningful sense of the term. Her brain was dead.

I can’t begin to tell you how grateful I am to have no one to be angry with. Her caregivers gave her excellent care, her doctors were on the ball, and I believe no one made any negligent mistakes that caused Miss Margaret’s death.

I’m so thankful that it was nobody’s fault that Miss Margaret died. As I do not believe in God, I’m not angry at God or the universe. I’m oddly at peace with  feeling only the deep cooling tides of grief bathing my soul and not the white-hot flames of anger and rage licking at my peace of mind. I can’t tell you how grateful I am that no one is to blame for my Sweet Margaret’s death, that she died knowing she was loved and treasured, that we shared such a major portion of our lives together, that we loved and treasured each other for so many years, that her last day on our beautiful planet was so positive and happy.

I look at what’s happening in the world today, the horrible drug war in Mexico, a land with which I have so many emotional, spiritual, and  cultural links. I witness what’s happening in Africa, Iraq, Afghanistan, and so many other places in wrenching anguish, where daily the snapping blood-smeared jaws and jagged teeth of the war machine feasts on the bodies and souls of so many unfortunate human victims, all to sate the vulgar hunger of control, money, and power.

I am acquainted with a young woman whose husband some thug robbed and shot to death around 2007, leaving his widow utterly alone with three children, two of whom are in their early teens. Despite her grief and anger, she continues working in the local Safeway, raising her kids, maintaining her spirits and living a life of grace, without complaint or self pity. My hat is off to this very courageous and brave young woman. I don’t know if I could have gone on if I were angry at Margaret’s doctors, or if someone had killed her, or if someone were responsible for her death. The anger on top of the grief would have been too much for me to bear and to still want to go on living.

So now, I am learning how to be a bachelor as an older man. I am continuing to exercise and trying to eat right. My friends and neighbors check up on me. I have some wonderful friends who nurture me and who love me in this difficult time of my life. They bring comfort and joy to me,  diluting the acrid saltiness of my lonely tears with their friendship. In that, I’m fortunate  indeed. I am most grateful to my daughter, my brothers and cousin Juan, my nephew, and my friend Jan, and so many others.

Dying is so automatic, you know. We all do it. It’s living the worthwhile life that’s the challenge. If we can manage to leave this world a little more decent, a little more bearable, a little better because we walked on the face of our mother, the earth, then our lives were worthwhile. There’s not much any of us as individuals can do, not a lot,  but whatever small legacy of decency we can leave behind us augments the decency that our fellow humans leave. 

Young folks often go through a period of life when they ask themselves what the meaning of their existence is. To discover that, they must look inward and not to some kind of divine architect.

I think we create whatever meaning our lives have. We leave grace in our wake when we can follow the golden rule, when we act from the knowledge that we are social beings, that ultimately, our interests lie with the interests of the greater part of humanity.

We have duties to do good in this world because we are mortal, our lives are so finite, so short. To understand life’s meaning, we must begin with understanding and accepting our personal mortality, how utterly short our existence as individuals is on the face of this green and watery-blue planet.

When I was a boy, I remember the orange groves in the hot high deserts, only there because of irrigation. The orange blossoms are so tiny, and they each emit a tiny bit of perfume. But in the evening, under the desert’s sparkling starry skies, the hot wind carries the added perfumes of a million orange blossoms. Suddenly, the air is filled with orange blossom scent. It makes one glad to be breathing, breathing the perfume of  life.

Let us each, by the way we lead our own ever-so-short lives, add our separate tiny delicious scent to the perfumed winds of human decency. Let a growing wave of that perfumed comforting mist of humanism float in the warming winds of change beginning to circle the globe, winds that can extinguish war, capitalism, and greed. Let our lives help extinguish and blow out the firestorms of hunger, homelessness, ugliness, of oppression and inequality, of mindless greed and inhumanity. Let our individual and ever-so-temporary presences here in this desert of capitalist modernity be a healing balm for a hurting humanity.

If any of you readers, most of whom never knew Miss Margaret, want to leave some tribute to her, let that tribute be that you dedicate yourself to being like the orange blossoms in the nighttime heat of the high desert air.

Kind regards,

Alan OldStudent
July 16, 2011

I first ran into “The War Prayer” when a young woman sold me a copy at an antiwar demonstration during the Vietnam war. I was struck by the power of its language, as well as by the sentiments.

Several years ago, I found a a very effective YouTube animated version. This version is a bit long, which is why it is split into 2 videos. But it is well worth watching.

Then, just a few days ago while searching for this 2-part video presentation, I discovered a 1981 PBS adaptation of “The War Prayer“ which was part of a larger program on another of Mark Twain’s antiwar stories.

The actor who delivers the actual prayer of God’s emissary puts an experienced hell-fire preacher’s delivery into a decidedly antiwar statement.

The two-video version, which follows Twain’s text pretty much as he wrote it, appears below:

And here is the PBS adaptation:

Regards,

Alan OldStudent

The Unexamined Life Is Not Worth Living – Socrates

Moreover, the cost of the war in Afghanistan is currently 1 million dollars per soldier per year, according to this November 14, 2009 New York Times article.

One million dollars is a large number, but one trillion dollars is an unimaginably larger number. It’s easy to gloss over when the politicians and pundits toss around these numbers.

The thickness of a dollar bill is 0.0043 inches. So a stack of a million dollar bills would be about 109.22 meters or 358 feet tall. That’s as high as an office building 30 stories tall, counting a story as being approximately 11.9 feet tall (about 3.6 meters).

But a stack of a trillion dollars would be 63,516.5633 miles (109220 km) tall. That’s 2.5 times the circumference of the earth. That’s what American taxpayers pay for the Iraq/Afghan war. And the champions of small government say nothing about this.

Did you know that the United States just by itself has a military budget greater than the rest of the world’s countries combined? Or did you know the US military budget is more than 10 times  greater than that of either Russia or China’s? (Click here for the documentation of those figures).

There seems to be plenty of money in President Obama’s budget for these wars, for bailing out the banks that are too big to fail. But there does not seem to be enough money or political will to create a massive jobs program to put Americans back to work rebuilding America’s crumbling infrastructure Yet it was the promise of such programs that brought Obama’s historic victory, that put the first African-American in the White House.

Isn’t it odd that we have plenty of money for the organized mass murder that war actually is but not enough money to guarantee health care, housing, and a  decent job for every US citizen?

The National Priorities Project maintains the excellent Cost Of War website, which is off-line for maintenance as I write this. However, this site shows the various tradeoffs, what the Americans could do and accomplish if the meat grinder of war, the mass slaughter carried on at our expense, in our name, against the will of the majority of us were not draining away our resources.

President Obama. Here’s a political challenge for you.

Bring the troops home now!

Failure to heed this demand of so many Americans will not reflect well on you 50 years from now, when historians look over the follies of early 21st century American history.

Here’s a link to a video from the Rethink Afghanistan Facebook page.

Regards,

Alan OldStudent
The Unexamined Life Is Not Worth Living – Socrates

The bodybuilder and fitness guru Scooby is an impressive man whom I have covered elsewhere on this site. What I like about him is the way he cuts through a lot of hype about instant results.

Because I do lots of research on-line about medical procedures for my professional activities, and because I do lots of research on fitness and exercise for my blogging, I get more than my share of targeted ads, aimed at either enhancing parts of my body, like biceps, chest, and of course, sex organs. I also get lots of ads aimed at reducing belly fat, love handles, gray hair, and so on.

These ads all make similar claims for their products:

1. They’re designed for very fast results.
2. They’re all based on some recent scientific breakthrough or else they are part of some forgotten ancient wisdom tradition.
3. They all are secret, but the guardians of the hidden wisdom will let you in on their secret for a very low fee.
4. They all have amazing before-and-after pictures, showing amazing results achieved in a very short period of time.
5. Many of them feature some kind of miracle gimmick or miracle supplement, herb, etc

The truth is that safe, sensible results do not come fast, and the methods are not some big secret.

Scooby made a video about losing weight. He has a problem with the word “diet,” which I understand and appreciate. Of course, he’s referring to fad diets, gimmicks that are  supposed to be short term. Really, what one needs is a sensible life-time eating plan, and it is in that sense I mean diet when I talk about it on this web site.

Anyhow, here is Scooby’s common-sense video on how to lose weight. And if you check the sidebar called Physical Culture and Health Links, you will find links to more information on diet and exercise. At the very end, YouTube has put in an ad, but it’s easy to just skip that

Here’s the video:

Regards,

Alan OldStudent
The Unexamined Life Is Not Worth Living – Socrates

Several videos have come to my attention recently. One is of a clip from the Ross Sisters, a trio of singers and dancers from the 1940s. Not only were they extremely good musicians, but they were in extremely good condition. Check out this video.

The first part is their very tight 3-part harmony 1940s-show style pop singing, and then the acrobatics begins. Each stunt is even more impressive than the former, and I know you’ll be as inspired as I was by these beautiful  young ladies.

The next one is of a 72-year-old Ernestine Shepherd, who bench presses 150 pounds and runs marathons. She leads a fitness class at a local church for other seniors.

Anyone who is that accomplished at half her age is impressive. And to look at her leading her class, one gets the feeling that she inspires all her students to do as well as they can.

Watch her interaction with the class members. She really tries to get each person to understand where they are and how to take small steps joyfully towards greater fitness.

Often, there is too much one-upsmanship in so many fitness classes, and Ms. Shepherd seems to delight in helping her class members feel good about the progress each of them makes individually without destructive comparisons to others.

She looks to me to be a truly inspiring teacher.

Regards,

Alan OldStudent
The Unexamined Life Is Not Worth Living – Socrates