Gin and Tonic Under the Stars!

By whose means will change come? By all of ours.

It is funny sometimes how the most visionary folks can sometimes be the one with narrowest. They see far but not wide.

I too think we need to understand there are Pacificist and then there are anti empirialist and then there are antiwar, etc.... It's funny how many times these individuals dont see the validity in each other.

I have this ongoing conversation with a Florida Green about Gun Control. And I argue for all the movements that have suceeded that rejected violence. And he argues that if it were not the armed resistance that stood in the background, Gandhi's nonviolent resistance would not have suceeded, and he argues that MLK wouldnt have been able to draw attention from the machine, if it weren't for the fact that Malcolm was just outside the door.

I dont have any answers. In my ideological fantasy world I wanna think peace will always overcome violence. Eventually the oppressed will walk with oppressor. But in the real world, sometimes I am let down.

Whether to take a course to end suffering and war that may be longer and slower, one that rejects violence (therefore possibly a greater loss of life and oppression is suffered) is the only correct path, or whether the justification of ending the suffering is balanced by violent resistance to oppression.

I only know where I am in my heart. What I feel in my soul. And that is I hope I never get to the point again in my life that I would resort to violence to solve a problem. That is where I am coming from.
We humans all share that fight or flight instinct. But as creature of intellect we can overcome the inclination to see only those two options.

It is too bad that folks who are on this list are concerned that we are all coming from the same place whether pacificist or anti empiralist or whatever name you choose. I am more concened that we are heading in similiar directions.

I know folks here who are righteously opposed to the war. Who would go to jail for justice in a second. I have stood in front of tanks in the streets of Miami with Greens. I have stood while tear gas and rubber bullets shot all around. I have had to talk reporters down from freaking out from tramatic shock at what they were seeing. I watched my friends get hit. Watched them get arrested. I cried too many tear gas induced streams across this country. So is there a place for civil disobedience and direct action in my life, yes.

But I have also stood silently at vigils that were surely almost democrats in attendance, and heard them talk about talking to people in check out lines to stop the war. And how they should all call their congressmen. As they gather in their protected park with no real threat for their expressing a resistance by lighting a candle. But this middle age soccer moms can reach folks that some of us can't. And I share with them stories of what others have done and are doing.These seniors who have toed the democratic Parties line for decades can begin to whisper to each other. And the whisper grows.

So I think we need to give each other a break. I think we need to worry less about what divides us and more about what unites us and stop this war together. We need the democratic soccer moms, the ISO sisters, the GPAX, ANSWER, UFPJ, and whoever else to lay aside any differences and stop this military industrial complex in it's tracks, because we all know it is far more than Iraq and Afghanistan it is the world.

There will be plenty of time to debate philosphy after the wars are over. We can all spend hours on hours and debate whether it was a mom in Crawford, A street Movement, Civil Disobedience, elected officials, or the Green Party that stopped the war. While were sipping gin and tonics under the stars feeling glad we were part of it.