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Occupying Leadership: What Will it Take to Accomplish Real Change?
Environmental activist Tim DeChristopher and Jamphel Yeshi, the young Tibetan monk who set himself on fire last week, are more alike than might first meet the eye.
Tim DeChristopher, a jailed climate change activist
DeChristopher, one of the founders of the group Peaceful Uprising, took direct action to disrupt the sale of wilderness to mining companies in a closed Federal auction. He ended up in prison, but he also did a tremendous amount to raise public awareness about the issue of land sales to corporate industry, and inspired the PeaceUp folks to greater activism.
Jamphel Yeshi also took a dramatic personal action at huge cost to himself—he lost not just his liberty, but his life. He and the 30 other monks who have taken this drastic step in the past have succeeded in letting the world know how deeply the Tibetan people are suffering under Chinese repression, and how passionately they yearn for autonomy to practice their religion and preserve their culture.
Dramatic personal action is definitely a good tool to use in raising public awareness about an issue.
The problem with it is that one leader standing alone is an easy target—and if the action is a suicide, that heroic action is always going to be a one-time event.
That the Occupy movement has so far eschewed the single, high-profile leader model is a sign of the solidity of this nascent social movement.
Despite demands from the media and others for a leader to step out of the shadows and announce himself (the leader is always presumed to be male), Occupy has held firm to its founding principle of being a “leaderless movement.”
This is true in the way the different “chapters” of Occupy, springing up at will anywhere in the world, are completely autonomous from the Occupy Wall Street folks who initially launched the movement last August; and it is true in the way that any passerby can join a General Assembly and have a chance to speak and influence or inspire the group. It’s true in the various Occupy online platforms that give anyone with an internet connection the ability to communicate with the world, and it’s true with the Occupy media, which are collective and often anonymous publications of strategies, theories and praxes of resistance.
I feel a tremendous sense of loss and rage that obvious, powerful leaders like Tim DeChristopher and Jamphel Yeshi are driven by frustration with the system and anger at injustice to commit acts of activist resistance that are either outright suicidal, or land them swiftly behind bars.
This is the approach the Chinese take to anyone seeking to challenge the entrenched status-quo leadership and social structure, and we in the West like to howl about human rights violations every time they throw another idealistic young activist in jail.
But we do the same thing here.
We reward the best and brightest of our young people as long as they play by the rules of the game and never question the wisdom of their elders in setting up those rules.
The Ivy league grads who will go on to become Goldman Sachs executives or corporate CEOs or weapons systems engineers—they are our golden children who can do no wrong.
But those young people who look out at what is and see the waste, the greed, the desecration of the planet, the horrendous danger in which the old game has placed us, as we cross the threshold of the 21stcentury into the new era of global heating, overpopulation, extreme inequality, toxic chemical poisoning, militarization…those young people are considered by the power elites to be annoying, pie-in-the-sky, unreasonable idealists who need to grow up and get a job.
In other words, they need to shut up and join the system.
The reason the Occupy movement is gaining steam is because the system no longer has enough places for all the smart, talented young people we are producing.
We can’t all join Goldman Sachs, now can we?
We can’t all join Greenpeace either.
When young people can’t pay off their student loans and can’t find jobs, and their parents can’t help them because they themselves can barely keep up with the mortgage payments…these young people are naturally going to be much more open to the possibility that something is quite wrong with the established system.
That’s where we are now. That’s why suddenly we have not one or two extraordinary young leaders like Tim DeChristopher or Jamphel Yeshi stepping up, but a whole tide of young people who have the time, the talent and the energy to tackle the problems of our American society, and our global human civilization, head on.
One General Assembly at a time, they are creating a new vision of society and a new model of leadership.
It couldn’t be more different from the corrupt talking heads they grew up watching on TV.
It is, as Tom Hayden shared with us eloquently this week in The Nation, a return to the SDS and SNCC vision of true participatory democracy in action.
This spring and summer, it’s the numbers that will make all the difference. They can’t lock up a million idealistic Americans whose only crime was to want to change our country for the better.
Did I say a million? Let’s make it 10 million, all across the country, coming out and taking a stand for a new rules to the game of life that are based above all on respect for the planet and her creatures.
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, says the Scripture.
No wiser words have ever been spoken. Let’s stop the hypocrisy and start practicing what we preach. Let’s do it soon, before any more brave young leaders have to martyr themselves on our account, trying so desperately to wake us up.
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49 Comments so far
Show AllJennifer tells us:
"He [Jamphel Yeshi ] and the 30 other monks who have taken this drastic step in the past have succeeded in letting the world know how deeply the Tibetan people are suffering under Chinese repression, and how passionately they yearn for autonomy to practice their religion and preserve their culture."
It seems you have accepted MSM propaganda on Tibet as the truth, Jennifer. If you'd like to read an interesting account of the China-Tibet question which tells quite a different story, you might try Michael Parenti's "Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth":
http://www.michaelparenti.org/Tibet.html
Some excerpts:
"For the rich lamas and secular lords, the Communist intervention was an unmitigated calamity. Most of them fled abroad, as did the Dalai Lama himself, who was assisted in his flight by the CIA."
"Throughout the 1960s, the Tibetan exile community was secretly pocketing $1.7 million a year from the CIA, according to documents released by the State Department in 1998."
Thank you port look out, for this information. I had a feeling, but never bothered to look into it. I also have a problem with the support of suicide as a way to make real change in the world. Sort of like what Ghandi said about an eye for an eye creating a world of blind men.
Not a bad article in certain ways. However, the quoting of 'scripture' isn't really helpful. If a person doesn't have his/her own conscience, parroting a biblical cliche isn't going to transform anyone. Anyway, i am going to check out Parenti's article.
The golden rule is hardly a cliche.
Interesting and meaningless. A free and independent Tibet is more important than what they were doing before China invaded and started ethnically cleansing the people. Just because the regime is bad doesn't mean it doesn't have the right to exist and grow with it's people.
"...just because the regime is bad doesn't mean it doesn't have the right to exist and grow with it's people."
Nero, Hitler, Franco, Mussolini, papa Doc, Mubarak, all popes, and the present US regime would heartily agree with you.
So, the Chinese did the Tibetans a favor? Just as we did for the Iraqis when we threw out Sadam?
It never fails. Almost like clockwork, anytime there is a news item on Tibet, comments show up with claims on "feudalism", "serfdom" and so on in 'Old Tibet' and, by implication, how the Maoist Han Chinese went and "rescued" the Tibetan people from tyranny. The real tyranny here, IMO, is this mindless spreading of propaganda points by otherwise reasonable people, without any regard to the actual feelings of the Tibetan people - those living in Tibet and those living as refugees elsewhere, and their continuing miserable plight and the possibility of a sad, uncertain future.
All for what? Why would these otherwise reasonable people invest so much effort into training themselves to hate the Dalai Lama and to inflict such verbal cruelty on the Tibetan people? Yes, they ARE indeed inflicting a form of cruelty by their refusal to see what THEY - the Tibetan people - want, and, instead, blindly accepting what they are told by propagandists. That is why I said right at the top - that ideologues can be cruel. Because they DON'T care for the people as much as they care for a justification for things done in the name of ideology.
The same thing has cropped up from time to time here on CD, and I have been involved in some back and forth exchanges. Here are a couple of examples:
"Shine A Light":
www.commondreams.org/further/2011/05/05-1
"A Simple Buddhist Monk":
www.commondreams.org/further/2010/07/06-4
"Who's Afraid of Ai Weiwei?"
www.commondreams.org/further/2011/05/02-2
And here is a rebuttal to the primary source of many of the armchair historians - an unfortunate essay by the respected Dr. Michael Parenti, relying on questionable accounts by ideologue "historians" who have either never been to Tibet, or only been there on guided tours organized by the Chinese authorities, and who do not read or speak Tibetan, nor Chinese:
"A Lie Repeated: The Far Left’s Flawed History of Tibet" - by Joshua Michael Schrei
http://dissidentvoice.org/2008/04/a-lie-repeated-the-far-left%E2%80%99s-flawed-history-of-tibet/
Also available at :
https://www.studentsforafreetibet.org/get-involved/action-toolbox/a-lie-repeated-the-far-left2019s-flawed-history-of-tibet
"Fact Vs. Myth"
https://www.studentsforafreetibet.org/get-involved/action-toolbox/fact-vs.-myth
**********************************************************
The above is a copy / paste of my earlier post on yet another CD article as I am sick of typing up another rebuttal.
"Another Tibetan Monk 'Sets Himself Ablaze' in China"
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/10/26-3
Anyway, people are free to do their own research. They are also free to listen to ideologically motivated accounts and they are free to condemn a people to continuing misery.
Right, total.
A coming together of all progressives (the 99% - if they understood politics) into one mass movement and political party could swamp the corrupt duopoly.
And what will a political party do? Elect folks to office? And won't that process involve identifying "leaders" or "representatives"? At some point in time, you will have to choose and identify them ... You can't have a political party that is nameless with nameless folks representing it ...
From my perspective, the only way to get those REAL NUMBERS, is to eliminate the one percents divide and conquer agenda. What it seems to me is needed is a broad coalition of all races, gays, Republicans, right wingers, Tea Partiers, Black Panthers, Democrats, Independents and especially the dumbed down and apathetic American sheeple. As long as the 1% can keep Americans divided they will continue to be screwed by the 1%. For once, if the American people could just somehow forget labels and realize we are all on the same boat ( the Titanic ) and all going down together unless we unite as Americans, then I do not see much hope for REAL NUMBERS.
A really, REALLY important point Paul!
"The 99%" includes almost everybody, not just the "left" as represented by sites like CD.
The trick in such a broad coalition is finding the common ground amongst so diverse a group as "the 99%".
Frankly, I doubt it will happen.
But there are several issues where polls seem to reveal a consensus of 70% or above as long as divisive language is removed from the poll questions.
This constitutes a Supermajority in U.S. political tradition, so should be a good substitute for the unreachable 99% consensus.
With this in mind, the question of how to raise real numbers becomes easier -all we need do is begin from these Supermajority-supported subjects, focus on the most popular language for them, and begin the appeals to the People.
"With this in mind, the question of how to raise real numbers becomes easier -all we need do is begin from these Supermajority-supported subjects, focus on the most popular language for them, and begin the appeals to the People."
A cogent comment, matti. Then we will need a forum where we can all gather to discuss, plan and organize.
Matti you are sooooo correct. " The trick in such a broad coalition is finding the common ground of so diverse a group ". I would love to be wrong, but I have to agree with you that I also doubt it will happen. But my point was that seems to be the only real hope for the Occupy Movement as the one percenters have the upperhand as long as they label Americans and put them into political parties, classes, races, genders, homeless, ect.ect. The 99% are all being screwed by the 1% but it seems only a small percentage of the 99% are aware of this and if there is some way where the majority of Americans will finally come together in the millions, like the Egyptians did in Egypt; then I believe that would scare the hell out of Wall Street, the MIC, the war mongers, and the bankster 1% that they are in danger of losing their power and control of America. Probably just another pipe dream, but this site is called Common Dreams......and that is my common dream for America.
Interesting that you named so many different categories, but forgot one BIG one... people in poverty.
As long as this is a middleclass movement, it will NOT have the impetus it needs.
The poor were included, just as gays or Republicans instead of as "the poor". :)
One would hope that one result of the Occupy camp-outs will be more rubbing-of-the-shoulders between the "middle class" and "the poor", so that the movement will naturally expand to include more of the direct concerns of those who find themselves in poverty.
Definitely part of the general expansion and evolution from the "original" Occupy expression needs to be the crossing of these class lines within the movement.
So, all poor people are either gays or republicans.
Wow... and you wonder why you don't find more people joining you.
Amazing.
Truly amazing.
And I am not a "THE" anything... I am a PERSON. A poor PERSON. Not a THE. Maybe that is the problem right there.
Oh jeez!
I just didn't feel like typing out the whole list!
I can't believe you are serious!
You should sell your computer if you are short on cash.
And NO ONE is a "poor person", some persons are materially poor.
Those are very different things.
But hopefully Occupy camp-outs will result in more interaction and common-ground finding between persons that are materially poor and those who are materially comfortable. There is no reason that anyone needs to be materially poor if they do not wish to be, and maybe this injustice can be ended with the help of this movement.
As long as we try to understand each other instead of picking fights, that is.
Yeah, I'm just a picky, ornery person, right?
How DARE I insist that poverty be recognized and included! How SELFISH of me!
Of course, the same was said about women in the 60s, who insisted on being included and not just lumped in with the "he" language.
You could have nicely said, "Oh, thanks... I meant to add poor people, too", and then do so.
But nooooooOOOoooo,you gotta get all up in arms about it.
Tell ya what... trade places with me for a while, and see what it is like to be ignored all the time, while life gets worse and worse and "progressives" and "leftists" just can't be bothered.
I'd LOVE to be in your more privileged shoes, and maybe it would do you good to be in my (worn) shoes.
You know nothing about me, so you are in no place to be giving me authoritarian advice.
You know, a little compassion and understanding really does help, especially if you're wanting NUMBERS.
Jeeez.... didn't think of that part, eh? If you want NUMBERS, then ya gotta include people.
What a concept.
Please pick someone you are actually in a fight with to pick a fight with.
I don't feel like bearing the brunt of your displaced anger any longer.
You are repeatedly mistaking my meaning.
So...have a nice day and good luck.
I brought up an important oversight, and if you are serious about enlarging Occupy, then you will pay attention to it.
If you just want to defend yourself against people who are in a different situation in life, then continue to ignore those who try to speak with you about your oversights.
Just don't complain that people aren't running to Occupy, when you choose to ignore them.
Your choice.
"There is no reason that anyone needs to be materially poor if they do not wish to be"
WTF?! Is this a typo.or are you a blathering new ager?
Yes, numbers. But they CAN and will lock up a million protesters, as needed. Just need a few reels of BARBED WIRE. Maybe when you get to the 50-100 million mark....Remember, tho, 99 of the 100 million are watching TV and trying to buy the latest gimmick--all they think about. So--a long uphill slog, and things will have to get so much worse....
And please drop the "Scripture" nonsense. "Scripture" of one sort or the other has been and is utterly devastating for humanity, as you must know, being a TEACHER.
Yes, I do know how destructive religion has been. However, that one principle seems very much worth salvaging. And I do believe that we need to appeal to people in terms that seem familiar to them, because it's not about "us" vs "them," it's about all of us working together for the good of us all.
"Do unto others. . ." goes way back, and let's just say that as progressives all we're trying to do is get back to old fashioned values of traditional societies as opposed to Western societies with all their emphasis on creature comforts, technology, and all the rest that goes along with that monster. We need to get back to simply being human by embracing our humanity and rejecting hierarchy.
"Those who don't learn from history are condemned to repeat it." Don't forget about working people who've lost it all due to the one per cent who robbed the rest of us and now we including myself pay their damn taxes for their ride on the gravy train.
Don't ever let us forget about working people who've lost it all become homeless or whatever else. This is what being progressive shoud be about.
It would also be nice to remember people who are too old, too sick or too injured to work.
Jennifer:
I would not be so quick to apologize for your use of the scripture you quote in your article.
I happen to agree totally with you that it’s one of the best texts ever written. If one reads William Blum a study of US interventions since the Second World War, one would be at a loss to explain these tragic events as they occurred at period in time when Modernity and Secularism was being hailed as the saving grace for mankind.
Remember Nietzsche’s - God is Dead, only a new God will save us (read man’s ego), of which came the Enlightenment period that thought by doing away with religion all the evils of the world would go away. It’s hard to comprehend why Voltaire had so much trouble finding this perfect paradise once the cloak of this repressive ideology was removed upon its citizenry? Maybe Candide and Pangloss made the mistake of traveling to places inhabited only by humans.
It is unfortunate that this is still true today:
“And for ten weary weeks I kept myself alive
But around me the corpses piled higher
Then a big Turkish shell knocked me arse over tit
And when I woke up in my hospital bed
And saw what it had done, I wished I was dead
Never knew there were worse things than dying
For no more I'll go waltzing Matilda
All around the green bush far and near
For to hump tent and pegs, a man needs two legs
No more waltzing Matilda for me.”
The corpses are still piling and what is our excuse when we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan just to mention two conflicts still extant in our most recent memory today?
If my neighbor beats his wife, does that give me an excuse to follow suit? Certainly the educated mind must distinguish between the vertical fantasies, with all its dogmatism that is Media (television, journalism, texts and everything thereof….), from the horizontal consciousness that has evolved from the halls of learning.
With this I do agree with Rene Girard: Religion has been the scapegoat for humanity’s ill for way too long, while always highlighting its evils, yet never acknowledging the foot hold to non-violence it has offered society. If not religion, where then have these values come from that allows us to engage in this discourse we are presently engaged in?
Just crossing at an intersection with your vehicle may seem to be a simple secular ideology, but its foundation is imbedded in the scripture you quoted in your article; a turn for you a turn for me. No crashes.
I would like to conclude with the wisdom that is Rene Girard: If you wish to live with non-violence, then you must imitate a model that is in the form of what you wish that world to be. He uses the business model as example: The business model is more evolved than mankind because of imitation to a proven model, i.e. you want to make televisions, then, you will have to follow the rules of your competitors and abide by the religion of electron flow; in the case of humanity, our pride interferes with us imitating a good role model because the [I] becomes imbued with the pride of I am “King of Kings.”
The response you offered to a post had you crashing at the intersection; what foundational values you will use to resolve that issue is beyond me.
Dear totalmadness--I applaud your fighting spirit. We have all seen how a few hundred Occupiers are handled by the police. We have all seen what is happening to the Arab Spring revolutionaries. I'm agreeing with you, it won't be bloodless. If you look back historically, numerous regimes have been able to establish Gulags with the capacity to hold as many dissidents as needed...I think Jennifer was proposing it was going to be more polite, if we had a million.
Many Americans must already be frightened--or just home watching TV. Can you tell anyone that its even going to be like the Civil Rights Movement--a few people beaten and killed out of millions?
Jennifer, I am going to respond to your question, not the content of your piece.
What will it take?
It will take actually reaching out and including EVERYONE. So far, while there is a lot to commend OCCUPY for, and I respect what they are doing, it is still predominantly a young, white, middleclass movement, and speaks only to the middleclass.
Someone upthread mentioined Martin Luther King. The Civil Rights movement began as a middleclass black movement, but as King saw the needs of poor people, and included them, the movement grew in numbers and intensity.
When OCCUPY and unions reach out and include people in poverty, the same thing will happen.
So far, sadly, they don't seem inclined in this direction. Too bad.
"...it is still predominantly a young, white, middleclass movement, and speaks only to the middleclass."
-- Is that a fact? With all of the occupy movements across the nation it's interesting how you feel you reserve the right to make such a broad-brush statement. The Occupy group I attended here in CO was far from what you say it is.
Yes, there are differences in the different groups, as to be expected.
But, if one looks at the various released videos, one sees pretty much what I have reported here.
But, that's OK.... just deny it and move on. Then complain that not enough "numbers" are joining you.
I'm not denying anything.... Just questioning your matter of fact (without facts) broad-brush statement. And im also telling you that my observation and experience with OWS is quite different than your observation. Is that okay? Or would you prefer to throw out some more logical fallacies to undermine my empirical experience with OWS folks?
"What will it take to accomplish real change". US Americans could change this county overnight if they had the collective will to. If we all stayed at home for a week that would bring the powers to the table. It's one thing to demonize protesters in the public opinion, when bust their heads open. But it would be impossible for the government stop or not respond to a protest that involved everybody staying home for a week. Imagine neighborhood block parties every night for a week. Get to know the neighbors, and party our way to power.
totalmadness: a rousing second post! Why I hail the brave women of CODE PINK:They stand up and show bloody hands to the powerful in the very halls of power.
I also hail the visionary Derrick Jensen (Endgame), who raises all the questions, without flinching, making the space for us to work out the answers.
What it will take is growth past Occupy.
A look at the on Port Huron Statement and other Hayden-era SDS ideas is one place to start with this process -and luckily there are many other good places to start as well.
Wherever the process starts, the growth of "participatory democracy" needs to include actual legislative or amendment efforts to replace Representation with Direct Voting.
Telecommunications now allow us to move faster than Parliamentary Procedure.
This means that Citizens can and should be able to vote directly on legislation without the need for a Representative to be a proxy for their vote because of the slowness of horse carriages. ;)
Seems like a fight tailor-made for the movement of "the 99%".
The most important protests won't be at parks and on streets, as valuable as those may be. They'll be at the polls. Both the Republicans and the Democrats have served the 1% faithfully and, at most, allotted a few crumbs from the table for the 99%. As long as they get our votes, why would they change? Send them a message on election day by voting for other party candidates.
But, the DNC apologists tell us, that could make Romney president. Right now Romney is talking to the right of where he is, and Obama to the left. This reflects their different party bases, and in fact they'd govern in pretty much the same corrupt, 1%-serving, militaristic, warmongering, constitution-trashing, environment destroying, secretive way. However, under Romney the Democratic senators and representatives, and the left-leaning media, would recover from the paralyzed vocal cords and jellied spines they developed on March 20, 2009. There would be real opposition--for partisan reasons rather than principle, obviously--and that would be better than the self-induced coma on the left that we now see.
Among the electorate, support for the two major parties is certainly broad, but it's not deep. Most people know they're being screwed. With enough grassroots and internet activism, it would be possible to gain a plurality and actually elect a third party president. And even if it failed, a Romney victory would certainly cause the Democrats to take notice and, at least to some extend, amend their ways.
We have nothing to lose but our houses, jobs, freedoms and morality.
Just plain ignoring the Prez race and focusing on the Congress and the State and Local elections.
"What Will it Take to Accomplish Real Change?"
To accomplish real change will take the people's vision and initiative, displacing the elites'. Journalists will frame events accordingly else be ignored by the people, just like the elites. Ignoring elites is like ignoring TeeVee commercials. Easy as pie. Attending to our own true inner needs, and our inner voices and visions, easy as pie, because the rewards are infinitely more valuable to us than the elites' slave bait bread and circuses. The people know their way now, and are walking left, toward clarity, toward the holistic synergistic sphere of good, ignoring the journalists' confusing/contradicting frames. Exciting times for the people. Most friggin relevant truth.
"what will it take to accomplish real change?"
In a nutshell...a lot more pain. The overwhelming majority of Americans have no capacity to manifest a 'vision' if what you mean is a state of being and acting that is pro- active towards ethical, moral, fraternal government. The very ethos of moral government has been thoroughly demonized and cast asunder. It's replacement by market place morals ruled by Capital stands firmly entrenched and in absolute control of the mechanisms of state power. Americans have demonstrated an incredible acceptance of their shriveling prosperity and individual political significance so I expect that current trends will continue. It is the nature of the Capitalist driver to whip the burdened beast until it drops.
"It's replacement by market place morals ruled by Capital stands firmly entrenched and in absolute control"
Yes, yes, I noticed the more das kapital is given kontrol, the more it crashes into things. Almost like a wind-up toy which you can predict exactly what it will crash into next. This is why the people don't mind voting third party in the elections. We know das konservatives can finish das kapitalist train wreck much sooner than the liberals can.
But das kapital isn't really in the news, today. The people's movement is in the real news today. We're building the replacement society. Funny how what makes sense, the people's movement, is in the real news, while what doesn't make sense, elite business as usual, is in the fake newz. By the fake newz I mean Big Brother's announcement speaker, from Orwell's 1984, what elites call "mainstream media". I think you can agree with this, wholeheartedly!
Some suggestions on helping Occupy:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Occupy-Your-Lawn-by-Daniel-Geery-111024-210.html
http://www.opednews.com/articles/An-End-to-Authoritarianism-by-Rocky-Anderson-120326-729.html
And: www.voterocky.org
Occupy has been called leaderless, but it's more accurate to say that they are mostly leaders and not many followers.
This essay was going strong until it hit the end and tripped over Tom Hayden, who's not what he once was. I'm also not sure what she's asking us to do at the end.
That said, I concur 100 percent on the essay's idea that we should have solidarity but no martyrs. The system is geared to receive. On the streets, you have baton-happy police. In the courts, you have bat-shit crazy judges who punish the people but who have the ear of corporate lawyers. Add to that a government without shame, selling our lands to put more cash into the war machine.
The author omitted the most obvious thing we must do: vote third party. We must organize behind a party that supports the public interest over private and corporate interests. One DeChristopher is just an example, but our distracted populace seldom pays attention. Thousands of DeChristophers with representation in Congress and in the courts is another thing altogether.
Jennifer has demonstrated that one can bring the people's movement into the public discourse, in an effective way. She describes the movement with plenty of explanations of the hows and whys, and she makes its agenda look natural, which it is, absolutely. The only reason it could seem unnatural is that traditional journalism is bent toward creating realism for the imperial agenda and suspicion, confusion and alienation toward everything else.
Keep it up, Jennifer. The liberal elites are not happy about the worldview and agenda that you are trailblazing in words. It's a trail away from their murky status quo and toward the people's nirvana, on the far left. But there will soon be hundreds of thousands more messengers like you. The people are learning we can have it all. All things good, which are naturally connected into a whole. It's ours. It always has been ours. And it will be very easy for we the people to defend, once we permanently fuse our motor neurons to the concept. We're a formidable force. The elites have always been afraid, out of their minds, at the people's awakening.