Archive for October 2011
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Joel Olson on "Whiteness and the 99%"

posted by drew

10.20.11

I was honored to have Joel Olson as a guest speaker in a class I taught at Prescott College in the late '90s. Later I heard him speak in the bay area about his excellent book, "The Abolition of White Democracy."

I respect Joel and his scholoarship immensely. Check out his recent article, "Whiteness and the 99%."


Drew's New Poem: "Occupy Wall Street"

posted by drew

10.14.11

Occupy Wall Street                            Drew Dellinger

We need global
citizens for some sit-ins
again.
I say we all meet
on Wall Street
and lock down--
lock the whole block down!

[Drew Dellinger, 2001]


I take exception to the rule
of the greedy and the cruel.

This fall, school’s in session
and the lesson is Wall Street.
It’s time for action
and your name’s on the call sheet.
It’s time we all meet
and name what it is:
the game has been rigged
to enrich corporate
business interests that sent this economy spinning.
Charlie Sheen is not the only clueless dude that thinks he’s winning.

See, the one percent done spent all the rent.
And now the rent’s due, so we’re coming to a tent near you.

We’re the like-minded ninety-nine percent
standing up to corruption with loving dissent.

We stand for justice,
and the future,
and all of humanity.
Embracing all people.
Yes, even Sean Hannity.

The message is simple:
greed, injustice, and eco-destruction have to go.
Pay attention corporate media. We’ll try to say it slow.

It’s time to
rock the nation,
rock this occupation.

It’s time for the people to peacefully fight back.
Tell Congress and the media we’re taking the mic back.

Tell the jaded it’s that long-awaited revolution.
Put away the pepper spray and re-read the Constitution.
These cops are paid to go crazy, yo.
But we’re peaceful.
Don’t tase me, bro.

We came to incite insight,
unite and discuss this.
We came to hang, and to bang the drums of justice.

Let’s occupy
with our love and our light.

Let’s occupy
the earth and the sky,
and live with all beings
as a planet-wide tribe.

Occupy the divine mind residing inside.

See, I’m the type writer
that’s known to light fires
and prone to inspire
the moment’s own higher desire.

‘Cause history knows it’s the time
for resisting the team at the scene of the crime.

Tell your friends I’ll meet ‘em there at Freedom Square.
They can’t stop us, from Seattle to Chiapas.
It’s our mission to envision
what comes after the catastrophe.
How do we move past
the capitalist disaster?

Our communities need us.
We are all leaders.

How could we ask for anything less than the future?


--Drew Dellinger


(October 13, 2011)  www.planetizethemovement.org   #OWS               copyright c 2011


On Story

posted by drew

10.13.11

Stories reflect the ecological nature of reality. Each story is an ecosystem, a galaxy of its own, a holographic microcosm that contains and mirrors the One Story that is the cosmos.

 

(Nod to Susan Griffin and Thomas Berry.)


Luminous Library: Quote of the Day

posted by drew

10.11.11

"Calling someone a racist individualizes the behavior and veils the fact that racism can occur only where it is culturally, socially, and legally supported. It lays the blame on the individual rather than the systemic forces that have shaped that individual and his or her society. White people know they do not want to be labeled racist; they become concerned with how to avoid that label, rather than worrying about systemic racism and how to change it."

--Wildman and Davis, "Making Systems of Privilege Visible,"

in White Privilege, Rothenberg, ed.


Luminous Library: Quote of the Day

posted by drew

10.06.11

 "The attention of the audience is gained through a willingness of the performer to involve himself totally in the performance and to call for the audience to do so as strongly. This the artful talker does by 'dancing' his talk, by dramatizing himself and his argument in physical ways."

--Roger Abrahams


Luminous Library: Page of the Day

posted by drew

10.05.11

 "White coaches resisted the jump shot for two decades. When Nat Holman, coach at City College of New York, saw his first jump shot in the late 1930s, he declared, 'That's not basketball. If my boys ever shot one-handed, I'd quit coaching.' In his autobiography, former Boston Celtics player and coach Bill Russell describes playing ball in the 1950s when coaches routinely benched players for taking 'Negro' jump shots. Today the move is so essential to basketball that we cannot imagine the game without it."

--GENA DAGEL CAPONI

p. 4, Signifyin(g), Sanctifyin', and Slam Dunking: A Reader in African American Expressive Culture

#drewdellingersluminouslibrary

 


Fred Shuttlesworth: Thank You for Changing Our Country - Hero of American Democracy

posted by drew

10.05.11

A great spiritual leader has passed. Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, known for his fearlessness, initiated the Birmingham Campaign that turned the tide of the nation and led directly to the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and the Civil Rights Act.

In 1956, after 16 sticks of dynamite blew off the corner of his house and literally blasted him out of bed, he was never again afraid. "It took the fear out of me and it made me know that god saved me to lead the fight so that I was never fearful after that."


what people are saying about drew

"Holy Amazing Book, Drew! LOVED it more than any ever. Just ordered eight. I hope you have plenty in stock. You're going to need them."
- Jenny Wagner, Ontario, Canada

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