One of These Days...

Yeah, one of these days I'm gonna add a separate blog list. There are so many good ones out there that deserve a link, a shout out. I tried already to do this, but the links didn't activate, and I've been moving around so much the past year, that too much of the work I want to do falls by the wayside. But this is temporary. Those of you running on the worker hamster wheel know what I'm talking about.

And I've gotta add something to a Clapso comment. He said, "A.N.S.W.E.R. pisses a lot of groups off--they must be doing something right."

The following are other activists who pissed off a lot of groups, and governments... all of them pissed people off so much they were assassinated and/or imprisoned: If you're reading this, and you have other names to add to the list, please send 'em.

1. Bobby Kennedy
2. JFK
3. Ernesto Che Guevara
4. Malcolm X
5. Mohandas Gandhi
6. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
7. Nelson Mandela
8. Rosa Parks
9. Dorothy Day
10. Lech Walesa
11. Mary Harris (Mother) Jones
12. Jesus
13. Aung San Suu Kyi

I remember when Mandela came to Miami Beach after being sprung from a South African prison. His many supporters gathered outside the Miami Beach Convention Center, while a small but very loud group of anti Mandela protesters tried to shout us down, run us off.

Something Gandhi said : "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you. Then they fight you, then you win."

At this time, the powers that be in D.C. are fighting the group A.N.S.W.E.R. and its ant-war message, because ANSWER has been effective in getting its message out, and can no longer be ignored or laughed off. In a city where--by all accounts, political posters plaster the landscape, $10,000 in fines for postering is overkill. Especially when those fees and fines target only selected posters. With these fines, the D.C. government is attempting to silence political dissent, stifle protesters whose views oppose its agenda, and shut down a group whose beliefs are contrary to its own, by burying the group under a mountain of paperwork and debt.

We have a thing called the First Amendment. Nowhere does it say free speech is only for folks who agree with "W," or whoever happens to reside in the White House.

Is this the America we want to live in?

The Union Square Button Guy

This is going to be a short one; life is so hectic these days. Learning my way around NYC all over again, and covering a lot more miles in a day --without a car---than I used to in medium sized Tampa.

A couple of posts back, I commented that political buttons were no longer interesting to me, after looking at a few on a vendor cart at the entrance to Strawberry Fields. Well, today I'm eating my words for lunch...

A quiet, smallish man on the outer edge of Union Square Park (which is what I call it, but is probably the wrong name) was selling all kinds of buttons on his table last weekend. I bought four: one with John Lennon's image reads "Give Peace a Chance;" another that reads "Support Organic Farmers;" a couple more for family members: one of Rosie the Riveter with the words, "Si Se Puede," and "Books Not Bombs," and another one for my granddaughter that says "Peace Through Music." At eighteen months, she already has a decent sized book collection, although right now her real love is music. She loves to listen to Beatles' CDs, and she'll dance to almost any song playing on radio, TV or one of her toys.

Anyway the point is, this guy who is from the Phillippines, had an amazing assortment of buttons, big and small, political ( I especially liked the one that says: "Republican Health Plan: Don't Get Sick") and the not so political, and some cool t-shirts too. And some Tibetan prayer beads that I wanted to ask him more about, but I forgot, and so I caught up with him again the following Sunday.

The t-shirts sold by the button guy and a number of other vendors around the park's perimeter are Native American made, of heavy duty cotton, and come in a rainbow of colors, including hot pink tie dye. There's a print of an old photograph circa 1800-?, of four Native Americans on the front, with the caption: "Homeland Security Fighting Terrorism Since 1492." The website for the t-shirt designers is www.westwindworld.com. T-shirt sales benefit native peoples directly.

I 'll look for the button guy again on Sundays, since he said he's "always" out there. There are lots of vendors in and around the park, and so many talented artists. Something was special about the button guy, though. His placidness while I-- and others-- rummaged through his buttons reminded me of a couple of Buddhist monks I ran into at an airport once.

If this is considered a plug, well that's OK.