By Strider

It’s been a long row ta’ Hoe, Now,

From Ducktown to Longmont

& I pray there’s still More yet to come.

I been pushin’ this Plow over hard, stony Ground

Tryin’ ta plant Y’all some Trees an’ some Flowers

‘n’ I’ve seen many cold Dawns

and strode mostly Alone

While I worshipped the Sun an’ the Snow

‘n’ I’ve carried the Mem’ry of All I’ve encountered,

& I’m tryin’ ta make sense of it All.

SomeOne gave me a Mission

I been tryin’ ta be True to

As I Plowed every step of the Way –

Yet, my Guides have been scattered

Wearin’ many Disguises

While I’d listen to what they might Say.

SOME spoke Backwards — Some Frontwards

Some Screamed and then Cursed

First at Me then at That which I Love

But I’ve searched for the Meaning

In Whatall I’ve Encountered

As an oft-Cryptic Sign

From Above.

Now, Confusions ha’ plagued me

Many Dangers waylaid me

As I ran up this crooked ol’ Trail

I keep getting’ back Up

From th’ Swamp an’ th’ Muck

Prayin’ Someone might Stand for my Bail.

But the Night has been Long

Stifled many a Song

That my Heart is still longing to hear –

‘n’ I try even now, though I still ain’t learned how

to dispel that Ol’ Demon – my FEAR.

And He keeps right on Lurking –

Crushing all of my Working

For Love Beauty Justice

And Truth.

So my Path kep’ on Windin’

To Escape the Confining

Prison Walls which have Stolen my Youth.

& I Run up the Mountain

shout my NAME to the Stars

then return to my hovel a l o n e

Knowing NOTHING is Promised

but to DO What I Came For

and to Stand up an’ Sing You

My SONG.

Strider  1/17/2008

By Strider Benston

Economics, “the Dismal Science,” is that realm of human activity and concern most knowingly and actively obscured from common understanding even by its practitioners until even those participants themselves are patently incapable of escaping the web of lies they have spun to justify their power and profits. Its hermetically sealed language code: efficiency, competitiveness, the invisible hand, economies of scale, comparative advantage, financial instruments…, has been successful in disguising naked greed as inevitable, natural, and a highest good and sacred duty for the greedy, and in mystifying the manipulated masses from seeing that the emperor is naked.

“ Let no one be deceived. Unless Western man is able
to release himself from the degrading tyranny of his enslavement
to the religion of economics, he is certainly doomed to self-destruction.”

Ashley Montagu, On Being Human, 1950-1966, p. 115

What Is the Economy ?

Economics, from the Greek, means the governing of a household. The basic concept includes the food and energy systems, material structures, input and output, sustainable relations to the natural and social environment, and the harmonious inner relationship among all its members and elements. The modern capitalist definition has reduced this comprehensive domain to the narrow production and sale of goods by any means necessary to achieve a maximum of profit which is extracted from the process for the sole benefit of and control by the owner – irrespective of the quality, benefit, or detriment of that product to its producers, its consumers, the social relations which facilitated its production, or consequent dangers to its natural environment.

The modern corporation is the legal and structural embodiment of this human-created system. It has brought such wonders as mass race slavery, imperialism, mono-crop agriculture, gigantic pollution-spewing factories which have lately been exported
to non-democratic countries to insure the maximal exploitation of labor and the environment, strip-mining, mountaintop removal, the poisoning of our air, land, waterways, cities, and oceans, a mountain of waste threatening to drown the whole planet, and wars of total destruction in the permanent competition for control of resources, rules of engagement, markets, labor, and the targeted destruction of family
and community life – all in the name of free enterprise and growth.

Perhaps this sounds harsh; for haven’t we all benefited from cities and concerts and cheap transportation, and moon walks and I-pods, and the rock-star adulation of celebrities which are provided for our attention and amusement by all these structures ? Well, this totally begs the question of how we might be living had we the option of different choices, or different relations or societal goals. It IS what it IS.

There is no doubt that capitalism has facilitated a mind-boggling, and overwhelming quantity of production – and waste. In fact the GDP is precisely a measure of these quantities of production — and waste. Epidemic diseases, cancers caused by the poisons we eat, breathe, and drink, the production of bombs, collection agencies, telemarketing, reclamation of poisoned drinking water, prisons, and the war industry are ALL counted as pluses in our GDP.

Presently, due to the use of certain “financial instruments,” we face a global crisis of unprecedented magnitude. And all our brilliant pundits who have guided us to this precipice have not a clue about how we might survive the storm.

“Natural economic adjustments will “There’s a risk of falling off a cliff.
return advanced countries to positive growth The global fiscal stimulus is an
by the end of this year.” John Lipsky, insurance policy that may not work.”

Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund Kenneth Rogoff, Harvard University

The above were both quoted from the World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland,
on the same day: 1/31/2009, Wall Street Journal, a-7

How Has It Worked Historically ?

As Arthur Koestler explained in his classic final work, Janus, 1976, every actual thing in the universe is a holon. It is itself, and is also a part of a larger whole. All living structures are aware of their dual role in the “great chain of Being.” All healthy systems foster a type of active consciousness of this central role. A healthy cell performs its function for the tissue, organ and organism which it serves while absorbing nutrients, nurture and purpose from that organism. A cancerous cell is concerned exclusively with its own metabolism and replication. When the selfish motive overwhelms the mutual motive, the organism dies – as do all its constituent living entities.

Capitalism in its entrepreneurial stage acted spontaneously and organically by pooling collective energies to create something new. When embedded within a functioning social system, perhaps within a community, as it often was, it often tended
to provide a real service to that community, and led to tremendous innovation and growth for that parent system. Adam Smith in the 18^th Century, saw and extolled this vibrant potential, and offered advice on how to strengthen it. He did not foresee that the child would devour its parent.

Nature {Life} functions as a whole. Our breathing, blue planet, within the matrix of sunlight, gravitational and rotational energies, is a closed system. All waste from one process becomes nutrient for other processes. Here is where capitalism departs, tragically, from its parent model. For its operational principle is the extraction of wealth from the social system which produced it, and the dumping of poisonous waste back onto the natural environment beyond its capacity to absorb and re-incorporate those concentrated toxins.

From the intrinsic dialectic of nature playing upon society we have seen the rebellion of the excluded from that capitalist system. The opposition classes and ideology tragically incorporated the basic premise of that system itself, the rampant exploitation of Nature and permanent expansion of industrial productivity, while posing itself as the extreme counter to how it functioned socially. Thus Communism: and the great ideological war of the past two centuries. The social dynamics were inverted and rigidified under central control which, ironically, glorified and intensified the basic premise, and in its drive to compete against its parent, led often to even more intense exploitation of its own working class. In the process the fatal flaw of permanent expansion on a finite planet was overlooked by both systems. The basic genius of the greedy parent, that spontaneous, creative, incipient activity from below was stifled and destroyed.

This War of these competing mega-systems for supremacy in the domination of Nature, and expropriation of the energies, relations, and dreams of their subject populations constitutes the history of the 20^th Century.

What Have They Done To Us Lately ?

Within the capitalist matrix a system of finance developed, at first rather benevolently,
as profits often morphed into investments in newer, or larger enterprises. Yet, now, the primary wealth has been removed from the productive process, and is self-governing, and self-motivated. The addiction of the industrial system to finance capital has left it enslaved to it, and starving. For its supplier found itself a new junkie, ITSELF.

The banking system has often crippled the industrial system which it rules by its channeling of the flow of capital into and out of the realm of goods and services. The Glass-Steagle Act of 1933, and other initiatives under the FDR Administration served to corral the cannibalistic tendencies of finance, and render the larger society viable. Yet ever since the bank merger acts of the 70’s and subsequently, and especially the repeal of Glass-Steagle in 1997, the narcissism of finance has overtaken our society. The encroachments of finance over industry have served to hollow-out the manufacturing system of America with mergers, leveraged buy-outs, and the massive export of industrial capital. This decimated the stable base of the American working class, especially in the big cities.
It undercut and reversed the past century of democratic and labor rights hard-won
through protracted struggle by the American people, and fueled the frenzy of corporate Globalization. Those of us who were active in the Civil Rights, Labor, and other such movements remember well how hard and long we fought to win those rights, and how tragic to our society is their being ripped away. The resulting social despair is perhaps
the primary factor which fueled the hard-drug and violent gang culture raging ever since.

In recent decades our financial rulers have fashioned a debt economy where the claims of the ultra wealthy rulers serve now to enslave the present generation and starve our children. The creation of debt by the banks has always mortgaged our future which was to be satisfied by permanent expansion of production and the roll-back of the share allocated to those who actually work to create it. This increasing theft has been disguised by the importation of cheap shoddy goods, hypnotic advertising and the worship of star personalities, a massive prison system which profits from the destruction of millions of lives of Americans who are removed from the labor force, credit cards, and now the greatest housing bubble ever foisted on a culpable & unsuspecting public.

The mania of deregulation removed any structural and independent oversight from the positive feedback loop of mutual investment shuffling. Gigantic hedge funds appeared on the scene whose sole purpose was to invest in the expanding bubble of investments. Our entire social system became enslaved to a giant Ponzi scheme. Every major player in the casino knew well that they were doing this, betting that they would “get theirs” before the entire structure collapsed. They just didn’t know quite when. The Federal Reserve & the Bush Regime merely stoked the bubble to the max by feeding the frenzy with massive tax cuts for the ultra rich, especially the capital gains tax and inheritance tax. The unwary lower-middle class were sucked into the game by artificially low interest rates and the inane mortgage deals without scrutiny. The swaps and derivatives were created precisely to expand and hide the bubble from any accountability. Corrupt accounting and rating and insurance agencies collected their fees at every level. These fees and bonuses have already been stolen from the world economy, leaving all of us now saddled with trying to rescue -What ? the very system and people who have so robbed us that we might never recover ?

The $3 Trillion War in Iraq, mere debt-financed icing on the cake for oil companies, the military industry and private contractors, was never even listed on the books.

Our industrial economy was always but supplemental to the real economy of human and community relations, healthy children, and a vibrant Nature to live, love, play, and create, upon and within. Until it went crazy with growth-imperatives it served a valid and rational purpose, although we might well dispute many aspects of how it functioned, as the Marxists, workers, peasants, women & children, the trees and soil and rivers and oceans, the exterminated and surviving species with whom we share this lovely planet have done. The Reagan Revolution of the past 30 years has actively destroyed all the mitigating rationalities we had forced into an otherwise terminally-corrupt system. The profit-manic media monopoly serves to prevent the public from learning of our plight, and of our responsibility to rectify the tragedy. The rulers merely removed our healing invisible hand.

The phantom economy has fatally exacerbated all the already terminal contradictions which already laced the industrial economy, the depletion of oil, soil,
clean water and air, teeming cities of multiple millions of desperate souls, poisoned food,
a permanent war and prison economy, planetary overheating, the list goes on. Yet, with democratic structures we used to have some tools to mitigate the disasters and pose the possibility of thinking about an alternative way to live.

The pressures on the Obama Administration are beyond imagining, even were he and his team able to look at the picture which is infinitely larger than mere rescue of the System. It is our Earth which “hangs in the balance.” It remains imperative for us, the living, to take up this challenge, to support and encourage all honest efforts to mitigate the crisis, even as we learn to articulate the Big Picture; for not merely our economy and our society are threatened by the rampant greed under which we presently suffer, but all society and all Life on our planet tremble under that same threat.

Referring to the Seattle WTO protest of 1999, and thousands of other efforts,
the Pulitzer Prize winning biologist E. O. Wilson wrote in The Future of Life, 2003

“Protest groups. They gather like angry bees at such meetings…. They are people
who feel excluded from the conference table by faceless power…. They have a point.
The CEOs and governing boards, supported by government leaders committed
to an expanding economy, are the commanders of the industrialized world.
Like princes of old…they rule by fiat. The protesters say: Include us at the table,
and while you’re at it, the rest of life.

The protest groups are the early warning system for the natural economy. They are
the living world’s immunological response. They ask us to listen…. I say bless them all.
Their wisdom is deeper than their chants and tramping feet suggest, deeper than
that of many of the power brokers they oppose. They keep open public dialogue….
And if they are uniformly left-wing in ideology, So be it.” P. 188-189

And, while we’re at it, let’s remember what Voltaire advised us 250 years ago:

“Cultivate your garden.”

Strider Benston

I will include a bibliography on the web site

of the sources I used in preparing this article

Strider “Arkansas” Benston was a volunteer organizer for SNCC and SCLC in the voting rights movement in Alabama in 1965 and 1966. He loaded trucks and was steward in Teamsters and Mailhandlers unions in Chicago from 1968-87. He was founding president of Concerned Truckers for a Democratic Union in Chicago, 1975.
He earned a BA in Political Science, and Master of Humanities in Philosophy & History
at Univ. of Colorado @Denver in 1998.
He teaches, commits poetry, does construction work, bikes, & gardens.
He is presently a member of the Longmont Elections Committee  2009-2012

Bibliography for The Economy: As If It Matters

Agenda for a New Economy David C. Korten 2009

the Roaring Nineties Joseph Stiglitz 2003

Globalization & its Discontents “ 2003

Deep Economy Bill McKibben 2007

the Return of Depression Economics Paul Krugman 2009

Neoconomy Daniel Altman 2004

the Green Collar Economy Van Jones 2008

Dilemmas of Domination Walden Bello 2005

the Crisis of Global Capitalism George Soros 1998

the Future of Life Edward O. Wilson 2002

On Being Human Ashley Montagu 1950, 1966

Unequal Protection Thom Hartmann 2002

the Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight “ 1998

the Ecology of Commerce Paul Hawken 1993

the Shock Doctrine Naomi Klein 2007

the Judas Economy Wm. Wolman, Anne Colamosca 1997

False Dawn John Gray 1998

the Theory of Moral Sentiments Adam Smith 1759

Reinventing Collapse Dimitri Orlov 2008

Janus Arthur Koestler 1976

Paradigms in Progress Hazel Henderson 1991

Building a Win Win Economy “ 1998

S

By Strider “Arkansas” Benston

I wish to dedicate this Service today to several African-Americans

Who died in the year 2005 some of whom were my Friends

To James Forman, Executive Director of SNCC, ,

Who forged a militant, Revolutionary Movement

Deep in the Heart of the racist Dictatorship

Of Dixie and WE WON !!!

To Joanne Grant, another footsoldier in the ranks,

Who authored the book: FREEDOM BOUND

And the movie: FUNDI in Honor of

The Mother of the Movement

Miss Ella J Baker;

To the great Ossie Davis,

Of Whom if you don’t know, You have been sleeping,

To Nina Simone, Jazz singer & social activist extraordinairé;

To Frances Newton, MURDERED by the State of Texas,

And Stanley Tookie Williams, MURDERED by the State of California

And to Miss Rosa Louise McCauley Parks

who took the first step in Montgomery That we might ALL be Free
Our Great Leader, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., born 77 years ago today

in the city of Atlanta, is gone.

I hope to deliver to You, in this House, On this Morning,

Some of the Message which Martin commissioned to me

1. years ago

when my Name was ARKANSAS.

Martin Luther King: My Guide, My Colleague, My Friend:

If you listen carefully, then you will KNOW

Why I have been choked, & slandered, starved, and Stifled ever since that day

For I walk EVERY STEP of my LIFE

With Martin in my Heart.

A Guide indicates the right way to go — perhaps climbs a few mountains ahead,

Blazes a trail, points out some dangers & pitfalls, and the signs of progress.

A Colleague travels with You on the journey, into battle,

Shares thoughts and plans, defeats and victories, parties and funerals.

A Friend acknowledges & appreciates Your contribution, recognizes Your perils, and wounds, and sacrifices — along with Your Hopes & Dreams –

the Faith and Courage which impel one in the struggle — for Truth,

Justice, Beauty, & Dignity.

A Friend overflows with Compassion.

This is Martin to me.

The last time I saw Martin Luther King, we met at the airport in Washington, DC.

Martin had to escape, for a bit, from the Fire. And he sent me back into the flames. Martin was on his way to the Bahamas for some desperately needed Rest & Recuperation. The Selma Movement had been so intense that, even though it resulted in our greatest victory, and finally won the right to vote in this country, it nearly destroyed him.

When he returned, Martin went to Chicago, to Los Angeles, to Riverside Church, to DC, and to Memphis – where he was taken away from us f o r e v e r.

Now if you don’t know who put out the contract to kill Martin. I will give you a clue. His initials are J. Edgar Hoover; the team included U.S. Military Intelligence, especially the 90deuce, out of Birmingham, the Memphis police, the New Orleans Mafia, and Big Oil in Texas,, & many operatives.

But that is for another day.

In the last sermon of his life Dr. King told his congregation in Atlanta,

“I may not get there with You,

but want you to I know, that We as a People will get to the Promised Land !”

Let us hope that Martin knew something that we mere mortals

are not privy to.

In this room TODAY we are called upon to gather the wax and trim the wick,

• & to clear our own vision. To begin to construct that candle

which shall light the way that All Mankind may see.

For Tomorrow we are challenged to blaze a trail

To set foot upon a Journey

From which there shall be NO turning back,

That those who are ready may join us, & we need you desperately.

And those who are not yet ready may learn by our example.

Now I do not mean

To charge you here today any MORE, nor any Less,

Than any other persons anywhere, but WHOEVER You Be,

and wherever You Are, if you discover a bit of Truth PLEASE

Carry it a little further down the Path,

Pass it on, So that your Sisters and Brothers

may not continue to stumble in the Dark.

Now we have marched in the streets of Birmingham

& Selma, & Chicago, & Memphis

along the swamp-laden highway to Montgomery,

and on those thousands of highways and byways to Washington

to AWAKEN this fabulously wealthy nation

to the plight of its own poor of ALL colors:

Black and Brown, and Red and Yellow, and White.

We have challenged its Foreign Policy

Of permanent WAR, and the Rape of the Planet

And we have marched, and taught, and prayed, and sung

To bring a Message THAT THE PURPOSE OF A NATION,

Of a Government” the PURPOSE of a Society

Is NOT to forge a machine

which shall enslave every nose to the grindstone,

bend every back in submission to prescribed Conformity,

& BREAK every Heart whose beating Pulse and Purpose

are NOT permitted to be employed in the service of their Children,

their Community, and the Healing of Our Mother Earth

But, we have been CAPTURED and enslaved in the service of GREED –-

In the ugliness and wretched Horrors of WAR,

In the Demonization of those who are driven into Despair,

Who no longer have a Dream ANY dream

For which they wish to live.

OUR PRIORITIES have been hijacked

By a word-game based upon the Ultimate LIE.

This LIE is pronounced from nearly every pulpit in the land. It headlines every newspaper; it blasts the nightly news; it spews forth filthy venom on right wing “TALK” radio;

It crowds every conversation and corrupts every relationship on the Planet.

This Ultimate LIE

Is posed in several parts:

It says that your neighbor is your ENEMY,

That those who grow, harvest, and bake your bread, who pick your fruit,

Dig your onions & snap your beans, should be robbed of their land

And should die of starvation, or perhaps merely $ell their children into slavery.

And IF they RESIST

They are deemed “Terrorists” whom we must KILL by the thousands

With our SMART bombs of White Phosphorus, & Napalm, & Uranium,

Dropped from the air by our Pilots of Impunity.

It is said that those who worship GOD

By bowing in prayer 5 times every day, those who sing out their Joy to the Dawn,

Who love the earth, her forests, her tundra, her mountains & plains,

Even her Deserts – that such persons everywhere

Are to be robbed of their homes, of their lands, of their children,

Are to be robbed of their Dreams:

That their ONLY purpose in Existence is to slave for the Masters of Industry

For the Masters of Finance,

For the Masters of WAR.

These Masters of the LIE

Who worship WAR as their ultimate God,

And use the ideology of Nationhood, and the glorification of Greed

To justify their Power, their Corruption, their Lust;

Their Insane and Evil, long-premeditated plan

To dominate ALL Mankind; — “Full Spectrum dominance”

as decreed by King Cheney.

These Masters of the LIE DEVOUR us, our Constitution, and our Society.

The present Cheney / Bush Regime

Is in EVERY aspect the most Corrupt there has ever been,

By several orders of magnitude.

I could list a litany of their abuses: like Katrina, the WAR Lies,

Secret arrests, and prisons; life sentences imposed without charge, or evidence, or trial;

systematic torture, Jack Abramoff & the Money game, Enron, & our

Apartheid school System which trains soldiers, prisoners, functionaries and guards.

But, we would be here all week

I will state that EVERY non-oppressive Department of our national Government

Is being systematically DESTROYED from the TOP.

Every directly Oppressive Agency

Is being EXPANDED in both Scope and Power,

And Impunity.

WAKE UP !!!

They already did this in Germany.

We KNOW what happened.

These Masters of the LIE

Feed their insatiable GREED with our living Earth itself,

And turn our Home, our Sacred home

Born of the Spirit of Existence, and the trials & tribulations of 4 ½ Billion years
of Vibrant Growingness which has become this lovely Garden, giving us our very lives,
our possibilities, EVERYTHING; — these Masters of the LIE now plot

to turn it ALL into an uninhabitable desert forever.

WHY do they do this ??? Do they want this as a goal ???

NO It’s merely that they JUST DON’T CARE.

They worship Themselves and their own POWER to Destroy –

Consequences that means Us our Future our Children,

Our Planet — Consequences be Damned !

We stand here today commissioned by Mother Earth Herself,

and by whatever God or Gods who brought Her into Existence,

And US Her Children, to keep Her Breathing

& Singing, & Laughing, & Dancing;

We stand commissioned To D I V E S T ourselves of this LIE.

For if we FAIL in this task,

There IS NO Future.

The Ice caps are melting

Our cities are devastated, and drowned by storms;

Our Mountaintops are blown into smithereens & debris;

Our Soils and Rivers are poisoned,

The very Ocean itself is turned into a festering sinkhole of our Waste.

The Peoples of the earth are divided into nations and classes, and religions,

ALL that we may be exploited in service to an Ideology

and a power structure of ultimate Greed.

And Our Children? What of our Children ???

Our Children are locked up almost from birth into Institutions,

Behind walls, under roofs which block out the Sunlight, — segregated by race and by class –

Where they are taught SERVITUDE, competition, the worship of POWER, Technologies of more efficient exploitation,

And the Ideology that it is all for their own GOOD,

Just like the STRAP, and Castor Oil and obsessive testing are “for your own good.”

Those who don’t play along with the GAME,

Are filled with “behavior-correction” drugs:

Prozak, antizak, Panizak to make them comply.

If the children try something else, ON THEIR OWN,

Perhaps to escape the Monster, then they are thrown into prison — to rot

By the ,millions in this country

To rot by the millions.

Now Mankind, & especially this country, which is both the Spearpoint of Doom,

AND the Agent of Possibility,

Mankind has entered a crisis with the 21^st Century – a crisis long-building,

But now matured to fruition.

It is not just War. War is but as a symptom

The great American Theologian, William Ernst Hocking, said,

“There are a great many things worse than War,

and WAR brings ALL of them, about.”

We are suffering from a Crisis of Conscience,

A Crisis of Corruption,

& a Crisis of Courage.

We suffer from an enslaving Worship of Materialism,

From a forfeiture of responsibility,

& from the delusion of Impunity.

We have permitted our entire Society to be hijacked by an Orwellian manipulation to serve an ideology which they call “Economics.”

We are living RIGHT NOW under a Corporate Dictatorship;

Although those who are Part of it, Don’t notice this.

Ashley Montague wrote in 1950 “Let no one be deceived,

Unless Western man is able to release himself from

the degrading TYRANNY of his Enslavement to the Religion of Economics,

he is certainly DOOMED to self-destruction.”…

in service to this God, of competitive individualist ECONOMICS,

which was always FALSE in its ubiquity –

This new GOD needed help

to destroy Community everywhere, and capture the entire planet,

& so they invented Materialism & Individualism,

for which we all bear some responsibility,

for we have worshipped, willingly or not, at their Thrones.

Perhaps the greatest HOPE for Mankind today is the recent upsurge in Latin America, ALL of Latin America for democracy,

Which has been forever crushed by American Imperialist Militarism.

AND we have recently formed a Network of Spiritual; Progressives at home
to directly challenge the theft of our language, and our culture

By the fanatical Capitalist lackies who dominate

and perpetuate Christian literalist Fundamentalism,

Which is precisely the opposite of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.

Now, is not Redemption precisely

That effort to recapture our Wholeness, our Truth,

Our Communion ? the language of the Heart ?

Now, it is only in the past Decade that Science has finally discovered,

that which Mankind has known for thousands of years — the Heart-brain

– The seat of Compassion, and Community. –

This may be its most profound discovery, ever

And our greatest hope for survival and sanity.

Now we may begin the mission of “Bringing it all back Home.”,

Martin Birmingham, 1963

I tell You today that I have taken on the Monsters of Segregation –

the racist dictators of Dixie,

I have placed my life and my honor on the line in the struggle for Peace,

Against a cruel and unjust, a racist war against a poor, weakened,

and distant people.

I have stood for the absolute birthright of ALL God’s Children

To have an opportunity to earn a decent living, to live in Community

& to be treated with respect, and dignity. Now for nearly half the people on the planet
that most basic human need is NOT possible.

WHY ??? is this so ?

If you go from here into tomorrow with ONE new social fact, let this be it.

Our entire economy: our Entire world economy,

Has been hijacked by a greedy self-interested group of powerful people

With a PRIVATE agenda. All Power ands strategy flows from this agenda

This agenda is the creation of Scarcity.

Only by capture — by theft of the land, the resources, the energy, the social structures,

& the language Of the entire earth, and backed by a structure of complicity, an overwhelming Military absolutism, and a fatalistic philosophy of necessity, could this universal scarcity
be brought about.

& they have done this remarkably well, I might add.

Now, how were they able to do this ?

By enlisting ourselves as mercenaries — as henchmen — in the Game.

Power Accumulation and Wealth Control: that’s it. That’s the whole Game.

Everything else is but a tactic:

Nations Religion Armies

Sensationalistic Press Technological Power

Finance Capital, Racism, the WTO,

It’s all a Tool of the Game,

And we ourselves –

Victim, slave, and starvéd Soul though we may be,

We, ourselves, are complicit in this Game/

Now, I would love to go into an explanation of why this is so,

And HOW it came about. And strategies for Liberation

But, that is for another day.

but, I DO hope today, to light a Candle for You

from a Torch which Martin Luther King handed to me,

at the airport in Washington DC, one day in May in 1965,

Martin came over to me, He clasped my hand in both of his,

He Pressed into my hand $25 and a plane ticket to Atlanta,, He looked deeply into my eyes,

And said to me. “Give ‘em Hell, Arkansas !”

Martin sent me back to Alabama — “Yes, I’ve sent You on a Mission

But the deeds are all Your own,

Once You’ve learned how You should Be then You can sing it in Your Song.

Now they’re gonna call you Crazy, & they’ll lock you in their jail.

But, someday I’ll come along to go Your bail.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said,

“No man knows just what another can do, NOR does s/he know until s/he has tried.”

Martin did not ask a single question of me, nor tell me a single thing to do,

or to avoid, any place to go, nor any person to meet. He gave me no map to follow,

test to pass, Or an exit plan he simply gave me his complete trust.

Martin said simply to me, “Give ‘em Hell, Arkansas.”

I never saw Martin again.

I had already passed my test.

Now It’s the REAL thing.

This is Your LIFE !

“Son, I may not be there with You,

so, here is Your task. Do it well. “

“If White Kids Die,” was written by a witness

of my work the next month in a little town called Demopolis, Alabama.

Yet is not this the same charge offered to EVERY one of us ?

“Let your Light so shine that ALL men may see it !”

and let your light be Beautiful.

Now there are historic times THESE are historic times

When that charge – & that lamp

May seem too heavy, and too conspicuous to carry.

& so we hide under a bushel,

or we may take a gig

& may perhaps be paid VERY well

to help the forces of the Darkness snuff out the light of others,

or CAPTURE it merely to feed their own negative light

of POWER over others. But,

“This little Light of mine I’m gonna let it shine !

Let it Shine Let it Shine Let it Shine !”

Some say, “Lord ! Lord ! what can I do ?? Me, insignificant, crippled,

Greedy, frail & frightened little mole that I am.

What can I do ??”

Mohandas Gandhi said, “Even though the very best that I can do

May be woefully inadequate,

Still, I must do what I can.”

“Be the Change

that you wish to see in the world.”

Now, I did not come here today to hand you a plan of action, NOR an ideology –

but merely to indicate — perhaps to point — Here !

You will find it in Your Heart.”

Perhaps a bit of Encouragement,

You CAN find it ! You Can do it! “

Maybe a cheerleader, even a Drum Major,

For the very BEST in Humanity – what we came here for –

YOU ! Let Your little LIGHT shine !

sing

“Yours are the eyes through which He pours out

Compassion to the World.”

Once You set your foot firmly on the Path

You are never again a l o n e,

Though ALL men may revile You, betray You, persecute You,

and deny you 3 times. Before the Dawn.

Let your light be True,

Be Beautiful, be Just, be Wise, be Loving,

All the rest will come to You.

“The Word will appear on your lips when it MUST be spoken.”

Speak it well !

sing

“So I’m giving You a Message but the Words are all Your own.

Once You figger what they Be then You can sing ‘em in Your song.

Now, they’re gonna call you “Crazy” & they’ll lock You in their jail …”

“& You be ‘LONE,

sho’ ‘nuff be a lone

ain’t nothing never BEEN so ‘LONE,”

Ain’t nothing ’ never BEEN so ‘lone

Dirty dog damn deep down in the bottom of a coal mine ‘L O N E

STILL, gotta do it,

Keep on Keepin’ on

Well, now You on “th’ Paff,

But, it’s a long ol’ row to hoe.”

& I, I walk out on my own

a 1000 miles from Home

but, I don’t feel alone –

‘cause I Believe in You & Lord, I don’t mind the Pa9in

don’t mind th’ drivin’ Rain

I know I will sustain

‘cause I Believe in You.”

The Deeper inside Your Soul, your INFINITE Soul, you are willing to go,

The more You will find the Eternal Universe, throbbing there,

The Eternal Pulse of Beauty.

Blossom forth ! Blossom Out !

This Beauty it is Brahman

It is the Essence

Of Who You ARE;

It is the Purpose, the Power, the Being of the Universe,

ONE VERSE

Of which YOU

Are the Singer and the Song

Let Your LIGHT so shine

That ALL the World may see it,

And see Itself reflected

In BEAUTY

sing

“so now just do the Best that You can do

& try to do it RIGHT

yeah ! just do the best you can with ALL your might.”

sing ‘There been times when I thought

I couldn’t last for long,

But, now , I think I’m able able to carry on

It’s been a long

A long time comin’ brother but I know,

Change Gonna Come oh yes it is.”

sing “so May your hands be ever busy

May Your Wings keep soaring high.

May the Dreams that bring you Courage light the Rainbows in your Sky

May the FAITH which gives you meaning keep Your heart forever Strong.

& May the Days that bring you Presence linger long,

Yes, May these Days that bring us P r e s e n c e linger long.”

Strider Arkansas Benston

© 1/15/2005

It is designed to present an overview and an outline from which we can gain perspective regarding the possibly apocalyptic crisis we face. Please do not let my intentionally remote language confuse you. There is NOTHING innocent about what they have done. Wall Street lobbyists have donated $5,100,000,000 to political campaigns of both parties in the past decade. Ironically this is nearly identical to the amount of money given to Saddam Hussein by the first Bush regime under the guise of USDA “agricultural loans.” The ENRON theft and collapse which ushered in the Bush II regime, and which financed his campaign, was the model for robbing the public and donating big money to provide the tools, the laws, and the cover to do so. Sadly, some of the very same people who created our present deregulation-induced meltdown have been hired by President Obama to get us out of it.

Robert Rubin and Larry Summers were core operatives of the mania. Rubin, along with Skank, oops, Hank Paulson, ran the highly favored investment giant Goldman Sachs.

Let us hope that President Obama can direct them to do a 180º and reverse the damage.  We will be dealing with these matters, and especially with how, and WHY such extreme ideologies were created by our schools of economics and then foisted upon the public mind through the placement of such ideologues at the “commanding heights” of our society. I highly recommend reading “The Political Mind” by George Lakoff, Viking, 2008.

Strider

I did present my poem at Longmont City Council Open Forum
on January 12, 2010.  The actual presentation, as are, I think, all of my city Council speeches of the past 5 years, recorded in Longmont library,
& recent ones are on Longmont web site.

Strider

The current American war preparations and propaganda

have recently brought before an outraged, but bewildered public

a set of new issues and concerns which we have seldom, if ever, before confronted

in this constitutional democratic society. Due to a pervasive policy of rote thinking, public mythologies, and the extreme individualism and “get-ahead” imperatives and rewards inherent in the policies of all American school systems, and, of course, the economic system We are unarmed, intellectually, morally, & socially, and organizationally, to deal with the machinations of our rulers.

American students and citizens probably knows less about their own history

than the citizens of any other country with a public, and ”free,” education system.

* Within the space of a letter, I can only present an outline, with which many will certainly disagree. That is fine. Do so. The proofs will come as current policies unfold, and continue, tragically, to re-define our entire society. You may draw your own conclusions. What I offer here is a view of the social patterns of recent history.

Those among us who are older will have some knowledge of that to which I refer.

Persons from Europe can not so easily forget Hitler, as we have. *

When the working class falls under assault by its government and economic powers, its natural tendency is to mobilize either toward socialism, toward syndicalist communalism, or toward greater democracy. When the middle class faces a corresponding assault upon their rights, freedoms, and standard of living the members tend historically, to go fascist. Most of us recall the Reaganesque assault upon the political standing, rights, and organizational freedom of the working class in the 1980s. This could not have been accomplished but for the tremendous export of capital and jobs attendant upon the first phase of the current drive for Globalization of “free” trade.

The next phase began in full force in 1997, with the Asian economic crisis, and the financial and political measures employed thereafter to “shore up” the System.

With American workers already effectively dis-empowered, phase 2 now entails the “belt-tightening” assault upon the traditional rights, freedoms, and standards of the far more atomized middle class. It is not at all irrelevant to consider the case of Germany in the 1920s, the most highly educated and industrialized nation of that time. In its formal structure the Weimar Republic was also the most democratic country of that era.

When a corporate oligarchy uses racist, nationalist, religious and other dehumanizing techniques, and both the threat and the fact of mass terror either employed by itself, or charged to this demonized Other; when it employs blatantly and provably false propaganda, and the suppression of constitutional protections and basic citizen rights & freedoms toward the advancement of policies and launching of structures pre-determined by, and for, that oligarchy, this is the core structure of Fascism.

Military aggression, generally against some vulnerable demonized population, in national “defense” against some presumed threat from that target, to martial the mal-educated and emotionally reflexive sector of the population, and to suppress intelligent thought, basic humanity, and democratic participation, is ALWAYS part and parcel of this fascization process. Even in the most broadly based democracies, there is always some danger of such racist demagoguery.

President Eisenhower tried to warn us of the takeover of our country by the Military Industrial Complex, which he named, with its attendant destruction of our democratic society. He got us OUT of the Korean War. It is time we listen to Ike.

Constitutional protections civil liberties, basic human rights, and democratic participation are our only structural protections against such a threat of enslavement.

These have generally served us well in America, even under great duress. During the Great Depression we were saved from such takeover of our society precisely by the general expansion of democratic rights, rather than their curtailment This is not the policy of the current Regime.

The Patriot Act, and the secret currently proposed Patriot Act II, entitled the Domestic Security Enhancement Act, which is to be rammed through Congress under cover of the coming War so that the flag-waving and fear of retaliation will suppress serious discussion of its provisions, are designed precisely to abrogate our basic American Constitutional rights. Among its provisions are measures to strip Americans of their citizenship if they are deemed by some agency, viz. the FBI, to have contributed to, or participated in some activity which that agency, considers a threat to American security. These measures are to be retroactive. Judicial review is to be dispensed with. Secret arrests are empowered, and it is to be a criminal offense to inform a friend or spouse that he or she is being investigated. When these Acts become fully operational, very soon, we will no longer live in the society in which we have grown up and have always believed in, even as we may have previously employed these very mechanisms to criticize vehemently many of its policies. Such freedoms may soon no longer exist.

Let us recall the words of President Ronald Reagan, “I stand for the UN-amended Constitution.” Most people thought he just meant that he was advocating race slavery which was abolished by the 13th Amendment. It is much worse than that.

Unamended means precisely NO BILL OF RIGHTS. No freedom of person, religion, press, assembly, or association. Reagan expressed explicit disloyalty to his sworn oath to uphold and defend the existing Constitution. Twenty years ago people thought it

to be funny. It is NOT funny. The laws are right now being put in place. When Secretary Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney call for “Full spectrum dominance,” over the world, this is no joke. What is meant by that phrase, precisely, is the elimination of International Law which might apply to the United States, and the elimination of the United Nations as a viable democratic world body.

We in America, and therefore the entire world, are in mid-process of such a concerted threat to the democratic institutions which constitute our society

as occurred in Europe 3 or 4 generations past. In France, Germany, and Russia

they have not forgotten. Those three countries along with Poland,

suffered more than 40,000,000 dead.

Today, as then, the demanding appeal to national power, accompanied by strident, even screaming invocation of the very principles & ideals which they actively destroy,

are employed in concert, to line us up for war. We have little time left to wake up.

We Americans often accusingly act bewildered at, “How could the German people have allowed Hitler to hijack their country ?”

We wonder, “How must the German people have felt in August of 1939 ?”

Now we know. Strider Benston

2/11/2003

Stands the ever pregnant “Why” of Existence .

The numinous Telos of Ultimacy

Suffuses the vibrant, quivering Presence

Of each and every Moment, Event, and Location

In this vast Universe of Being.

It is the quickening of Purposefulness,

The surging, urging , Forward and Beyond –

The assertion of vibrant Identity,

And submissive participation

In THAT of which we are but a part,

An organ

A cell, a speck, an instant –

It is the ever-moving, transcendent curve of Yin/Yang,

The pregnant hiatus separating Intent from Act,

The flowing s t i l l n e s s

Between Inspiration and Expiration

The L i v i n g n e s s

Between Birth and Death;

it is the fundicating Invitation

Innovation,

Invocation

Of Future into Past:

The Creation of the perpetual,

And ever – renewed Birth of NOW,

The Culmination of ALL that has ever BEEN

In the Foundation of All that shall ever BE.

It is the Absolute Moment of Eternity — –

The Alpha and the Omega

It is the Meaning of Being

wrapped in the Being of Meaning.

It is Forever.

Strider

 9 / 23 / 2001