NOTICINGS: Parallel polis
At home and the government’s minority power over the majority.
I’m new at this gardening. Fifteen years in, and I’m just now learning about gold. The kind of gold that revitalizes, renews, and restores. Wood chips! As I fill and refill the wheelbarrow, keeping track of the loads with chalk lines (because I want to know just how many barrows I can move around), I settle into the morning’s task: laying down the wood chips on ground hungry for nourishment, softening, and water conservation. The future—beginning now and five years hence—will receive my care well. As James Brown sang it, I feel good. Sing it. You will too.
That is, until we stop, look, and listen to the other side of our private lives: the government’s minority power over us, the majority. Representative government is an oxymoron in bold.
One coin, two sides, living in our parallel polis.
Did you ever marvel at how the food we buy for our delectation is hurtled into gorgeous displays? It’s like being at a museum, each item a portrait. At my food co-op I took this photo of radicchio and kohlrabi.
But oh boy, what a difference from what this video shows. Take a look see: https://www.tiktok.com/@menteendesorden/video/7517176195864218910
Fruits of labor. Theirs.
In one form or another, the Reconciliation Bill, aka One Big Ugly, is another kind of labor hurtling towards July 4th. That’s the date when the President plans to sign the bill.
The bill’s proposed cuts to social programs and moving even more money into the coffers of ICE prove its hideous intent. This is what’s happening before our eyes: a brutal round-up of our neighbors, throwing them into ICE holding tanks. Overcrowded. Perpetually cold. Underfed. The prisons are privately owned—more profit for some.
Former Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich posted:
Innocents all. That’s the rule of law in this country: innocent until proven guilty and denied habeas corpus.
In the next few days, what can we do?
Make 5 Calls. Use the resources provided by Indivisible.
Calling your congressperson is the most effective way to influence policy.
What would be your two photos representing your private life and the government’s manhandling? Post them in the chat here. Don’t you wonder what the similarities and differences of our lives are, as together, all of us struggle every day to protect and love what we love?
At day’s end, after laying down six loads of that wood chip heap, I’m noticing that I now understand that wood chips are gold. A small pleasant surprise rises: I’ve actually pitchforked into an understanding that our human endeavors to protect and conserve this democracy in action, with respect and gratitude, are gold, too. Without Mother Earth we don’t have nuttin.
As to the pitchfork, isn’t that the symbol that Satan uses? The other kind of gold is a multitude of profits for the governing few by employing a cursed, masked, violent abuse of fellow human beings.
Source: pxfuelThe essence of life is made visible by a bee covered in pollen. Humans. Fauna and flora. We are inescapably one.
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NOTES
In this oil on canvas painting by Criselda Vasquez, she uses her parents to reinterpret and contemporize the iconic 1930 painting by Grant Wood, American Gothic.