No matter how many times I find myself here its always the same thing. There is enormous work involved in making meaningful positive social change, and protesting and hanging out in the parks is not doing that work.

In 2003 I predicted that Arlington West would not be successful in stopping or altering the course of the War and was shut down, silenced, and shut out by you and others. so determined was everyone to march on with the protest and manner and modus operandi of it that nobody was up for the discussion of what meaningful strategy towards change would really consist of. Time After time I pleaded, begged, cajoled, put forth work that was ignored, Even as I carried out crosses and flags and played taps on my Clarinet, I was persona non grata. To be tolerated, but not listened to. Brushed Aside and placated, Used for time and energy and then thrown under the bus where my ideas or more intellectual contributions were concerned.

History has a habit of recycling over and over until the lesson is learned. The Occupy has not done its homework, and it doesn’t want to do its homework. The Veterans for Peace may consist of older and more mature people in general, but the problem is still the same. Nobody actually listens to people like me as I put forth the real solutions. Nobody wants to take the time and energy to actually STOP THE MADNESS. Its too important to have the drama, too important to have the noise, Too important to make that next headline in the paper (so we hope…) And not nearly important enough to Check ourselves into a direct democracy and science centered problem solving process.

As I struggle once again for lucidity, for sanity, for a path of right action, with everyone else sure I’m just easier to ignore, I’d like to again make the point. It would be nice to have REAL allies in this work, to have people I could depend on in my effort to save the humans, and people to make it happen. It could happen so very quickly with so few people. Or, Never, at all, playing symbolic protest games with tents or crosses or Guy Fawkes masks.

I spent all week working on Workshop Presentations only to find out that nobody is behind me or taking it seriously.

Maybe the Veterans for Peace can make good on the work trade they would owe me for dozens of hours of time I gave them for symbolic gestures and come help with the wiki, so that I can make a case, both to the anarchists and the police, that this can all of it be non violent and evolutionary instead of confrontational and caste war.

Or …maybe not…I’m trying to stop having any positive expectations or hopes, because humans pretty much always prove that i can never underestimate their propensity to mis prioritize whats really important.

http://occupythiswiki.org/wiki/Non_Violence_Theory,_Practice,_Ethics,_and_Protest_Communication

I shouldn’t have to do this alone.

see also this inspiring interview with Brian Wilson from Democracy Now! today:

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/10/28/blood_on_the_tracks_brian_willsons

sending love out to all the brave vets for peace!

Maria Potter

I have talked to hundreds of passersby on Sundays over the years at Arlington West and half of them just shrug and say well sometimes we have to do it (have a war) and “its always been with us”. I liked John Lennon’s son’s recent line that if people were as desiring of peace as of having a color tv, there would be peace. But too many people just shrug. Hail to the Veterans For Peace.

Well at least there is hope. It was on veterans day last year I believe that I went to the Courthouse to amid all the Vets and the orchestra played John Lennon’s Imagine, imagining a world without war.

Steve Lord