I'd written this a few weeks back and wanted to share it with you all:
So we have a new president-elect and we’re all about change. On election night, I sat in the basement den of my boyfriend sister’s home and watched as thousands – no millions, took to the streets in celebratory joy of not only electing our first Black President but also the end of the tyrannical regime of President “Lame Duck” Bush. It was easy to get swept up in the jubilation of that night. Watching millions of tear stained faces, holding hands and waving signs of hope, made me realize that the Dream of Martin Luther King Jr., was not only possible but closer to happening than my cynicism would ever have allowed me to admit. Seniors and youth; women and men; black, white and in between, took to the streets in every major, and minor, city in America bellowing out a collective war cry of “Yes We Can.” Their consensus was evident: Obama equals Change.
Now back to reality. Only a couple of weeks after the single most historic election in American history, the nation has been stunned back to realization that if change comes, it won’t be easy. Cities across America are bracing for the worst, as the national and international financial crisis has finally reached Main Street. New York City is projecting a $5.2 billion gap over the next two years; Los Angeles has a $406 million dollar shortfall of a projected $7.1 billion over the next three years; and in Chicago, the hometown of our president-elect, must find savings to fill its projected $3.25 billion deficit. All the cities are taking painful action to find savings and fill-in the holes of their budgets including rescinding property, business and tax cuts, cutting back on valuable city human services, eliminating funding to cultural programs and laying off city employees. In my own city of Philadelphia, which must plugs its own 1.6 billion dollar deficit, the biggest felt impact has been to Fire Department, recreation centers pools and public libraries. We have been warned for months, in some cases years, that this would happen. According to Wikipedia.com, the global economic crisis was suggested by several important indicators; high oil and energy prices led to high food prices, which led to global inflation. Predatory lending practices of subprime mortgages created a growing number of properties going up for foreclosure, which became the backbone for the credit crisis. And of course the credit crisis drove large, well established investment and commercial banks to go belly-up, which lead to the millions of people out of work and a global-wide recession. As current news reports are suggesting, the worst is far from over. The private sector has already let go thousands of employees, bringing this week’s total unemployment rate to an all time high of 500,000 – with more job loss expected to come. The government’s response has been swift but also haphazard, frittering away billions ($700 billion to be exact) to banks in hopes that they will do their part to free up the credit market and prevent the future collapse of the US economy. However – and quite possible intentionally - the government failed to actually tell the banks just how they are suppose to spend the money, as greedy executives squandered millions on lavish “retreats”, bonus pays and my personal favorite, securities. And now we are only a congressional vote away from our government repeating the same mistake with a $25 billion rescue package for the “Big Three” auto companies. Screw that!
If I was a conspiracy theorist, I would say that this entire economic crisis is nothing more than, as Canadian Journalist and Author Naomi Klein puts it, a “Shock Doctrine,” a mechanism used by governments to push through widely unpopular reforms in the wake of crisis and upheaval. And similar examples of this doctrine has occurred throughout history including the first Depression in 1901 and the last Great Depression in 1929 – both caused by similar failings on Wall Street. And that this recent economic crisis was created and orchestrated by the banks and the Federal Reserve to not only get richer, but decrease the value of the American Dollar to the point of collapsing while increasing their dominance over the world economies by skillfully enacting an entirely new currency called the Amero, also known as the North American Union Currency. And in the end, we’ll all be chipped-up marionette monkeys twirling around and shuffling our collective feet for the amusement of our economic enslavers. But I digress.
While what we are experiencing today seems grim on all fronts and our future to remain free men ultimately prevents a challenge, I can say with confidence that it’s not totally hopeless. Through chaos and instability come real opportunities to construct long lasting power shifts in society. One possible way in which I would love to see our country adopt, is a change in our overall system of living. Here’s a working Theory: A neighborhood friend of mines, who happens to be a Catholic Nun (for real) the executive director of an pro- earth, arts and mediation center, once told me that in order for racism, s*xism and exploitive capitalism to end, we must reshape our society so that it is round instead of triangular, or pyramid shaped. What does that mean exactly? To best explain, I refer you to a paper called “The Human Service System: Pyramid or Circle?” by Emma Van der Klift and Norman Kunc. In it, they describe our current system as operating in a pyramid structure that “organized hierarchically or vertically, with a clearly defined "chain of command". Information flows from the bottom to the top, and back down again.” Within these pyramid systems, large groups are assembled to perform specific and repetitive task. And since the end goal is to produce specific results, this system structure is designed to be inflexible to change and resistant to individuality. Most systems in our society -churches, school districts, government - meet the criteria for the pyramid power structure. On a flip side, moving towards a circular power structure would mean that our society would act more as many small community group operate, moving horizontal as oppose to vertical. Also defined by Klift and Kunc, “it is assumed that everyone is equal. People participate voluntarily. Community organizations do not typically rely on rules, regulations or procedures to "manage" or control one another. If expectations for behaviour have been defined, they are usually generated by the group. People take turns leading, or leadership might be a shared role, depending on the task. A community leader is not the "boss". Current examples of this structure can be found today in our society in the form of cooperative markets, health care centers and recycling programs. Within a circular power structure allows for people to maintain their individuality while also being interconnected to the community as a whole. In circular power structure, individuals interests are respected more, almost encouraged, through true democratic processes and are merged together to bring about a collective solution or reaching a collective goal. This structure is in deep contract to the current pyramid power structure, which operates based on rules and discipline.
There will be some setbacks to fully implementing this new structure, new way of being, but again, not impossible. The first major setback is constructing how big this circular power structure should be. Bigger power structures create a vacuum for individuals with fringe political, social and economic beliefs. Personally, I am in favor of smaller, more regional circular structures in which groups interconnect to work on goals and find solutions for their particular area. From that, smaller groups can then link with other groups to work on broader, specific issues thus creating a link, but not jeopardizing the integrity of the smaller group. The internet, in particular the thousands of social networking sites, has been a perfect example of how this can work. People of like minds, values come together for the purpose of one belief or goals. Secondly, how would we handle more vicious, dominating circles (i.e. race-hating groups)? Good question, one that has not been lost on me. However, we haven’t figured out what to do with these groups today. Both segregation and isolation from groups whom they might harm comes to mind. Again it’s a working theory. But one that I feel could be considered implementing in small steps: community gardens, shared rides, pot luck dinners and clothes and toy exchanges are all perfect examples of small scaled things we can do now within our own communities. Eventually bridges will form and create avenues to work on bigger and broader community concerns.
I would be really interested in hearing your thoughts.
Posted By: charing ball
Friday, December 5th 2008 at 7:36AM
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