Hola Everybody!
It’s Friday, dammit! Now you have absolutely no reason to complain.

I keep forgetting to mention that everybody get up and go see Little Miss Sunshine. Don't let the title fool you, it's not a kiddie movie. It's actually, in my not so humble estimation, the Movie of the Year! Both Alan Arkin and Abigail Breslin, the young lady who portrays the title character, Olive , could easily win supporting actor Oscars! This is one of those movies "they don't make anymore," see it and be reminded of how story could actually transport/ transform/ transcend.

Finally, check out my friend/ tormentor/ former sex slave, Nina,  and buy soap from her. I think she has a good idea going, so let's support those of us who dare to "dream during the day"!

 ***

 “To get where you want to go you can't only do what you like.”
-- Peter Abrahams (1919– )
South African novelist, Tell Freedom, 1954

“The greatest enemy of individual freedom is the individual himself.”
-- Saul David Alinsky (1909–1972)
Social activist, created numerous activist citizen & community groups

 Okay! So I’m standing in front a large group of incarcerated women. Half of them you can clearly see would rather be doing something else and my boss is in the process of introducing me. My director is an intelligent man. But like most intelligent people, he always feels a need to go off on tangents when speaking publicly. I’ve been trying to disabuse him of the notion that this is an attractive way to present a message. I’m glaring at him because I can see that the longer he talks, the harder it’s going to be for me.

 I’ve been known to cut people off, so he stops, grins knowingly at me, and introduces me.

 In the interest of adding some context to this moment let me relate a quick story. I was having dinner recently with some friends at my fave restaurant and as is our wont we were all kidding around and I was flirting with the new waitress. I am a notorious flirt, everybody knows this. I flirt with everyone, age, looks, sexual orientation doesn’t matter. If it moves, I flirt. Anyway, my friends and I are all cutting up and they ask the new waitress which one among our group would she trust the least. And immediately she looks at me! LOL!

“He’s too cute, he looks like a player,” she says! OMG!

You have to understand that between my two best friends and me I am a saint. My friends are predators, plain and simple. I don’t even like introducing them to any female platonic friends because these are the type of men and that give other men a bad name.

As you can see,  I’m far from a neutral presence. For some reason that escapes me, my presence elicits extreme responses. I don’t what it is; maybe it’s my habit of making eye contact (which sometimes is construed as a provocation), my stance, my posture, or my looks (or lack thereof) – whatever.

So there I am in front of a sizable number of bored women in a hot, stale-smelling gym. Welcome to my world! LOL!

Nevertheless, I attempt to work my magic little by little. I use key words at the right times, engage the participants, make one of them come up by my side while I illustrate a point with her assistance. I apply humor at those moments when some energy is needed and when I have them sufficiently riled up, I give them the juice! I pour the passion, I undress myself (no, not my clothes, perverts!) psychologically and I give them my message which is essentially a message of hope.

 I describe to them in as little detail as possible, how they can break out of their mental prisons and I recruit two more women to go through a little experiential exercise. By now, I’m in “flow” mode – I’ve become more translucent and the light is shining through me and it’s shining bright. What I mean by this is that  it’s no longer “Eddie” up there, doing something. iBu now it’s all a process and people are laughing, crying, understanding until 45 minutes later we’re finished, or started, depending on how you look at things.

Whatever your situation is at this moment, I can think of only one thing worse than being locked up. I don’t give a fuck what you’re going through, you’re fuckin’ free, dammit. At the very least, you're free in the legal/ physical sense. What I’m offering here is freedom from their mental prisons and that’s the only thing worse than being locked up in prison. You see, you can be restrained physically, but you have to allow another to lock up your mind.

 People tell me all the time that this idea of mine, of teaching people who are incarcerated the art of freedom, is not an attractive offer. “These people want jobs, housing, or training, Eddie,” they say.

 I disagree.

 Teach someone to be free and that person will be free no matter where she finds herself. And that is the message I try to embody – freedom. It is what I am passionate about, what I sell. By the end of the session, I come to the realization that I am drenched in sweat. I’m wearing a suit and tie. During the question and answer period a lovely young lady, she can’t be more than seventeen, asks about the streaks in my hair and I make everyone laugh by saying I fell asleep while on vacation and someone streaked my hair. It’s a special moment because her question was really an attempt to connect on another level. It was more like, is he one of us type of thing. We laugh and I tell them it’s part of a mid-life crisis, LOL!

 As a way of closure to the session, I ask everyone if they’re willing to go through the series of workshops with me. "Who wants to be free!" I ask. And, of course, everyone raises their hands, even the one young lady who gave me the hardest time. I warn them that I’m going to challenge them in ways they never knew and everybody’s like, "Yeah, come one with it!" Inwardly I sigh because these women are going to make me work and work hard. They're hungry for freedom and they feel it on many levels. To many there, I can imagine freedom is like a cool drink of water in the middle of a desert.

 What about you – are you truly  free?

 Love,

 Eddie

 ***

Painting by Dr. Sabin-Corneliu Buraga

Hola Everybody,
Sssssssh -- listen: it's quiet around here right now....





I had the opportunity to attend a very special wedding yesterday (I won't post pics). Fortunately, it wasn't mine! Image LOL!

Seriously, a former client/ participant was married yesterday and she invited me. I had reservations at first. Once The Work is over it's not fair for me to hang around people. Closure is important. But Jackie (note: names/ descriptions have been changed in the interest of confidentiality), has made it her business to keep in touch with me over the six years since she first walked into my workshop and I made her cry (many, many times LOL!).

She has no family – death and other factors left her alone when she was a mere girl of thirteen. When other girls were still hugging their teddy bears and talking about boys, Jackie was fending for herself mostly alone. When other girls were worried about making it as a cheerleader, Jackie was being used by an older lady to lure men to her home. Before Jackie was fourteen, Jackie had been turned into a whore -- selling her body as a means for survival.

Before she was a teeneager, Jackie learned about a lot of fucked up shit some people reading this will never be able to even begin to understand.

There was a time that people said that I was hopeless, that I would never change. Think of the worst, or most humiliating thing, that could happen to someone and I can say I’ve been there: jails, institutions, humiliation, death wishes, attempts at suicide, all the good stuff. Eventually, I would become one of the many faceless “homeless” we all avoid and step over on our way through the daily rounds of activities of daily living. I was that person. Dirty, hungry, unkempt (well, I’m so vain, I think I looked good even as a homeless person! LOL!), “hopelessly” addicted – all of that and more.

I have done things, despicable things, and been places very few people can claim. A part of my humiliation was not being allowed to a shooting gallery, for example. For those that don’t know, try to imagine the dirtiest, most disgusting apartment, where all you see is the blood of intravenous drug abusers, where all you smell is shit and urine, and other body fluids, where the worst of the worst come to congregate, and you might get an idea of what a shooting gallery is. I was banned from some of these places! LMAO!!

Furthermore, those that have been where I have ventured, for the most part never come back. My theories on human behavior change are primarily grounded on my personal experiences and transformation. For me no one is helpless, no one is forsaken – if I can do this, anyone can. Finally, this isn’t just about me. There are millions of men and women, many who were worse off than I was, who have managed to return and achieve some measure of true happiness. Life doesn’t suck, we do – and we can choose to stop sucking. Life is the greatest gift and what we do with it is what makes it fucked up. Sure, there’s suffering, but that’s not the whole story. There’s also boundless beauty, love, and truth in life. It’s not enough to suffer, you have to smell the fucking flowers too. There’s suffering, but there’s always our response to suffering, which has the potential to transform our suffering.

It’s a simple message for complicated people.

At first I refused to work with Jackie, begged my supervisor to transfer her to another workshop, but he refused, saying it would be good for my professional growth. Actually, his intention was to get me fired. But it worked out in the end. Sure, in my mind, I fucked Jackie in all kinds of ways! LOL! And her MO was seduction – the only way she knew how to relate to men was through her body – the exploitation of her body. So, it was “hectic” in the beginning. She was twenty-three and beaten when she walked into my workshop, but she walked out three weeks later a woman beginning to take possession of herself and seeing her true beauty. Oh yeah, there was one more thing that really threw me for a loop about Jackie: she was even more beautiful inside than she was on the outside.

Jackie is gorgeous. I mean she’s drop-dead gorgeous. Full, ripe lips, creamy white skin, large hazel eyes framed by Brooke Shields-like eyebrows and long, curly, light brown hair. Impertinently large breasts, seemingly unaware of the laws of physics, on a body with an impossibly narrow waist (I swear I can wrap my around her waist and my fingertips will meet!). In addition, the greatest fuckin' ass! But to top it off, she was blessed with a sharp intellect.

Gawd!

Over the years, I’ve been something of a mentor for Jackie. Someone she could call whenever, for whatever. Perhaps, in some sense, I was the only one she could trust implicitly. Under other conditions, I think I would’ve fallen under Jackie’s spell, but eventually I would push her out, encourage her to develop her own network, explore, and create her own world. Yes there was a mutual attraction, but I knew that crossing that boundary with Jackie ("I'm not your client anymore!" she would say in exaspration), would've done more harm than good. The sexual tension between us has never been a secret; it has been grist for the mill in our work together. In learning to relate to me in new ways, she was able to extend that to other areas of her life.

I was taken completely by surprise when she requested that I give her away. She told me she really had no one else, at least no one that mattered that way, and that in a sense, I earned that right because I helped usher her into this new world. I resisted– hard. I just didn’t think it appropriate and suggested that her uncle would be a more suitable choice. Then one day I got a phone call from her husband-to-be and we had a conversation that just opened my eyes. I finally agreed and Jackie was beside herself.

She looked absolutely transcendent yesterday. She was beyond beautiful and I was so proud of her -- of the woman she had become. I try to explain to all my clients that I don't do anything and this is true. I’m not trying to be modest. “I” don’t do The Work “It” does the work – sometimes through me, or in spite of me. The Work takes place outside of my ego identity. My job is to be part of the process, or facilitate that process, and to take credit for something like that is like taking credit for the rain or the sunshine: it just doesn’t make sense. Nevertheless, yesterday, both Jackie and her husband managed to embarrass me totally by doing some kind of testimonial on me. They actually made me cry.

F*@k!

In a way, this all came at just the right time. I’ve been on the front lines for so long -- I’ve grown tired. I want to step away from actually running groups and do more of the academic side of informing how groups should be run. I would rather be training trainers because I think I would have more of an impact that way. That’s why this upcoming series of workshops in the women’s prison is key for me. You get tired doing this work, sometimes. Moreover, I look at the system, a criminal justice system that’s racist and unequal, for example, and I wonder if I’m making a dent in all this crap. And I’ve come to the realization that, while I am making a difference in some individual lives, the system is still fucked up and that’s where I need to focus my energies at this stage of my evolution. Yesterday Jackie came back into my life to remind me of why I’m here and that, in the end, it’s all about The Work.

Thanks Sweetie, may you know true happiness.

Love,

Eddie

Hola Everybody!
Not sure anyone's reading my blog here, but I post it inseveral places, so what the heck, right? LOL!

Hmmmmm... well, time for an [un]patented...

[un]Movie Review!

On the heels of my recommendation for Little Miss Sunshine (which should garner acting awards for Alan Arkin and Abigail Breslin), I have one more movie recommendation: Half Nelson. Man! What a movie! It's an independent feature so those living in the Disneyfied segregated purgatory armpits aka "The'Burbs," or those living in the boonies, may not be able to see it ("It is written... " or, "Time Warner says so!" LOL!).

The movie could've easily taken the easy way out, as Spielberg and his imitator Ron Howard, often do (Why?!?! WTF did he do Da Vinci Code?!?! Grrrrrr). Instead of the tried and tired formula of white, brilliant, but flawed teacher, saves bright, but flawed black inner city kids, and they all live happily ever after, we instead get a powerful movie that totally engages you without being totally alienating.

Ryan Gosling and newcomer Shareeka Epps turn in two of the most powerfully nuanced performances of the year. Epps (as Dray) is simply amazing. Her acting is all restraint and subtlety, which makes it even more amazing considering her age. Her face is sometimes an unreadable mask (but all the more readable because of it!) and when she does smile, or emote, it's as if the sun burst.

Gosling plays Yang to Epps Yin, and he's able to riff off of Epps restraint in all kinds of ways and his performance is both hilariously ironic and poignantly tragic. In addition, at a time where even depictions of 9/11 are conveniently de-politicized (which happens to be a political decision, btw), Half Nelson wears its politics on its sleeve. The movie is interspersed with clips of historical civil rights footage, which adds to the power of the subject of the movie. Be forewarned, there are no neat little endings, proposed solutions, or tidy little packages  in this movie, but it will move you in ways that may shake you out of the sanitized coma that is modern life (we all want not to feel, it seems. But we're dying to meet that someone, or to feel in some meaningful way, people!).

***

 

"This is moral perfection: to live each day as though it were the last;
 to be tranquil, sincere, yet not indifferent to one’s fate."
 -- Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121-180)
Emperor of Rome 161–180, Stoic philosopher, Meditations

 The average Westerner does all he can to impose direction and control over his life. I have a much older friend I sometimes play dominos with, who is no closer to adopting this attitude than were our ancestors in Puerto Rico a hundred or two hundred years ago. If there is any aspect of the modern Latino/a psychology that's most pathologized by whites, it's the acceptance of fatalism best expressed in the phrase, que sera, sera (what will be, will be).

 At first glance, my friend’s acceptance of fate (“… it is written”) may appear perverse, considering the dazzling range of tools we Westerners have in our arsenal against the impermanent and unpredictable nature of life, but spend some time with my friend and you will quickly find yourself questioning the wisdom (perhaps the sincerity?) of Western attitudes. He's the latest in a long line of mentors.

 When he has paid up his taxes, my friends explains, his life insurance, trained in the latest marketable skills, saved for his kids’ education, paid alimony, bought the house and car conforming to the unwritten rules of his tribe and which allows him a certain status, given up alcohol abuse, nicotine, extra-marital sex and recreational drugs, spent his two-week vacation (or weekends) on some adventurous (but safe!) holiday, learned how to be super-careful as to what he says to or does with members of the opposite sex, the average “Americano” (as my friend calls us) may – and often does – wonder where his life went. Well, my friend doesn’t say it all in one convoluted sentence like that, but that’s the core of his message, I guarantee you.

He (my friend) continues: The average Americano, invariably feels cheated when he finally discovers that all the worrying and all the insurance payments have failed to protect him from fire, burglary, any number of natural disasters, The Sack, terrorist activity, death, or worse --   his wife’s sudden and seemingly impulsive decision to desert with the kids, the car, and all the spare cash in the joint bank account.

 And if you were to tell my friend that in a kingdom without safety nets, he would be crushed by accident or illness, whereas an Americano might have bought himself some measure of protection, you would be correct. However, in-between those transitory bumps and grinds of life (which are, as the song implies, inevitable), my friend lives a life of sublime insouciance, as I like to call it. The standard Americano observation would be that he is an old man living in a fool’s paradise. Perhaps, my friend would agree with a wink and a nod, but might not he reply that the Americano has built himself a fool’s hell?

 He’s some character, my friend…

***

 

If no one tells you they love you today, know this: I love you. I love you unconditionally for being the way you are right now -- this very moment -- and I will continue loving you in this way until you can love yourself in this very manner.

Smooches,

Eddie

Hola Everybody, 

Yesterday marked a year since the US Gov't. (not hurricane Katrina) killed countless people -- US citizens. A year later, they're still finding dead bodies and about 60% of the city is still in a shambles.

I'm experiencing some difficulty wrapping my mind around this, so bear with me... for those interested, Spike Lee’s documentary will be airing in full tonight. I strongly recommend this powerful piece. Of course, if you want to stay comfortable, not bothered, then don’t watch it. It might make you think. 

Voyeurism as Compassion

 “Our government…  teaches the whole people by its example. 
If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law;
it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.” 
-- Justice Louis Dembitz Brandeis (1856–1941)
US jurist, associate justice of the US Supreme Court

Voyeurism is a term that often refers to the practice in which sexual pleasure is derived from observing other people. Such people may be engaged in sexual acts, or be nude or in underwear, or dressed in whatever other way the "voyeur" finds appealing. The word derives from French verb voir (to see). A literal translation would then be “seer” or "observer", with pejorative connotations.

However, voyeur can also be used to describe someone who receives enjoyment from witnessing other people's suffering or misfortune…

 ***

I had had it! I snapped.

I was watching a CNN news report on Katrina (sandwiched in between hours of shameless coverage of “The Ramsey Case”) while waiting for a train at NYC’s Penn Station the other day, when I heard (yet again!) a young lady say “I just don't know why they didn't evacuate.” I turned to her and snapped, "You don't know because you lack the ability to imagine being in their situation,” and walked away shaking my head in disbelief.

The Katrina Hurrucane did not kill people -- it's winds did not kill people. Our government, and it's apathetic response killed people.

Our president, who took eleven days to even make it to NOLA, is accountable.

The whole Bush Administration is accountable.

Where was Cheney? (Hunting)

Where was Condeelza (she was attending musicals)

Where was Rove? (nowhere to be found)

This isn't about blame, it's about paying heed to Santayana who said after WW II: "Those who refuse to learn from the past are condemned to relive it." today, a year after Katrina nothing has changed.

So, leave the superficial, "everything is fine, why muck it all up," analysis at home boys and girls. What I'm about to write isn’t nice and I'm not taking any prisoners today.

People died needlessly and if it were YOUR child, or YOUR loved one who died, you would be singing a different tune.

Editor and Publisher, the mainstream journal that reports on reporting, recently counted tens of thousands of stories on the recent developments in the Jon Benet Ramsey case. First, let me just say that I just don’t understand that obsession and why that story trumps the fact that two national elections were very likely tampered with and that people are dying in Iraq as we speak for a war we entered under false pretexts. I guess I’m dense, but it saddens me that in death, little Jon Benet is paraded before our eyes in garish make-up night after night. If that isn’t child pornography, I don’t know what is.

But it is in this voyeuristic framework that the media presents most of its stories. And the vast majority of Americans, buy right into it. With Katrina, the media presented stories that seemed to suggest that those that stayed, stayed for weird “cultural” reasons. They were too entrenched in their ways to stay, reports said. We’ve all seen variations of the cat woman, who chose to stay and perished as a result. In order for voyeurism to replace compassion, we first have to de-humanize the object of our gaze. 

Take as an example how the media's focus on looters and supposed gang raping murderers (all unsubstantiated), at the expense of the efforts by thousands to help one another in the midst of hellish conditions, facillitated the racist stereotyping of Katrina victims as vile trash. Once the climate had been created and the frame set -- one that said, these are bad people, who do bad things -- it took no effort at all for racists to concoct lies and peddle those to a willing and gullible public.

As recent surveys show, the public’s attitudes towards poor people in general haven’t been changed by the Katrina disaster. Those people that died deserved to die because they were too stupid to evacuate in time. How dare you feel compassion for those poor stupid fools!

People still think “po- folk” have it made and are poor by their own design or inherent laziness. I believe the young lady’s remark at Penn Station was deeply informed by that attitude. In fact, people’s attitudes towards the victims of the Katrina mismanagement can be mapped according to race: for the most part, according to one University of Chicago study, whites tend to mirror the notion that those trapped during Katrina were too stubborn to leave.

Let’s talk facts folks, Okay? The fact is that some people chose to ride out the storm in town because they had commitments to be on site to keep the city functioning and help return it to order. Some stayed for more idiosyncratic reasons, not least because they expected their homes to withstand the hurricane, which, incidentally, most did. The vast majority who didn't evacuate as the storm approached, however, were either too poor or too frail to leave, or both!

Two months before Katrina, Mayor Ray Nagin's administration decided that it couldn't afford to provide public transportation to evacuate residents in the event of a major storm. So the city produced DVDs (?!?!) to distribute in poor neighborhoods, alerting residents that they would be on their own. There was no attempt, as part of the evacuation plan, to provide transportation for the nearly 100,000 New Orleanians who didn't own dependable cars and couldn't afford to pay their way out of the city. This was cowardice.

This is “efficient government” and the consequences of Katrina lead directly to this notion that government can’t do anything right. So let’s leave it to the private sector because they’re best. Hey! Maybe Halliburton, whose doing such a great job in Iraq, can clean up NOLA! It’s Corporate Christianity! The fact is that the ineffective way in which Katrina was handled (which was directly responsible for the deaths), is a prime example of how “less government” failed us. I will explain…

That notion that New Orleans couldn't afford to mobilize for evacuating up to a quarter of its population, speaks to the real sources of the devastation of New Orleans and the excruciatingly slow pace of its recovery. Every government determination of what can or can't be afforded depends on a costs/ benefits calculation and of the interests that compete for use of resources. The Nagin administration couldn't afford to use enough buses as part of its evacuation plan because it gave higher priority to dedicating funds to other purposes--such as subsidizing development and keeping taxes and fees low.

"Efficient" government is a code phrase for a public policy that serves the interests of business and the affluent—this was the ultimate cause of the city's devastation. Remember that the city survived the hurricane. It flooded because the levees failed. The levees on the 17th Street and London Avenue canals failed because, in the words of the Independent Levee Investigation Team, “safety was exchanged for efficiency and reduced costs.” This was the result of federal underfunding, the Corps of Engineers' skimping, state and local officials' lack of vision, and a lack of adequate government oversight--or, in neoconservative language, cutting government red tape.

Bush’s boy, “Brownie,” placed in charge of the drastically cut FEMA as a political favor, had no experience regarding emergency management. I think he had something to do with Arabian horses. Today, on CNN, they’re questioning whether government can adequately manage emergency services. Great! Set something up to fail and then point out that it didn’t work! Makes sense!

Where the breech occurred on the 17th Street Canal, the Corps made concessions in sturdiness of construction to accommodate real estate developers' desire to stuff as much new upscale housing as possible into that neighborhood. The levee on the Industrial Canal failed because of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet's extreme vulnerability to storm surge. MR-GO, as it is called, is a forty-year-old white elephant of pure corporate welfare. In this case, in other words, public safety was sacrificed in the name of corporate greed.

The major idol on the altar of “less government”/ Corporate Christianity is the notion that government services are wasteful and unnecessary. The conservative dogma that the market can take care of everything that needs to be taken care of, was exposed for the scam that it is. FEMA failed because Bush and the worthless bums he put in charge of the agency were completely blind to the notion that a public institution should have responsibilities for securing the public welfare. When disaster struck, they were blindsided, unable to imagine what to do, that perhaps its responsibility should include mobilizing rescue and assistance efforts for people on the Gulf Coast whose plight CNN was broadcasting round the clock. For Bush, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, and former FEMA Director Mike Brown, the organization existed only as an opportunity for plunder, political cronyism, and posturing.

I don’t know, maybe I’m dense, but the way I see it, this was a crime, plain and simple. And the freakin' buck stops at the freakin' top!

Today most of the city remains practically deserted. The social infrastructure is at best spotty in most of the city. Only 21% of Orleans Parish public schools had opened by the end of the 2005/2006 school year. Fewer than half of the city's bus routes and less than a fifth of its buses are operating. The levee system hasn't been adequately repaired or upgraded, though the new hurricane season officially opened on June 1. (The Army Corps of Engineers has apologized for its tardiness.)

Meanwhile, privatizers and developers lurk everywhere. Most of the schools that have reopened have done so as charter schools. Both mayor and council can imagine only scenarios in which the private sector will be stimulated to come to the rescue and lead a renaissance. This means that they can imagine only policies aimed at boosting the interests of the monied few -- cutting spending precisely when they should be increasing it--or drawing on corporate “expertise.” Speculators are coming on themselves at the bit to act on redevelopment plans that would reconstruct the city as a theme park with resorts, casinos, and upscale housing.

Welcome to corporate Christianity where property owners are able to assert their influence, while non-owners are nearly as invisible in civic life now as ever before.

Welcome to the Thunderdome!

It's Thursday and you can't complain! What to do? Hmmmm... LOL!

First, details for the "Last Picnic of the Summer Season" event: it's to be held Saturday, Sept. 9th at Ft. Lee Park, right at the foot of the Washington Bridge on the NJ side. I will be sending Evites as soon as I can. If you're reading this and want to go, drop me a line, all are welcome! You have two choices: quickly think of an excuse NOT to come, or just come, dammit! LOL! It's a kid-friendly event, so bring the house monkees if you so desire. More details to follow, I'm rushing right now. It's prison day and I have to get ready!

A child in early development understands the power of compassion and empathy -- even at a stage of growth that hinders their intellectual or cognitive grasp of it. They understand compassion in action, they understand empathy. One child cries, the rest cry along with it.

While I question the motivation behind the challenge, "Well, what have you done?" as a way of furthering dialogue, I certainly can understand compassion as an instigator toward action. As I noted yesterday, it's part of what I do on a daily basis.

I believe that coherent, intellectually sound conversation can be a tool for activism. It was for me when I heard public speakers passionately articulate their causes. I believe, contrary to what others may say, that the media have abdicated their role in keeping the public informed. Much of what's going on, as in the Katrina Debacle, goes on unchallenged by the mainstream media. Yes, the do get paid huge sums of money, but for the most part they are corporate whores, plain and simple.

I will explore the connection between the level of moral reasoning and political affiliation, but today, in the spirit of compassionate action, I will offer some ways you can help in the aftermath of the crime that was Katrina. Keep in mind that if this happened to the good people of "Nawlins," it can happen to you. Katrina missed New Orleans, it was the government that killed "those" people -- hardworking, tax-payong folk, just like most of us. Perhaps we're entering an age where the wealthy will be saved while the working poor and poor will be sacrificed on the altar of Corporate Christianity.

For a full report on the aftermath of Katrina and what you can do, click here.

I have handpicked some sources below:

I get those stupid forwards all the time. You know those things that are bullshit: “Send this to 1000,000,000,000 of your friends and you will get a blowjob in ten days,” bullshit? Well, I would suggest that you can become an online activist. Yup. I learned this from a friend who’s confined to a wheelchair. The internet has been her salvation and she does a lot of GREAT work, right there in front of her computer…

**Visit www.katrinaaction.org to find information, connect with local organizations and learn about actions that affect housing, health, jobs, and other related issues.

 

**Help ensure that news media tell the real story of Katrina and its aftermath and continue to offer balanced reporting on the issue. Call your local news and radio talk shows, and write letters to the editor. (For pointers, Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting has an online kit with contact information for media outlets and sample letters.) I have been part of several FAIR alerts that caused media outlets to publish retractions when they were found to be reporting falsehoods. I recommend FAIR highly.

**Got five minutes a week? Join the Katrina Information Network. KIN members commit to five minutes a week to send emails to their network and to policymakers to keep these issues on the public agenda. Rather than send those abominable forwards…

On the creative front, the most innovative project I've seen coming out of the catastrophe is the New Orleans Kid Camera Project. Created to address the psychological and emotional impact of Hurricane Katrina on children returning home to New Orleans, the project fosters photography, creative writing and mixed media as means for children to explore their environment and express themselves, their stories and feelings. Check out the latest gallery of the kids' work here and then click here to support future efforts.

Finally, if you want to donate money to help the tens of thousands of Hurricane Katrina survivors still homeless and in great need, see the American Institute of Philanthropy's guide to find the best ways to help the victims, and check out the Network for Good's suggestions on Katrina giving. Habitat for Humanity is also a good recipient. It's been on the ground for virtually the last twelve months helping to rebuild the homes of those way down on the government's priority lists. Giving to Habitat will get your money to the right place.

May you all know true happiness or I’ll smack you upside your head till you get it! LOL!

Off to prison, love ya!