social movements

January 12 marked 10 years since the 2010 earthquake in Haiti that killed more than 300,000 people, and left an estimated 1.3 million more homeless. Much of the greater Port-au-Prince region lay in ruins, including the presidential palace, 17 of 19 ministries, and many schools and hospitals. Entire neighborhoods leveled. Power out. Roads blocked with rubble, some still not removed.

A radical call to action has never been more vital than today, as the abomination of capitalism known as neoliberalism tears apart society from stem to stern, continuing the grand experiment that originated under the watchful eyes and vision of aristocratic plantation-owners like Washington and Jefferson as wealthy patriots.
In honor of their hard fought war to avoid taxation as much as possible, Trump retroactively honored them with a gigantic tax cut for their distant namesakes, the wealthy.

The world is saying no to war with Iran and US out of the Middle East. Hundreds of protests were held in the United States and around the world on Saturday with a unified voice of “No War.” These protests are in solidarity with massive protests in Iraq calling for the US to get out where it is now an occupying force as the government has asked it to leave.

On January 20, Donald G. Trump completed his third year in office. My one blog that received five-digit Facebook shares predicted Trump would lose in 2016. I was spectacularly wrong but not alone. Even the Las Vegas bookies thought Clinton was a shoo-in with her unbeatable two-punch knockout of (1) I’m not Trump and (2) World War III with the Russians would be peachy at least until the bombs start falling. What could possibly have gone wrong?

From Stop The Militarization of Police Facebook page

The United States is relying more heavily on illegal unilateral coercive measures (also known as economic sanctions) in place of war or as part of its build-up to war. In fact, economic sanctions are an act of war that kills tens of thousands of people each year through financial strangulation. An economic blockade places a country under siege.

In one of the poorest neighborhoods of Bogota, Belen, I saw two people bleeding in the middle of the road. One person was clearly dead. A group of onlookers was moving frantically, shouting loudly. There was an attempt to resurrect an injured man. I asked the driver to inquire whether our help was needed, but he was told something insulting by the locals, and insisted that we leave the scene immediately.
Was it a traffic accident? Or a murder? The driver did not know. He actually did not want to know.

Stop killings by police protest (Credit: William Widmer of the NY Times)

The last of a series of gigs I’ve been doing over the past six weeks on the road was last night.  I don’t always manage to collect my thoughts on the experience into a blog post, but I will this time.