Stream of Consciousness Blog Entry

One of the best ways of learning about what's going on with yourself - I mean, what's REALLY going on with yourself, meaning the things that you don't even know about yourself that are percolating in your own mind - is to sit down and write about something completely different. Usually, interesting stuff just floats up from your own unconscious like so many chunks of ice.

The older I get, the more comfortable my own brain gets with the idea of communicating the real Hannah to the (and I say this with all hilarity and affection) busy-bee bullshit rule-following hamster-running-on-a-wheel boring-as-hell ambitious business-card-flinging Girl-Scout-civics-lesson penitent guilt-ridden half-a-calorie-counting serious-as-a-heart-attack Metro-Stations-of-the-Cross work-ethic conscious mind that has made my life a living hell since adolescence, but I haven't got back to the garden yet, so until that day comes, I will have to work at it to nudge the doors of perception a little opener.

CONSCIOUS MIND: But, but..? Are you sure that's a word, Hannah? "Opener"?

UNCONSCIOUS MIND:

SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!

OF COURSE IT'S A F____G WORD!

HOW THE HELL ELSE

ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO GET SOUP

OUT OF A CAN?

--------------------

I was always really impressed by Burning Man. I never went, but wow! It's not just the sheer logistical nightmare and wonderment of it. It's not just that I love art that is created only to be destroyed. It's not just the barter-only economy. It's not just the lovely tank top I have with their lovely slogan "Joy Is a Form of Protest," brought back as a gift from my lovely ex who probably went to look at drugged naked women spray-painted in tiger stripes.

The real thing that blows my mind about Burning Man and the whole culture is that it's really a gigantic pagan ritual that has sprung up as a result of and commentary on the carbon combustion age. We are all Burning Men. It's a ritualistic and cultural expression of the fossil fuel economy.

I wish I were more familiar with it so I could draw out this argument in depth, but the only other think I can think of in the same category is that town in India where they ceremonially burn Santa Claus. Which is not all that different, really, and perhaps more meaningful since cremation is kind of the industry standard there.

I find it almost unfathomably creepy and horrible that our civilization is entirely powered by burning the remains of beings that died millions of years ago. We're literally burning our ancestors. We are powering these millions of cars and all those blinking little appliances in our homes and apartments on fossilized dead bodies.

It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that the implications of this practice are massively destructive, from the degradations imposed by the extraction industries, through the pollution caused by refining and shipping, and then the release of carbon dioxide in combustion, which has already started the greatest man-made environmental disaster in human history.

They should have known from the beginning that there was going to be some kind of devil's bargain with petroleum. It's far too powerful. Human beings aren't supposed to be whizzing in and out of cities in giant tanks of steel at 70 mph for their daily commute. Human beings actually really shouldn't ever go 70 mph an hour in their life. (Except on a train, IMHO).

There is very little of our daily life that corresponds to the way that human beings have lived for millennia; at least in the United States, most of the country's physical landscape has been completely reordered around this. Not to mention the mountains that we are currently being leveled, or the fracking pumps injecting radioactive water 8,000 feet into the ground to crack open bedrock so gas can escape. That's just baaaaad voodoo.



Links:

Award-winning new documentary on fracking and the oil and gas industry, which is coming to mess with PA very soon: Gasland (screening in Philly on April 10).

CAN YOU DO THIS WITH YOUR TAP WATER? from JOSHFOX on Vimeo.

Democratic candidate Joe Hoeffel is the only candidate in the Pennsylvania Governor's race to call for a moratorium on gas drilling/fracking wells. (New York already has, considering it far too dangerous.) His position is here.

The Oil and Gas Accountability Project at Earthworks.

And of course, love to Greenpeace, the organization that made me a liberal by canvassing my house when I was 12 or 13. The canvasser showed me photos of dead elephants and burning rainforests, and I got very upset, gave her all my allowance, and the next day canceled my subscription to the National Review. Never let anyone tell you that going door to door doesn't work.

Joe Hoeffel for Governor of Pennsylvania

"Of course I'm endorsing Joe. He's the only one who can take the heat." - Democratic Committeeman, Bucks County. It is often said that 'politics is the art of the possible.' But in my experience, I have found that there are huge differences of opinion as to what, exactly, is possible - how high are our goals and ideals, and how hard we should to fight to achieve them. There are some leaders whose definition of the word 'possible' are truly expansive, and truly visionary. And luckily for us, one of them is running for Governor this year: former Congressman Joe Hoeffel, from the township of Abington, Montgomery County, PA... and with your help and strong support, he can be Pennsylvania's next Governor. County Commissioner Joe Hoeffel is a pro-labor, feminist, pro-environment progressive who has been running against Republicans in Republican-majority Montgomery County for 32 years, beating them, and then working constructively together to forge consensus. In this, he is very rare. During his three terms in the U.S. Congress, four terms in the PA legislature, and three terms as Montgomery County Commissioner, Joe maintained a voting record that earned him a 100 percent approval rating from the Sierra Club, 97 percent from the AFL-CIO, and 100 percent from Planned Parenthood. The first bill he passed, in 1978 at age 27, instituted campaign finance reform in Pennsylvania. Joe is a principled, ethical, passionate leader who has been tireless about standing up for what is right, and because of his popularity in the Philadelphia suburbs - the 'swing area' in most statewide elections - he has by far the strongest chance to beat the Republican machine in November. Donate and volunteer today. Even donations like $20 or $50 add up - donate today. Joe needs your help gathering signatures as well to get him on the ballot... to tell your friends, to hold house parties. Early support matters the most! Joe wants to return to Harrisburg to enact policies that would fix our ongoing budget crises and imbalances in order to make our economy stronger and produce jobs, protect our forests and waterways from the ravages of gas drilling, and stop the Stupak-style erosion of womens' rights to reproductive health. Joe's policy proposals and endorsements are posted here. Please call the campaign office to help Joe or if you have any questions: 215-302-2010. Thank you! Hannah Miller

Monday, Feb. 15 in Philly: The Bills Are Too High

The Bills are Too High:
Community education and support on rising costs of gas, electric, cable and internet - our basic utility needs.
Monday, February 15th from 6pm - 8pm
Tuttleman Learning Center room 105 at the intersection of 13th and Montgomery
Philadelphia, PA
www.mediamobilizingproject.org

The Bills are Too High is a community educational event and support on the increases in the costs of basic utilities that are affecting our city and state. In a city where unemployment has climbed over 10% and nearly one and four live in poverty, paying the bills is a struggle for many of us. From electricity, to cable, gas, and internet, federal and state actions are making it harder every day for Philadelphians to meet our basic needs.

The beginning of this year marked increases as high as 40% in the electric bills throughout Central PA. Jan 2011 will see more increases for all those in the Philadelphia area served by PECO/ Excelon because of deregulation.

With Internet and Cable major companies like Verizon and AT&T are pushing federal law makers to allow discrimination of content on the internet, a move that would make the internet more expensive for everyone.

Along with this Comcast is looking to buy NBC/Universal. From past experiences of deals like this such a move means less channels for viewers and higher monthly bills.

And many people going through the winter without heat were almost kept in the cold because of a lack of funds for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP). More funds were distributed but the program is under extra stress because of the economic down-turn.

Through out the evening there will be support to sign up for LIHEAP and other utility benefits, take action to make cable and internet affordable, and a listening booth to share your own story.

The Bills are Too High will take place at Temple University Main Campus, Tuttleman Learning Center room 105 at the intersection of 13th and Montgomery, on Monday, February 15th from 6pm - 8pm.

For more information, email bmercer@gmail.com.

Fun Propaganda!

Rip! a Remix Manifesto is a great documentary for anyone who has ever downloaded anything for free and kind of wondered whether they should be worried about copyright - and even more so for mashup artists, which I didn't even know I was, but I am myself! I saw it at Argus Fest in Denver, a series of cool documentaries shown in cafes there.

Here is a great section. (can get the whole thing here):



The art of Ricardo Levins Morales:



This is one of the artists in the clip above, Negativland, who happened to make a piece on Pay TV Versus Free TV (this one's for my media justice buddies):



And if you've already watched the clip from Rip! from above, here is the Open Source Cinema animated clip:

Infrastructure Campaign Blues

Across the spectrum of those who work for progressive issues and candidates (climate change, civil rights, Hoeffel for Governor, etc), there is a special little corner of those of us who work on what I call ‘infrastructure issues.’

What we do affects the outcome, in some small way, of the rest of the fights. What we do is to try to change the framework of rules that govern the flow of money and influence and power (and, in my case, the flow of information) that, in turn, decide which voices get heard in all the other debates.

It sounds like it would be understood as important, but unfortunately, to care about infrastructure reform, or to understand why it is necessary, requires a deep understanding of how the American political system works and a desire to work on obscure issues, both of which do not often simultaneously occur. The types of reforms I am talking about span from voter enfranchisement, to media democratization, to campaign finance reform, to public finance of campaigns, and reform of the redistricting process itself.

We toil somewhat in obscurity, and these issues are generally some of the hardest to organize on, because they require fairly extensive political education. Most folks already have their issues, and at best, what we do is seen as secondary. I had been meaning to write about this for a while, but my hand was forced by the very grievous injustice perpetrated upon the American people this week by the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United. The American people – and all those who live here, citizens or not – deserve so much better than they got this week.

I work on the same floor of a Dupont Circle office building as the headquarters of Common Cause. They are my friends. Bob Edgar brings in coffee cakes for the staff. On our floor, Common Cause is known for their amazing holiday decorations.

Campaign finance reform was one of the first political causes I ever cared about, before I had even ever worked in politics or covered elections. The Media and Democracy Coalition, for whom I work, comes out of the same lineage, and I remember, after about 7 months of organizing on media reform, how amazed I was that Common Cause had managed to build state chapters – state chapters for an infrastructure campaign! It seems almost quaint, imagining a time when Americans still felt that they had enough control over their own government to go to a Common Cause chapter meeting about how to change it. It’s one thing to do that in Philadelphia, it’s another thing entirely when it comes to Congress. There’s a poster on the wall in the Common Cause offices: EVERYONE IS ORGANIZED BUT THE PEOPLE – John Gardner.

I’m an organizer, and the apathy on the part of the American populace is so overwhelming at times.

It’s become so obvious for me during the last two jobs I’ve had. In one of the jobs I had in 2008 (it was healthcare reform), everyone believed that the healthcare system sucked, but felt powerless to do anything.

Now, in my current job, everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) HATES the media, hates almost everything about it, without any limit: the crappy radio, the lack of good information on television, the sensationalism, the reality shows, the high cable or dish TV rates, the portrayals of women, the portrayals of African Americans, the portrayals of any other racial minority, of seniors, of immigrants, of teenagers, of pretty much everybody except white male serial killers or plastic surgeons wearing sexily weathered J. Crew t-shirts, the fact their local newspaper doesn’t actually tell them what’s in the healthcare bill, the fact that games from their publicly-funded sports team sucking the tax dollars out of their nearly-bankrupt city are only available to paying cable customers, they pretty much hate EVERYTHING ABOUT THE MEDIA as it is now, with the exception of the Internet, which is facing an onslaught of pressure by people who are hellbent on ruining it like the rest of the media. And even with all that, all those grievances, they still don't believe they can change anything.

That’s how people feel about the campaign I work for now. They all already agree with how messed up everything is. It’s exactly how the American public feels about money in politics. It is universally understood, the need for campaign finance reform.

So where does the transfer stop? How is there universal agreement on what’s wrong, and so little hope that one can change it? How do we go from ‘core American value’ – the easiest thing on which to motivate a group….to waking up one morning to Citizens United?

On CSPAN radio the day that CU went down, I heard a commentator say, “this decision really highlights the loss of Sandra Day O’Connor from the bench, with her legislative experience.”

Yeah.

I haven’t read the decision, but the implication of this comment was that the rest of the Supreme Court did not think that corporate campaign contributions have an undue influence on Congress.

Yeah.

I do not know how you get to be a Supreme Court Justice without understanding such a thing, but there seems to be a failure in our educational system on that point. My friend on Facebook wrote today, “it’s okay, it can be overturned, remember, Plessy vs. Ferguson was overturned by Brown vs. Board of Education.”

There is that much sorrow. It is a death, especially when you think about the minor voodoo miracle it took to pass McCain Feingold in the first place.

There was a part in Michael Moore’s Capitalism that was hard to forget. It was the part about the Citigroup memo, leaked to a reporter in 2005, that outlined CitiGroup’s political sociology about globalization. I’ve linked to it here, but I just want to highlight the point Moore made in the movie: that CitiGroup analysts truly felt that the top 1 percent of earners in America were running the country again, and that there was only one last bothersome thing getting in the way: the fact that the American Constitution still guaranteed “one person, one vote.”

We are at a time of such great flux that it is hard to see the future. In a way, there might be something very real, and very good, coming out of this (and I don’t just mean it the way my dear friends mean it: as in, you have to smack your head against the concrete to wake up and fight again, etc etc.)

In a world where the media has so fragmented and exploded, in a way that devalues the word and overwhelms the Story itself, and where political advertising becomes more openly corporate (depending on transparency law), it’s possible that we might actually have to, out of necessity, return to the good old-fashioned form of political communication – talking to our neighbors and friends. Which is what people like me - who like talking - have been hoping for all along.

It has occurred to me that political communication online now, especially on friendship-networks Facebook – where you get your ideas and news from your friends – is not really all that different from community-based organizing, or even ye olde Philadelphia ward system. The apathy and trust levels have sunk so low that this is really the last space where political communication is taken at face value. To have all of this devalued might not be a tremendously bad thing at all. We'll see. I would really appreciate any thoughts you have.

Beautiful Things from My Travels.

I travelled a lot in December, and have been greatly changed by it. I went to the Philly burbs for my brother's wedding, went to Amsterdam with a dear friend, came back to DC, then drove to Mississippi where we moved my grandfather into an old folks' home called Wellington Place...then drove to Tennessee to see my mother and sister...then went to Atlanta just to mess around.

Here are some of the beautiful things I would like to post here:

Painting: "Great Bridge, Sudden Storm at Atake" by Ando Hiroshige. There is a replica in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam because he liked it so much he painted his own version. I love this painting. If you could see detail, the little people on the bridge are rendered very expressively; they are kind of freaking out in their wet kimonos and running. It's very humorous and cute and it reminds us that, in the end, we are just little clueless fumbling human beings in a much larger universe.




















BOOK: This is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read.

It's about Paradise. I did not think that Aldous Huxley was as good as creating Paradise as he was at creating Hell. But I should have known.

I bought it at the Friday bookmarket in Amsterdam. They have a book market every Friday in the same place! It's what people do on Friday nights.






















While in Atlanta I went to the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change; there was much I did not know or understand until this trip, and it was fortunate I was there. I particularly want to read his last book, written in 1967. It also struck me how different it was for him and the SCLC organizing in Southern vs. Northern cities. (see below, a clip of King on nonresistance vs. nonviolent resistance.)




Listened to Indian music... a mix...

Listened to a lot of Miriam Makeba:



Two versions of "Wade in the Water" by Eva Cassidy:

Original gospel version:

Wade In The Water - n/a

And quite amazing soul-jazz rendition by Ramsey Lewis:



And since this post is getting a little too heavy on the God, here's a clip from Bill Maher's "Religulous," which was a hilarious movie:

Starting Anew.

Shiva vs. the self.

It has recently occurred to me that I have been grievously mistaken about the proper way to conduct a human life.

I owe an apology to many people I have injured in my foolishness. I have been blind.

I am going to fix this.

Happy New Year everyone.