Leaning Into the Great Shift: "Freedom is What You Do with What has Been Done to You."

Woman's March, San Francisco, 1/21/17

Woman's March, San Francisco, 1/21/17

Woman's March, San Francisco, 1/21/17

The Force is with me, and I am one with the Force. -- Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

"Freedom," John Paul Sartre (greatest Western philosopher of the 20th Century) declared, "is what you do with what has been done to you."

On 1/20/17, our nation's capitol city fell into the grasp of deeply disturbed men who want to drag us all into a dystopian Handmaid's Tale / Fahrenheit 451 future: anti-woman, anti-nature, anti-science, anti-democracy, anti-reason, anti-humanism.

On 1/21/17, the great cities of America (and the rest of the world) responded. In Washington, D.C. itself, at least half a million dissenters celebrated true freedom, probably many more, and certainly thrice as many as had gathered for the travesty of the previous day. Likewise, the protests in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco were bigger than the travesty of the previous day.

Marches and rallies were also held in Boston, Seattle, Denver, Miami, Houston and elsewhere across the U.S.A., as well as throughout the world, e.g., in London, Paris, Barcelona, Tel Aviv, Mexico City, Melbourne and Berlin. Millions and millions of human beings, really, at over 670 events.

Here in San Francisco, in the pouring rain, such a multitude, so many powerful women, so many brave children, so much love, so much peace, so much clarity of mind, so much rich diversity. 

This post includes some images from actions in San Francisco on both 1/20/17 and 1/21/17, and embedded videos of three powerful statements delivered at the Women's March on Washington, one from Madonna, one from Ashley Judd and one from Alicia Keys.

Remember, corporations are not people, money is not speech and 2 + 2 = 4. 

May the goddess of liberty prevail. May the patriarchy be overthrown in the collective psyche. 

May altruism and sustainability be exalted as spiritual and existential imperatives. 

May the great shift accelerate. 

May the vajra of the heart be realized in this lifetime. 

-- Richard Power

Woman's March, San Francisco, 1/21/17

Anti-Inauguration, San Francisco, 1/21/17

Woman's March, San Francisco, 1/21/17

Anti-Inauguration, San Francisco, 1/21/17

Woman's March, San Francisco, 1/21/17

Anti-Inauguration, San Francisco, 1/21/17

Woman's March, San Francisco, 1/21/17

Anti-Inauguration, San Francisco, 1/21/17

Anti-Inauguration, San Francisco, 1/21/17

Woman's March, San Francisco, 1/21/17

Anti-Inauguration, San Francisco, 1/21/17

Madonna: Welcome to the revolution of love, to the rebellion, to our refusal as women to accept this new age of tyranny, where not just women are in danger but all marginalized people, where being uniquely different right now might truly be considered a crime. It took this horrific moment of darkness to wake us the f--- up ... To our detractors that insist that this march will never add up to anything, f--- you ... It seems as though we had all slipped into a false sense of comfort, that justice would prevail, that good would win in the end. Well, good did not win this election, but good will win in the end. So what today means is that we are far from the end. Today marks the beginning, the beginning of our story. The revolution starts here, the fight for the right to be free, to be who we are, to be equal. Let’s march together through this darkness and with each step know that we are not afraid, that we are not alone, that we will not back down, that there is power in our unity and that no opposing force stands a chance in the face of true solidarity ... To our detractors that insist that this march will never add up to anything, fuck you. Fuck you ... We choose love! We choose love!

VIDEO: Madonna, Women's March on Washington, 1/21/17

Ashley Judd (reciting Nina Donovan's poem "I Am A Nasty Woman"): I am a nasty woman. I'm not as nasty as a man who looks like he bathes in Cheeto dust. A man whose words are a diss track to America. Electoral college-sanctioned, hate-speech contaminating this national anthem. I'm not as nasty as Confederate flags being tattooed across my city. Maybe the South actually is going to rise again. Maybe for some it never really fell. Blacks are still in shackles and graves, just for being black. Slavery has been reinterpreted as the prison system in front of people who see melanin as animal skin. I am not as nasty as a swastika painted on a pride flag, and I didn't know devils could be resurrected but I feel Hitler in these streets. A mustache traded for a toupee. Nazis renamed the Cabinet Electoral Conversion Therapy, the new gas chambers shaming the gay out of America, turning rainbows into suicide notes. I am not as nasty as racism, fraud, conflict of interest, homophobia, sexual assault, transphobia, white supremacy, misogyny, ignorance, white privilege ... I am not as nasty as using little girls like "Pokemon" before their bodies have even developed. I am not as nasty as your daughter being your favorite sex symbol, like your wet dreams infused with your own genes. Yeah, I'm a nasty woman — a loud, vulgar, proud woman ...

VIDEO: Ashley Judd, Women's March on Washington

VIDEO: Alicia Keys, Women's March on Washington, 1/21/17 

Alicia Keys (singing "Girl on Fire"): She's just a girl, and she's on fire/ Hotter than a fantasy, longer like a highway / She's living in a world, and it's on fire  ... 

Corporations are not people. Money is not speech. Healthcare is a human right. 2 + 2 = 4.

Richard Power is the author of eleven books, including most recently, "Cauldron Yoga, Gaian Poetics and the Way of the Ancient Future," along with the other four volumes of his "Primal Reality" series, all of which are available in both softcover and Kindle versions via Amazon.com.

For information, visit his Amazon author's page.

Woman's March, San Francisco, 1/21/17

Anti-Inauguration, San Francisco, 1/21/17

Woman's March, San Francisco, 1/21/17

Do The Math; The Tao of Reckoning

Dorothea Lange - Mother and Child, Great Depression, California (1936)

Do the math.

The poor are getting poorer.

• In a recent survey, 56 percent of Americans said they have less than $1,000 in their checking and savings accounts combined, Forbes reports. Nearly a quarter (24.8 percent) have less than $100 to their name. Meanwhile, 38 percent said they would pay less than their full credit card balance this month, and 11 percent said they would make the minimum payment—meaning they would likely be mired in debt for years and pay more in interest than they originally borrowed. It paints a daunting picture of the average American coming out of the spend-heavy holiday season: steeped in credit card debt, living paycheck-to-paycheck, at serious risk of financial ruin if the slightest thing goes wrong. -- Jack Holmes, More Than Half of Americans Reportedly Have Less Than $1,000 to Their Name, Esquire, 1/12/17

The rich are getting richer.

• The private jets of the world's wealthiest men and women are swarming the Swiss Alps for the annual World Economic Forum (WEF), which begins Monday in Davos, Switzerland, in the midst of an ongoing global inequality crisis. And that crisis is accelerating, according to a new Oxfam report released Monday: today, only eight men own the same amount of wealth as the 3.6 billion people who comprise the poorest half of humanity. Those eight men are Bill Gates, Amancio Ortega, Warren Buffett, Carlos Slim Helu, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, and Michael Bloomberg. The report, An Economy for the 99%, observes that "[f]ar from trickling down, income and wealth are being sucked upwards at an alarming rate." It goes on to describe how super-rich individuals and the massive corporations they run are fueling the inequality crisis by offshoring taxes, driving down wages, and influencing government to their advantage, and argues that the "very design of our economies and the principles of our economics have taken us to this extreme, unsustainable, and unjust point." "It is obscene for so much wealth to be held in the hands of so few when one in 10 people survive on less than $2 a day," said Oxfam International director Winnie Byanyima in a statement. "Inequality is trapping hundreds of millions in poverty; it is fracturing our societies and undermining democracy." -- Nika Knight, Just Eight Men Own Same Wealth as Half of Humanity: Report, Common Dreams, 1/16/17

And some among us are eager to inflict a great wound and then pour a mountain of salt on it.

• The Congressional Budget Office just issued a report on the likely effects of a Republican effort to repeal Obamacare immediately but keep some elements of the coverage expansion in place for two years. The numbers are staggering and suggest the GOP will find it difficult to keep its promise of an “orderly transition,” unless they deviate significantly from a prototype repeal bill they passed last year. Within the first year, the CBO predicts, 18 million people would lose insurance. In addition, premiums for people buying coverage on their own would increase, on average, by 20 to 25 percent relative to what they would be if the Affordable Care Act remained in place. And that’s just the short-term effects that a “repeal-and-delay” strategy would have. Once Obamacare’s tax credits and Medicaid expansion expired fully, the CBO says, millions more could lose insurance and premiums would rise yet again. Ultimately, the CBO concludes, 32 million more people would be uninsured and premiums would be twice as high ― again, relative to what they would be if Obamacare stayed on the books. -- Jonathan Cohn, CBO Predicts 18 Million Uninsured, Higher Premiums In First Year After Obamacare Repeal And Delay, Huffington Post, 1/17/17

There is a Tao of Reckoning.

• We must recognize that we can’t solve our problem now until there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power… this means a revolution of values and other things. We must see now that the evils of racism, economic exploitation and militarism are all tied together… you can’t really get rid of one without getting rid of the others… the whole structure of American life must be changed. America is a hypocritical nation and [we] must put [our] own house in order. -- Martin Luther King, Jr. Report to SCLC Staff, May 1967.

Corporations are not people. Money is not speech. Healthcare is a human right. 2 + 2 = 4.

Richard Power is the author of eleven books, including most recently, "Cauldron Yoga, Gaian Poetics and the Way of the Ancient Future," along with the other four volumes of his "Primal Reality" series, all of which are  available in both softcover and Kindle versions via Amazon.com.

For information, visit his Amazon author's page.