Thankful For You All

Native people and their friends find it a cruel irony that colonizers celebrate gratitude on a day connected with their displacement from their homelands. I've heard them wondering how a group so determined to depopulate, deforest, and pollute could be said to be thankful in any meaningful sense of the word. How is it possible to be thankful for attempted genocide? 

I'm grateful that Native people are still here, and that I've had the opportunity to hear their teachings about how to live respectfully on this planet. May we all heed their wisdom before it's too late.

If you read my blog from time to time, I'm thankful for you. You care about the war against the poor at home and abroad and likely take action to end those wars and bring justice to bear. Thank you.

If you were one of the 40,000+ people who voted for me to represent Maine in the US Senate, I'm thankful for you. You voted for a candidate independent of corporate influence, with Green values and a Green platform aimed at honoring and upholding life over profits. Thank you.

If you were one of the 1,400+ people in one of 47 states who donated to our campaign, I'm thankful for you. You expressed your confidence in our campaign's goals with resources you had, whether it was $1 or several thousand. Thank you!

If you were one of the 200+ people who volunteered on our campaign, I'm thankful for you. Without your skills and your belief that we can make a difference in our world we would not have been able to do much of what we accomplished. Hundreds of thousands of people heard our message of the need for government on behalf of people, planet, and peace because of your efforts. Thank you!

If you were one of the 20+ paid staffers on the Lisa for Maine campaign, I'm grateful to you. You gave far more of your time and your compassionate wisdom than we were able to pay you for, and you often brought your friends and associates along, too. We would never have earned 5% of the vote in Maine without your diligence and focus. Thank you!

If you are a member of my family, I'm grateful for your support, encouragement, donations (especially the in-kind donations of your expert work) and love. I couldn't have put in 14 months of concerted effort without the foundation of your love and confidence. When you said you were proud of me, that meant more than any accolade from the public. Thank you!

In this period of rest and reflection on my personal goals, my gratitude abounds. Thanks to everyone who went on working for a better world before, during, and after our grassroots campaign. Thanks to everyone who has sent me messages of appreciation for the role I played. You know for sure that I will keep on keeping on though the path is yet undetermined.

Finally, if you're a health care worker putting your life on the line constantly to keep the rest of us safe, I'm grateful for you. I'll do everything I can to stay out of your hospital so those who need medical care can receive it, and those who give medical care can stave off total exhaustion. I'm with Banksy, you all are superheros (even if you don't wear capes like they do in England).

White Privilege Amid Health Decline, Mortality Uptick Is Still A Thing This #Thanksgiving

Image credit: Distractify

White people with think racism is a problem in the U.S. -- racism against white people. Kali Holloway on Alternet via Raw Storynotes that education is a factor:

On “reverse racism,” half of white Americans overall agree “discrimination against whites is as big a problem today as discrimination against blacks and other minorities.” But the socioeconomic divide on this opinion is fairly vast. Among working-class whites, a solid majority, 60 percent, believe the tables have turned and anti-white discrimination equals that faced by other historically marginalized racial and ethnic groups. But just 36 percent of college-educated white Americans cosigned this idea. Blacks and Hispanics overwhelmingly reject the notion, by 75 and 71 percent, respectively.

Delusional thinking by low income people who have enjoyed white privilege all their lives is understandable. Their position on the receiving end of class discrimination has profound economic effects over generations, obscuring the advantages their skin color has conferred.

Source: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/10/29/1518393112

Also profound health effects, as the group of whites in the U.S. with a high school education or less now has a high death rate  before age 55, mostly from addiction or suicide. But, they lack the information to tell the difference between the effects of class vs. race. Being a passive consumer of corporate "news" is a recipe for ignorance, and that goes for watching MSNBC and NPR as well as Fox. For accurate information, they'd be better off reading the satirical website The Onion.

What they do have is plenty of misinformation blaming their plight, not on other whites who run wealthy corporations, but on immigrants, Muslims, people of color, and people with political leanings indicating they do understand the situation.

An analogous situation is the fact that in the U.S. obesity correlates with education level attained. 

While the cause and effect of studies that showed this remain unexplored, I'm willing to be that it comes down to decision making about what to eat. If corporate advertising is the determinant, then obesity will be the result. 

Also if  you are low income (which also correlates closely to education level) your low cost food options will be factory-processed carbohydrates sold by corporations, rather than fresh fruits, vegetables and protein from your local farmers.

Exploiting the suffering and confusion of low income people is nothing new. Getting them to identify an "other" as a scapegoat is nothing new, either. And the terrifying results are all too familiar.

Native people whose land was stolen and who have survived attempted genocide in North America do not consider themselves people of color. They are indigenous inhabitants of what was once a bountiful life support system -- if you knew how to respect the ecological balance of life forms coexisting in it. 

As a group native people have been economically marginalized by whites for hundreds of years, and they have the low incomes and poor health outcomes to show for it.

Image credit: theredish.com via Indian Country Today Media Network

Native people are offended by Thanksgiving myths that gloss over the theft and the genocide. They ask us not to teach our children these myths, but to have the courage as white, privileged folks to acknowledge that we were born on third base -- we didn't hit a triple.

This is hard for the white people that were born on first base to swallow. It doesn't seem fair to them that they can't afford decent health care, home ownership, or a college degree without crushing levels of debt. It doesn't seem fair that enlisting in the military is one of the only viable jobs remaining for someone with only a high school diploma. (When I say viable I mean producing a living wage, but many lower level military families actually are poor enough to qualify for food stamps.)

And they're right. It isn't fair. Corporations pay little or no taxes in these days of corporate government -- so a self-employed cabinet maker is taxed at a 30% rate to make up the difference.

So angry white people cling to their traditions and insist that Thanksgiving is a jolly family holiday with no dark side. They cling to believing that if they're struggling economically, it must be because Obama went to Harvard on scholarship. Increasingly, the more deranged among them commit hate crimes. The corporate media chalks these crimes up to mental illness. If the murderers were Black or Muslim the corporate media would call them terrorists.

I enjoy a family dinner as much as the next person. But let's not pretend everyone has equal access to the harvest feast table.