“I was so lonely and scared [when I arrived at Grollier Hall Residential School]. A lot of the kids in the room were crying. Others were wetting their beds. They wouldn’t even let me talk to my sister, who was also there at school. To this day, I couldn’t figure out why they were doing this to me.”
—Norman Yakeleya, executive director of the Grollier Hall Residential School Healing Circle.

Yakeleya was six in 1965, when he was taken from his remote home village and put on the three-hour flight to the residential school in Inuvik.

“The residential schools have become a proxy war for a whole range of problems that aboriginal communities have, that have their origin not with the schools, but with Indians’ interaction with mainstream society.”
—John Siebert, a former researcher with the United Church of Canada

Perhaps unintentionally, but Siebert’s comment in a way conforms with Dr. Roland Chrisjohn’s comments below, about the sickness being not solely tied to the children subject to residential schools (who suffer today), but profoundly with the system that produced residential schools.

A few years ago I got to interview the Pulitzer Prize Winning author Samantha Power, who wrote A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, about portions of America’s role in and around genocide. It was, by definition, a difficult, compelling, highly informative read.

Power wrote about the tireless, obsessive work of little known Rafael Lemkin, who fought for decades to bring in legislation to help increase awareness of genocide—he coined the term and sought its definition—and make governments responsible for doing all they can to prevent genocide. Ever since, the word has been a political hot-potato. Nonetheless, defined or not, the inconceivable perversity, brutality and sadness of genocide remains.

Power said:

The convention defines genocide as a systematic attempt to destroy, in whole or in substantial part, a national ethnic or religious group, as such. So the idea there is that you target a group, not because of anything the individual members of the group have done but simply because they are members of some undesirable clan—religious, national, ethnic.

MADE IN CANADA

Canada is about to have a Truth and Reconciliation Commission for victims of Residential Schools. This to me is a positive, important and necessary evolution.

However, I wonder, is it not always dangerous and self-defeating to rely on or wait for the state to cure what the state created—if this is what is happening or hoped for—whether it’s with Land Treaties or the Debt or anything else?

Of course, very few would decry useful government works: water, electricity, roads—even health care etc. But isn’t the “state” almost by definition a conglomeration of largely self-interested, powerfully backed forces that rarely offer anything more than politically expedient lip-service to those not in the sphere of influence?

Consider the brutal struggles of even the relatively organized indigenous peoples in Oaxaca and Chiapas—granted, a less democratic country. But racist policies, legalized oppression and abominations like the Indian Act—all state-created and implemented—have twisted and decimated a culture, at times, to near hopeless dependence on yet alienated from said oppressors.

Dr Roland Chrisjohn puts it this way:

“Present-day symptomology found in Aboriginal Peoples and societies does not constitute a distinct psychological condition, but is the well-known and long studied response of human beings living under conditions of severe and prolonged oppression [by the system].”

If this is true, and the system was the cause—and I don’t disagree—then in my opinion, said state/system, by definition, may possibly help through some sort of evolving justice but can never be the key to either recovery or independence, let alone autonomy or sovereignty.

Is it not true that without tribal land sovereignty, there can be no Indigenous culture? But even sovereignty guarantees nothing, except perhaps justice. Why?

Vino Deloria writes, as cited in Tamara Teale’s essay: The Silko Road from Chiapas or Why Native Americans Cannot Be Marxist (1998):

“What industrial society has done is rip us apart from the Earth so we can’t go back …

Surrounded by an artificial universe where the warning signals are not the shape of the sky, the cry of the animals, the changing of seasons, but simply the flashing of the traffic light and the wail of the ambulance and police car, urban people have no idea what the natural universe is like…there is not the slightest indication that urban man realizes that his artificial universe is dependent on the real world.”

For the first time in history, sometime in the last few years the world’s population became more urban than rural. From a population of 6.7 billion people today, by 2050 the population is projected to reach, and max out, at 10 billion people. Of that population growth, 95% is expected to be urban (see Mike Davis’ Planet of Slums).

So where does that leave the so-called indigenous way of life, in reality? I don’t know, of course.

The reality is complex in the extreme, and begs endless questions about both emotional intelligence and the survival of the species. Tamara Teale puts it this way, paraphrasing Ward Churchill as to why Indigenous beliefs are ultimately anathema to Marxist beliefs:

“…there are roughly four broad concepts which separate traditionalist Native values from Marxism: 1) American Indians can never identify with the working class of the colonizing power, 2) Native Americans can never develop a class consciousness because the ways in which they have been persecuted are fundamentally different from the industrial working class, 3) assimilation to American consumerism is cultural genocide and suicide (192-93), and, 4) a redistribution of the wealth accrued from a large-scale and systematic robbing of the Earth runs counter to the Native American world view…”

RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS

Residential schools, for those who don’t know, were set up as early as the mid 1800s and continued until the late 1980s, though they were virtually phased out by the 1970s. The process was to forcibly remove native children from their homes, ship them to residential schools (religious schools, generally, Protestant and/or Catholic) with the goal being forced assimilation—to take away their native ways, their native languages, customs etc—to ‘civilize’ them. Abysmal conditions, corporeal punishment and sexual abuse, it turns out, were in some schools frighteningly commonplace.

As many as half of the aboriginal children who attended the early years of residential schools died of tuberculosis, despite repeated warnings to the federal government that overcrowding, poor sanitation and a lack of medical care were creating a toxic breeding ground for the rapid spread of the disease…

Yet few in Canada, I would imagine, would consider what happened at some Residential Schools as genocidal. Negative, yes. Cruel, yes. Racist, yes. Ignorant, yes. But genocide?

From the Globe and Mail, April 24, 2007:

Few argue that the policy was genocidal in the Nazi sense of deliberately killing people. Rather, the focus was on killing native culture in the name of assimilation, said John Milloy, a Trent University professor.

“The purpose of the [federal government's] policy is to eradicate Indians as a cultural group,” said Prof. Milloy, who has had more access to government files on the subject than any other researcher. “If genocide has to do with destroying a people’s culture, this is genocidal, no doubt about it. But to call it genocidal is to misunderstand how the system works.”

The following two articles offer further insight, and comment on both genocide and “the system.”

An excerpt:

In his book ‘The Circle Game: Shadows and Substance in the Indian Residential School Experience in Canada,’ [Dr. Roland] Chrisjohn writes that even in its watered-down form, Canada is in violation of the CPPCG [International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide]. Residential schools were run from the 1800s to the 1990s where children were removed, by force of law, from their communities and sent to institutions run by the churches.

In the words of Scott, residential schools were designed to “take the Indian out of the Indian.”

Chrisjohn explains that under the CPPCG, residential schools were clearly genocidal according to Article Two, which defines genocide as: “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

“a) Killing members of the group; b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

“I could argue all five, but the fifth one is a slam dunk,” says Chrisjohn. “There is absolutely no way Canada can deny that they legislated the transference of children from their parents to the church authorities.”

On May 21, 1952, when Canada’s Parliament ratified the Convention, bringing it into the Canadian Criminal Code, they omitted sections b) and e) of Article Two. A further amendment in 1985 removed section d). It was around this time when accounts of the involuntary sterilization of Native women began to surface.

“They left out three-fifths of International law,” says Chrisjohn, “that specifically would make in Canadian law what they were doing to First Nations people, from 1948 until the present day, the crime of genocide.”

“It’s not a coincidence. This is all too convenient … The original two omissions correspond directly to Canada’s official policy of abducting Native children and keeping them in residential schools, where many were subject to gruesome and well-documented abuse and torture.”

That is saying something very huge, indeed, even if one disagrees with the Convention’s definition of genocide. Emotionally, I must say, even most so-called progressives would likely have good things to say about Canada—and for many good reasons—while simultaneously believing that residential schools were brutal, even criminal, but not genocidal. Heck, I am profoundly fortunate and grateful to be living in Canada.

Emotions notwithstanding, however, and whether agreeing or disagreeing with the definition Chrisjohn points out, one must concede that what happened at many residential schools clearly fits the criteria of an aspect of the international and legislated definition of genocide.

And none of this discusses whatsoever the definition of what happened to indigenous peoples throughout the Americas with the arrival of the explorers, church and conquerors beginning in the late 1400s, and the centuries that followed. Except one thing: it speaks of the “system” itself. Man, it’s tough being human.

In another article, Chrisjohn comments on “the system”:

“…we must misunderstand Indian Residential School to the extent to which we think that the pathology in the system lies within the survivors of the individual survivors of the Residential School experience. The pathology that you are looking for is not in the pathology of the people who went through the experience, the pathology is in the system of order that gave rise to that Residential School, that saw it in operation, that put it in operation, that thought it was a good thing, that patted itself on the back occasionally saying: ‘aren’t we doing well by our brown cousins?; we’re bringing them freedom and we’re bringing them into this particular world; aren’t we generous? and all they are paying for it is all of their land, all of their trees, all of their minerals, all of their water, their freedom,their language, their religions, every aspect of their form of life, that’s all they’re paying….’

“I’ll tell you. Give us back all the land, give us back the payment for everything stolen, meet your obligations under the Treaties and I will see how many of us are still sick.

Even if we are sick, we have the right as sovereign people to decide what we are going to do about it—not accept Health and Welfare Canada’s pronouncement that ‘it’s twenty sessions with a psychologist and you’re out the door, that’s it, you’re cured…

Although there is no doubt that individuals who attended Residential Schools suffered, and continue to suffer, from the effects of their experiences, the tactic of pathologizing these individuals, studying their condition, and offering ‘therapy’ to them and their communities must be seen as another rhetorical maneuver designed to obscure (to the world at large, to Aboriginal Peoples, and to the Canadians themselves) the moral and financial accountability of Eurocanadian society in a continuing record of Crimes Against Humanity.“

Painful food for thought on the journey of a Nation, and the people who live therein.

This from the John Milloy book A National Crime: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System, 1879 to 1986:

“The residential school system was conceived, designed, and managed by non-Aboriginal people. It represents in bricks and lumber, classroom and curriculum, the intolerance, presumption, and pride that lay at the heart of Victorian Christianity and democracy, that passed itself off as caring social policy and persisted, in the twentieth century, as thoughtless insensitivity. The system is not someone else’s history, nor is it just a footnote or a paragraph, a preface or chapter, in Canadian history. It is our history, our shaping of the “new world”; it is our swallowing of the land and its First Nations peoples and spitting them out as cities and farms and hydroelectric projects and as strangers in their own land and communities.

As such, it is critical that non-Aboriginal people study and write about the schools, for not to do so on the premise that it is not our story, too, is to marginalize it as we did to Aboriginal people themselves, to reserve it for them as a site of suffering and grievance and to refuse to make it a site of introspection, discovery, and extirpation—a site of self-knowledge from which we can understand not only who we have been as Canadians but who we must become if we are to deal justly with the Aboriginal people of this land.”

Lots of love, compassion, understanding, healing—and joy, dammit!

Pete

“The cinema is little more than a fad. It’s canned drama. What audiences really want to see is flesh and blood on the stage.”
—Charlie Chaplin, 1916

From PBS Frontline, a documentary about growing up on line called Digital Nation. Interestingly, those groups funding virtual reality the most (if I understood) are the military (ie the taxpayer), marketers, and the government (the taxpayer).

What that all means I truly don’t know.

But if you watch the last half hour of the film, you’ll see how clearly war video games—and video games—at least appear to have been geared towards military recruiting, the use of drones from 7,500 miles away, increased detachment to so many things one might have once considered important, or human, and other truly confusing, even perverted, processes.

What can be done today with technology is truly remarkable. And there was a sense, in at least one school, that technology was helping them learn something. But I can’t say I felt much excitement, joy or hope (overall) with the technology I witnessed watching this film. Indeed, quite the opposite. But perhaps this is my nature. My brother, for example, I am sure, would have loved it—just as some of those talking about it in the film loved it.

The war stuff was too much for me. And science, as always, continues to create with little or no sense or appreciation of ahimsa, a word used by Gandhi, which means ’cause no harm’ or ’cause as little violence as possible.’ Science seems to create and evolve as if no responsibility comes with the production and discovery. Sort of like the perverse comment: “Guns don’t kill, people do.” Yes, but certain guns are specifically produced for people to kill people, and thus, they are used for just that…

And I realize technology somehow probably, simply, has to move forward as it does today, as it has forever. I am typing on a remarkable computer right now. I know, I know. And I should smile right now—okay, I’m smiling—just to not get too heavy.

Still, the film, for me, just seemed to show (again, overall) how little we as a species have actually learned about human behaviour, addiction, and the potential for being continually farmed out by bigger, more powerful, interests. Others see virtual reality as allowing people to live however they want to—a form of freedom. A different sort of addiction, of course, but one could, in theory, say the same about drugs. By the way, I have my own addiction to information-seeking/research on line. It might sound noble, but there are problems inherent—like sadness, sometimes inertness, from too much negative, distressing information. We are, after all, what we eat. And the eyes and ears also “eat.” Swallow joy, if you get the chance. Smile. Laugh. Hug! Love. Care.

It is also not a particularly revealing film in that studies on the effects of new technology cannot even keep up with the rapid-fire changes in said technology, thus leaving the studies largely obsolete. By the time the study is complete, the technology has changed. Also, the degree of indoctrination, particularly in the area of the military and war games, seemed to me severe. But the film, I think, is still very worth watching—here.

Please write back any positive thoughts, if you really have them. I am sure my luddite-leanings, genetically, leave me missing something, or missing a lot.

Good luck. God help us, and lots of love,

Pete xo

This is a sweet conversation filmed by a friend of mine, director Jason Goode, filming his daughter, and a friend of Jason’s filming his son. The two kids are in conversation on the phone. Tell me, do our conversational skills really improve? It’s very sweet.

Lots of love to you and yours,

Pete xo

The strongest bond of human sympathy outside the family relation should be one uniting working people of all nations and tongues and kindreds.
—Abraham Lincoln

A country or even a city (Ciudad Juarez, for example) can become open for business in many ways—or at least many variations on a couple of ways. Needless to say, the world is profoundly complex. Generalizing, I mention two possible ways here which I will write about in more detail soon. My word choice and inflexion are, admittedly, a result of my bias.

One way is via an increased police state or military state of terror and repression (Haiti, over and over) of Labour rights (Colombia, right now), keeping wages low, protest oppressed, and giving, say, paramilitary protection for foreign interests to come in, pay off a few, and exploit resources and workers. Unfortunately, multinational corporations in the West rarely if ever bring with them the laws that regulate them in their original country (labour laws, human rights laws etc). Indeed, those laws and regulations are the reasons they leave—feeling they cut too much into profit, and profits are readily available elsewhere (despite the difficulty of moving). I’m making it black and white, but the math is clear.

The other way is to try to create stability through decreasing oppression and increasing the rights of workers and labour groups. This can make the country more stable, although it can be discomforting to the lock on Power of the Powers that be, and decrease external business interests (because they have to pay a decent wage, making leaving their own country less attractive). Remember, it was the perceived cut into profits because of these same enforcements (labour rights etc) that made the corporation leave in the first place.

Now I don’t deny many problems of corruption and gross hierarchy in labour movements all over the world. But labour in the general press seems to be almost entirely left out of the conversation about increasing human rights and standards of living in the developing world. This despite the fact of the vital role of solidarity and labour in increasing standards of living and human rights in Canada and the US and Europe, under brutal conditions at the end of the 1800s and through the 1900s, being undeniable (I can site endless examples).

Where did not only civil rights come from (solidarity), but the eight hour work day, a decent wage, weekends, health benefits, the right to associate etc?

For countries all over Africa, and in Haiti, the conversation among Leaders, the Powerful and the Media seems to be largely between the necessity of the free market and/or the problem of aid. Indeed, if the market is “safe” for foreign investment—regardless of domestic oppression, even in the extreme—the country generally gets a big thumbs up.

Take former President Bill Clinton, whom I strongly salute for his relentless work in Africa and, recently, in Haiti. His commitment seems to be sincere. Nonetheless, his comments on Colombia in Foreign Policy Magazine recently seem to be typical if not dangerous by what they omit. And why omit them? He asks this question about President Uribe of Colombia:

There are lots of fascinating leaders in Latin America worth studying. But I think it’s worth looking at Colombia. How has Medellín been given back to the people of Colombia? We all know President Uribe has faced criticism in the U.S., but how did Medellín go from being the drug capital of the world, one of the most dangerous places on Earth, to the host city of the 50th anniversary of the Inter-American Development Bank? I would look at that.

Fair enough. But in his praise, he fails to mention that in the area of labor and labor rights in Colombia, since 1986, over two thousand trade unionists have allegedly been killed:

Since 1986 [up to February 2008], there have been more than 2,515 documented killings of trade unionists. Many have been tied to multi-national corporations. The trade agreement would increase the presence and power of multi-nationals.

That may not be ethnic cleansing—though it may largely be people of the same ethnicity—but it clearly is ideological or class cleansing. Is that not also a crime against humanity?

And according to the NFB film The Coca-Cola Case:

Columbia is the trade union murder capital of the world. Since 2002, more than 470 workers’ leaders have been brutally killed, usually by paramilitaries hired by private companies intent on crushing the unions. Among these unscrupulous corporate brands is the poster boy for American business: Coca-Cola.

Here’s the trailer.

If you read through this interesting article from Regan Boychuk on Haiti—The Vultures Circle Haiti at Every Opportunity, Natural or Man-made—you will see more of what I am talking about. Open for business does not by any means necessarily mean anything about human rights, labour rights or a decent wage.

An excerpt:

The [American (and Canadian?) supported] Duvalier dictatorships (1957-86) killed tens of thousands of Haitians, but they also opened Haiti up to do assembly work for foreign corporations in the late 1960s. The tyrants were swiftly rewarded with a ten-fold increase in international aid—most of which was stolen or otherwise misspent, but donors didn’t much care as long as their business interests were being attended to.

Haitian workers were “closely supervised and controlled by the government”, which kept “wage rates at very low levels” – “undoubtedly… the single most important factor influencing the location of assembly industries in Haiti”, according to economist Monique Garrity.

Even the World Bank admitted the “assembly industry is largely outside the Haitian economy” and made “no fiscal contribution.”

During this experiment in sweatshop development between the 1970s and 1980s, absolute poverty in Haiti is estimated to have increased 60 per cent—from 50 to 80 per cent of the population.

A shorter version of the article is here, in the Georgia Straight.

Milton Friedman once said (and I’ve heard Clinton echo the phrase) that, paraphrasing, capitalism (or free market economics) is not sufficient for democracy, but it’s necessary if there is to be a democracy. In other words, without capitalism there can not be democracy. There is truth in that, of course, depending on definitions of democracy and capitalism.

However, I would suggest (and Milton likely never would!) that, with a cursory glance at history and present history, labour rights and worker rights—the right to organize, to speak freely—are both sufficient and necessary for democracy, because they are a huge part of a democracy. If you have one, you likely have the other.

The fight is never about grapes or lettuce. It is always about people.
—Cesar Chavez

How can anything be considered truly free market when the setting of wages, between, say, wages that would lead a corporation to break even and wages that would lead a corporation to go bankrupt, is always arbitrary? The market doesn’t choose. Between the possibilities, which can be immense, the corporation chooses. In self-defense against, say, a wage that workers see as oppressive or unfair, they fight back.

Those who fight for economic deregulation, so-called, are generally very happy to regulate wages. Being forced to work ten hours a day is a regulation. Being forced to work seven days a week is a regulation.

It is no coincidence that both totalitarian societies like Communist Russia and their oppressed satellites (Poland’s Solidarity Trade Union Movement opposed this oppression in the 1980s) and deeply fascist totalitarian societies like Nazi Germany or Pinochet’s Chile have always crushed democratically run unions. The same we see in Colombia today, in the extreme, Clinton’s praise notwithstanding.

I realize I’m not being precisely precise, but think about it. Any comments are appreciated.

Lots of love,

Pete

Look, I’m as ashamed and outraged as the next Canadian, maybe more, for a “security” cost of 900 million dollars for the three weeks of the Olympics here in Vancouver (and let’s just call a spade a spade and a billion a billion). Especially when the original cost was estimated at 175 million (which still seems exorbitant). I’ll write about this soon, among other thoughts. That kind of price doesn’t sound like security, it sounds like a military lockdown, or maybe I’m just not up on prices these days. And aren’t so many other human necessities in a democracy being cut back on these days?

Nevertheless, those sorts of economic disasters, even outrages (in a time of economic disasters and outrages) aside, there remains such beauty and wonder in the human form, in athleticism, in spirit. My friend Raul Ingles directed this gorgeous dance duet (called, perfectly, and making a point: Duet). Take a look, it will move you, surprise you, and lift your heart—and what more can one ask for in three or four minutes? It’s, well, it’s lovely.

Lots of love, compassion and joy to you and yours,

Pete

A CBC Program called The Nature of Things—narrated by David Suzuki— just did a piece called The Downside of High. The film in whole can be seen here.

Dr. Jim Van Os, a Dutch researcher, and his group, gathered together the evidence from a bunch of studies. On the use of marijuana, Van Os said:

“We found that cannabis use nearly doubles the risk of developing future psychotic states…be it isolated psychotic symptoms or clinical psychotic disorders, like schizophrenia…But we need to have a better idea about the biological mechanism underlying the connections between cannabis and psychosis.”

For kids under 16, the use of marijuana may show a quadrupled rate in the likelihood of having psychosis. Unsurprising, on one level, in that it is a younger, developing brain, experiencing the effects—and dopamine and other hormones are being triggered, perhaps in excess.

One poor kid, already sensitive and stressed, and having experienced a psychotic break, was allegedly smoking three joints a day.

What this means in actual numbers of those having psychotic breaks is not clear, but it’s still certainly worth looking into. Either way, it still remains true that 435,000 people died from cigarette related illness in 2000, and no one died from marijuana.

Further, it is clear that it is illegal to sell cigarettes to minors, yet the drug seller of marijuana (or seller of any serious illicit drugs) couldn’t care less, as a rule, what age the user is. Like McDonald’s or other purveyors of vacuous food, the younger the better, undoubtedly.

To quote one of the kids:

“When I was young, it was easier to get marijuana than alcohol. We’d just go up the street and buy as much as we wanted. Whereas liquor we’d have to get somebody to buy it for us. It was a lot of work. A lot of effort. So we’d just buy weed. It was easier.”

And host David Suzuki asks, scientifically:

“But is it possible that cause and effect are mixed up? Could getting high have been an attempt to ease the early symptoms of underlying mental instability?”

Either way, it can be, for some—causing both relief and psychosis—a vicious circle.

FROM TLC TO THC

Finally, pot, by all accounts, is intensely stronger than the marijuana smoked in the 60s and 70s. Plants grown in-house have been cultivated to have much greater THC in a given plant. THC levels were 1-3% back then, and now they’re 18-23-25%. Health Canada states that THC has increased more than 130% in the last ten years. Imagine that bump in your glass of wine. Again, wouldn’t a little regulation help, in a legalization context? I would think so, but who can say? And it sure isn’t up to me.

Oh, and get this: the program mentioned that there’s actually a part of the plant that might trigger psychosis—the THC—and another part of the plant—cannabadiol (CBD)—actually seems to help buffer psychosis in a person (and convulsions in rats!). And worse, the CBD part of the plant—as the THC has been strengthened over the years—has actually been diminished, literally bred out of the plant. Messing with Mother Nature can be tricky.

Cannabidiol is a very mild drug, and is being worked by pharmaceuticals as a hopeful anti-schizophrenic/anti-psychotic drug. Fascinating, huh?

Old, normal, marijuana used to be about 4% of each (this contradicts the 1-3% above, but perhaps it’s a study from a different country), THC and CBD. More THC results in less CBD. Today’s pot is “delivering a double whammy.”

SUPER DOPE

Evidently, the United Nations (not literally the United Nations, but people in the building) has discussed classifying this high potency marijuana as a different drug. Still, according to the program, the vast majority of people are unaffected in terms of psychosis. This is for certain, given so many studies. But seeing as marijuana-producing paranoia has been known forever, it’s not surprising to me that some, unfortunately, are more prone to marijuan-related paranoia and even psychotic breaks.

POT OF GOLD

Get this, when I was in my twenties, I always felt a little bit mentally vulnerable. Knowing that, and having heard marijuana can make one paranoid, and believing I had a fragile brain, I never wanted to try it—nor did I.

Heck, I was so gentle, the pressures of playing junior hockey gave me colitis! I eventually quit, took up guitar, and it cleared up very quickly. What a sensitive boy.

Marijuana could certainly use some regulation (and in my opinion, legalization for a multitude of reasons). When it becomes slightly decriminalized (thus, not regulated), but at the same time is becoming excessively more potent—almost a different drug—it is a dilemma. Plus, it remains underground, with criminal groups becoming even more wealthy, powerful and dangerous. Why would any average citizen want that?

The journey continues. May we all listen a little closer to our “balance point.” Oh to feel fulfilled, complete, solid, creative…

Lots of love,

Pete

This, my friends, is the perhaps latest possible tip off for an upcoming event. FACING ALI is on TV, well, tonight. I just heard. But anyway: Tonight! at 9 PT on CBC Doucmentary, so only in Canada, and you have to be a subscriber to the channel—so, yes, a few limitations. Nonetheless, it’s on here, in about five minutes. Okay, one hour and seven minutes. You can also rent it now, at your local video store, if you’re too late here.

Hope all is well,

Pete

Where progress has been made, wherever any kind of injustice has been overturned, it’s been because people acted as citizens, and not as politicians. They didn’t just moan. They worked, they acted, they organized, they rioted if necessary to bring their situation to the attention of people in power. And that’s what we have to do today.

The remarkable, inimitable and endlessly courageous Howard Zinn died yesterday, at 87. It was actually my birthday, so I will use his life of service as even deeper inspiration. Not that one person, to the average citizen, could be much more inspiring than Howard Zinn.

What can be said about Howard Zinn?

From what he did at Spellman College in the late 1950s and early 60s—standing by his wondrous black, female students, including Alice Walker, and their right, their protests, demanding to be free and treated as equal human beings. This, of course, got him fired for “insubordination.”

Being the first person to write a book demanding a complete withdrawal from Vietnam, without conditions.

His massively influential and popular A People’s History of the United States, which told me about so many heroic and wondrous figures I had never heard of. A new list of heroes!

Zinn was often attacked by the intelligentsia. Arthur Schleshinger, for example, called him a polemicist, not a historian. I doubt Howard could care less. He was writing for the so-called average person, the citizen, you, me, and those suffering and struggling so much more. He cared what they thought. He was writing the alternate history.

In his own words:

“There’s no such thing as a whole story; every story is incomplete. My idea was the orthodox viewpoint has already been done a thousand times.”

Zinn said, paraphrasing, we can’t even begin to know our history if we don’t understand what unknown people have done to change this world:

Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.

I am saddened by this passing, to be sure—and for the finite nature of a human life in a never ending journey, and grateful for his inspiration. Isn’t it funny how, despite death, how much you love, how we all love and want to love? How much life matters? How much kindness and wanting the best for others matters? I love that.

I am researching for a film on the history of labour, and I was so hoping to interview Howard and meet him for the first time. Noam Chomsky was even going to give me an introduction. So in my research, in my learning, I will with joy remember Howard’s unconquerable spirit, how small actions matter. How you and I matter. And together we matter more.

There is a heartfelt tribute to Howard here.

One last line from dear Howard, who was, evidently, countless students’ favourite teacher. Boy, we’ll miss him. And we’ll carry on trying to stand up for more justice, compassion, positive change, solidarity, humour and creative out-of-the-box dreaming, thinking and acting.

Revolutionary change does not come as one cataclysmic moment (beware of such moments!) but as an endless succession of surprises, moving zigzag toward a more decent society. We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world. Even when we don’t “win,” there is fun and fulfillment in the fact that we have been involved, with other good people, in something worthwhile. We need hope.

An optimist isn’t necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our time. To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something.

If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

Here’s to you, Howard. Thanks a lot.

Lots of love to you and yours,

Pete

I was talking with a friend of mine a few days ago about the link between suffering and art, and we were asking: is it necessary to be so flippin’ heavy? Is suffering necessary for art? Of course, some times it can’t be helped. A lot of artists have thought (or still think) that drugs, alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, coffee, whatever, are vital to creativity. Are they? To great work? Should I punch a wall? Heaven knows there’s enough pain in the world without being excessively self-inflicting. Could John Lennon have written I Am The Walrus without LSD? And was he really the Eggman? How many holes are there in Blackpool, Lancashire? Or was it holes in Albert Hall? Yes, I believe it was. And John Lennon would love to turn you on. At least that’s what he said.

I can’t remember what my friend and I concluded, because we killed ourselves after a deep depression before we could get an answer. Just kidding. I’m smiling. Hey, in fact it’s my birthday today. I’m older—45 trips around the sun—but my hopes and heart remain young.

Anyway, why is suffering and art considered compatible? Even necessary? I think one of the grand problems is the cult of personality, where actors and writers are put in this strange high pantheon in a society desperate to be distracted by glitz and story—a pantheon once inhabited, according to the Greeks, by our so-called daemon (we all have one, supposedly!). And the daemon, in some mysterious way, is the actual artist. Notice how close that word is to that word for a terrible, rotten being: demon. How ironic. Who altered its meaning? Well, demon is a term in Western religion, which may give a hint. But stuff happens, so what are you gonna do?

Anyway, in this lovely TED talk, author Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love) talks about artists (all of us, in other words, in some way) rethinking the place and meaning of their creativity, their art, their relationship to art.

There’s even a great story she tells about Tom Waits, which makes the whole presentation cooler. So remember, at every moment of sinking despair, and before, there is great beauty in you. Genius (in the meaning she gives). Words, wanting to get out. Movement, wanting to move. Kind, creative speech, looking for an ear. All kinds of wonderful, inconceivable things that science can’t explain, which is why I love life, and why I love scientists.

Lots of love to you,

Pete xox

Decriminalising personal possession, though helpful in other ways, won’t do much to tackle organised crime, which retains its grip on the market. But America’s tentative moves in the direction of legalising the supply of drugs, rather than just going easy on users, could start to change things…If California’s hippies long for legalisation, the bullet-weary citizens of Mexico’s poorest barrios are even keener.
—The Economist, November 2009

Not much more to say about the War on Drugs. Well, of course there is. But I’ve written about it, in my minimal-understanding way, dozens and dozens of times. Here’s an interesting article, and an excerpt, that I will punctuate with a few numbers and spaces to make clearer. It must be noted that this article from Mick Moore—Drugs: towards a global tolerance regime—is not footnoted, which is unfortunate, but its ideas are food for thought:

Let us not delude ourselves that the poor farmers [in Afghanistan, North Africa or wherever] who produce the drugs at least get a good income.

They don’t.

At the farm gate, prices of raw material just after harvest are very low. The price only starts to inflate as drugs cross a national border; international smuggling is a risky, expensive business.

Poor farmers receive very little for their labour. They typically live in remote, conflict-ridden areas from which the [drug] processors and [drug] traffickers exclude normal development activities like schools, road-building, banks and agricultural advisers.

The traffickers can be more confident of a reliable, cheap supply of coca leaf and poppy if [1] government employees, honest politicians and armies can be kept at bay…

…if [2] farmers have little access to alternative sources of credit [to making a living], and if they have to pay high prices to transport fertiliser or to ship bulkier non-narcotic crops [food, for example] to market.

[3]The processors and traffickers prefer that there be little economic infrastructure in producing areas. They want and create weak states and misrule. [The traffickers] finance separatist and insurgent armies [re: terrorists] to keep the government at bay…

…and [4, the traffickers] simultaneously buy off politicians, police, armed forces and customs officers.

[5] The illegality of drugs makes it rational for traffickers to lock producing areas—and sometimes whole countries—into multi-dimensional underdevelopment. The same corrosive consequences for governance, public authority and democracy are replicated as traffickers tranship [traffic] heroin and cocaine through the Caribbean, Central America, Central Asia and, increasingly, West Africa.

[6] Increased tolerance and decriminalisation of drugs use within the main consumer markets of Europe and North America would do nothing to alleviate these upstream effects of illegality in the producing and transhipment countries.

[7] We need a simultaneous shift toward a more tolerant, effectively regulated regime on both the supply and the demand side of the business.

It is no longer utopian to talk of substantial policy change within a few years. Where and how will it come about?

[8] There are clear, strong links between [continued] prohibition [as we have now] and the growing likelihood of defeat for the Western military forces in Afghanistan.

But a certain kind of puritan populism is so well entrenched in American electoral politics that it would be very hard for the Obama administration overtly to promote significant policy change, domestically or internationally.

There are no simple answers, no cures, and hundreds of thousands of personal experiences with drugs, with people on drugs, that mix up the conversation.

It’s a big topic. It effects us all more than we can know: people, friends or even ourselves with addiction; increased crime; increased health costs; increased violence; increased decimation of inner-cities, ghettoes and slums; increased and shocking incarceration rates; increased terrorism and developing country instability etc, etc.

Be good to yourself if educating yourself on the topic. It’s a stunner, to be sure. Facts sometimes run contrary to self-righteousness and morals. Then again, when hasn’t that been true?

Lots of love,

Pete