The 99% Versus Wall Street: Stephen Lerner on How We Can Mobilize To Be the Greedy 1%’s Worst Nightmare | | AlterNet.
Savvy organizer and big thinker Stephen Lerner talks to AlterNet about how to take power back from Wall Street.


Try this:

I don’t think people are mad at somebody who invented a product or founded a company. It’s that people see that Wall Street is not productive. Their wealth and their riches, they do not come through any normal means — they come through cheating and gambling and ripping us off, which I think troubles us in a different kind of way.

and this:

You have a tiny group of people who basically are making decisions that control all of our lives. So it’s a very simple notion: why don’t we bargain with them collectively? […] If we all refuse to pay at the same time, it would put enormous financial pressure on them.

Find the whole piece here:
http://www.alternet.org/story/153541/?page=entire

Since I started using the lunar year to change years, I have to tell you, it makes life a whole lot easier for me. Try it yourself for a year and see if it doesn’t relax and re-energize some things for you.

We place a lot of psychological energy on significant times, but for me the solemn moment of reviewing the old year and renewing purpose for the new year doesn’t happen during the Christmas holidays.

I don’t have to undergo a period of deep reflection during this turbulent time at all, for me it’s fine to keep barreling through it all, with the extra zest of parties mixed in.

When everybody is thinking they have to stop for holidays and the end of the year – and then have to follow it with the dead of winter and the January depression – I’m just mid-season, still going strong.

I get quality work done during Christmas, what with two four-day weekends back to back, and everybody slacking off. The phone stops ringing, business pressures ease a little.

My goal this holiday season is to get certain projects finished – or else abandoned – by January 2nd, because that’s when I come charging out of the pen, ready to rumble, with a full head of steam and feeling sassy. I never stopped. I just enjoyed the parties and the sacred times and kept the calendar open.

The real new year for me will start in early February, close to Spring, and also close to my birthday as it happens. A time of great renewal and upward energy. That’s when I’ll relax and review the past twelve months, and hitch my hopes to the new world waiting just below the surface of the soil, getting ready to bud and spring forth.

Christmas? Merry Christmas! New Year? Happy New Year! Have a great time, and give yourself an extension of time. Go Lunar! See you in February for the real celebration!

It’s a site that Texas Disposal Systems operates under license as a landfill, but you can’t call it anything other than a ranch. And a dude ranch at that. It’s immaculate. And it has exotic wildlife roaming its vast acreage too.

Jimmy and Bobby Gregory, the brothers who founded and own TDS, take pride in having their showcase guest buildings downwind from the landfill area, and they should – the air there is purely sweet. That’s because they take most of the good stuff out of the trash before they bury it. The landfill is something like the last resort – and they never stop thinking about what else they can get out of that trash before it has to sit idle in the gorund.

Take a look at how we saw the facility.

Sue didn’t know TDS like we know them since we took the tour – she had no idea our local recycler and trash hauler was also the nation’s leader in sustainable landfill management. See how impressed she gets by the end of this second clip.

The subtitle of the article reads:

The world’s two great ice sheets are melting faster than anyone believed possible

Suddenly now, models and theories are being swept away by real evidence shown by the planet itself as all the ice begins to melt. It becomes clear just how long the process has been building. It becomes clear that when something as big as a glacier decides to show visible activity it has long been accelerating towards the speed of catastrophe.

From our Facebook entry when we posted this story last week:

no need to warm the whole planet, it’s enough to cause shifts in atmospheric currents – this causes shifts in ocean currents, and warmer ocean currents are claiming the ice from underneath. Beautiful, gripping story from Rolling Stone – nature is showing scientists how it really works – we are in the deadliest peril.
– http://www.facebook.com/georgetown350 (September 24)

And as I posted on my personal Facebook page moments later:

it’s been building for decades, now great glacial sheets are racing to the sea, one foot per hour. This is all moving so fast everyone is bewildered…I’m just dazed
– http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1716019532 (September 24)

You had best read the story for yourself. It’s a beautiful piece of writing, perhaps as befits what may turn into an epitaph for the ice – epitaph for us too maybe.

– By Ross Hunter

The subtitle of the article reads:

The world’s two great ice sheets are melting faster than anyone believed possible

Suddenly now, models and theories are being swept away by real evidence shown by the planet itself as all the ice begins to melt. It becomes clear just how long the process has been building. It becomes clear that when something as big as a glacier decides to show visible activity it has long been accelerating towards the speed of catastrophe.

From our Facebook entry when we posted this story last week:

no need to warm the whole planet, it’s enough to cause shifts in atmospheric currents – this causes shifts in ocean currents, and warmer ocean currents are claiming the ice from underneath. Beautiful, gripping story from Rolling Stone – nature is showing scientists how it really works – we are in the deadliest peril.
– http://www.facebook.com/georgetown350 (September 24)

And as I posted on my personal Facebook page moments later:

it’s been building for decades, now great glacial sheets are racing to the sea, one foot per hour. This is all moving so fast everyone is bewildered…I’m just dazed
– http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1716019532 (September 24)

You had best read the story for yourself. It’s a beautiful piece of writing, perhaps as befits what may turn into an epitaph for the ice – epitaph for us too maybe.

– By Ross Hunter

I admire him for his truthfulness, and for the principle of truthfulness that he and his team had to fall back on after their apparent defeat. Instead of spinning the event as some kind of step forward, McKibben chose to be uncertain, and this opened up his understanding of how he really felt: he simply couldn’t stand to go against Obama, and widen the Enthusiasm Gap seven weeks from elections.

So we just put out a press release saying that weâ€d failed in our mission and walked away.

And now notice how this honesty has given him uncompromising, solid ground to continue forward on:

At least for now, but not forever, and really not for much longer.

I’ve been meaning to say that what happened there when Obama turned his back on the 350 movement was a validation that we are in the first stage of victory according to Mahatma Gandhi, who famously said:

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

They have not yet started to laugh at us. It will be a great step forward when they do. Onward.

Hi Everybody

A countdown is in progress from yesterday when we started our 30-day countdown mission to get all the final details achieved for the Global Work Party on 10/10/10. It’s day 29 today, but you probably knew that right?

The event is looking really good – during the course of this week all the players unveiled their plans and the Expo has really taken on clear definition – I’ll tell you more as I gather all the notes from the team – but it’s going to be a great event, and it seems like the whole city is coming onboard.

Globally the number of locations signing up with 350.org is approaching the 2,000 mark last I looked, which is double a month ago – hard to say where we’ll be on the day but Georgetown will be part of that news for sure, so start feeling proud.

We started the 15-day public notice for HARC approval today, so our plants are happily growing offsite while we wait out the time, and sometime after September 27 we’ll install the Green Wall framework – THEN you’ll see some pictures.

We do need some more volunteers for various tasks, especially for the day itself. I know many of you reading this are already volunteers, but please take a look at the latest list and you may know somebody who’d be perfect:

http://www.georgetown350.org/volunteer

Remember, the greatest volunteer task is the one that one that everyone can do, which is to spread the word. And we’re making it easy with the downloadable flier online.

You will not want to miss this event, and neither will your friends, family, co-workers and neighbors. You can hand them a flier very easily by going here:

http://www.georgetown350.org/flier/

or to Facebook here:

http://www.facebook.com/notes/georgetown350/the-flier/124099867640265

and printing or sharing the flier to the world.

A great thing you can do is to send the pdf file as an attachment to all your friends in your address book by email AND you can recommend our Facebook page to all your Facebook friends and ask them to LIKE it. This way they can get news direct from us and you’re off the hook – EASY!

And if you’re in conversation, just send people straight to the web site homepage at Georgetown350.org and let them explore the magic for themselves.

Okay, I’ll let you get back to the weekend, more news next week, but meanwhile there’s more news daily at Facebook and the web site, so slip on over there between times.

More soon

We didn’t actually need it for this urban green wall, we could have had the whole thing free-standing. But it’s easier to work the soil and irrigation this way, using the real ground. Stay tuned for the trellis work attached to the wall next. Ready for that PARTY yet?

The full thought that makes up my title to this post came out of a planning meeting I took part in a few days ago. We are developing sustainable practices to fight the effects of climate change, and I mentioned that personally I have no hope that the human race can change its habits in time to save itself from massive catastrophe.

How then, some wondered, could I remain motivated?

Practitioners will readily understand that hope is not necessary at all for compassionate action to manifest. There was no time in the meeting to go into this, but I did post a short rallying call on the project blog the next day (proclaimed of course also to Twitter):

Lift up your hearts, because although the planet and our species are in great peril, all is not lost so long as we work constantly to seek solutions.
– Beyond Hope and Despair Lies Duty

That link will explain the project if you care – and it’s a wonderful project, another 350.org global demonstration and wakeup call. But it’s not why I’ve been so absent from this place, even though my time is consumed right now because of it.

I’ve lately started on the vajrayana by my own volition, beginning ngondro without a guru, and this has shaken up my life beyond any ability to write notes along the way. But now I think I can offer some findings.

~~~

I asked an acharya of my Shambhala lineage about this shortly after I’d begun and he supported what I was doing, but he felt impelled to tell me that I wouldn’t get very far without a living, human guru.

And I know this, but I don’t expect to get very far. Getting far was not my purpose.

From a book I was studying I had incidentally been practicing a little bit of Guru Yoga, and I found myself falling in love with Guru Rinpoche. I just wanted to be with Guru Rinpoche more. I realized that without intending it I had strayed into the vajrayana already, and I wanted to set some formality to it.

I started to practice The Dakini Heart Essence ngondro, falteringly of course, and the first time I went all the way through it and let it carry me I wept to realize I had come home.

It felt to me as if I had been hiking for several months already in the rocks and ridges of the high mountain country, on my own in wilderness with no human mark anywhere – and suddenly a makeshift wooden signpost appeared saying this is the border to the land of vajrayana. And the other side of the sign, the same rocks and ridges.

You could break a leg in such terrain, or fall an unimaginable depth, regardless of what they called the country.

~~~

It will take me another 2-3 years to arrive at the vajrayana in the Shambhala path. And the Sakyong, Mipham Rinpoche awaits my coming with boundless generosity. I don’t know if I’ll get there. My acharya doesn’t know. Many days my heart cries out for a teacher. But I feel that I can at least get on with some of the work while I wait.

When I am worthy of a teacher’s time, my teacher will appear. And if this never happens in this lifetime, it doesn’t matter. Let me tell you why.

I’ve realized in just the last few days that none of this is about me. It’s finally starting to sink in that this is about all sentient beings.

I’ve been reading a lot of commentary during this time, and the wonderful, glorious Chagdud Tulku with his heartwarming reality reminded me that no one will get anywhere (even with a teacher) without the aspiration to practice for the sake of all beings.

And this closed the circle for me.

I’ve been struggling so much to get this new thing right. There have been many days when I’ve felt pretty worthless. My ambition has run smack into my laziness and this has thrown my self esteem into ruin. I had never been accustomed to missing practice, or failing in discipline, and now I’ve seen many days when I’ve slunk off to bed without ever having practiced that day. Worthless.

I couldn’t just go back to shamatha and give up Guru Rinpoche. And I could feel the blessings in my life. And yet it was so hard to go forward.

Mama never said there’d be days like this.

But everything is karma. And wheels are made for turning. Time and tide bring new days. And Chagdud Tulku sure helps. And finally I see that it’s not for the perfection of me that I could practice, it’s for others.

It seems to me the only purpose of the path is to generate merit to dedicate to the enlightenment of all beings.

There is no other purpose.

And one can be an instrument, and pass the rain of blessings through oneself, back out into the three realms, until samsara is empty.

And so coming to the cushion and the floor, or not coming to the cushion and the floor, need not be a reflection of how strong I feel in my purpose or my practice. I don’t have to be very good at what I’m doing. Because anything I do will be better than everything I don’t do. Some merit will arise. Some merit can be dedicated to the enlightenment of all beings. If I practice.

And this has changed everything.

~~~

It turns out, then, that the title of this post applies all the way from the beginning of the post to the end, which this is

If there is merit here, I dedicate it to the enlightenment of all beings.