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Wednesday, August 26, 2020
Aurora Connects, Friday August 28
Saturday, August 22, 2020
Friday, August 21, 2020
Virgo
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---------------- Virgo
La virgen,
pura como una gota de azogue,
en la cintura un cinturón de zafiros,
reina sobre la tierra mudable.
-------La vigila Mercurio
mientras ella ordena cuidadosamente
las cuentas de cornerina, de sardónica
----en la calma de la noche plena.
----------------------© Rafael Jesús González 2020
--------------Virgo
The virgin,
pure as a drop of quicksilver,
girdled with sapphires,
reigns over the changing earth.
-------Mercury watches her
as she carefully orders
the beads of carnelian, of sardonyx
-----in the calm of full night.
------------------© Rafael Jesús González 2020
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Thursday, August 20, 2020
Gaia's Lament
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“Gaia’s Lament” by Rafael Jesús González
It would seem that the fevered Earth in her delirium has generated antibodies in the form of a crowned virus to cure herself of the cancer that humankind has become upon her body. Forest fires rage on the Amazon, in Australia, in Siberia, in California, everywhere. More frequent and ever more disastrous hurricanes and floods wreak death in all the continents. The poles warm and glaciers melt. The oceans rise. Each day more and more of our relations the other animals, the plants become extinct. Humankind’s hubris has created the tragedy of the Anthropocene.
The Anthropocene is the Age of Man (humanity) the current geological age “viewed as the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment.” It is a young age by any measure given that the Earth is about five billion years old. Shall it be measured from the time of the first appearance of Homo Sapiens in Africa 300,000 years ago? Or from the rise of agriculture and the Neolithic Revolution some 12,000 to 15,000 years ago? Or since 3100 BCE with the institution of the patriarchy in the ancient Near East? Or since patriarchal monotheism with the Babylonian captivity of the Jews in the 6th century BCE? Some argue much more recent dates such as the industrial revolution about 1780, or even closer and more exactly, July 16, 1945, seventy-five years ago with the first test of the atomic bomb when I was ten years old. There is no consensus as to the beginning of the Anthropocene.
I would date the Anthropocene precisely: October 12, 1492, almost five hundred twenty eight years ago when the Europeans who looking for a short route to the wealth of India stumbled upon a portion of the Earth unknown to them.
Thinking they had reached India, they called the native people they encountered “Indians” and called the western hemisphere a “new” world, a virgin land, and immediately set out to possess it in every sense of the word, to steal, violate and rape it, to enslave and kill its people, the “Indians” they called savages. The Europeans came with two ideas quite strange to this “new” world, Abya Yala, Turtle Island, later called “America:” 1) that they held the one and single truth of divinity and 2) that the Earth belonged to humankind — and so they took the land with sword and cross forcing the native people they did not kill to convert to Christianity, most ironically in the name of the invaders’ one, abstract god’s avatar, a young revolutionary rabbi, Yeshua (from whose birth they reckoned time,) who had taught love and compassion, justice and peace.
The European invaders took the land, murdering “Indians” with the gun and the horse but mostly decimating them through the great pandemics the Europeans unwittingly brought with them killing between 10 million and 100 million people, up to 95% of the indigenous population of Abya Yala, the Americas.
Very soon following the invasion of Abya Yala and coinciding with colonization, the economics of Europe was mercantilism that held that wealth was in profitable trade regulated by the crown. With most of the native population decimated by disease and murder, the need for labor in mining, clearing forests, and large-scale farming was needed. Much of the wealth of the Americas was in labor-intensive crops: sugar cane, coffee, cocoa, hemp, tobacco, cotton and the need for cheap labor was met by the importation of slaves from Africa in the beginning of the 17th century. African people, traded for or captured by slave traders, were brought to the Americas and slave trade, its greatest cost being the intense suffering and great death toll of the enslaved Africans, arguably became the most profitable trade of the time.
Two fundamental premises of European belief were 1) that mankind was created in the image of their one patriarchal god and 2) that their god had given mankind mastery over the other creatures (including woman) and had charged him to subdue the Earth. For the European to justify the enslavement of other humans and treat them as cattle, as a commodity, they had to be made “other,” closer to the other animals decreed by their god to be mastered. So subsequently with the growth of capitalism, and especially the Atlantic slave trade, the concept of racism (the belief that some groups of humans are superior to others, that the fair-skinned are superior to the dark-skinned group) arose in the late 18th century.
Mercantilism morphed into capitalism, private ownership of production and trade independent from control by the crown. In practical terms, it means private ownership and unbridled rape of the Earth as merely a source of raw material to be extracted and made into consumable products by cheap labor, slavery in whatever form, for the profit of the capitalist (the owner.) It is the economics of empire. Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations was published in 1776. Thirteen of Britain’s wealthiest colonies in North America declared independence from Britain and the crown that same year claiming Enlightenment ideals of liberty under-mined by private greed and the possession of slaves as if of cattle. The reasons for breaking from Britain were more economic than moral.
Thomas Jefferson, writer of the Declaration of Independence, son of the Enlightenment, exemplifies the conflicted consciousness of many a European-American. In Jefferson’s “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” there is an echo of John Locke’s, one of the chief thinkers behind what was to be called capitalism, “life, liberty, and property.”
But Jefferson did felicitously write “happiness,” a state not necessarily dependent on property and wealth. And in his original draft, he accused the British king of waging “cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisp[h]ere.” A colleague, Benjamin Franklin, so as not to alienate the slave-holding colonies, struck it from the declaration.
Thomas Jefferson owned slaves all his life, and slavery remained intact. The liberty lauded in the Declaration of Independence was limited to white males of certain wealth, not for women, nor “colored” men, nor the poor, and certainly not for the slave. From its beginning, the United States of America was patriarchal, imperialist, racist, capitalist, and governed by a plutocracy. The conflict between human and property rights plagues us to this day.
The Industrial Revolution, begun in England about 1760 with the mechanization of production and intensified with the invention of the cotton gin and the development of the steam engine and then the internal combustion engine for use in mining, the manufacture of cloth and other products, and transportation, and with slavery in the southern U.S. and labor at slave wages in England created great wealth for the owners of land and means of production who would pool their resources in corporations to maximize their wealth and their power — and went about ravaging of the Earth, clearing forests, damming rivers, leveling mountains for minerals, plundering prehistoric forests in the form of coal and oil harbored in Earth’s bowels to fuel wars and more plundering. The burning of the remains of the primeval forests blackened the cities like Manchester and London combining its famous fog with its infamous smoke into smog poisoning the air and warming the atmosphere. And lung diseases and others ran rampant. This they called “Progress.”
Eighty-eight years after the Declaration of Independence, the conflicted consciousness of the young country came to a head with a bloody civil war over the issue of slavery that threatened to sunder the union. The northern states won the war over the slave-owning southern states, the union was preserved, and the slaves were freed (though their citizenship and civil rights were mostly nominal.)
I have spoken of the U.S. and England only because they epitomize the modern empire. But other European nations powered by the industrial revolution also invaded, conquered, plundered, and colonized the Americas, Africa, Asia, Polynesia, Australia. It is a history of the murder and displacement of indigenous peoples and the taking of their lands, of war, and the degradation of the Earth.
Much has been made of the “American Dream” popularly understood as the dream that anyone in the U.S. could achieve, especially by working hard and becoming successful (attained wealth) thereby, it was assumed, attaining happiness. Ironically, the term (by which he meant something very different) was coined by an American historian in 1931 at the height of the Great Depression, product of the “Robber Baron” era of the late 1800s, the reckless speculation of capitalists, and the degradation of the mid-west prairies by mechanized agribusiness creating the “dust bowl” making great poverty and waves of migration of workers. The depression was dealt with aptly by one of the most sagacious presidents of the U.S., Franklin D. Roosevelt, with radical policies that remedied the excesses of capitalism and ended with a disastrous Second World War marked by a policy of genocide of the Jewish population by Nazi Germany and the criminal act of unnecessarily dropping two atomic bombs by the U.S. on Japan seventy-five years ago.
The world war that followed was called “The Cold War” because U.S. wars were not officially declared though wars continued. The need of industry to produce for war had created a powerful economic and political interest group, Military-Industrial Complex, which the Republican Pres. Eisenhower, a general and hero, warned was detri-mental to democracy. Since the beginning of the nation, capitalism had been conflated with democracy and dissidents who questioned it were called treasonous, repressed and persecuted. One U.S. undeclared war was on a little south Asian country, Viet-Nam whose people were killed, forests were defoliated, rivers poisoned by bombs and chemicals. So unjustified, wasteful, and cruel was the hopeless U.S. war that a great majority of U.S. citizens rose in opposition and the war came to an end. There was hope of change but the reactionary element of the country came to power. The U.S. intervened in other countries, notably in Central and South America, subverted democratically elected govern-ments that questioned predatory capitalism, and propped bloody dictatorships that in the name of fighting communism jailed, tortured, killed their people, and some, as in Guatemala, committed genocide of our indigenous people. Wars, for fossil oil, all justified as “self defense,” were waged in the Middle East destroying people and degrading the environment greatly increasing pollution and heating the atmosphere.
Such is the history that brought us to now and Globalization, the development of an increasingly integrated global economy marked especially by free trade, free flow of capital, and the tapping of cheaper foreign labor markets. There is where we are and the ultimate result is slavery in its modern form and the devastation of the Earth. Even a profoundly ignorant man, one who does not believe in science or even truth, one who cannot speak without lying will sometimes tell a truth. Trump, the fascistic 45th President of the United States, celebrating the 241st anniversary of U.S. Independence Day, said that “. . . we will protect and preserve [the] American way of life, which began in 1492 when Columbus discovered America.”
That date, I maintain, marks the beginning of the Anthropocene. It is the beginning of the imposition globally of the metaphysical myth of a patriarchal monotheism that posits humankind’s mastery of the Earth, its obligation to populate it, subdue it, master all other of its living creatures.
When the Europeans conquered us of Abya Yala, the Americas, our conquerors were not only the soldiers but also the missionaries. We were forced to convert to their beliefs, our cultures, our traditions were denigrated and the new cosmology so strange to us was imposed upon us. Our myths and ideas of the divine were male and female, our cosmologies did not reduce the Earth and its creatures to mere commodities for the use of us humans. Many of our creator deities were female, most of them if not all, personifications of the Earth. We recognized our relationship to the other animals, and to the plants, and to inanimate beings, as our kindred and helpers, our teachers. Mountains and lakes and springs were holy. The Earth was sacred, our Mother, Pachamama, Tonantzin. As one of our elders, Chief Seattle, told the invaders, The Earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the Earth.
Many of our indigenous cultures were destroyed, our languages lost, our wisdom denied or unheard. Our indigenous peoples have lived for millenniums in harmony with the Earth, with our fellow creatures, our relations, the other animals and plants, and we disturbed little the natural order of things. There is much that they have to teach us. And we must learn to listen.
Myths are important; our myths set the metaphysics by which we relate to the Earth and one another. They form our reality. Even if we do not know our myths, even if we may repudiate them, they still have formed the matrix of our culture and our society and they form more-often-than-not the unconscious premises of our values and institutions that determine how we live our lives, relate to one another, to the Earth.
The greatest power of conquest of the new world may not have been the soldier but the missionary who replaced our myths, our beliefs, with those of Europe, telling us that what mattered was an imagined existence beyond death. The Earth was but a valley of tears through which we passed on our way to the beyond. And, as a friend who was related to the royal family of Hawai’i said to me of the missionaries: “They said, these wooden figures are not gods, pointed up to the sky and said, there is your god, we fools looked up, and they took all our land.”
Since the middle of the last century, the term “decolonization” has gained much currency. What it refers to is the breaking away of the colonies of the empires and the forming of independent states. But as it is being used more and more, it refers to the “decolonization” of the mind, liberation of our indigenous minds from the brain-washing of colonialism. I, of both Mexican Indian and Spanish blood (and for all I know, African) born into a traditional Mexican Catholic family, can attest to the difficulty of the task. But be assured that the conquest of Abya Yala has by no means been completed; the five hundred twenty eight years of conquest has also been five hundred twenty eight years of resistance. We have not gone away. By the same token, in this United States, the war to abolish slavery has not yet been completely won either. Our brothers and sisters of African ancestry to this day are discriminated against and murdered at the hands of the police. The virulence of racism is much ingrained in the culture of the nation, inherited from colonialism and the economics of empire. It is a sickness that, like patriarchy, must be overcome.
I have painted with a broad and select brush a history complex and nuanced. (I will leave it to a Howard Zinn to tell the history that I have not touched upon.) I have focused on the United States of America because that is where I was born and live and because it is the foremost modern empire. I recognize that many of our European brothers and sisters who came to these shores and many of their descendants have been and are of good consciousness and have struggled and do struggle to create a world that is compassionate and just and honors the Earth that holds it. It has always been so since the “discovery of a new World” with such as Fray Bartolomé de las Casas and gains have gradually been made to make democracy in the Americas. In the U.S. in my mother’s lifetime women gained the right to vote. In my lifetime our brothers and sisters of African descent gained their civil rights even in the former “slave states” of the South where racism has been most virulent. The right of labor to organize has been a continual struggle with gains to be counted. Gains, too, have been made by our brothers/sisters who differ from the traditional norms in sexuality and gender. Much of those gains have been at great cost of struggle and pain to be sure and we have our martyrs, foremost among them the great visionary and prophet Martin Luther King Jr. (whose dream, by the way, shares many of the elements of “The American Dream” of the historian who coined the term.) Martin Luther King Jr. was a man of the cloth who understood and followed the teachings of Yeshua of Nazareth. His was very much a theology of liberation.
I write in the isolation forced upon me by the threat of a deadly disease made even more deadly by the policies of a government headed by men who have dropped all pretense of democracy or justice or compassion, indeed of decency — the poisonous bloom of unbridled capitalism, fascists. The policies of capitalist empire have torn the world with continuous war and concentrated the wealth in the hands of a few creating famine and violence for the many. The effects of reckless violation of the Earth has caused her to become feverish and changed her climate. Great numbers of our brothers and sisters are displaced fleeing violence and poverty and homes devastated by the effects of that climate change. They come to seek asylum to the borders of the wealthy nations whose policies are the very cause of their fleeing only to be jailed and their children caged. My heart is often heavy and I struggle with sadness. (Yes, and with rage.)
But also there is great awakening and my brothers and sisters of good heart and consciousness flood the streets at great risk of infection to demand justice for our African American brothers and sisters and for everyone and for protection of the Earth. They are met with violence, guns and tear gas and clubs by the military sent by the fascist POTUS Trump — day after day. And my brothers and sisters protesting make my heart glad and hopeful and proud. And we make our revolution of mind and of heart for justice rooted in compassion, for peace, for the Earth, for life. But the violence directed against them by federal military and by local police promises a repressive police state and makes me sick with fear as POTUS 45 and his party openly undermine the coming elections. We must continue to take to the streets in protest.
On occasion I don my mask and walk in the ‘hood. It makes me sad to see my neighbors masked and careful to keep their distance, see their smiles only in their eyes. To us human mammals accustomed to the pack, for whom the first communication is the touch, to be denied the kiss, the embrace, even the shaking of hands is a violation of our nature. I wonder what effect it will have on those of us who survive, on our children, our species. But it is summer and the sun is bright, the flowers a riot of color and of scent, and the bees go about their business, butterflies flit about, the birds fly and sing. The Earth and the life she bears are beautiful and precious beyond measure — our revolution is
of fierce love that must at all costs prevail. Now.
Rafael Jesús González
Berkeley, California August 2020
Dragonfly Press, DNA Ezine August 2020
author's copyrights
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.
~ Howard Zinn
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Tuesday, August 18, 2020
Make America Great Again — let's go back to before 100 years ago: Women Suffrage ratified August 18, 1920
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19th Amendment to the US Constitution —
Women Suffrage approved by Congress 6/4/1919
ratified 8/18/1920
- When women's suffrage was gained in the U. S. in 1920, my mother Carmen González Prieto was newly come to the U.S., not yet thirteen. She did not become a citizen of the United States until 1957 while I was serving with the Marine Corps in Kaneohe Bay, the territory of Hawai'i. Shorty after she died at the age of 86, while I was visiting my brothers in El Paso, I accompanied them to vote; everyone at the voting place asked where Mrs. Carmen González was; they had never known her to miss voting since she became a U. S. citizen. (She always voted Democrat.)
— Rafael Jesús González
19th Amendment to the US Constitution —
Women Suffrage
by Deborah Tutnauer
(2010)
This is the story of our Mothers and Grandmothers who lived only 90 years ago.
Remember, it was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote.
The women were innocent and defenseless, but they were jailed nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for the vote. And by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of 'obstructing sidewalk traffic.'
(Lucy Burns)They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above
her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for
air.
(Dora Lewis)They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against
an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought
Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits
describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming,
pinching, twisting and kicking the women.
Thus unfolded the 'Night of Terror' on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at
the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson
to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket
Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right to vote. For weeks, the
women's only water came from an open pail. Their food--all of it
colorless slop--was infested with worms.
(Alice Paul)When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press. So, refresh my memory.. Some women won't vote this year because - why, exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work? Our vote doesn't matter? It's raining?
(Mrs. Pauline Adams in the prison garb she wore while serving a sixty-day sentence.)
Last week, I went to a sparsely attended screening of HBO's new movie
'Iron Jawed Angels.' It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women
waged so that I could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my
say. I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder.
(Miss Edith Ainge, of Jamestown , New York )All these years later, voter registration is still my passion. But
the actual act of voting had become less personal for me, more rote.
Frankly, voting often felt more like an obligation than a privilege.
Sometimes it was inconvenient.
(Berthe Arnold, CSU graduate)My friend Wendy, who is my age and studied women's history, saw the HBO movie, too. When she stopped by my desk to talk about it, she looked angry. She was--with herself. 'One thought kept coming back to me as I watched that movie,' she said. 'What would those women think of the way I use, or don't use, my right to vote? All of us take it for granted now, not just younger women, but those of us who did seek to learn.' The right to vote, she said, had become valuable to her 'all over again.' HBO released the movie on video and DVD . I wish all history, social studies and government teachers would include the movie in their curriculum I want it shown on Bunco night, too, and anywhere else women gather. I realize this isn't our usual idea of socializing, but we are not voting in the numbers that we should be, and I think a little shock therapy is in order.
(Conferring
over ratification [of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution] at
[National Woman's Party] headquarters, Jackson Pl [ace] [ Washington ,
D.C. ]. L-R Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Mrs. Abby Scott Baker, Anita Pollitzer,
Alice Paul, Florence Boeckel, Mabel Vernon (standing, right))It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn't make her crazy. The doctor admonished the men: 'Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity.' Please, if you are so inclined, pass this on to all the women you know. ?We need to get out and vote and use this right that was fought so hard for by these very courageous women. Whether you vote democratic, republican or independent party - remember to vote.
(Helena
Hill Weed, Norwalk , Conn. Serving 3 day sentence in D.C. prison for
carrying banner, 'Governments derive their just powers from the consent
of the governed.')
History is being made.
-------------------by Deborah Tutnauer
(2010)
The Declaration of Sentiments
Seneca Falls, New York, 1848
(Source: U.S. Dept. of State)
The
Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions was drafted by Elizabeth Cady
Stanton for the women's rights convention at Seneca Falls, New York in
1848. Based on the American Declaration of Independence, the Sentiments
demanded equality with men before the law, in education and employment.
Here, too, was the first pronouncement demanding that women be given the
right to vote.
Sentiments
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one
portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a
position different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one
to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent
respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the
causes that impel them to such a course.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are
created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit
of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted,
deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever
any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the
right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to
insist upon the institution of a new government, laying its foundation
on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them
shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should
not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all
experience has shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while
evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms
to which they were accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and
usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to
reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their duty to throw off such
government and to provide new guards for their future security. Such
has been the patient sufferance of the women under this government, and
such is now the necessity which constrains them to demand the equal
station to which they are entitled.
The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations
on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the
establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts
be submitted to a candid world.
He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the
elective franchise.
He has compelled her to submit to law in the formation of which she had
no voice.
He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and
degraded men, both natives and foreigners.
Having deprived her of this first right as a citizen, the elective
franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of
legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides.
He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead. He has
taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns.
He has made her morally, an irresponsible being, as she can commit many
crimes with impunity, provided they be done in the presence of her
husband. In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise
obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her
master-the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty and to
administer chastisement.
He has so framed the laws of divorce, as to what shall be the proper
causes and, in case of separation, to whom the guardianship of the
children shall be given, as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of
the women-the law, in all cases, going upon a false supposition of the
supremacy of man and giving all power into his hands.
After depriving her of all rights as a married woman, if single and the
owner of property, he has taxed her to support a government which
recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it.
He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those
she is permitted to follow, she receives but a scanty remuneration. He
closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction which he
considers most honorable to himself. As a teacher of theology, medicine,
or law, she is not known.
He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education, all
colleges being closed against her.
He allows her in church, as well as state, but a subordinate position,
claiming apostolic authority for her exclusion from the ministry, and,
with some exceptions, from any public participation in the affairs of
the church.
He has created a false public sentiment by giving to the world a
different code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies
which exclude women from society are not only tolerated but deemed of
little account in man.
He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his
right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her
conscience and to her God.
He has endeavored, in every way that he could, to destroy her confidence
in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing
to lead a dependent and abject life.
Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half the people of
this country, their social and religious degradation, in view of the
unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves
aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred
rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights
and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States.
In entering upon the great work before us, we anticipate no small amount
of misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule; but we shall use
every instrumentality within our power to effect our object. We shall
employ agents, circulate tracts, petition the state and national
legislatures, and endeavor to enlist the pulpit and the press in our
behalf. We hope this Convention will be followed by a series of
conventions embracing every part of the country.
Resolutions
Whereas, the great precept of nature is conceded to be that “man shall
pursue his own true and substantial happiness.” Blackstone in his
Commentaries remarks that this law of nature, being coeval with mankind
and dictated by God himself, is, of course, superior in obligation to
any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries and at all
times; no human laws are of any validity if contrary to this, and such
of them as are valid derive all their force, and all their validity, and
all their authority, mediately and immediately, from this original;
therefore,
Resolved, That such laws as conflict, in any way, with the true and
substantial happiness of woman, are contrary to the great precept of
nature and of no validity, for this is superior in obligation to any
other.
Resolved, that all laws which prevent woman from occupying such a
station in society as her conscience shall dictate, or which place her
in a position inferior to that of man, are contrary to the great precept
of nature and therefore of no force or authority.
Resolved, that woman is man's equal, was intended to be so by the
Creator, and the highest good of the race demands that she should be
recognized as such.
Resolved, that the women of this country ought to be enlightened in
regard to the laws under which they live, that they may no longer
publish their degradation by declaring themselves satisfied with their
present position, nor their ignorance, by asserting that they have all
the rights they want.
Resolved, that inasmuch as man, while claiming for himself intellectual
superiority, does accord to woman moral superiority, it is preeminently
his duty to encourage her to speak and teach, as she has an opportunity,
in all religious assemblies.
Resolved, that the same amount of virtue, delicacy, and refinement of
behavior that is required of woman in the social state also be required
of man, and the same transgressions should be visited with equal
severity on both man and woman.
Resolved, that the objection of indelicacy and impropriety, which is so
often brought against woman when she addresses a public audience, comes
with a very ill grace from those who encourage, by their attendance, her
appearance on the stage, in the concert, or in feats of the circus.
Resolved, that woman has too long rested satisfied in the circumscribed
limits which corrupt customs and a perverted application of the
Scriptures have marked out for her, and that it is time she should move
in the enlarged sphere which her great Creator has assigned her.
Resolved, that it is the duty of the women of this country to secure to
themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise.
Resolved, that the equality of human rights results necessarily from the
fact of the identity of the race in capabilities and responsibilities.
Resolved, that the speedy success of our cause depends upon the zealous
and untiring efforts of both men and women for the overthrow of the
monopoly of the pulpit, and for the securing to woman an equal
participation with men in the various trades, professions, and commerce.
Resolved, therefore, that, being invested by the Creator with the same
capabilities and same consciousness of responsibility for their
exercise, it is demonstrably the right and duty of woman, equally with
man, to promote every righteous cause by every righteous means; and
especially in regard to the great subjects of morals and religion, it is
self-evidently her right to participate with her brother in teaching
them, both in private and in public, by writing and by speaking, by any
instrumentalities proper to be used, and in any assemblies proper to be
held; and this being a self-evident truth growing out of the divinely
implanted principles of human nature, any custom or authority adverse to
it, whether modern or wearing the hoary sanction of antiquity, is to be
regarded as a self-evident falsehood, and at war with mankind.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton 1848
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Sunday, August 9, 2020
Nagasaki
-
It was on August 6, 1945, seventy-five years ago, that the
United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima,
Japan. Three days later, August 9, another on Nagasaki. We
must never let it happen again; let us work for complete
nuclear disarmament throughout the world.
With the U.S. presidency in the hands of an ignorant and
irresponsible autocrat whose cabinet is rife with war-mongers
in control of the most immense nuclear arsenal on Earth, hope
is strained. We should be terrified - terrified and in revolt.
Fue en el 6 de agosto 1945, hace setenta y cuatro años que
los Estados Unidos dejó caer una bomba atómica en la ciudad de
Hiroshima en el Japón. Tres días más tarde. 9 de agosto, otra
en Nagasaki. Debemos asegurar que jamás pase otra vez;
trabajemos por desarmamento nuclear completo en el mundo
entero.
Con la la presidencia de los EE. UU. en manos de un
ignorante e irresponsable autócrata cuyo cabinete es repleto
de belicistas en control del arsenal nuclear más inmenso de la
Tierra, es forzada la esperanza. Debemos estar aterrorizad@s y
en rebelión.
It's said that if you
fold one-thousand paper cranes
your wish will come true.
For peace I would gladly spend
the rest of my days folding.
fold one-thousand paper cranes
your wish will come true.
For peace I would gladly spend
the rest of my days folding.
----------------------------------------------------© Rafael Jesús González 2019
----
translation into Japanese and calligraphy
-by Prof. Naoshi Koriyama
Se dice que si
doblas mil grullas de papel
se cumplirá tu deseo.
Por la paz felizmente me pasaría
el resto de mis días doblando.
doblas mil grullas de papel
se cumplirá tu deseo.
Por la paz felizmente me pasaría
el resto de mis días doblando.
---------------------- ------- --------© Rafael Jesús González 2019
Summer Solstice of 1983, about a thousand of us imprisoned in Santa Rita Prison because of blocking the entrance to the Lawrence Livermore Laboratories, California, where nuclear arms are designed, occupied ourselves folding cranes from old newspapers; among us all, we made many more than a thousand to send to Japan.
El Solsticio de Verano de 1983, cerca de mil de nosotr@s pres@s en la Prisión Santa Rita a causa de haber bloqueado la entrada a los Laboratorios Lawrence Livermore en California donde las armas nucleares son diseñadas, nos ocupamos doblando grullas del papel de periódicos viejos; entre tod@s hicimos mucho más de mil para enviar al Japón.
-
Monday, August 3, 2020
full moon: moon with cloud mask
-
Me visita la luna,
me mira por mi ventana llevando
mascarilla de nube,
cuidadosa de guardar su distancia,
recelosa de tocar con su luz.
-------------------------© Rafael Jesús González 2020
The moon visits me,
peers through my window wearing
a face mask of cloud,
careful to keep her distance,
leery to touch with her light.
-------------------------© Rafael Jesús González 2020
-
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