Month: November 2016

The Dan DeMarle plan for healing the nation and how to stop tyranny

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1. Actively invite more people to read actual books, as many books as possible.  Books open the world and help you see other perspectives.
2. Actively invite more people to subscribe to their local newspaper or a National Newspaper, or both.  The 4th Estate informs us and keeps our country free.
3. Actively invite more people to shop local, eat great food, often organic, involves getting to know your farmers, and producers.
4. Actively invite more people to form, and join walking/running groups.  Running or walking together provides great opportunities for community, sharing, and communication across groups and opinions. It also improves mood and decreases anxiety.
5. Actively invite more people to join knitting/sewing clubs.  Great places to sit, focus, work, and solve the problems of your world.
6. Actively invite older people to volunteer in schools, get young people to volunteer with old people.  We need intergenerational relationships.  The old have lots to teach the young, and the young have lots to teach or remind the old about.
7. Actively invite people into nature.  Hard to realize how important it is, unless you haven’t been in it for a while.
8. Actively invite people to grow vegetable gardens, or to garden.  Nothing teaches the importance of planning,  work,  and time, then planting seeds and waiting weeks or months to harvest those seeds. Then to do it again. So much of today’s life is immediate gratification. Farming and gardening are the complete opposite.
9. Actively invite people to actually vote, particularly in primaries. Politicians follow votes. When only 5% vote in primaries, they follow the needs of that 5% not what’s good for the other 95%.
10. Encourage all Americans to travel internationally.  Get people out of their bubbles to see what the rest of the world is like.  If American’s are traveling across the whole world, the US Government will need to pay attention everywhere.
11. Actively invite more people to shop at their local public markets.  See a glimpse of what the world looks like. Everyone buys food, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and all races and ethnic groups.  The Rochester Public Market is like attending the UN.
12.  Stop climate change!  Otherwise, everything else is unimportant.
13. Have national military service.  It’s very hard to armchair quarterback national security when you have family members serving our country.
14 Talk with people in person. That means go to community meetings, go to places people congregate to talk and discuss, if there is not one near you, create it.
15. Make and create art. Show others your vision of your world.  Go to art museums, see great movies, go to poetry readings, go to student art shows at local colleges.
16. Remember to count to 10 or wait 5 minutes before posting that comment, or making that comment.
17.  Give money, time, or resources to causes that are important to you.  Everyone wants money. If that is all they want, they may not be doing what you think they are. My city pound needs blankets and toys.  My food cupboard needs food.
18.  Delete fake news, let others who post it, know that it is fake.
19. Have fruitful conversations with people who totally disagree with you.
20. Give to political candidates you support, not just local, not just State, but Nationally
21. Give to organizations that do the work you wish you had the time or skill to do, such as the American for Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Planned Parenthood, etc.
22. Invest regularly in local Libraries – it’s easy – buy books at book sales, pay extra when you have a fine.
23. Get people to complete the Census, and complete it yourself
24. Know who on your street needs help, and make it a habit to help them
25. Repeat step 9 for every single election
26. Drive people to the polls
27. Get involved in the political party of your choice
28. Fight for bail reform.
29. Fight for the rights of the undocumented, and the documented
30. Read history, teach history
31. Protest what you feel needs to be protested
32. Protest loudly and zestfully
33. Volunteer at as many different organizations as you can
34. Have sex regularly
35. Be a role model, Be the person who when people don’t know who to vote for, that they ask you for advice
36. Run for office, and/or work on a political campaign and then run for office
37. Make it your business to know where the bodies are buried
38. Write, write, write, and get your ideas out there
39. Brush your teeth regularly, and exercise regularly all of this is exhausting and you never know when you will be talking to someone
40. Get to know the police, thank the police, and call them on the carpet whenever they screw up.
41. Support your military families
42. Subscribe digitally to as many quality newspapers and magazines as you can afford to.
43. Democracy dies in darkness  so shine a huge fucking spotlight on it, every chance you can
44. Fight tyranny and injustice to your last dying breath
© words originally written 11/2016, updated 6/2/2020.

Pushing Cars

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My sisters were terrible drivers. They were old enough to drive, I was not, I was in my early teens.  Since there were a number of us in the house at various times there were multiple cars.  None of these were junkers but some were second hand, often they were passed down from one sibling to another.  Now generally my older sisters were not terrible drivers. They however, had a thing about icy roads, and I remember one Spring with just  a wet road.  Invariably it seemed like once a year during those years,  one or the other would be driving with friends, and end up in a ditch.  Now my parents were not supposed to know that this had happened. But there was the car in a ditch.  Luckily my older sisters typically had older boy friends, so they usually took the job of pushing these various cars out of ditches.   However it would invariably come to their needing their little brothers’ arms, and backs.  Somehow they would get home, and round us up with pleas or bargains.  We would then slip out of the house undetected or before Mom and Dad got home.   Another of the many cars would drive us up.  Next we would be standing in a ditch, pushing a car out of a ditch, some deeper than others, while my older sisters, appeared to help push. The VW Bug was the easiest to push out.  I don’t remember any serious body damage to the cars, while except for once.  That was however how those older boyfriends could come in handy to do light car repair, or to  at the very least pull out dents.  We would then be brought home, before Mom and Dad could find out. Invariably we would be sworn to secrecy.  We actually kept those secrets.  We all had secrets, some big and some small.  It was all for one … and one for all.  Since then I have lost count of the number of cars I have pushed from ditches, and snow banks.  I hope I have taught my children to do the same.   At times however I remember those secret rescue missions and smile.

 

© words by Dan DeMarle 2016