*235,000 miles have been channelized
*More than 600,000 miles are impounded behind dams
*More than 25,000 miles have been dredged for navigation

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One of my recent photos:

Ain’t it grand?

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Poem: “haiku pusher"

Born in the glorious violence of two tectonic plates pressing against each other until the land lifts and folds over itself, mountains link the sky to the ocean floor and have fired human (and animal?) imaginations since, well...forever.

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One of my recent photos:

Serving & protecting

Since I’ve already told you how today’s occupantscan learn from the labor movement and how important it is to #occupy filmmaking, how about a union-themed movie classic as a path toward activist inspiration? Read on…

Name the best-known early 1950s film with a union theme? Easy. That would be On the Waterfront. But Waterfront was not the early 1950s film with a union theme that Noam Chomsky called, “one of the greatest films ever made...couldn’t get it out of my mind for weeks.” That would be the sadly neglected 1953 film, Salt of the Earth.

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Mixed messages

Only 3% of the Earth’s total water is freshwater. Of that, only 1% is available for human consumption. Do the math and you’ve got a grand total of 0.01% of the Earth’s total water being usable. Still, if utilized more judiciously, this amount is enough to support the world’s population three times over.

But when you consider that only about 8% of the planet’s freshwater goes for domestic use, it’s easy to recognize that global industry is the primary criminal and thus, the primary target for change.

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One of my recent OWS photos:

Expect us...

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One of my recent OWS videos:

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Rick the Cartoonist in The Occupied Times of London:

Click and scroll down a bit

Here in New York City, when Mayor Bloomberg’s private army goes on an arrest binge, the reasons range from trespassing to carrying books or food into Liberty Square (Zuccotti Park) to making signs to wearing masks to that old standby: disorderly conduct.

In other words, it’s illegal to conduct yourself in a disorderly manner.

But who’s discerning disorder from order? At Liberty Square, it’s those heavily armed folks wearing blue uniforms. The unarmed humans sharing free food, playing guitars, and setting up think tanks? They allegedly have no say in deciding what distinguishes order from disorder.

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One of my recent OWS photos:

MLK Day Union Rally

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While we can’t know exactly how Dr. King would feel about the endless parade of US military interventions, his thoughts on another brutal intercession are also on the record. The Vietnamese, he said, “must see Americans as strange liberators ... For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy.”

King then sagely and prophetically added: “We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved ... What do they think as we test our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe?”

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One of my recent OWS photos:

imagine a heart
an atomic heart so warm
it melts barricades

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My mother passed away four years ago on January 12, 2008. This experience is still teaching me previously unimaginable lessons about grief, sorrow, and loss because even in her death, my mother gave me one last, loving gift: My heart became broken open.

I fight it. Deny it. Defy it. Try to think it away but so many events in my life since January 12, 2008 keep bringing me back to the accepting that my heart is broken open—perhaps for a reason.

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Choose sides

For nearly four months, we’ve heard some version of this simplistic gripe about Occupy Wall Street (OWS): But what are their demands?

To ask such a question is to willingly succumb to the craven compliance that conscientiously cloaks a commodity culture. If only OWS would just put itself in a damn box—with a familiar, easily identifiable label, of course—it would make life so much easier for those who’ve long surrendered the capacity for critical thought.

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One of my recent OWS photos:

#MicCheck

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Courtesy of Rick the Cartoonist:

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In 1853, the future founders of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden set free several pairs of the previously unknown European House Sparrow inside Brooklyn’s Green-wood Cemetery. By picking hayseeds out of horse droppings from the carts used for funerals, these tiny birds flourished and are today one of the continent’s most ubiquitous creatures.

The moral of this story: When all they can supply is horseshit, it’s up to the us to pick out the hayseeds that enable us to not only survive…but to thrive.

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One of my recent photos:

New year, same economy

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What happened in 2008 is an excellent illustration of how system handles dissent: A black face, a soothing voice, and a vague message of change—all designed to keep rabble pacified without changing anything at all.

Best news for 2012: The rabble is no longer pacified.

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One of my recent OWS photos:

This is so not over...

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One of my recent OWS videos: