Give us your Tired your poor.....

"Undocumented immigrants have even fewer protections. Recently I heard about a drywall company in Seattle that hired undocumented immigrants and made them scale tall buildings without a safety harness. One of the immigrants fell and cracked his skull. The boss was so scared he would be reported for hiring undocumented workers that he refused to allow the other employees to call 911. He threatened their jobs. Finally one of them did call. The worker who fell lived but had serious brain damage, and a lawsuit was brought against the employer." Pramila Jayapal [We Are One America]

The term "immigrant" is often considered to be rather disparaging; a person from a poorer country settling in a richer one would be called an immigrant, but people from a richer country permanently living in a poorer one might call themselves "settlers", or speak of retiring to, rather than immigrating into, a country with better weather and lower living costs.

Everyone's foreign in America
Everyone's come here from some
foreign shore...before us lies
Glory Land...
Restore us to Glory Land...
[cris williamson from album~Prairie Road] go to the link below and click on song: Grandmother's Land and hear this short clip of the above lyrics.......
http://www.criswilliamson.com/about/music/praire_fire.html

www.weareoneamerica.org
"....the U.S. media broadcast around the globe the idea that America is a luxurious and ideal place to live, a place where you can find opportunities that you can't get anywhere else. If we advertise that America is the best country in the world, then we shouldn't be surprised when people show up...."

Recent surveys by Gallup found roughly 700 million adults would like to migrate to another country permanently if they had the chance. The United States is the top desired destination country. Nearly one-quarter (24%) of these respondents, which translates to more than 165 million adults worldwide, name the United States as their desired future residence. With an additional estimated 45 million saying they would like to move to Canada, Northern America is one of the two most desired regions. The rest of the top desired destination countries (those where an estimated 25 million or more adults would like to go) are predominantly European. Forty-five million adults who would like to move to the United Kingdom or to France as their desired destination, while 35 million would like to go to Spain and 25 million would like to relocate to Germany. Thirty million to Saudi Arabia and 25 million to Australia. [wikipedia]

************

..................I often debate anti-immigration pundits on radio and television — like Tucker Carlson on msnbc and John Carlson, who has a conservative radio show here in Seattle. When they say, “Just deport them all!” I ask whether they’ve ever tried to live a day without the services or food provided by an undocumented immigrant. You couldn’t do anything except sit, probably in a very dirty house or hotel room. [Laughs.] I also tell them Social Security would collapse without undocumented immigrants..........

******

Part of what OneAmerica does is inform people about the immigration-and-detention system. For example, after 250 detainees got food poisoning at the Tacoma Detention Center, we invited people to come and sample a detainee meal. We wanted to encourage Americans to think about what it might be like to get food poisoning while stuck in a bureaucratic jail system. Most people are horrified to learn that these things happen, but they don’t take action, because they think it’s an isolated occurrence. We’re trying to make people act on their core beliefs about how human beings should be treated. OneAmerica has worked with many clients who have had medical conditions in a detention center and been unable to see a doctor. One of our clients was pregnant and wasn’t allowed her prenatal visits. Finally, in her eighth month of pregnancy, she was released onto the street with no money. Perhaps they were afraid she would deliver her baby in the detention center. The detention industry is enormous and growing. I think that the more the industry is privatized, the way the prison industry is becoming, the more human-rights abuses we’re going to see..........

*********

The reasons people immigrate are multifaceted. More people are moving around the world today because of political, social, and economic strife than ever before. Many times it is U.S. foreign policy driving this migration. For instance, after the North American Free Trade Agreement [nafta] was passed, more than a million Mexican farmers were driven out of business because they could not compete with subsidized U.S. farmers, and undocumented immigration from Mexico rose by 60 percent. If somebody has to leave his or her home to earn a living, you could describe that as “seeking opportunity,” or you could call it “forced migration.” NAFTA talks about a “borderless world” in which goods are freely traded back and forth, but if people can’t legally travel across the border and access jobs on the other side, these trade agreements benefit only corporations, many of which relocate just across the Mexican border so they can pay lower wages.

[see entire article/interview: http://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/395/without_a_country

~~~~~~~~~~~

On the one hand we publicly pronounce the equality of all peoples; on the other hand, in our immigration laws, we embrace in practice these very theories we abhor and verbally condemn. Emanuel Celler

Stopping illegal immigration would mean that wages would have to rise to a level where Americans would want the jobs currently taken by illegal aliens. Thomas Sowell

"Revolution is not a one time event. "

today my blog is dedicated to Audre Lorde..."I am a black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet"
In an African naming ceremony before her death, she took the name Gamba Adisa, which means "Warrior: She Who Makes Her Meaning Known"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When I began watching the Egyptian protests, my ordinary life

"Dr. King’s last act on Earth, marching in Memphis, Tenn., was about workers’ rights to collective bargaining and rights to dues checkoff. You cannot remove the roof for the wealthy and remove the floor for the poor." [jesse jackson marching w/teachers and students in Wisconsin, 2011]

and
"Egypt supports Wisconsin: ONE WORLD, ONE PAIN" [see photo of source]:
http://dudelol.com/egypt-supports-wisconsin-workers-one-world-one-pain/

and MOST IMPORTANTLY!
""The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house" [audre lorde, 1984 ]


She wants her difference acknowledged but not judged; she does not want to be subsumed into the one general category of 'woman.

from poem "power" The difference between poetry and rhetoric
is being ready to kill
yourself
instead of your children.
I want this book to be filled with shards of light thrown off from the shifting tensions between the dissimilar, for that is the real stuff of creation and growth."
Lorde focused her discussion of difference not only on differences between groups of women but between conflicting differences within the individual. "I am defined as other in every group I'm part of", she declared. "The outsider, both strength and weakness. Yet without community there is certainly no liberation, no future, only the most vulnerable and temporary armistice between me and my oppression".^[14] She described herself both as a part of a "continuum of women"^[15] and a "concert of voices" within herself
Lorde stunned white feminists with her claim that racism, sexism and homophobia were linked, all coming from the failure to recognise or inability to respect difference. To allow these differences to continue to function as dividers, she believed, would be to replicate the oppression of women: as long as society continues to function in binaries, with a mandatory greater and lesser, Normative and Other, women will never be free.
In response, Lorde wrote "what you hear in my voice is fury, not suffering. Anger, not moral authority."^[13]

"A Litany for Survival

For those of us who live at the shoreline
standing upon the constant edges of decision
crucial and alone
for those of us who cannot indulge
the passing dreams of choice
who love in doorways coming and going
in the hours between dawns
looking inward and outward
at once before and after
seeking a now that can breed
futures
like bread in our children's mouths
so their dreams will not reflect
the death of ours:

For those of us
who were imprinted with fear
like a faint line in the center of our foreheads
learning to be afraid with our mother's milk
for by this weapon
this illusion of some safety to be found
the heavy-footed hoped to silence us
For all of us
this instant and this triumph
We were never meant to survive.

And when the sun rises we are afraid
it might not remain
when the sun sets we are afraid
it might not rise in the morning
when our stomachs are full we are afraid
of indigestion
when our stomachs are empty we are afraid
we may never eat again
when we are loved we are afraid
love will vanish
when we are alone we are afraid
love will never return
and when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid
So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive."
— Audre Lorde (The Black Unicorn: Poems)

The Fon creation myth is the traditional creation story of the Fon peoples of West Africa. Various versions of the creation story are told. In most the creator is either Mawu, the moon being and mother of all the gods and humanity, or Mawu-Lisa, the sun/moon being who is both male and female. In others, Nana Buluku is the ultimate creator, an androgynous deity who gave birth to the female Mawu and the male Lisa and passed the power over creation to them.

Many of the creation accounts tell of Mawu creating everything as she was carried from place to place on the back or in the mouth of Aido Hwedo, the rainbow serpent. The earth was created first, its curves, slopes and rises shaped by the winding, snaking motions of Aido Hwedo. Mountains formed from Aido Hwedo's excrement wherever they stopped to rest, leaving precious minerals inside. When Mawu finished, all of the mountains, trees, elephants and other creations left world too heavy, so she asked Aido Hwedo to coil, to encircle the earth and rest underneath to support its weight.

Aido Hwedo holds his own tail in his mouth to hold fast to the earth, and rests in the cool of the seas which Mawu made for him to protect him from the heat. Mawu's son, Agbe, now commands them. Whenever Aido Hwedo shifts or readjusts his position, he causes an earthquake or tidal wave.

[Fon is a major West African ethnic and linguistic group in the country of Benin, and southwest Nigeria, made up of more than 3,500,000 people. The Fon language is the main language spoken in Southern Benin, and is a member of the Gbe language group. The Fon are said to originate from Tado, a village in south east Togo, near the border with Benin.]

IF NOTHING CHANGES NOTHING CHANGES

march 1, 2011....Pisces Sun, Aquarius Moon, Pisces Mercury, Venus Capricorn>Aquarius 3/2!, Mars Pisces, Jupiter Aries, Saturn retrograde in Libra.
The Moon enters Aquarius early in the day, bringing our more humanitarian qualities to the surface. Venus sextiles Uranus this morning, which also favors social interactions. We aim to treat others with equality and respect - as true friends - and we find it easier to embrace change and to interact with others without fear or shyness. A taste for the offbeat is in order. There can be some oversensitivity, however, with Mercury semi-square Venus this morning - an influence that doesn't favor practical tasks that require concentration. Venus enters Aquarius tonight, where it will stay until March 27th. During this cycle, we move towards unconventionality, independence, and freedom as themes in our social relationships. Aquarius can be just as faithful as Capricorn, but it has to be on his own terms! Experimental relationships are more intriguing now. Being friends as well as lovers is important to us during this cycle. Allowing one another freedom of expression, and treating others fairly, unselfishly, and impartially, are themes now.

i'm sitting here drinking my morning coffee, pretty riled up
and if you aren't familiar with that phrase 'riled up' i've just dated myself [i mean who cares i'm 62 going on 14 anyway, what's age really??]
OR it's regional, you cross a state line, utter a cliche and no one knows what you are talking about
this happened to me in texas. everyone i said i bawled all night [of course is said that
all i do is cry] and the eyes rolled
what?!

i like this word a lot: RILED
but then i'm no feminine flower, i have no desire to keep the peace, just look good, roll over, lay down, be under-standing, patiently agree, pretend, compromise, deliver, be docile, be sweet [however i draw the line at kind]
Adj.
1. riled - aroused to impatience or anger; "made an irritated gesture"; "feeling nettled from the constant teasing"; "peeved about being left out"; "felt really pissed at her snootiness"; "riled no end by his lies"; "roiled by the delay"…
synonyms: annoyed, irritated, miffed, nettled, peeved, pissed, pissed off, roiled, stung, steamed,
displeased, not pleased; experiencing or manifesting displeasure


the purpose of this email/blog [i've yet to actually use my blog

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8Kxq9uFDes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Hill
• Hill was memorialized in a tribute poem written about him c. 1930 by Alfred Hayes titled "I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night", sometimes referred to simply as "Joe Hill".[12] Hayes's lyrics were turned into a song in 1936 by Earl Robinson.
• Paul Robeson and Pete Seeger often performed this song and are associated with it, along with Irish folk group The Dubliners. Joan Baez's Woodstock performance of "Joe Hill" in 1969 is one of the best known recordings. She also recorded the song numerous times, including a live version on her 2005 album Bowery Songs. Scott Walker recorded a version for his album The Moviegoer.

--
"the more we love, the more real we become"
"When you truly possess all that you've been and done, you become fierce with reality." stephen levine

"ring the bells that still can ring
forget your perfect offering"
"There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in."
- from Anthem by Leonard Cohen