This item was on Democracy Now! on 10/30/08 and the sheer gall behind the "accusation" made me laugh aloud. The contradiction is ineffably amusing. [All emphasis mine]:

McCain Faults Obama for Ties to Professor He Once Funded

On the Republican side, Senator McCain has revived an old attack on Obama by bringing up his alleged ties to Palestinian American professor Rashid Khalidi. Khalidi teaches Arab Studies at Columbia University, where he also heads the Middle East Institute. The McCain campaign has cited few allegations against Khalidi aside from the fact that he is a Palestinian and supports Palestinians’ right to resist Israeli military occupation. Speaking last night on CNN’s Larry King Live, McCain criticized the LA Times for refusing to release a video of Obama appearing at a 2003 event honoring Khalidi.

Larry King: “Speaking of newspapers, there is the LA Times.”

Sen. John McCain: “Yeah.”

King: “They apparently—your campaign says that they’re suppressing videotape of a 2003 banquet when Barack Obama praised Palestinian activist and scholar Rashid Khalidi. What’s this all—what is this?”

Sen. McCain: “Why shouldn’t they—”

King: “Why would the paper suppress this?”

Sen. McCain: “I have no idea. If they have the tape, they ought to make the American people aware of it, let them see it and make their own judgment. Frankly, I’ve been in a lot of political campaigns, a whole lot. I’ve never seen anything like this, where a major media outlet has information and a tape of some occasion—maybe it means nothing. Maybe it’s just a social event. I don’t know. But why should they not release it? And why shouldn’t the Obama campaign want it released?”

King: “Is this Palestinian some sort of terrorist?”

Sen. McCain: “We know that at that time, the PLO was a terrorist organization.”

King: “He was PLO?”

Sen. McCain: “Yeah, yeah—that’s what the allegation is, Larry. I haven’t seen the tape. So—but we should see the tape to make it—the American people make a judgment.”

McCain went on to compare Obama’s appearance at the dinner to appearing at a “Neo-Nazi” event. The LA Times says it won’t release the tape because of a promise made to the source who provided it. Khalidi has never worked as a spokesperson for the PLO. McCain’s attack on Khalidi marks the latest in a series of efforts to disparage Obama because of real or concocted ties to Arabs and Muslims. Khalidi is a respected scholar who has called for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict in accordance with a majority of public opinion in the US and worldwide. The so-called Khalidi “controversy” also comes as a surprise in light of McCain’s own previous ties to Khalidi’s work on behalf of Palestinian rights. During the 1990s, McCain chaired the International Republican Institute when it gave several grants to Khalidi’s Center for Palestine Research and Studies.

Labels: McCain, Presidential race 2008, republicans

I'm not so much interested in the question as how many news stories are talking about it.

It's not much of a surprise though; Palin is the current golden girl because of her VP run. McCain is obviously not going to run again if he loses and all those folks from the primaries are just memories at the moment. This will change after the election, assuming McCain/Palin lose the election.

The New York Times says:

Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center, a conservative group, called it a “top order of business” to determine Ms. Palin’s future role. “Conservatives have been looking for leadership, and she has proven that she can electrify the grass roots like few people have in the last 20 years,” Mr. Bozell said. “No matter what she decides to do, there will be a small mother lode of financial support behind her.”

Unless Palin is really developing her skills, it's difficult for me to see her in the Presidency except as a front for other interests/power brokers. She may be top dog in Alaska but that is not saying much compared to a broader political stage.

The superficial similarities to the current Bush are difficult to ignore. (Although I think Palin comes by her "folksy" mannerisms more honestly than Bush.) The appeal of the "shucks, I'm just like you" factor isn't to be discounted but I don't think it really plays well in these times. Even four years from now, it's unlikely that our economy will be in great shape. The "drill, baby, drill" motto won't solve our longterm energy problems. Her foreign policy approach until now has been shallow and naive. Unless she (or her team) can work up a more nuanced approach to issues, she remains all surface and no depth. Undoubtedly, those who will try to educate her will be the Neocons.

I don't think she's stupid. It's possible she will get up to speed, particularly if she has four years to prepare, but I personally think it's a losing proposition for the GOP to go with her as the future. Just because she "galvanized" the GOP base this time around doesn't mean she's a good candidate. The longer you look at her positions and responses, the less there is to her appeal. Smiles and winks are not substantive positions.

Labels: Christian Reconstructionism, Presidential race 2008, republicans, Sarah Palin

Fierce Celt, my housemate, steadfastly refrains from investing too much in the outcome of the Presidential election. Given the outcome of the last few elections, she maintains there is no telling what will happen so why get your hopes up? I'm a reluctant realist when it comes to politics: Voters don't always have the clear say over the results on election day.

Republican political fixers certainly influenced the outcome of 2000 and the 2004 results doesn't seem all that clear either considering the numerous problems with "caging" voters and voter roll purges.

Like the X-Files tagline, I want to believe in fair elections in the USA but manipulators work hard to affect the final count. I don't mean the normal heat of elections, accusations and self-praise flowing in abundance from both camps. That's just the normal political jockeying for position and to be expected.

Our voting system is so flawed in execution that I sometimes wonder why impartial international observers don't monitor the vote counting. Electronic voting machines are still astonishingly problematic and so full of glitches I can't believe they are used at all. There is no guarantees of their accuracy and the companies manufacturing them have documented close ties to the Republican Party, something that doesn't exactly generate confidence in the impartiality of their programming.

It's obvious my cynicism is ascendant and rampant.

I just can't believe in a system that continually tries to deny access to many citizen voters. It is the Republicans who seem to have mastered the art of constricting access in their favor. No one tries to deny voters in well-off neighborhoods their franchise. It's always the poor and working class who suffer the attention of self-styled gatekeepers crying "voter fraud" to exclude them.

Democracy is supposed to be built on the basic right of citizens to vote politicians into and out of office. Once this is circumvented, we are left at the mercy of white collar thieves and professional manipulators. We lose faith in the basic credibility of the election system. This leads to a sense of powerlessness and of being helpless pawns.

In the face of my cynicism, I'm left with hope that the system isn't anywhere as corrupt as it seems. But hope isn't much of a comfort in these dark times. It feels more like a crutch, an illusion best ignored.

Yet I still hope.

Labels: cynicism, election, hope, politics, Presidential race 2008, republicans

It seems particularly lame and disingenuous for the Republican/McCain camps to cry "foul" over voter registration fraud. Despite studies that show that such fraud isn't extensive or exceptionally organized beyond very local levels, they keep hammering ACORN.

ACORN (The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), which is at the center of the current allegations, has a factsheet on the issue which is worth reading.

This Washington Post article examined the issue in 2007 during the blow-up over the Attorney General firings.

By contrast, the efforts by Republicans to exclude eligible voters under the pretext of voter fraud is both persistent and very well documented.

These are the technical tactics of politics: making sure the right people are able to vote.

Labels: politics, Presidential race 2008, republicans, voting

Another Presidential candidate debate down, one more to go. I'm left without sharp edges or persistently lingering points of exceptional import.

Living in the age of opinionators rather than analyzers, factoid reporters rather than fact checkers, we are left without clear understanding of truth. Claims are presented without contrast, without context, leaving loudness and aggression as the clearest memory.

I look for follow-up analysis and find only partisan cheerleading or carefully balanced gray reportage. All this is carefully choreographed to create the iconic representations of the candidates. War hero maverick. Calm assured diplomat. Rainbow Brite frontier woman w/ maverick highlights. (I've got nothing for Biden except experienced but occasionally gaffe-prone white guy which seems thin even to me.)

Winners of a particular debate are variously declared using specific or specious criteria: polls, style, audience, expectations. Because there has to be a winner and a loser. There are no stark contradictions. There are no lies, no misrepresentations in the mainstream reports. They leave those to be presented by the campaigns.

What would it be like if every campaign claim and counterclaim were strictly analyzed for verifiable facts? For a candidate's historical positions? Deconstruct the assertions with clarity and without bias and see what comes out the other end.

Instead we are tribes battling, shouting taunts and incoherent epithets back and forth, caught up in the identity politics and issues cleaving the body politic.

Color me blank.

Labels: debates, Dems, dog pound of daddies (and mommies now), politics, Presidential race 2008, republicans

My previous post barely touched the surface of the problems with the intersection of Palin, Dominionism and Witchcraft. At this point, however, Palin's connection to the good Bishop Thomas Muthee is relatively old news.

Moving beyond the obvious bald Palin/Muthee facts leads to the question of using prayer to affect politics. The particular worldview of Dominionism is an intensely righteous and judgmental one. There is no problem with clearly defining battle lines for their "spiritual warfare." There is also little separation between personal spiritual and secular political goals since the widespread institution of Biblical law in secular government is a central tenet.

At core, Dominionism is a profoundly anti-democratic philosophy, rejecting pluralism for a rigid and strictly homogeneous society, kept that way through intimidation and severe punishments. People who didn't conform in such a society would be harshly reformed or eliminated.

Now, Bishop Muthee's Word of Faith Church website has a number of interesting phrases. Some of this may be attributed to poor English skills but I'm struck by this one: "Our Vision: Touching lives for total community transformation thereby taking cities and nations."

"...taking cities and nations," presumably for Christ in this instance, has this conquering tone of overpowering the non-believers, converting where possible and destroying or driving out when necessary. Also of interest is what seems to be a kind of motto for Word of Faith Church: "'we preach christ crucified' 1cor. 1:23." [sic capitalization] The full passage reads: "But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness;" (King James version, here for different translation versions/comparisons.)

This is borne out in the story of Bishop Muthee driving the "witch" Mama (or Mamma) Jane out of the Kiambu, Kenya. According to sources, this was where Bishop Muthee founded his first Kenyan church. Note also that almost twenty years after those events, witch hunting and killing continues to happen in Kenya.

Muthee's website claims he has 400 churches currently. By the way, I can't find a source for Muthee's "Bishop" title since no source I've found tells if it was conferred to him by some organized hierarchy or organization. I suspect he granted it to himself.

I have to note that the details of the story of Mama Jane seem to come entirely from Muthee or his supporters. The earliest independent news story on the events is the 1999 Christian Science Monitor story. Most information on the events surrounding Mama Jane seems to come from a DVD called Transformations rather than investigative reporting.

Once again I've run out of time for this story and I admit what I've written in this post is rather disjointed. There were several other points I was going to include but I think I'll just briefly list links to connected stories I found.

"Why are intercessors sometimes referred to as armor bearers? Please explain the role that they fulfill in this capacity."

Palin's Churches and the Third Wave

Praying Down God's Power

Christian Fundamentalism Permeates the Republican Party: Sarah Palin’s links to the Christian Right

The Republicans' Subliminal Ticket: Will American Voters Be Hoodwinked?

Labels: Christian Reconstructionism, Christians, Dominionism, Presidential race 2008, republicans, Sarah Palin

Now I give lie to my previous post where I called for a cessation of Palin bashing. I sincerely think that she's not a very good focus for critical examination leading up to the election. Her flaws and lacks in relation to the VP position are myriad and are being hashed out quite thoroughly in the public arena. I think it serves little good purpose to continue to thrash her beliefs, views, skills, etc.

Yet... I still shamefully feel the urge. As a target, she's stunningly easy to find fault with. While there are some false stories floating around, there's still plenty of substance. Pharyngula has a nice post from a scientific perspective on some of Palin's beliefs.

Related is an opinion piece by Chris Hedges: "For Palin, It’s a (Christian) Man’s World". I think some of Mr. Hedges' points are a bit off, not the least being taking a starkly black and white absolutist view of Ms. Palin's denomination while accusing them of exactly that. Then again, Hedges has much greater knowledge of the subject matter than I can possibly lay claim to. I do know that Dominionism or Christian Reconstructionism shouldn't be dismissed casually. It is a very serious religious movement with strong fascistic elements. If Palin is involved in a denomination affiliated with Dominionism, that is quite disturbing.

Here's a quote from the current Wikipedia article on Christian Rconstructionism:

While many Christians believe that biblical law is a guide to morality and public ethics, when interpreted in faith, Reconstructionism is unique in advocating that civil law should be derived from and limited by biblical law. For example, they support the recriminalization of acts of abortion and homosexuality, but also oppose confiscatory taxation, conscription, and most aspects of the welfare state. Protection of property and life needs grounding in biblical law, according to Reconstructionism, or the state set free from the restraint of God's law will take what it wishes at a whim. Accordingly, Reconstructionists advocate biblically derived measures of restitution, a definite limit upon the powers of taxation, and a gold standard or equivalent fixed unit for currency. (all emphasis mine.)

Normally, of course, what a candidate believes religiously is not particularly relevant to their election and ability to serve in office. However, when the beliefs explicitly call for bringing civil law into line with Biblical law, then there is a problem for everyone. Even most Christians wouldn't want the imposition of Biblical law which includes slavery among its tenets. Read the Old Testament; the laws and punishments would horrify the vast majority of Americans. The quote above is a little evasive. Re-criminalization of abortion and homosexuality means execution for the perpetrators of these acts, not mere jail time. At least it means that if you're going to strictly follow those Biblical laws.

I have no idea what goes on the the heart and mind of Sarah Palin. I don't know enough to predict what she would do in the Vice-Presidency. Most of the info I've seen indicates she is much like George W. Bush in her certainty levels: Act first and let others deal with the fallout. A decider, not necessarily a thinker.

Personally, I think we've had enough of that kind of leadership style in the last eight years. Between McCain's quick-to-anger moods and Palin's breezy don't-let-facts-get-in-the-way-of-decisions approach, I'm not eager to see the results of their administration.

Labels: news, Presidential race 2008, republicans, Sarah Palin

UPDATE: All our cluster is out of jail, the bus is back on the street, and I’m home in my own bed! But some of the young organizers who put together food, housing, and meeting spaces for the direct actions are facing trumped up charges of conspiracy to riot and ‘terrorism’ under Minnesota’s version of the Patriot Act. This is one of the clearest uses of this post 911 legislation to target dissent. The Welcoming Committee members are not accused of actually doing any rioting—indeed, they were all in jail during the convention, nor was any physical evidence found to corroborate the fabricated statements of the paid informants who infiltrated meetings. It’s vitally important for progressives to stand behind these young people who have been targeted mostly because they proclaim themselves ‘anarchists.’ If they can be targeted for their beliefs, so can any of us. If they can be held responsible for the actions of people over whom they have no control, so can anyone who organizes a march, a rally, a civil disobedience, or a protest where a provocateur breaks a window. The lawyers are estimating that to fight their charges may take $250,000 over the next several years. Hey, that’s only 1000 people who can donate $250 each. I’ll be one of them, will you? To donate any amount, go to:
http://www.nornc.org/

And thanks again to all of you who have been so supportive and generous during this last week. Here’s my final post, my previous posts can be read at: www.starhawk.org

The Last March
By Starhawk

Thursday, September 4: This is the final night of the convention, the night that John McCain is scheduled to speak. There’s also an antiwar march scheduled to begin on the steps of the Capitol—an unpermitted march. We make our way there through a city that has become an occupied zone. There are rumors that police are blocking the bridges, that the whole city will be under curfew from 5 pm on.

We gather up our cluster—only about ten of us. The Capitol is surrounded by clumps of riot cops and the tension is throbbing as speakers on the stage rile up the crowd. Jason and Riyanna are fresh out of jail, and not eager to go back, so they will stay on a safe edge and not put themselves into danger. At least, not if Lisa has anything to say about it—she’s snapping at them like a mother dog correcting her pups. She, of course, will snap equally hard at anyone who suggests that she ought to stay out of danger. Juniper and I together can sometimes corral her enough to let us watch her back—but not always. Andy and I have been remarking about how, even though our tactic of choice is to wade into danger and stolidly obstruct it, nothing seems to happen to us. This has held true for both of us, separately and together, in situations much more dangerous than this one. Is it something we do? Will naming it jinx it? How far can we trust it?

A few people in our group are having a moment of panic. Nothing’s happened, yet, but all our intuition tells us that something could, at any moment. They decide to go back, and be our support if something does.

I’m feeling the fear, but it’s a little bit outside of me. I’m trying to drop down below it, to the calm place where I can get information, or at least, a clear hunch. Is this going to go really badly? If so, do I want to be out of it, or in it, to try and make it less bad?

There are two great instincts that war in the human breast; not sex and death, as Freud maintained, but these: the urge to stay safe, and the urge to get into the action or at least, see what’s going on.

For the moment, the second urge is dominant in all of us who remain. The march starts off, and we join it. But we’re extra alert. We’re looking for the exits and the escape routes, positioning ourselves always so there is somewhere to go.

The march heads up the street alongside the Capitol lawn, and then tries to turn across one of the bridges leading into downtown. The police move in, and block us.

There’s a tense crowd of people on the bridge and filling the intersection. Around us are police in full riot gear and gas masks. There’s also a group of bike cops, looking slightly underdressed in shorts and gas masks. They’ve brought in the Minnesota specials—a line of snowplows across the bridge. On them are perched black-masked cops in heavy leathers holding thick-muzzled rifles that shoot rubber bullets.

The energy is unfocused. Nobody knows quite what to do. It could all fall apart, in a moment, with the cops attacking the crowd, or it could remain a standoff for a long time. I am softly drumming, not quite sure what to do, when a young, African American woman with long curls and a ring in her lip comes up and says, “Do you know how to sing, ‘Aint’ Gonna Study War No More?”

I shift the beat, we begin singing, and soon gather a small chorus that forms around us. A tiny, round, young black woman in spectacles steps in front. She has a large voice, and she takes over as lead singer. The chorus grows and a space opens up in the center of the intersection, that is soon filled with riders on bikes, circling around and around, counterclockwise. A young man turns a cartwheel. A clown on stilts appears, out of nowhere, and joins the ride. Suddenly, it’s a circus in the street. The mood shifts and becomes almost festive.

My own mood has shifted, too. I’ve been practicing a more Buddhist-style meditation lately, just watching my breath in odd moments and being present to what’s happening. I’m doing that now, breathing and drumming with the bikes and the song and the riot cops, and for no rational reason whatsoever I feel a surge of pure joy.

Two of the cyclists are punk kids covered with patches and graphics that I’ve seen at spokescouncil. One of them is named Maggot, and I’ve seen him sitting with his head down, mumbling his comments which always make sense. Now he’s on a bike, his head up, smiling.

The young woman in front of me turns and taps my elbow. “Let’s sing, ‘We Shall Overcome’”, she says.

I drum and the others join hands and sing.

“We shall overcome, we shall overcome,
We shall over come, someday…”

There’s some piece of magic at work here. The circling bikes remind me of our dragon-clad cyclists from the ritual that began this week. Now, after all the pain and the ugliness, the tension and the snatch squads and the media lies, after all the arguments and conversations about violence and nonviolence and tactics and accountability, after the splits between Obama and Hillary and the fruitless arguments about which is more crucial, gender or race, it seems deeply and oddly wonderful to be asked by two young black women to sing the old Civil Rights songs of the sixties here in the face of the riot cops. As if something is truly welling up from the earth, some spirit that knows and values rage but persists in remembering the power in acting out of love.

It’s a spell. For just one moment, in one place, we sing in spite of our fear, and the violence abates.

“Deep in my heart, I do believe, we shall overcome some day.”

It’s been a hard week. We’ve seen the full machinery of the violence of the state called out to quell any semblance of dissent. I’ve seen friends arrested, beaten, shoved, nearly trampled by horses, tasered, pepper sprayed, beaten and literally tortured in jail. We’ve seen organizers targeted for ‘terrorism’ and media lies paint a totally warped picture of what has happened here. They’ve tried to make us feel powerless and afraid, and at times, they’ve succeeded.

But we’re here, at the end, still singing.
-----
Below are all of the DemiOrator posts containing Starhawk's reports from the 2008 Republican National Convention:
Starhawk's RNC post 1: On the Bad Side of Town
Starhawk's RNC post 2: Raid on the Convergence Center
Starhawk's RNC post 3: New Moon Ritual
Starhawk's RNC post 4: Police Seize Permibus
Starhawk's RNC post 5: A Spiral Dance in the Streets
Starhawk's RNC post 6: Emergency Calls Requested
Starhawk's RNC post 7: Dancing with Delegates
Starhawk's RNC post 8: Peace Island and Poor Peoples’ March
Starhawk's RNC post 9: Updates on Thurs, 4 Sept 2008
General Info about Starhawk's RNC Posts

Labels: direct action, Presidential race 2008, protests, republicans, RNC, starhawk

A recent In These Times article caught my attention: "John McCain: Dereliction of Duty" by Cliff Schecter. It's reproduced a few places but notably at the Veterans Today website.

In an election season, I have great doubts about reportage but something I find easy to grasp is McCain's voting record in the Senate. A voting record provides practical guidance about what programs McCain actually puts his vote behind or ignores. For me, it provides a counterpoint to his rhetoric and a check on his version of the truth. All national level politicians are prone to exaggerating and minimizing, promises and deliberate silences on particular subjects. It's part of the breed standard.

Here are some excerpts from the article but there's more meat to it:

Because McCain is running for president almost solely on his biography as a war hero, he can't - and won't - allow the slightest doubt to linger about his dedication to soldiers both past and present. It didn't matter that the vet simply wanted to know how McCain - himself a former soldier and prisoner of war - could oppose important healthcare legislation for veterans. In fact, he didn't even ask McCain about the GI Bill that he opposed, which had been supported by a bipartisan group of 75 senators, including Republican veterans Chuck Hagel (Neb.) and John Warner (Va.).

Most notably, McCain also testily responded to his inquisitor that he had "received every award from every vets organization."

The problem is, not only is that assertion not true, but McCain's record on veterans' issues paints a picture of a man who has been willfully negligent when it comes to providing for his former brothers and sisters in arms....

In 2005, Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii), now chair of the Veterans' Affairs Committee, introduced legislation that would have increased veterans' medical care by $2.8 billion in 2006. He also introduced another bill that would have set aside $10 million for "readjustment counseling services" - a program to provide a wide range of counseling, outreach and referral services for those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, to ease their readjustment back into society. (This program was started in 1979 for Vietnam veterans, so one would think McCain is quite familiar with it.)

But McCain - and other Republicans who are more concerned with using government funds for tax cuts for multimillionaires or for corporate subsidies to oil and gas companies - voted this effort down....

The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), the country's largest Iraq veterans' group, looked at 155 Senate votes since Sept. 11, 2001, on legislation that "affected troops, veterans or military families." It then awarded each senator a grade by comparing his or her votes to IAVA's view of what constitutes effective support for active troops, veterans and their families.

No senator received an "A" grade. Thirteen senators - all Democrats - received an "A-." The worst grade received by a Senate Democrat was higher than the best grade granted to a Republican. Obama, for his part, got a B+.

McCain received a "D."

In fact, IAVA founder and Executive Director Paul Rieckhoff says that "there has been no bigger obstacle to passage of the GI Bill than Senator McCain. Even though he'd now like to claim credit for it, he didn't even show up. He thought it was more important to be in California for a fundraiser."

Labels: McCain, Presidential race 2008, republicans, senate, veterans

While I'm sure there are plenty of critiques of Mrs. Palin, the Republican Vice-President candidate, I haven't read many of them. I was, however, drawn to About Sarah Palin: an e-mail from Wasilla because of its informed firsthand content and tone.

Assuming it is authentic (in an election season I take nothing for granted,) it provides a picture of her that focuses on her local accomplishments and the tenor of her administration skills. I prefer this kind of evaluation to more polished punditry.

What interests me as well is whether people will ignore her qualification shortcomings to support her because of particular identity issues: Anti-choice, Christian, woman, authoritarian, "soccer mom," etc.

Not the least of her apparent qualifications is her conventional attractiveness. When my mother, a dyed in the wool Republican her whole life, described McCain's pick she didn't once mention Palin's qualifications. Instead my mother described Palin: her hair, her clothes, her energy. I asked about Palin's skills and my mother brushed that aside as if it were insignificant and unimportant. I admit I was a little shocked. It seemed like a "cult of personality" attitude, except my mother didn't even know Palin's public persona well on that first day.

I'm actually looking forward to how the Republicans are going to present her and, more importantly, whether people will accept the image uncritically.

Labels: Palin, politics, Presidential race 2008, republicans, Sarah Palin

I'm a fan of well-executed non-violent actions such as the ones Starhawk often participates in. Sadly, the police remain woefully ignorant about the difference between violent and non-violent actions. Or perhaps they just don't care: a disruption is a disruption is a disruption, and free speech only belongs in a Free Speech Cage Area, far away from the convention. Preemptive action against all planned protests always seems to be the order of the day by authorities at these conventions. --DemiOrator

Feel free to forward or repost this—thanks to all who have made calls already—it really helps! We got the convergence space reopened—but the raids continue!

New Moon Ritual
By Starhawk
(Sun Aug 31 10:14:12 2008)

This is how magic works:

We are gathered on sacred ground overlooking the Mississippi to celebrate the new moon and to begin this week of demonstrations and actions outside the Republican National Convention. We have an intention for the ritual, an intention the planners have been working with here in the Twin Cities for months: to court an upwelling of earth wisdom.

Magic, we say, is the art of changing consciousness at will—that’s Dion Fortune’s definition. Implicit in that is ‘art’, imagery, poetry, and we’ve been looking for the imagery that will embody our intention. The most powerful rituals are built around one clear image and one clear intention.

But we keep getting multiple images: webs, crystals, bedrock, surging water. The hurricane, roaring toward the Gulf, back toward New Orleans where many of us volunteered after Katrina. And dragons.

“Oh please Goddess not dragons!” I’m saying silently inside my own mind. “With or without dungeons—high wince factor. Overused. Disneyesque.” But dragons it is—protective Chinese dragons, ancient earth serpent powers, water dragons, fierce, fire-breathing guardians.

Many years ago, I had a friend who lived in a group house in San Francisco. He used to say that every collective needed a dragon who lived in the basement, someone really ill tempered who will emerge from time to time and drive off those people who come to visit for a night and end up staying for a month, eating up all your sweet pickle chips and losing your bicycle.

And so, when we do ritual in a public place, we always name some people as ‘dragons’, to guard the boundaries of the circle. This ritual coincides with the arrival of a group who has biked from a conference in Madison, Wisconsin all the way to the Twin Cities. Paul has contacted them, and asked them to be our dragons.

I am having a lot of trouble shifting my own consciousness as the ritual begins. It’s been a hard, tense day. All day we’ve been getting news that the police have been raiding houses, breaking down doors, arresting people, with or without warrants or warnings. We hold the morning meeting in a public park, because our Convergence Space has been raided and closed the night before. Someone says, “We’re a community that includes children—we can’t clear them out of their own living spaces. Remember if the police raid your space it’s important to have someone negotiate with them to get the children out.”

I am a tough person. I’ve been through a lot of these things and in spite of all my efforts to stay open I’ve grown something of my own protective scales. But those words pierce through them, and I find tears welling up in my eyes. It just hits me, that we’re standing here in the United States of America, in the liberal city of my birth, talking about how to protect children from armed police.

So this is on my mind as I try to center for the ritual, and then comes the news that our PermiBus has been pulled over and our friends in it are being arrested. My own organization, Earth Activist Trainings, has helped to build and fund this bus, and our dear friends Delyla and Stan Wilson and their daughter Megan have been traveling in it for seven months, offering trainings in Sustainable Skills, and tours of the bus itself as a living example. It has solar panels and graywater systems, a worm bin, hydroponic herb garden, composting toilet and three resident chickens. Megan, a gifted poet at sixteen, says: “We know the world is not as it should be: we want to live in a way that shows people what could be.”

So I’m trying to wrench my mind away from worrying about them, using all my magical tools to try to get calm and grounded and centered, and not having great success. I’m responsible for a major part of the ritual, and though I’ve been meditating on it and thinking about it for days, my mind is still pretty much a blank and now, as the ritual begins, I still don’t know exactly what I’m going to do.

And then the dragons ride in. Paul signals to them, and they ride down the hill and around and around the circle on their bikes, while we cheer and laugh with delight. For each of them has made a dragon costume. They have long snouts of painted cardboard and foam spikes in their helmets and wild wings of wire and gauze and webbing. They ride around and around, and just for a moment, the clouds of stress and worry roll away and I’m filled with wonder and delight. Three bald eagles circle above us. Magic.

As the ritual begins, I know what I am going to say, what images and energies are asking to be expressed. We honor the ancestors, and ask permission to do our work on that sacred land. We cast a circle, call in the elements of earth, air, fire, water. A young woman from the biking group has asked to spin fire, and her dance with twirling balls of fire on chains lights up all our hearts. All the while, the dragons stand guard around us, calm and still in their snouts and wings.

Susu, who is a poet, calls the Mississippi by having us all chant the letters of the mother river’s name, spelling a spell. We call in the earth spirits, and we call protection, for the circle, for all our friends in the street, and for our friends and all those in the path of the hurricane heading toward the Gulf.

My turn comes. Right away, I abandon my plans. This circle needs to move, to sing and dance, so I call in the drummers and we sing a chant to Spider Woman and to change.

“Spiders and webs are positive images for us,” I tell the group when the chant dies down. “The web is a symbol for the web of life, the web of connection. But there are other sorts of webs, too. Sticky webs. Webs of lies. Webs of entrapment. There’s a web of negative energy that has been covering this country, media webs that whisper to you day and night that you’re not good enough, not good looking enough, webs of scorn and judgment. And those webs get inside us.”

I ask people to turn to each other, to draw out the threads of those webs and let them sink into the ground as pure energy. To open up a space for something new.

If there’s a core belief in the Goddess religion, it’s this: that each of us is part of the web of life, and precious, bringing our own unique gifts to the world. We don’t ask people to believe in things, not even the Goddess who is simply our term for the great creative mystery that weaves the world. But we do ask people to believe in yourself, in your own deep work, in your sacred purpose. You are here for a reason.

And then I ask people to sink down into that web of life, to feel it beneath our feet, in the soil, in the web of waters that flow beneath us, in the very bedrock below us which was once living things and which in the fullness of time will return to life as soil and root and growing thing. To listen to that web of life, and to know that all we really need to do to court its upwelling is to open up a space for it, and listen.

Eagles circle, and then as the sun sets, so do helicopters, circling around us, their thrum making it nearly impossible to hear. But we begin to dance and drum, to weave a spiral and raise a roaring cone of power, and the helicopters finally move away. Energy pours through us, roaring upwards like dragon fire.

At the end of the ritual, someone calls for anyone who was in the convergence center when it was raided to come forward. A young woman steps into the center of the circle. She was in the building the night before, with her five year old son, who was scared and crying as the police drew their guns on his mother, handcuffed her, patted her down. Now we lay soft hands on her, chant and sing and send her healing. When it is done, she’s glowing; and immediately begins organizing housing for all the people who have been displaced by the raids.

I sit down, spent. A man and a woman come over to talk. They are thinking of offering housing, but worried. What about the anarchists? Won’t they destroy things, or bring down the police on their home? If they march with us, will they be in danger? They’ve heard that anarchists like to provoke the police to attack peaceful demonstrators, to radicalize them.

I explain gently that anarchism is many things—a political philosophy with widely varying strands, from nihilists to pacifists. But mostly a way of organizing, a stress on personal responsibility, on taking action oneself and not waiting for the government or someone else to do it for you.

A young woman from the biker’s group comes over. She’s dressed all in black—if ever someone looked the part of an anarchist, it’s her.

“We were just talking about you,” says the man, and soon they are deep in discussion. She tells him that yes, she is an anarchist, and so are pretty much all of the group with the bikes. And that for her, it’s about building community, looking out for each other, making decisions together, mutual aid and respect. They have a long discussion, in which magic is happening: consciousness is changing.

I talk with her and with some of the other dragons as we share food made by Seeds of Peace. A tall young man with golden curls tells me how much it meant to them to be dragons. “We really got into it,” he says. “We spent a whole day making our costumes, and getting into that guardian, protective energy. And now I don’t want to let it go. I’m going to keep my foam spikes in my helmet when I’m doing deliveries. We want to be guardians for the marches, for the city. For the world.”

This is how magic works.

The bikers are all hugging each other in a circle, reluctant to leave each other now that the ride is over. They have fulfilled their intention, built their community, spread their message, and brought us a gift of wonder and delight.

And as we prepare to leave, I get a new message. Our friends with the bus have not been arrested, although the bus itself has been impounded. They are free, although their home and all their possessions, computers, permaculture displays, worms and the contents of their composting toilet are now locked up somewhere in a police yard, with no explanation or reason. The police had no search warrant—indeed, they did not search the bus, but explained that they were impounding it in case they wanted to search it later. They did, however, release the people, the two exuberant Australian shepherd dogs, and the three chickens, with whom we are reunited back at our home.

Magic. Like so many things, it doesn’t work perfectly. But it works.

www.starhawk.org
www.earthactivisttraining.org
permibus.livejournal.com
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Starhawk is a lifelong activist in peace and global justice movements, a leader in the feminist and earth-based spirituality movements, author or coauthor of ten books, including The Spiral Dance, The Fifth Sacred Thing, Webs of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising, and her latest, The Earth Path
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Starhawk's website is www.starhawk.org, and more of her writings and information on her schedule and activities can be found there.
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Below are all of the DemiOrator posts containing Starhawk's reports from the 2008 Republican National Convention:
Starhawk's RNC post 1: On the Bad Side of Town
Starhawk's RNC post 2: Raid on the Convergence Center
Starhawk's RNC post 3: New Moon Ritual
Starhawk's RNC post 4: Police Seize Permibus
Starhawk's RNC post 5: A Spiral Dance in the Streets
Starhawk's RNC post 6: Emergency Calls Requested

Labels: politics, Presidential race 2008, republicans, RNC, starhawk