Our political arena, for that's what it is in the best and worst sense of the word, has become so toxic and counter-productive that it is spilling over and poisoning the lives and psyches of our children.
To be sure, childhood has always been fraught with peril as children learn the protocols, boundaries and limitations of the will to power - but it seems to me that the current environment of bullying and competition has reached a new level of critical mass...on the playground, and in the halls of government.
Factions battle on air, in print and in the halls of political congress. Each side asserting their right-mindedness or their moral authority. But what has been lost in the fray is a true dialog of the challenges ahead and a consensus for action. A conversation of solutions, as opposed to a battle of wills.
All parties, domestic and foreign, have lost their credibility and along with it their efficacy. People have caught on to the fact that all sides have one agenda - supremacy for their side, and more importantly, supremacy for the entities that fund them.
Which is why in recent months we have seen scores of people taking to the streets.
Whether you feel the protesters are well-informed or misguided, it must be acknowledged that there is discontent in the air. A long, burning, fermented discontent that has broken free of the misinformation, the political theater and the strategies of distraction of those who would keep the masses deaf, dumb and blind.
Revolution is in the air and the "Architects of the Status Quo" are in panic mode. Cue the terror plot, cue the celebrity scandal, cue the latest villain of the week - anything to draw attention away from the growing, mass-awakening.
Architects of the Status Quo have over-played their hand and old strategies are falling on deaf ears (ears that have grown immune to lies and suspicious of fear tactics) leaving them to scramble, trying to avert the inevitable construction of guillotines in varying versions of Freedom Squares across the globe.
Which is why we need a change in direction. A change in dialog.
For if rulers (and the entities that fund them) around the globe continue to hold onto strategies of control - based on mind-control and naked aggression, then nothing will avert us from the trajectory of cataclysm that their injustices have placed us on.
The reason I have suggested a Global Labor Treaty is because it changes the dialog.
(click here to sign)
It reins-in corporate abuses. It suggests a path to end oppression and exploitation. And it gives those at the bottom hope for the future, in a world that has left them destitute.
I authored the petition and designated as its target the Security Council at the United Nations because there needs to be a single point of accountability. Change will not come unless everyone - every state and every nation across the board and around the globe, is bound by the same rules.
People who have been oppressed and exploited have nothing to lose which leads to acts of desperation...acts, in fact, of terror. Economic Justice is a national/global issue because it is a root cause of discontent, unrest and untold suffering.
We have the ability to go in a new direction. To affect change. To apply pressure.
Those who mock the Occupy Wall Street movement might do well to remember that Jesus didn't just
talk about change or tell parables about the rich not being able to get into heaven. He was an activist. He over-turned the money-changers' tables in the temple.
Well, Wall Street brokers and Ceos are the money-changers and humanity is the temple.
It's time to take activism to the global stage. It's time to stop Peace-Blocking the United Nations. It's time for us to walk the walk of democracy.
Think of the impact it will have on our children. To live in a world that is
not based on talking peacefully, but acting aggressively.
Who knows, maybe we'll find that eliminating hypocrisy is the key to defusing aggression.
At least, that's the way it seems to me,
Annie
