Appealing to the IMAGINATION of the Coordinating Committee
Dedicated to something beyond what John Lennon meant….
by Richard Martin Oxman

“How can Michelle Obama be a model for young girls while she lets her husband bomb kids overseas? How can the kids at the University of California be happy with reduced tuition while her husband reduces everything to rubble abroad? Why are we all… in prison? Don’t the students see that they’re incarcerated?” — The author’s nine-year-old son

One by one I see the old ghosts rising
Stumblin’ ‘cross Big Muddy
Where the light gets dim
Day after day another Momma’s crying
She’s lost her precious child
To a war that has no end — John Fogerty, from Deja Vu All Over Again
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7297115172630222933#

I see Carol Woods & Timothy T. Mitchum and the singers who did “Let It Be” in Across the Universe doing Fogerty’s song on the UC-Berkeley campus*, helping to generate national interest in March 4th. Or Green Day. Or…. Just use your imagination, please. We need to blend music of some sort with the mundane, predictable/stock demands coming out of protest quarters. Demands doomed, as things presently stand, to… never breathe, to die from a lack of activist imagination. A lack of connection with the wider world.

*We could get major worldwide figures to participate… if members of the Coordinating Committee would contact me ASAP.

Whether or not it’s our many wars, our many bases, what Sonia Shah addresses http://www.soniashah.com/index.php, what Alison Weir addresses http://www.counterpunch.org/weir01082010.html, what Darwin BondGraham addresses http://www.zmag.org/zmag/viewArticle/23269 whatever… the March 4th protests at UC-Berkeley — at all the centers of education statewide gathering to make a difference, reverse momentum — we are obliged to embrace other issues as enthusiastically as we do matters concerned with fee hikes, cuts and layoffs.

We must put aside our differences and our myopia as we put on our “uniforms.” [Pause.] Imagine us as, say, as basketball team. We have different positions on this and that, but we all take our positions in solidarity to face the opposition as they come down the court at us… controlling the ball. They are much bigger. And they’ve been practicing 24×7 while we’ve been getting our act together… only on the weekends. Also,… please note that it won’t matter if we win game after game with them… if we never address the fact that the ball we’re playing with comes from slave labor… and that the boards we walk on are the product of raping the last forest on earth. WHAT THE HELL DO I HAVE TO SAY TO MAKE THAT MAKE SENSE TO YOU? That’s how you’re going about this upcoming battle. Preparing to fight… without sight. Without vision. Without a chance in hell of “winning” anything worthwhile in the Big Picture.

A golden opportunity is coming up in the so-called Golden State. An opportunity for pushing a much needed revolution of values. We must take advantage of it in solidarity, this window of opportunity… which will not come again.

And speaking of windows, imagine us all in a house… where some louse has been making our windows dirty. Imagine that we all put on our basketball uniforms, and tackle the challenge of cleaning up, making our view better, etc. without paying any attention to the mold on the walls… which envelop our windows. “Oh, we’ll get to that, but — first — we’ve got to deal with these windows.” Well, that’s fine, maybe, if you get around to dealing with the mold. At some point. But in the U.S. people have become accustomed to living with mold.

Please… let’s clean up this house completely. Not just clean some glass… not just pick up dust from a given corner, or sweep dirt around… screaming about how valuable your contribution is to one and all, how you’re setting a proper example, how it’s all a matter of first things first, dealing with what’s right in front of your face…. The thing is, the mold is as local as the window. As important as the glass which is slated to crack under the increasing, inexplicable winds that are rising. Ah, youngsters, faculty concerned with careers, labor trapped in habitual approaches… please put aside some heartbeats… so that we can have a dialogue. And, then take meaningful, worthwhile (Big Picture) action together.

The author can be reached at tosca.2010[at]yahoo.com. He wants you to consider joining hands in solidarity with http://oxtogrind.org/archive/364 OR something with as much far-reaching potential to clean house… before the windows crack. And speaking of crack…. http://www.playingforchange.com/episodes/3/One_Love