Circle of Hope and Thanks

I am thankful today for Hope, the hope that we can all share right now,
that love can heal our world.
And I am thankful for the love that I feel right now.
It's burning inside me, and everyone.
We need to come together, and let our love burn like a big flame.
So that everyone can feel it.
And we can heal our Earth.

Today, as most Thanksgivings, I am thankful for my amazing family and for the good fortune that fate has dealt me in this life. The idea of good fortune fits in really well with what I've been feeling since the School of the America's protest I was part of in Fort Benning, Georgia last weekend.

For blog-fans not familiar with the School of the Americas (SOA), it's a special school where the U.S. government trains Latin American cadets in the art of assassination, kidnapping, torture, and mass executions. Graduates of the school are entrusted the sacred duty of protecting free markets and wealth by murdering priests, union members, artists, and entire villages of violent Marxist revolutionary terrorists (SOA in a nutshell, find more at www.soaw.org/).

I went down to Georgia with an eclectic group of peace-lovers from Syracuse to attend this non-violent protest that drew over 20,000 people this year. It was great. All weekend long, we convened to listen to testimonies from people that have seen the true face of Free Trade. Union leaders from Colombia spoke about the murder of activists who protest the dangerous work conditions in the coal mines run by U.S. based Drummond coal. Migrant workers told the story behind their search for work in the picking fields of U.S. farms. An indigenous Guatemalan man told us how he hid during a paramiltary raid on his village, and how he was the only survivor of the massacre. And Americans spoke of what they had seen and heard from the people in their visits to Colombia and Mexico and Guatemala, and how these connections had changed the course of their lives. Recognizing the violence and injustice behind NAFTA and U.S. military aid, American citizens are the only ones who can push our government to abandon the free trade model because the costs are just too high. The policies the United States has advocated in Latin America for over a century have spilled the blood of countless innocent victims (collateral damage, right?) and we the people, knowing what we know, need to continue making our collective voice heard, louder and louder until it can't be ignored.


The weekend was serious and the discussions were heavy, but at the same time, it felt as though the majority of the people I spoke with shared the hope that things could change. And we shared a joy that we were all there, 20,000 of us, fueled by a love of life and truth. And we heard stories from individuals from the U.S. and the Latin America who were organizing for their rights, challenge the system, and and working to build peace. I listened to a member of the Coalition of Immokalee workers. his words so full of determination, "No estoy satisfecho." We are not satisfied with the status quo, and we will work together to change things for the better.

Is the country still high on Obama's change? Let's see if he closes the School of Assassins in 2009. Or maybe we can give Guantanamo back to Cuba (not before excommunicating the demons of the islands' only from the only McDonalds). As commander in chief, Obama will have choices to make, the most important one being, who he will listen to. We the people need to make sure he hears us, and he needs no reason beyond justice to guide in his decision making. I want to invite Obama to take a trip wearing only his CITIZEN chat to Colombia or Mexico or maybe Syracuse, and then start making choices that will fix the power imbalance in this world.

On the long long drive back to Syracuse, I felt like I had in August after Spanish for Activists camp. Refueled and regenerated, ready to give all my energy to the struggle. Except it's a lot colder and I can't just go around singing revolution all day long. My personal challenge in the coming days and months is going to be figuring out, What can I do for the struggle? How can I be an agent of change in this world?

So it's Thanksgiving, and me and my mom just had a kick-ass dinner of free-range cow and fall fruits, including starring collards, sweet potatoes, acorn squash. I am very thankful this year, because I am full of the hope that our love for one another, that Namaste love that sees the light burning in everyone, that love for the Earth and all it's living things, will one day heal the world.


And don't shop tomorrow! Buy Nothing Day! We've got enough stuff.