Hello Kindred Spirits:

  I have done community organizing since I was 12 years old in 1966.  My first experience as a grassroots organizer was volunteering for Bobby Kennedy's presidential campaign.  His tragic assassination marked me as an ideaistic adolescent.  From that moment onward, I became committed to socia change using non-violence and education to "ferment" major paradigm shift in human consciousness.

    Now at the age of 57 years old - I am faced with an existentia dilemna....if most people are truly good at heart - then why is social change so hard?   Social change - changing the way people think, live and act happens at the pace of a snail.  Social change is "incremental" - it seems the work of my lifetime has not really changed the planet much.  In fact, I see things disintegrating at a rapid pace.

   As a teacher/educator - I am heartsick at the condition of our public K-12 schools.  Here in Sacramento, our public schools seem much more like preparation for the penal colony - acculturating youngsters how to manage living in prision - than anything remotely connected to imparting high order critical thinking skills, intellectual curiousity.....very little curriculum is taught in California public schools.  Forget about the classical canon - K-12 teachers have little time, nor support from administration to actually teach classical Trivium and Quadrivum.   California K-12 public schools are 100% driven by culturally biased Standardized Test Scores and an Orwellian "exit exam".

   Our state legislature makes a big to-do about having stringent "exit exams" for 12th graders to receive their diploma - but I'm not impressed.  I worked as a Literacy Worker/Writing coach at a Sacramento community college in the Learning Resource Center.  I was stunned when I worked with freshly graduated 18 year old youth, tutoring them on essay writing skills.   A large percentage of my tutees graduated with A's and B's from Sacramento high schools, but the actual literacy skills placed them at 6th or 7th grade level essay writing placement.

   These are bright kids, sharp and highly motivated to learn.  It weighed heavily upon me to be the "breaker of bad news" when I dropped the bomb and critiqued their homework essays.  Despite passing the "state exit exam" and graduating with honors, maintaining a 4.0 to 3.5 GPA - quite frankly, these 19 - 22 year old students had great difficulty writing cogent, well reasoned sentences.  Helping them tie a couple of paragraphs together was a major task.

   It is not the fault of our youth if the elders have abandoned them.  It is not the fault of our youth if the juvenile justice system, public schools and the government has abandoned them.

   In California, the mandate from ex-Governor Arnold Schwarzzeneger and our current State Senate/Assembly is to permanently shut down 30% of public schools.  Class size went from 19 students to 45.   This results in teachers being unable to "teach".....it is all about "crowd control" like herding cattle.  Just maintaining classroom management, preventing the kids from freaking out, throwing spitball, "pencil drop" and total frickin' mayhem is the primary task of the teacher due to egregiously crowded classrooms.

    Now to the GOOD NEWS!

    There is a national movement to Occupy Wall Street.

    There is an international movement to Occupy Wall Street.

     Here in Sacramento - the state capitol of California - California represents the 8th largest economy in the world - we have a COMMUNITY of kindred spirits who camp out in downtown Caesar Chavez Park, committing civil disobedience, conducting 1960's style "teach-in's" - educational forums, DVD indie movie nites, meet-ups.....STONE SOUP is the coolest part of our convergences.  Folks bring home made organic food for pot-luck feasts - we sit in a large circle and engage in high level, strategic discourse.

    Are you sick and tired of being sick and tired?

    Are you like the network broadcaster in 1970's inciendary film - by visionary social critic, Paddy Chaevsky "Network".............are you "Mad As Hell and Not Going to Take It Anymore"

    You do not need to fear the times to come.......the Extraction Economy has crashed, the Empire has crashed - "Peak Oil" occured in 2008 when oil wells in Saudi Arabia ran dry.   September 11th and 2008 Wall Street crash was the echo evocative of the fall of the Roman Republic with the Barbarians at the Gates of Rome........with the crash and fall of one civilization - a new civiization is riing phoenix-like from the ashes.

   At the dawn of the Third Millenium, what is happening to our species is more critical than the invention of fire or the wheel.   Since the Industrial Revolution in 1850's - our species has had a mere 161 years to adapt to more changes in technology than when Bonobo chimpanzees climbed out of trees in the Uldevai Gorge of Ethopia and became upright, bipedal hominids with opposable thumbs.  My grandmother was born in 1901, grew up on the prairie in the wheatfields of Montanna in a sod house - a farmer's daughter.  It took one month for her family to learn WWI had ended.  When Princess Diana was killed and September 11th happened - the entire planet knew within seconds.

   The impact of space age technology, the rise of globalism in the 1980's, genetically engineered crops, livestock, pharmaceutical drugs has "tweaked" the definition of what it is to be "human".  600 cable channels, live streaming video, a hundred gazilion websites, cell phones interrupting us, trash reality TV spewing from every network.........this neurological bombardment on the human psyche has resulted in unprecedented levels of mental illness, "stress as a lifestyle" and a shift towards numbing our psyches with excess credit card shopping.  Normative, mainstream American pop culture views "Shopping as Sport" - shopping at the mall, not because of a true need - but as a form of blowing off steam, anesthetizing our central nervous system in a voracious, addictive pattern of buying "stuff" we do not need, "stuff" that is made by slave labor in China "stuff" that is petrochemical based, drenched  in toxic biocide ingredients.   Even certified organic food chain has been polluted with GMO due to "drift" and lack of truth in labeling.

   I encourage everyone to take some "quiet time" and "time out" every single day to ruminate, meditate and focus your awareness on quietude.  Explore classical Stoic philosophy of ancient Greek and Irish scholars.  Study ancient and modern humanities.  It is Interdisciplinary Humanities which define what it is to be "human".   As a teacher, I've witnessed the destruction of K-12 and pubic university curriculum be watered down to pablum.  The corporatization of our K-12 schools and public universities has resulted in dumbing down the populace. 

   Literacy levels in America have plummeted.  Cuba has higher literacy levels than the USA!  Don't get me wrong......I am not a Commie and I am ambivalent about Fidel Castro.  The fact remains that Cuba has better health care, far higher literacy levels than the USA - no homeless people living on the street and no hunger.  1 in 5 children in America live in poverty.  This is among the richest nations on earth - yet homeless wander the streets, our public schools are crumbling....the City Council and Mayor of San Jose, California laid off 90% of the police department and fire department, declaring San Jose "bankrupt".  I learned of a Midwestern town that shut off all the street lampss because they could not pay the electric bill.  They defaulted on the bank loan which paid to install street lamps.  The finance company brought in workers to PULL OUT the street lamps on all public streets.  The street lamps were wholesaled to a scrap metal dealer to help pay off some of the cities debt loan to the finance company.

   If you are sick and tired of being sick and tired then DO SOMETHING about it.

   Join your local Occupy Wall Street, get rid of your car (save $9,000 a year) quit shopping at the supermarket - shop at your neighborhood farmers market for 100% of your food, join a community garden, rip out your front lawn and plant a mini-fruit-nut orchard and a vegetable garden.  Start backyard urban chicken keeping.  Learn self-sufficiency - stop shopping at Big Box stores, buy your clothes "gently worn" from thrift shops.  Get your household items from garage sales.  Join your local chapter of Slow Food - national Slow Food headquarters is holding a membership campaign with greatly reduced membership fees.

   Keep Hope Alive!

Colleen Whalen

Professional Troublemaker

Eco-Gastronomy Educator