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The power of Empathy

For a Butter World.
Rain on a blue tarp roof. Tiny, invisible explosions from the war in the 4th world. Math games are
useless, tripping under ladders. Halleluya, theyre counting us again. How can we have been counted
so many times and still count for nothing? Rain is sent to Earth to find notebooks and preserve them.
Lighters are generally lost three times, not by the same person. A snitch with a dime drops nine. Who
lays dryin, in the rain? Everything I do is gonna be funky, from now on. Dogs curl three times around a
nomadic idea of Home, take away in a doggy bag. Cigarettes rolled in bible paper, Ave Maria. Another
one dead, not mentioned in the newspapers. Uncounted, invisible. You cant see the fees for the
poorest.
Dumpsteria is the Creatrix of life from whom all bounty flows. Trash Worship is a high Trashion
statement. The river washes away last years footprints. Cut your losses and they grow back thicker. A
river of last years footprints flows endlessly past. Contrary to popular belief, one can step in the same
river of shit again and again. Its all one step.
I come in pieces. The blackbirds in the willows on the
GLENN GREENWALD: Avenue of the Redwood Sweatshops, the redwings and
We all do media criticism of various types, and I ravens, garbage can mavens, nine foot condors and
know, over the years, Ive voiced all kinds of snowy egrets, jostle each other on the branches, the real
critiques of U.S. media coverage. But if I had the land-lords of this place, the ledger keepers, the
power to just, overnight, remedy one of them, this magisterial conductors of civil boulevard life, and resource
discrepancy is the one that I would choose, re-allocators of scraps fallen from the masters many
because think about how powerful it is, just the tables. The landed gentry stroll past and declare the birds
eect that it has on us as human beings. Even just to be flying rats, which is funny because the birds are
randomly when it pops into our Twitter timeline or proclaiming, loudly, You drink your own crap water and
onto our Facebook page, you see the name and pay for it! and Youre so ugly you make onions cry!
the story and the grieving relatives of someone There is a short, shaved Redwood tree behind the
who was killed at this concert in Manchester. No Hurry-up cafe, her name is Ernestine the earnest, she
matter how rational you are, you feel anger, you provides local section 8 housing for many, many birds,
feel empathy, you feel so emotionally moved by mice, lizards, beetles, a vertical camp for chainsaw and
the horror of the violence that was perpetrated. petroleum refugees, a coniferous needle exchange.
So, imagine if there was any kind of balance The days are wet quilts smothering useful fires, the nights
whatsoever, where we knew the names of any of are blue tarps collapsed on tired decencies. it is enough
the victims of the indiscriminate violence of our to survive without meaning, hope is pretending at
own government, let alone the comprehensive pretense. Who reads between the headlines to see the
coverage of the victims that is devoted when we breadlines? Another overdose, another death from AIDS, gunshot wounds or auto crash or a thousand
are the victims of violence, how much that would kinds of other senseless deaths which are unique to us and our time, they seem to serve as the only
aect the perception that we have of the violence limits to our greed, avarice, profit seeking war machines and economics. Modern preventible death and
that our own government perpetrates. We keep it poverty, acts as a viral check on human populations, since we have removed ourselves from the natural
so abstract. We usually just hear 14 people died. order of things, left the garden in the forest, and no longer speak with the spirits we have trained
The Pentagon claims that its militants and ourselves not to hear.
terrorists. Its left at that. At best, we hear they
We are living in the time of the Invisibles. We live beneath the blue tarps of Haiti, Syria, the Devils
finally acknowledge four civilians are killed, but its
Playground, Hippy Hill, Rio de Janeiro, under bridges along the Eel river, on native reservations under
kept very ethereal, very distant and abstract. We
foreign occupation, in the cars, sheds, squats and crawlspaces of Babylon, we are everywhere,
never learn their names. We never hear from their
invisible except for our market extraction value, counted, but uncounted, a slight tic up or down on the
families. We never hear their life aspirations
stock market, shares in private prisons, security industries and fence companies, water and food
extinguished. And if there was just some attention
prices. We live invisibly in tents on 16th St. in San Fran; under tarps strung between shopping carts in
paid to telling the stories of the victims of our own
South Chicago, Atlanta, West Memphis, in the tar paper shacks of East St. Louis and the emisserated
governments violence, I think there would be a
wards of New Orleans, in migrant camps of the Central Valley, under tarps in the Okeefenokee swamp
radical shift in how we perceive of ourselves, the
and Blue ridge Mountains, beneath tarps on rooftops in the South Bronx and in the bushes of East
role we play in the world and who bears blame in
River Park, under the Williamsburg Bridge in the L.E.S., in jungles outside of freight yards, in needle
this conflict.
exchanges and women's shelters, in stainless steel prison cells and immigration detention centers, in
JEREMY SCAHILL: unrepentant penitentiaries, juvenile lockups and mental hospitals, county jails and cheap hotels, under
Well, I mean, look at how many times we read or tarps on the sidewalks of L.A. and Damascus, Little Rock, Gaza and Baltimore. Wherever Capitalism
hear reports that the United States has bombed a and greed have opened markets for business and arms sales.
wedding party or a funeral. And there is never a
The grease of the machinery of pure logic and violence, is us, our bodies which contain our stories, our
description of, well, who was the bride, who was
free market scars, the lives of the invisible, disposable labor force. We are all migrant workers,
the groom, you know, who were the people that
economic and environmental refugees, prisoners, parolees, and homeless, its only a matter of degrees.
were killed, and what were their dreams. Its
There is no certainty or security in nation-state governments and institutionalized patriarchy, racism and
unfathomable to me that if we had a wedding
class war. No good can come of this for most of us. There is no connection between honor and hard
party in the United States that was somehow
work, and security. In fact, statistically, the more one works at waged, menial labor the less one seems
bombed in a terrorist incident, that we wouldnt
to have of property and privilege. We houseless, would it be worth works at it, cannot even vote for the
know the names of every single person who was
wardens of our prison. We invisibles did not create the garbage of empire, we live in its garbage, we eat
killed. We would have heard about where the
this garbage and breath it, while washing the dishes of the rich and being driven out of town. Its like
people were going to go on their honeymoon and,
Woody Gutherie said, I aint never got nowhere, and I got there by hard work.
you know, thewhat the bride looked like when
she was preparing for it. We hear nothing about The world has been shrunk to a tiny point, an electronic signal indicating a financial transaction
any of these people that are killed, with our tax between two satellites. We must enlarge the world again, slow time down to the scale of living beings.
dollars, in our name. Regain a sense of proportion, of taking only what we need, the privileged could learn a bit from the
Trump just inked this deal with the Saudis for well houseless about these important skills; and remembering those who come after. All the other classes
over $100 billion. It could be as much as $400 have had their revolutions, now is the time for the largest class in history to put a face on ourselves,
billion when its all said and done. Defense stocks stand up and introduce ourselves to the beneficiaries, the harvesters of our labor, as producers of the
go to record highs. What does thatwhat are marvelous, the geese layin the golden eggs; to reclaim our marvelous ingenuity for ourselves; to
those weapons going to be used for? Well, in the destroy the propertarian work/death concentration camp and resurrect the coopertarian commons
immediate future, theyre going to be used for dedicated to the Goddess of life, the mother of us all and all living beings here on Turtle Island.
what theyre being used for now, which is to The Garden is open for all. We need only bind ourselves in solidarity to the world we wish to live in, to
utterly destroy Yemen, where the United States love each other and remember in our hearts the meaning of ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE and an
and Saudi Arabia are absolutely razing to the old Brazilian folk song which sang:
ground the poorest country in the Arab world and
have caused a catastrophic health crisis in that If we dream alone, its just a dream, but if we dream together its reality.
country, which already was facing a total
These tarps are our banner. With love and honor of life in our hearts, seeds and shovels in our hands,
completion of their water supply. We dont think
lets brake the frame, theres a world to gain!
about victims of war in the same way that we talk
about victims of school shootings in this country -Okra P. Dingle
or victims of terrorism when itswhen ISIS claims
responsibility for it. Its a problem.

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