Utah and Ani Talk Politics

Utah Phillips told Ani DiFranco in the following video, the people from the depression era had to deal with anxiety in the face of uncertainty. As the corporate/industrial era of consumerism blossomed, the people began experiencing frustration in the face of certainty. Sounds about right I'm thinking. I have never been one of those "color in the lines" kind of people, and corporations supported by state institutions have allowed for the commodification of the people. In the corporate world, where profit is king and the bottom line is the "Holy Grail"...everything is a commodity...especially the people. We are groomed to maintain this structure of self-destruction through continued consumerism.

Truth and the Other J.C.

This whole Jimmy Carter thing has weighed heavily on my mind the last few days. I'm having trouble understanding how speaking the truth can somehow make a person less in the eyes of society. This seems to be the case regardless if the person speaking this truth is a notable person or just a mechanic down on the corner of Main and First. Maybe it is just a southern thing, but maybe it is not...but my view is the only perspective I have.

I guess this whole thing is just more fuel for our religious (slash) political commandos. They can't let the tank run dry, else risk being stranded out there in no man's land with no gas! I suppose the reality is, the human race has a very long row to hoe before they can get past all of this. It is just that I was hoping we could have at least seen a hot coal by now...maybe not a hot blaze...but at least an ember which would offer us a little hope of fire. Maybe this JC thing will be a spark...perhaps it will create enough animosity between our religitical machine heads to supply the wind to spread the blaze. We could have a nice roaring fire before you know it! However that is very doubtful. The whitehouse has already distanced itself from the issue...the racial issue I have heard referred to as a political minefield. I am sure it will be downplayed by the media with hopes the entire suicidal fiasco will disappear from the radar screens.

After all, it is health care we need to be focusing on right now, and this is just another distraction from our goals. Although I can not help but wonder how the hell we can expect any significant changes in corporate/government policy if we choose to ignore the problem society has with the most basic of human rights? Yes, I think health care is very important, and I believe it should be a civil right...not a privilege. We have yet to really establish our other civil and political rights which the people have had to fight for...our freedom of expression; our equality before the law; or our economic, social and cultural rights...including the right to participate in culture, the right to food, the right to work, and the right to education. Now we have health care on the table, and it is a tough one. All civil rights are tough, and we have proven that even though we can change the laws, we have a much harder time enforcing them.

Social truths about injustices always seem to create plenty of friction. A society, which works hard to maintain a certain way of life, does not like giving up it's power by admitting it is wrong. Yes, social laws which promote justice and equality can change for sure, as we have seen through history. There is one problem we have as a society though...we the people never stop, sit down, talk, and figure out how to change our hearts. I think we all need a little anarchy in our hearts, otherwise it never changes. Society will try to convince you that anarchy is chaos...it is evil, and should be avoided else it will drag us into the depths of destruction. Bull shit...it is our only hope of salvaging this social patchwork quilt covering our little planet. Who knows, you may already be an anarchist and you did not even realize!

Before I get really windy, I think I will defer to another who does not have any problem speaking the truth. Just another Scots-Irish codger who can be honest to a fault, which probably makes him less a person somehow! Reading back on this piece, Howling in the Belly of the Confederacy, it's easy to see, even though we have changed presidents, the power structures have not changed one iota that I can see since Joe wrote this almost six years ago. The same structures are in place, and the people remain powerless and subervient to these unjust structures which promote exclusivism while advocating a desire for justice.

But something new and more ominous is afoot down here. Something that scares even a hardened tobacco-stained old toad like me -- a clammy, repressive chill. One that not only dampens all political conversation not Pro-Bush, but can even cost you your job in a small town like this one. I'm serious. When I invite like-minded people for cocktails, the atmosphere is distinctly that of a "safehouse," as the few local liberals all but whisper their opinions and eye one another, judging just how safe it is to speak one's mind. It's spooky, so spooky almost none of us is willing to admit it.

Yeah, we live in a new south now, one with equal rights guaranteed by the law...as long as your rights do not interfere with those who interpret these laws! As Joe says, "It's the newest "New South" ladies and gentlemen, much like the old one, but with three more layers of lawyers and realtors. Free market capitalism, Dixie fried."

Whole Wheat Community

Jim Kloss and Whole Wheat Radio are creating new definitions of community. As our government structures argue and debate over their ideologies and dogma, it is more common to see the people doing a much better job of building a future built upon transparency, accountability, and sustainability. These are the key factors...the very foundation stones of our future...and community is the tool of choice in this millenium.

So what is so unique about the Whole Wheat community? Well, it has a lot to do with demonstrating fiscal responsibility by being publicly accountable for all income and expenses. It has a lot to do with initiating a local mission along with an Internet mission, and melding the physical world with the virtual world. WWR is not your average run-o-the-mill Internet Radio station streaming music and webcasting house concerts. The community's roots go much deeper than that. As an example, last December WWR hosted one of the Transition Health Policy Team's community discussions with participation from the Talkeetna residents and the online members. It's all there, it's transparent...take a look! Whole Wheat was an active participant in the Talkeetna Community Playground Project, and purchased the monkey bars. We were there as the 2008 Talkeetna Democratic Caucus was webcast. The Internet community was even involved in the decision making process when the question of whether WWR should remain a member of the Talkeetna Chamber of Commerce.

Now there is a new twist to the Chamber of Commerce story which has brought to the forefront the need for a Whole Wheat Radio Event Contract. Jim's quick summary of the new twist:

I am trying to establish a generally non-discriminatory policy for holding events here. What do we, as the listening community, get in exchange? The right to webcast, record and document whatever that activity is. I realize that many of you won't be interested in listening to the meetings, but the deeper issue is: the local community will have a media resource they or their organizations can potentially use. This will hopefully encourage more local participation in all aspects of WWR.

I have participated in many online communities over the last 10 years, and I am really loving the directions taken by the WWR community...that is why I have remained and supported not just the wonderful independent music offered for play by some absolutely wonderful artists...but also because of the idea of an open community. A model that bridges the gap and encompasses both worlds...one which allows everybody, whether physically or virtually, to be part of the overall value of the community. Whole Wheat has been the perfect place for allowing people the opportunity of creating a valuable community.

I am sure most people get overwhelmed by the multitude of social sites out there. They all have qualities and can be beneficial for many reasons. I have enjoyed my Google Reader, and I have also utilized a few of the social sites other than Facebook. All of them have their place, pros and cons, but when it comes down to basics and feeling at home...I'll choose the Whole Wheat community over all the other hyped social sites every time!

Longshoremen of Notability

While doing my morning reading, I happened upon the thinker Eric Hoffer. Being in organized labor, I should have been aware of him already, and I may have read parts of his work through the years and just never followed through and read more from him. What really interested me in Hoffer was that despite his accomplishments as a writer, he remained a longshoreman until retirement at age 65. He was a member of Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union, Local 10.

It was inevitable this would launch me down the rabbit trails of the web...forever in search of that next piece of information which could just lead to the missing piece of the puzzle. You just never really know what each trail is going to have to offer. Similar to the downhome philosophy of a box-o-chocolates I suppose.

There is no doubt, the following of these trails is more like an exploration rather than a structured and more focused study...but just as rewarding and enlightening. The trails I chose this morning led me to other (according to Wikipedia) notable longshoremen besides Hoffer. The first one I will mention is Geswanouth Slahoot.

Dan George is well known for his soliloquy "Lament for Confederation". Geswanouth spoke of using the white man's tools for building political activism within the First Nations.

But in the long hundred years since the white man came, I have seen my freedom disappear like the salmon going mysteriously out to sea. The white man's strange customs, which I could not understand, pressed down upon me until I could no longer breathe.

When I fought to protect my land and my home, I was called a savage. When I neither understood nor welcomed his way of life, I was called lazy. When I tried to rule my people, I was stripped of my authority. more...

Another from the list is J. S. Woodsworth of Canada who had left the ministry of the church because of his difficulty accepting the Methodist dogma. Woodsworth also became involved in the labour movement...to the point he was arrested and charged by the King for publishing seditious libels and speaking seditious words. Woodsworth eventually become the first leader of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation...the prelude to Canada's New Democratic Party.

I am no longer interested in the Heaven above. I believe it is the duty of the CCF to make a Kingdom of Heaven on earth.

These three former stevedores were able to reach great levels of accomplishment and I am delighted I went down this particular rabbit trail this morning. I have known a few longshoremen as a labor activist and it did my heart good to find and share such character!

ASIDE: I would feel derelict if I did not mention Charles Manson met with Wikipedia's notability guidelines as a famous stevedore, having worked as a longshoreman for a couple of years. ;-)

Must Be the Heat

It has been a reflective kind of morning here in Mississippi. You know the kind of reflection I mean don't you? When the need to think your own thoughts outweighs the need to listen to others. Or perhaps it is just that occasionally we need to season the recipe with our own spice. We all know the secret is in the seasoning...right?

I have always believed any one of us would be considered very fortunate if we have at least one other person in this world that we consider to be kindred. Now explaining kindred can be very difficult...it's almost as if it's an unspoken and indefinable knowledge...something beyond our understanding or maybe our evolutionary capabilities of reasoning. I have found that this feeling of kinship or relatedness is just as prevalent in the virtual world as it is in the physical world. Here in lies the power of the Internet in my personal opinion. It is this ability to connect with other human beings and the realization that all living things are related. Mitakuye Oyasin

I have been very fortunate to have been allowed to become a member of two outstanding communities since I embarked on this web experiment in earnest back in '98. Two communities I am proud to call home. Perhaps it has been the shared morals, values, visions, as well as the mutual respect for each other that has enriched my life more than I can possibly say. Or maybe it is just the reassurance from the knowledge there are others out there who understand the human dilemma and are willing to search for the right questions, in hopes that somebody will find the right answers.

One thing I discovered early on was that we must all be students and teachers at the same time. It is this give and take that allows us to grow and use our combined knowledge. Learning and teaching are the same...one is no more important than the other. Every entity has particular strengths along with particular weaknesses. By the time our ego convinces us we finally know all the answers, the questions have already changed. Regardless of our diverse backgrounds, when all the pieces are sewn together...we are then a quilt...a cover...a blanket...or as it's commonly known this millennium...a community!

Communities are self-educating in my opinion...or they should be if they expect to survive the building of the new structures that are bound to grow out of this shared knowledge! Yes, I am a believer, and that said...I suppose it's safe to say I still believe in imagination and the people's ability to organize and govern themselves. I'm thinking if we can't possibly imagine a better world...there is no reason to expect one will fall out of the sky! Now it seems as though I'm rambling. Sorry! It must be the heat, or maybe the humidity...or both? But I do have some wonderful communal neighbors! So thanks for being there my friends...I'm honored!

What is Viral Spiral?

I watched a video this morning with David Bollier on Governing the Digital Commons. This video led me to Bollier's book Viral Spiral. I found much of the book very interesting and insightful, especially on some of the points concerning the social shift that has seen commoners transform from consumers into creators. Creators of not only text, videos, or music, but creators of entirely new social structures!



Below is a couple of quotes from Chapter 5, "Navigating the Great Value Shift":

I call this the Great Value Shift...a deep structural change in how valuable things are created for commerce and culture. The shift is not only a fundamental shift in business strategy and organizational behavior, but in the very definition of wealth. On the Internet, wealth is not just financial wealth, nor is it necessarily privately held. Wealth generated through open platforms is often socially created value that is shared, evolving, and nonmonetized. It hovers in the air, so to speak, accessible to everyone...

"What we are seeing now," wrote Yochai Benkler in his book, The Wealth of Networks, "is the emergence of more effective collective action practices that are decentralized but do not rely on either the price system or a managerial structure for coordination." Benkler’s preferred term is "commons-based peer production." By that, he means systems that are collaborative and nonproprietary, and based on "sharing resources and outputs among widely distributed, loosely connected individuals who cooperate with each other."

David Bollier's book, Viral Spiral is available for purchase or as a free download. Yochai Benkler's book The Wealth of Networks is freely available as well. As always, if you find either of these Ebooks worthy, please think about purchasing a hard copy in support. Thanks!

Music: Passion or Commodity?

The issue of the performance rights organizations has reared it's ugly head once again, and as in the past, this issue has once again taken over my thoughts on another sleepless night. In early 2008 a Royalties page was created on Whole Wheat Radio concerning the effect SoundExchange would have on our little Internet radio community. SoundExchange, which is an offspring of the RIAA, quickly became the most prominent corporate oligarchy with the help and blessing of the federal government. The U.S. Government and the U.S. Copyright Office basically privatized and outsourced our national copyright system over to RIAA. Now the RIAA ignores the Copyright Royalty Board Judges who once made our copyright determinations. Since SoundExchange was put in charge of collecting royalties by Congressional legislation back in December of 2006, it has taken on the appearance of a syndicate strong arm collector for the RIAA Corporate Mob.

I have witnessed the world which corporate power has created, and I have seen how corporations through lobbying efforts and payoffs have successfully converted our government from a people oriented form of democracy into a oligarchy that represents an elite few. It has been painfully apparent in my eyes, that we have allowed this to happen so easily with very little opposition. That does not mean we have to continue to keep our eyes closed to the corporate hegemony and it's dominance of our culture. It is simply not the model of governance in which I want to participate...and I certainly do not want to support such a socially detrimental system for our future generations. What I do want to support is a more sustainable model of community interaction. An interaction between the artists and the people who love their art.

Is music a passion or is it merely a commodity? I for one am tired of the consumer society, and do not see art as a commodity to be consumed. Music is a passion...artists are passionate about their music and this passion is passed on to their listeners. For the life of me, I can not see how music can be defined as a product, it goes way beyond the labels the corporate world places on it!

I found Whole Wheat Radio back in 2006, and I found something unique and reviving about the place...so I stuck around a while. I was exposed to a world of independent music I had never known existed, and I have never looked back. I have purchased so many CDs through our community I have literally had to move and rearrange furniture to compensate. When I exhausted those options, I had to begin burning them to a new hard drive and either sharing the CDs or storing them in containers. Now I am just one member of the community, so just multiply that times all the members of our community who have found the same amount of extraordinary independent music via the music library and Whole Wheat House Concerts. Yes there is another way to do it rather than the existing unsustainable model. We have found out it is possible, and we have also found out how important it is to share in the building and maintenance of a community that supports independent artists. It is a shared experience in a collaborative approach for the future of music. Maybe even beyond that, perhaps it is a shared vision of what our future communities will look like and how we will mesh our local and virtual communities into one!

There is a quote from the documentary Before the Music Dies that is so profound in my humble opinion...

Never have so few companies controlled so much of the music played on the radio and for sale at retail stores. At the same time, there are more bands and more ways to discover their music than ever. Music seems to have split in two - the homogenous corporate product that is spoonfed to consumers and the diverse independent music that finds devoted fans online and at clubs across the country.

I truly believe the power of change lies in our willingness to support real non-profit grassroots communities similar to Whole Wheat Radio. We can either decide to take those steps necessary to oppose those who have corrupted the common good of the people, or we can continue down the same road that got us to this unsustainable state in which we now find ourselves. As always, our future in this quickly changing world lies in each of our hearts. We are the change and it is in our hands!

Transfer Industry into Community

As always, what I will relate is just my humble opinion, as I'm not a songwriter, nor do I make a living as an independent musician. I am certainly not an expert at anything, but only a fellow human being with another opinion! I am merely one who loves the art of music and believes in the artists right to have control over their art. I also realize the sacrifices the independent musician has to make in order that those sacrifices will hopefully bear fruit. I also believe in the power of the music community's organizational culture and it's shared goals and values. That said, here is my take on the issues brought up by Bob Lefsetz which Jim Kloss linked to yesterday.

I'm sure they are doing the research, but if those who do the research continue to have ties with the old music guard, that research is going to be filtered to show those ties. What is wrong in the music industry mirrors the turmoil within our little planet's social and economic structures. These structures based on "who can get the most marbles wins"...are dying, and the handlers of these 20th Century models are scratching and clawing to hang on to their power over the artists in the music industry.

As Bob Lefsetz mentions, if suddenly the artists had control over the rights, it would be a whole new ball game. But unfortunately it will not happen suddenly, there will not be a clap of thunder or a bolt of lightning which will bring about the shift of power. Due to the power pooled in the top of our little pyramidal structure, it is going to take a consolidated effort on the part of the artists and their fan base; and it will be a slow turning...not an overnight U-turn. This is the very reason I became part of the Whole Wheat community back in 2006; because of the potential for artists and listeners to organize into a vibrant and active independent music community. A community which places the value and love of that art above the bottom line. Like I mentioned yesterday, to me the ideal community embraces the principle of "Give according to your abilities, receive according to your needs!" Perhaps I am a little naive and maybe I do dream a little too much...but if a person does not believe in positive change, it certainly will not happen.

I've read and heard all the alternatives that have been introduced by the music futurists and industry pundits, and all seem to somehow keep one foot in the existing corporate world as some sort of appeasement of the beast's ravenous appetitie. The existing corporate music biz does not want a diet; it is not capable of tightening it's belt; it will feign approval just to sate it's unending and unsustainable hunger of profits! Profits which it needs to maintain it's power structure of the few at the top and the many at the bottom supporting it's mass weight. While I respect many of the enlightened authors and activists who are attempting to create a vision of the music industry's future...I'm afraid they must extricate themselves from the prominent, yet outdated structures of the past. In order to build a sustainable model, they must go beyond what is accepted and take that leap into the unknown.

I spoke yesterday about The Wall that keeps all of us in a state of obedient subservience to the existing order. This wall is not a physical wall, but one built of our own fears about changing what is accepted as the current reality. This article comes from the hearts and minds of union reformers and workplace democracy advocates, but it is just as pertinent to all people who find themselves in structures that just do not make sense, or fail to offer any end to the injustices which are by-products of the current systems in place. We have to be willing to take those steps; willing to walk that unlighted path towards something sustainable that works for all of us!

Take Lefsetz quotes of Malcolm Gladwell from the New Yorker, David only beats Goliath if he puts in incredible effort and is willing to do what is "socially horrifying". "Socially horrifying" means you challenge the rules, and break them. Or as Gladwell states, "He couldn’t fight the establishment, because he WAS the establishment." "The price that the outsider pays for being so heedless of custom is, of course, the disapproval of the insider."

Socially horrifying and most certainly the disapproval of those who still work within the current system. It takes guts to stand up to power and build something completely outside their realm. My background is steeped in organized labor and it's struggles, but the struggles are the same. It has always been the same. It's always been a powerful few who want it all against the rest of us! The power has always lied within the hands of the people and their willingness or foresightedness to come together under common goals and values. This is where communities such as Whole Wheat Radio or other like minded communities hold great potential to pool like minded people, artists and fans alike...who believe in the power and justice within grassroots organizations.

Yes, it will be a slow turn as we morph from the "ME" social standard into the sustainable "WE" model. Yes, it will not be easy, power never concedes without a fight, but to quote Lorde...When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.