I started this blog in Nov of 2007. It hasn’t been that long and I really haven’t written as much as I had wanted to. But after going over what I have written and what I would like to write about, I have to say the running theme to my posts have changed. I finally see the tie-in to it all. You see I am a stern advocate for human rights, animal rights, the environment, freedom… all of it. But not all of that belongs under the heading “Thoughts on World and Indigenous Cultures, Women’s Issues and Humanity”. Although I will still be writing about these same issues that I am so passionate about, I will also be writing about other topics that don’t necessarily fall under the current heading.

So starting today, I am changing the theme to WAKE UP!! NO MORE APATHY. Because really, I’m not trying to spread the word about human rights, the environment, or anything else as much as I’m trying to get people to see that action needs to be taken. NOW. And if I can do a small part of passing on a little spark of information or inspiration, then maybe that person will pass on a spark, and so on and so forth. And pretty soon, those many little sparks can ignite into a flame of opportunity that gets people off their asses to stand up for what THEY believe in.

This world needs healing. And if we’re all waiting around for someone else to do it, then it will never get done. I’m not saying join a protest group and spend your weekends holding up picket signs in front of the mall. Nor am I saying start a blog and rant about it. All I’m saying is do something… anything Whatever you can, in your own way to voice your dissatisfaction with what you feel is wrong. Accept and use your voice while you still have the ability. Make changes however you can. And pass it along. Pass on a little bit of knowledge daily to someone who may not know. Perhaps that will be just the golden nugget of information that person needed to start his or her own spark.

We need each other in order to make change happen. I ask that you choose to make 2008 your year to make change. Choose to be active, to not be passive. Choose how you will live your life. I mean really choose. Consciously make the choice. Don’t just continue to robotically live life without intention. Think about what you are putting into your body. Find out what the companies do with the money you give them. Where does it go? What does it support? You’ll be surprised how many daily household products you purchase that continues to be put towards war and other inhumane practices. Think about how YOUR actions affect other people. Think about Newton’s Third Law of Physics – For every action, there is an equal (in size) and opposite (in direction) reaction force. Then think about what action you are taking or (not taking), think about what that reaction might be then DO SOMETHING.

We are all directly affected by what is going on in this world. We are all connected. We buy diamonds – children become boy soldiers and women get gang raped. We buy Proctor and Gamble products yet they are one of the top contractors for the U.S. War Dept. We buy products from Dow like Saran Wrap and other numerous chemical agents and they are the manufacturers of the rupturing breast implants, Agent Orange, Napalm and DBCP. We sheepishly go along with the implementation of RFID technology on our persons and we become a bar coded nation with little or no freedom.
We all know the story about the frog in the boiling water right? The boiling frog story states that a frog can be boiled alive if the water is heated slowly enough — it is said that if a frog is placed in boiling water, it will jump out, but if it is placed in cold water that is slowly heated, it will never jump out.

Let’s not be like that frog.

Thanks for waking up and tuning in.

 Normally I wouldn’t write about this subject here, but found this to be of interest and in a way ties into what is going on globally. Because the lines of food culture are becoming more and more blurred as we eat apples from New Zealand, tomatoes from Mexico, corn from who knows where… We should all be interested in where our food comes from and how our actions (what we CHOOSE to participate in) affect ourselves, our families, our community and our environment.

I had a very interesting conversation with someone today. The conversation started out about holistic living that morphed into eating organic. That opened up an enormous well of topics from farmers to big business to community support for green projects.

Now, I don’t like to label myself, so I’m going to just let you know where I stand. I primarily eat organic vegetarian food. I don’t use standard pharmaceuticals and opt for natural healing as much as possible. I try not to eat any daily, but the occasional cheese might slip in every once in a while. When it does, it’s organic. I shop at Food Co-Ops, farmers markets and other markets and stores that offer an organic option. I support local businesses as much as possible. And I work for a magazine that supports local artisans, farmers and products. Our main objective is to educate people and businesses about the importance of buying local and eating locally.

Why do I do this? Sure, I want to be healthy. I want to be conscious of what I eat- what I’m putting in my body and how it affects me. But also because I care about what the alternative is doing to our water supply, to our air and our soil. I care that our local farmers are being put out of business in lieu of genetically modified foods from various parts of the world with little or no regulation. I care to do something (in whatever small way that I can) before our necessities of life disappear. At least I can say (guilt free) that I tried.

The part of the conversation that I found interesting is that this person agreed with me. Yet, still made vast many excuses why he could not change his own habits and lifestyle. Is it because organic food tastes bad? No. In fact, you can still have your potato chips and chocolate chip cookies and ice cream. You can even have beer, wine and alcohol. You can keep your hamburgers, bacon and fried chicken. So the excuse that organic food is boring is obsolete. His reasoning for not eating organic is because it isn’t convenient.

With this I have to agree. It is not easy to make the choice to eat organic foods and then expect to go someplace like Texas and assume you’re going to be able to find an organic restaurant. I was just in Texas for the holidays. I had to travel 35-40 minutes to get to the nearest store that sold organic food. Shouldn’t this option be available to everyone? During today’s conversation, I started to feel bad because this person was telling me how they don’t feel they have an option. He and his wife keep a busy schedule taking their 2 children to various after school activities not to mention work and the other projects and priorities they have going. So, I completely understood when he told me he wasn’t able to drive that far to the market to get the organic food he’d like to get. Got it. But when I mentioned getting together a petition of other people in his community who would like to have the option of eating local and organic food things changed.
It felt like all of a sudden he was going to have to take action. And who wants to do that? I mentioned it because I know he’s on the board of his Chamber of Commerce. And I wasn’t suggesting that he do it, but I was suggesting that someone gather names. If there really is a call for a Whole Foods market or some other such entity to come in and fill that need, it will happen. We’re talking money here. Right?

He explained to me that there were other people on the board who were committed to green projects like planting trees. Ok, fine. But choosing what you eat and where you get it from is an act of being green as well. I tried to get him to see that by supporting these big businesses (they are not farms) who produce these chemical ladened products, they are saying it’s ok to continue to put pesticides in our food that will go into the soil that will then go into our water supply and into the air. Not to mention poisoning our bodies. And that’s not very green is it? What good is planting a tree is you’re just going to spray the fuck out of it with chemicals?

So I was told that there are too many people that won’t give up their Hummers and don’t consider being conscious about the food supply and the money going into the food supply as a priority. Again, I agree. But I also believe there are more people who do care and they just have a gap in their knowledge and understanding about what they can do and how relatively easy it is. But couldn’t get him to budge on this.

So I started thinking, why do I meet so many people that agree with what I am saying, but CHOOSE to not do anything about it? Is it that they are waiting for someone else to do all the work for them? Will these people be the first people to complain there is no air to breathe, no water to drink and no food to eat when it’s too late? How can we change apathy into action? There is a huge fear preventing people from taking action. What are people scared of?

Yes, I understand it is a whole convoluted drama of money, big business, government, survival of small family farms, people’s own personal habits, fear of the unknown not to mention fear of granola eating hippies. But change has to start somewhere. And if people have a resistance to making small changes within their personal lives how are we ever expected to make bigger changes that affect us all on a larger scale?

Last night I had a conversation with someone I know very well. I thought I knew this person and what his reaction would be when he asked me how everything was going. I told him I had just watched ‘THE DEVIL CAME ON HORSEBACK’, a documentary about Brian Steidle’s experience in the Darfur region of the Sudan. THE DEVIL CAME ON HORSEBACK takes the viewer on an emotionally charged journey into the heart of Darfur, Sudan, where an Arab run government is systematically executing a plan to rid the province of it’s black African citizens. I know I shouldn’t watch these things before going to bed, but for some reason I end up doing in more than I’d like.

My friend attended a historically black university. He has read some pretty interesting books and can have some controversial views on what’s going on in the world today. So, I felt pretty safe telling him I just watched this film and was feeling pretty sad. He asked why. I explained because I just wish I knew a way that could truly help these people and that I really wanted to do something to make a difference, but what could I do? After some debate as to why it was all happening to begin with, I started getting the sense this person wasn’t on my side. This person who I thought I knew so well was telling me I shouldn’t put my energy into helping the Africans. WHAT?? I think I sat in silence for a minute or two before unleashing my fury on him.

He then explained that his version of making the world a better place was to attain resources, a nice place to live and settle down and have kids that will not allow things like Darfur to happen. Ok, so you want to populate the world more with kids that will do the work that you will not do because you’re too selfish, lazy and apathetic to care that millions of people are displaced from their homes and die or get brutally beaten on a daily basis? By the time he has kids that would grow up (and hopefully learn to do the right thing but that’s debatable when the parents are showing that apathy is perfectly alright) the African children of Darfur will be gone. This is GENOCIDE. Not a drive-by shooting in Oakland. We’re talking about mass murders on a very large scale. Interesting that someone of his background would have these opinions on the extermination of the black people of Africa.

So I was jolted into thinking, if THIS guy (someone who I considered to be left of the average American) is saying this to me, then do most people feel the same way? Are we all just too apathetic to do anything other than program our Tivos for another episode of Orange County Housewives? Are most people passing the buck hoping their kids will take care of the world’s problems while the parents create more problems?

To answer my question, ‘what can I do’ perhaps the answer is not to find a way to stop genocide in Africa, but instead find a way to stop apathy in America.