I'm not having a Kanye West moment (and he's not entirely wrong), but for the past 48 hours, I've been oscillating between wanting to cry, scream, throw things and beat the crap out of those with the power to send help immediately, but didn't. Agnostic me has never wanted to believe in God more than I have in the past couple of days, so that I could take some small comfort in knowing that Bush and company, with their false, smug piousness, will pay dearly for all the pain, despair, destruction and hardship they've gleefully wrought on US soil and abroad in our name since 2000.

Yes, I'm angry. I've been angry for a long time because I pay attention to the state of the world and our collective apathy. I don't exclude myself from that statement, because if I did, I'd be lying. I'm as guilty of putting blinders on and refusing to see what's right in front of me, as anyone else, and I've been an activist since I was 13 years old; which is well over 20 years. To make my apathy even worse, I worked in the social services field for 11 years (from the age of 19 to the age of 30) and worked with people in need (and often in crisis) who had their dignity chipped away from them every single day because they were poor, homeless, mentally ill, disabled, HIV+, addicts, ex-cons, etc. In other words, I should know better.

There was no excuse for the apathy that I let swallow me after the 2000 election, but I did let it happen until last year when it seemed like there was a real chance of getting the greater of two evils out of the role of president. We were robbed, again, but I'm glad I got the needed wake up call.

In March of this year, I lost almost everything I owned as a result of a fire that destroyed half of the building I lived in, including my apartement of 3.5 years. I could easily be dead since the smoke alarms, both in my apartment and in the hallway, and the smoke that had filled my entire apartment, didn't wake me up. The only thing that woke me up was the sound of a Chicago firefighter kicking in my front door. (Thank you, whoever you are.)

Although I've tried to talk very little about the fire, primarily because being reminded of my own mortality is not something that I care to have happen on a semi-regular/regular basis, I do understand losing everything. I wish I didn't, no one should, but it makes my perspective different than prior to the fire, when I could still say "I can't imagine what it would be like to lose everything."

The fire forced something inside me to shift, and it's changed my course. It's not a radically different course, it's a return to the right one I never should have allowed myself to stray from. The internal shift is turning out to be a big, but necessary one one, and whether I like it or not, there will be casualties as my thinking shifts. That course includes, among other things, changing the world not just for my own sake, but for those who come after me, which is the point, isn't it? My feeling that there must be a revolution has also been reinforced.

"To make a revolution, people must not only struggle against existing institutions. They must make a philosophical/spiritual leap and become more human human beings. In order to change/transform the world, they must change/transform themselves."
— Grace Lee Boggs, "Living for Change"[3]

I'm not talking about violence, even though that's the automatic assumption when revolutiion is mentioned. I'm talking about starting with getting people to wake the fuck up and realize that change won't happen unless we *all* work to make it happen, and realizing that just because we're not wading through chest-deep water in the Gulf Coast, doesn't mean that the devastation there doesn't effect us all in ways other than our gas tank.

As much as I'd love to live in a happy, little bubble divorced from the stunning lack of humanity I see, and unfortunately have been guilty of contributing to, on a near daily basis when I'm walking down the street, or reading the news, I can't. Why? Because I'm still here. Isn't that enough to want to work for change that improves everything for us ALL?

Revolution, folks. That's what it's going to take.

"We have to see revolution as a new beginning, and see ourselves as participants and as creators, as opposed to forecasters, of the future."
— Grace Lee Boggs, interview with Autonomy & Solidarity[4]

I understand that human beings have the amazing ability to create the most elaborate defense mechanisms to deal with things that are difficult, painful and overwhelming, but the fact that filling up your SUV with premium is making a bigger dent in your wallet than you'd like, is simply NOT more important than babies dying from dehydration in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. My own housing concerns continue to cause an unimaginable amount of stress in my life, but it's really nothing because at least I know that I'll probably have a roof over my head tonight, when thousands and thousands of people won't.

"We must rapidly begin the shift from a 'thing'-oriented society to a 'person'-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives, and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered."
— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

We can all make statements of concern like that, and at the end of the day, we can take comfort in knowing our humanity is intact, but the goal is to NOT put that humanity back in a drawer when the crisis seems to be over, or, something else demands more news attention. Under the current administration, there *will* always be another crisis we ordinary people will have to deal with, and we need to respond by being more human human beings and doing what we know is right, even if it's inconvenient. I've often said that although we should be kind, it's sometimes easier to be rude. Notice I said kindness, not niceness. It's easy to feign niceness, but much harder to feign kindness. I could be wrong about that.

I suppose I've chosen to spit this out here, because I needed to vent my frustration before I explode, and because I need a public reminder of what I'm supposed to do, although I know damn well what I'm supposed to do. We all do.

Talking the talk is bullshit, walking the walk is what matters. That's my goal. That's also the goal of AAC Films. Welcome.

[1] Air America Radio's Hurricane Katrina section (offline)

[2] Governor Kathleen Blanco's August 28th aid request to President Bush offline

[3] "Living for Change, An Autobiography" by Grace Lee Boggs (a must-read, as far as I'm concerned)

[4] Autonomy & Solidarity interview with Grace Lee Boggs