My brother watched the movie, Food, Inc. this weekend and is shocked at what Monsanto is doing to control the seeds our farmers use. I've known what Monsanto is doing, both here and in other countries, for years, and yet what have I done about it? I haven't done anything.
This morning I opened the Best of the Web 2009, to The Joe Holt Integration Story by Heather Killelea McEntarfer in Terrain.org. I opened, but you can click:
http://www.terrain.org/essays/22/mcentarfer.htm
I think we forget, well those of us who are white perhaps forget, how much went into the integration that lead to the president we have today. I know there are only so many battles we can fight. We want to elect the "right people" and be done with it and sometimes that works and sometimes it seems we have to risk something too.
The drug companies are another corporation that is out of control. Steps for health care reform and the health of the country as a whole need to continue.
When my children were young, the cuts to the schools were dramatic so the parents got together and started raising money. We had carnivals and walk-a-thons and sold pizza and on and on. We made enough money to pay for three part-time teachers for computers, music and art. Then, the local schools got together to pool resources and now a great deal of money is raised and we have good schools. The point is we actually had fun raising the money. We met the parents. The children were involved. There is something about local involvement that allows one to directly see the results that is important. I'm hoping now with health care we can all begin to look at what we want and need. Common sense rather than greed can enter into discussions about what makes sense.
There is an article in the NY Times today on what it costs to go to a baseball game these days. It used to be inexpensive family fare. Now, the luxury boxes sell at corporate rates because they are tax-deductible. There are many ways to make changes. Perhaps tightening up corporate perks is a way to begin and I am in no way equating that with integration in this country, but it seems that people are resistant to change and maybe a prod is in order to remind them they are here to think, respond and change.
I just read the book The Tudors by G.J. Meyer. He has nothing good to say about any of them. The advertising game is not new.
"Tudor England was a world in which the rich got richer while the poor got not only poorer, but much more numerous." Movies make Elizabeth look virtuous. This is a scathing look at her self-absorption and unawareness of the horrifying plight of her subjects.
I was struck with "the emergence of a new set of social values - call it the Protestant ethic - that encouraged the prosperous to equate wealth with virtue and to regard the destitute as responsible (or even predestined to) their predicament. An older world view in which society was expected to provide for everyone, in which the poor were believed to have a special relationship with God and caring for them was supposed to be one of the primary moral obligations of every person, was inexorably passing away."
The pendulum on social consciousness swings now. Perhaps each of us can step in to determine where it stops.