Don’t get paralyzed by the untouchable stuff. Work for the health, safety, freedom and full-bellies right where you are. Learn, teach, share, build relationships, community and solidarity for the transition and for posterity. Preserve and stock up your pantry while the harvest is coming in as we write. Get familiar with your city council, become city council.

Start now.

Peace, Resistance, Hope,
Melissa

The problem, so it seems, is not the endless war, and an anti-war movement, nor is it purely the need for a social movement, as in national movement.

You are right, we live purposelessly from one stuff to another stuff; but the problem must be taken in small doses of “cure”. Focus on local chanage, experiment and new democratic forms of governance. Take pride in building local transformations. Start a local food grocery market, compost and recycle back to local farmers. Support the many purposes of local agriculture, environment services they can and do provide, water filtration and the like. Create land trusts, and renovate residential areas rather than displace the people who live there. Make a local difference.

Change beyond that, is regional, these will take shape as one experiment of success leads to models of change, clusters multiply.

Obama is about the end of the modern industrial society. He’s a waste of time and energy. War will end only when the transformation is complete, when the old empire is gone. We must prepare for what follows…

I encourage Wendy to keep reading this site along with counterpunch.org, blackagendareport.com, and chris-floyd.com. A few weeks of fact-based news should cure her delusions and naviete and have her throwing shoes at Barack and Nancy in no time.

If you believe US needs another party then get busy.

US needs a second party. Political parties seldom, if ever, melt down or do away with their basic demands, or rather, demand back our inheritance.
and no matter how small second party wld be, let`s say, having one mn voters, it never stops yapping, yelping, screeching, etc.
tnx

I would like to suggest that the political system is simply too cumbersome as a tool for effective and positive change. It is simply another filter, a barrier. As for presidents and Wall Street and corporate America, these are enormous targets, not prone to change or accessibility.

Instead, why not work with the educated, wealthy class for the change that this country needs. Notice that I said ‘educated, wealthy” and not educated or wealthy. Paul Newman was a member of this group. There are many others. They are powerful and influential.

One suggestion, though. Ranting will not get you a foot in the door. Nor will poorly thought-out ideas and inarticulate presentations. In short, you will need to work with the gatekeeper system and to have your shit together. Sadly, many Progressives still think that shouting will garner attention. It’s the well-placed whisper that works best.

Rick: Well put. Let’s not forget about the forthcoming reinstatement of the draft.

Americans made up their minds last November, and Barack Obama (with a ‘b’, not an ‘s’) was the winning choice by a good margin. I see from the mini-bio that Mr. Reichel was a congressional candidate for 3 months. Guess he couldn’t survive Election Day, like attention-hungry Cindy Sheehan, who only received an irrelevant 17 percent of the vote against Speaker Nancy Pelosi. That is a sad result considering Cindy carpetbagged her way into San Francisco, also known as one of America’s biggest anti-war cities. Now she has lost all credibility by hosting a radio show in the Bay Area on Green 960 AM, even though she continuously speaks out against corporate media. Oh yeah, did I mention Green 960 AM is a Clear Channel-owned station?

America is better off with leaders like Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi. We will recover economically, and we will continue to bring the troops home with our beloved Democratic Party. If anybody doesn’t like our president, then move to Canada, because Obama is ours until January 2017, like it or not.

Peace on Earth.
Wendy