Posts Tagged ‘poverty’

MEXICO: God, the supreme being, maker of all things, the divine creator of all – has been found…here on Earth. Apparently, God has been here for the last 27 years, living in poverty in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. God, known around the world by many names, (Yaweh, Allah, Krisha, Zeus, etc.), is known locally as Cora, is a single mother of two children, eking out a living as a prostitute in a brothel.

(Image courtesy of thinkvegan.net)

Sexism is the ‘gateway ‘ism”, that makes all other ‘isms’ possible.  It precedes all other forms of discrimination, setting the example that there are some people that view others as inferior and they use brutality upon them.  What I mean by that is that because our family and society models are built around the model of inequality, injustice and brutality – we accept that behavior as normal.  So, too is racism, classism, speciesism and any other oppression by one group toward another.  The behaviors of sexism are the behaviors of bullying, injustice, intolerance and cruelty.

(Image courtesy of indiesocial.com)

I walked onto the train platform in downtown Chicago today.  A woman had just finished shopping at Macy’s and had several red shopping bags.  She was trying to put everything into one bag.  The wind picked up and blew some of the empty bags down the platform.  I took off running and stopped them from blowing out onto the street. 

Then, she yells to me that: "It’s OK!  They’re empty."  Then she sits down and waits for the train with her two bags full of stuff.  The 5 empty big red bags are just out there on the platform and she makes no effort to pick them up.  I told her that I didn’t want litter for a Christmas present, picked them all up and threw them in the trash (no recycling on CTA platforms…dammit!).

Image courtesy of cesr.org

This post begins a series to recognize people that speak about the world in terms of what they observe and what they can prove.  Their voices stand out in the crowd.  In their words, they speak not of fantasy, delusion and rationalization.  Instead, they utilize the gifts of human cognition, awareness to observe what is here in the world around us.  They are not dogmatic, but analytic and take in the world ‘warts & all’ for what it is and what it is not.  They do not separate humankind from nature in any form of grandeur.  In short, they look at things the way they really are and not what we would have them be.