Common Ground

Let’s remem­ber there are many things we have in com­mon. The need for love, secu­ri­ty, food, shel­ter, health, hous­ing. Watch­ing our chil­dren grow into their amaz­ing possibilities.Working jobs that respect our dig­ni­ty.  Grow­ing into old age hon­ored and pro­tect­ed. How is fan­ning the flames of dis­trust between us block­ing our right to meet those needs?

Embrace the Mentally Ill

mental illness, depression, bipolar, paranoia, schizophrenia, health care

Despite the fact that men­tal ill­ness touch­es so many of us, peo­ple often dis­card, abuse, and demean the men­tal­ly ill. It’s okay to break your ankle, but not to grap­ple with men­tal prob­lems. And so, peo­ple are shunned, rather than embraced and sup­port­ed. A ter­ri­ble idea and social practice.

Wars Rage, Cities Crumble

A soci­ety bent on war can­not take care of its own. When we destroy the lives, homes, and pos­si­bil­i­ties of peo­ple around the world we can­not fund, pro­tect or nur­ture own lives, homes and pos­si­bil­i­ties. We destroy our­selves.  With a col­lec­tive fist, which should hold right­eous­ness and gen­eros­i­ty, we hand over our own lifeblood to forge a relent­less attack on the human rela­tions we have nev­er both­ered to know. We acqui­esce in a ter­ri­ble deci­sion. Or do we?

Commune (The Verb)

It is easy when doing polit­i­cal posters to focus on our trou­bles. There are many, after all. Some­times, how­ev­er, I nudge myself to con­cen­trate on our vision of a bet­ter life, to remind myself why I got involved in move­ments in the first place. The pow­er and joy of deep con­nec­tion with earth, the nat­ur­al world, with oth­er human beings. The impor­tance of cre­at­ing eco­nom­ic sys­tems and social insti­tu­tions that hon­or and sup­port those con­nec­tions. Doing this poster brought me back to those first excit­ing, very con­nect­ed days way back when.… Sigh.

Walking

Walking

Walk­ing. It’s sup­posed to be good for us, if we are able. Sup­pos­ed­ly, doc­tors rec­om­mend 10,000 steps a day. Let’s think about this. If you take 10,000 steps and mul­ti­ple it by the num­ber of peo­ple on the plan­et, even fac­tor­ing dif­fer­ences in the walk­ing capac­i­ties, maybe work­ing in a for­mu­la for rolling, that’s a lot of steps. Now, the impor­tant ques­tion, how many of the sum total of steps tak­en all around the world would be done in safe­ty? For how many peo­ple does walk­ing turn out to be not so good for them because while they were walk­ing they were in the wrong skin, wrong gen­der, believ­ing the wrong things, lov­ing the wrong peo­ple, liv­ing in the wrong place?

 

Home! A Human Right

One day, when I was observ­ing begin­ning teach­ers, the stu­dents were read­ing a sto­ry about some­one who was wor­ry­ing. The teacher stopped, made sure they knew what “wor­ry” meant, then asked what made them wor­ry. One stu­dent quick­ly raised his 7 year old hand and said, ” I wor­ry we won’t be able to pay the rent.” No sev­en year old child should have this wor­ry. Home is a human right.

Cost Of War

CostWar

This poster is in a per­pet­u­al draft state, but I though I’d put it out here. What is the cost of war? Our human ser­vices, com­mu­ni­ty life, fam­i­ly secu­ri­ty and our abil­i­ty to feel empa­thy. Drones lev­eled at one soci­ety are metaphor­i­cal­ly point­ed towards our own. Being lulled into a false sense of calm, of dis­tance from the ugli­ness of war, is tem­po­rary. It will come back to bite us in the b.….