LAISSEZ FAIRE: Dedicated to the uninsured 47 million Americans.

Laissez Faire


generally adored
this system fortunato
rarely abhored
maker of the ghetto

in a country hailed
by three hundred million hearts
covered if failed
with doctored charts

we hide the effects
defy the attacks
coming from rejects
lost with no chance


highest bidder, step up!
fight for your cash
and trample the Gallop
see? ain't no backlash!

we keep 'em down n' broke
what they got to take?
might be the stroke
or backyard snake

build my empire on your back
you slave, slave away for me
i cut your paycheck
damnit, don't cry when you bleed!

you're gonna stain my Persian
walk out of here and stay
i give you compensation
to keep the Wobblies at bay

don't try to organize
put those chains back on!
when you gonna realize
life ain't fair to a peon!


we switch it up now, boss
we take back the mic
you gonna hafta cut your loss
or we goin' on strike!

don't tell us what to do
we know what's ours to claim
and we gonna take it, too!
you didn't listen--damn shame

we want healthcare--swear it!
you've killed too many
we're gonna live--declare it!
no more big money


i'm gonna tell my kids to come
what corporations got wrong
tell 'em what is good n' done
apologize it took so long

you can have your competition
just don't shoot craps with strife
wheel n' deal to bold fruition
but give us liberty n' life!


--

pax.

i lose

one of my favourite games of all time is Risk.
i think i have this vague sense that at some point in history i won that game once.
but as a general rule, i know i always lose.

and yet it is still among my favourites.
while sitting here before church, reading about suffering for the Name (a Name i believe is also so often attributed to true justice and righteous acts for the sake of the people) from the sermon on the mount, and listening to Coldplay's Viva la Vida, it occurred to me exactly why i love that game so much!

i love fighting hard--to the last man--until my imminent defeat against an enemy so big that i know they'll crush me, but until that moment, until that day, I'LL GIVE 'EM HELL!


in that sense it feels like reality, the way i expect my life to play out if God puts me where i think he'll put me--
before an unjust enemy.

write your letters
grit your teeth
say your prayers
lock and load.

you provoke me

crawling in the mud, sticking to your fingers, caking your face. you belly down and ease so slowly, silently toward the goal.

the enemy standing at the gate. beyond it is all you ever cared about gaining.

behind you is all you ever cared about--lost.

at this pinnacle... this dare-devil collage of thoughts and racing hearts, your chest burns with everything you've ever felt.

swirling into one surge, one un-dying urge--a tornado of truth and heart.

you have nothing to hold you back any more. between the fences.

to attempt is to kill yourself. to forego, and remain, is suicide. if not worse.

when faced with the moment when the guard looks away, walks away, exists away from your goal--your promise--what not to do other than charge forth?

get up! go! race toward it with all your might!

even as the sights of so many guns bear down upon your bloody forelock, there is little left they can take.

when you can claim it all, just on the other side.

just outside the shiny barbed wire of Guantanamo, a boat is waiting to carry you away to your reality they tried to rob from you.

just JUMP!

God is jumping with you!

--

pax.

probably strange... came out of nowhere, huh?

Hey everyone, i know this probably seems to have come out of freakin nowhere! and to some extent it did. i'm finally having a some time alone with God, at this very moment, and i just wanted to say how beautiful God really is.

i personally forget it all too often. maybe we all do. i encourage us all to turn to our God, and seek the truth of his love and grace, and the beauty of his face.

without him, i'd have nothing real to offer anyone on here. i don't remember who said this, but i love it:

"what a man is, on his knees, before the LORD,
that he is, and nothing more."

yeah, sounds about right. i know i play myself and my work up (personally just me, i'm saying) to be something big. i really do believe it is. but i think i put too much of the guts and glory on myself whenever i start talking about my activism. this was never the intended outcome. but it happens all too often. i love my work, i love what i do! but i can't let it be the main focus of my heart, or else my heart will shrivel and dry up under strain and pressure. this is where God comes in, and if i'm diligent about going back to him, then i'll have no issues of how strong and full my heart is. my God is a God who loves and cares so deeply for ALL his children. he'd do anything (and did everything) to see his children get the best for them, in this life!

my God definitely cares about human rights, if he cares at all about his children. i like to think my work is done with him, as a friend and partner and servant and son, all at the same time. this way i can do it with perfect love even if my actions do not seem perfect.

PAX.

things have changed...

brothers and sisters... something has changed in the manner of my writing. at least the subject matter.

so the heavier subject matter, like that which i last posted. like that which is now deleted.

it's posted elsewhere under another name and the whole works. if you want to read any of my new posts on my new site, ask me individually. i'll give you the link. but please be careful. if you read my last post--that looked more like a newspaper article--then you might have a hint of the dangers involved with using real information on either side of the atlantic.

please understand if things here seem suddenly less suspenseful. hopefully my protective measures in switching over will be worth something and will help protect the authors here, and all who have commented. i'll definitely try to work on both sites, of course!

p.s. if you're willing to go slightly undercover, i'd be glad to work on this with a partner or two (or more). there are many many human rights stories to cover. the world is only so big.

PAX.

youtube videojournalists.

youtube should hire videojournalists to cover major stories on an international scale... like, obviously i'd be vying for the ones with little coverage, concerning Human Rights.

hopefully they come around to this idea soon so that unknown stories can become world-wide. enough people post celebrity gossip and movie spoilers and God knows what else, that frankly youtube's creators and owners could really capitalize on having freelancers bring them video coverage of far away wars and conflicts and injustices (and other stories too, of course), but this would greatly have the chance to bring about change and prevent innocent civilian death tolls from being forgotten in the dark closets of inhumane government buildings.

youtube, i hope you're listening. i hope you take this chance. i hope you bring on the change.

PAX.

Mogadishu

"hello, my name is ________________, and i'm a US citizen living in ______________. i'm calling on behalf of a man named ________________ living in Mogadishu, in Somalia, seeking asylum here..."

i called the UNHCR DC Office.

this is how my voicemail started. obviously, for protection all around, things had to be changed here, in this publishing.

the man i mentioned above, a Somali journalist, has been threatened by both sides, for his work with foreign journalists.

one of the journalists he's worked with in the past several months works for a big newspaper based not far from my house. i'm working with both of them, as well as a woman in the 11th District Office in Ohio, working for Representative Stephanie Tubbs-Jones.

hopefully this action will all count for something.

heat

the heat is on.
i feel idle once again.
i feel a waste of energy and knowledge.
i need to be out there.
gotta go fight.

the heat is on.

i picked up 'Not On Our Watch' again, after over a month. just in the mood for something political and activism-related. and now i feel more lost than ever.

missions is important, and not more or less important than justice, i believe. frankly, i think Jesus seemed to emphasize how we are to live more than what we are living for in the end. i could be wrong. but that's just the impression i get.

i feel idle once again.

i'm in Africa, but there's so little i can do. i can't give money since i'm so low on it myself. i can't write letters since letters across Africa rarely seem to make it where they're going (sent one to Dodoma, TZ, from here, and one to Capetown--two months ago. no reply.)

i miss lobbying with my colleague Bethany P. she and i were a good team. we hit two congresspersons from Ohio in one week, while thousands of other Amnesty activists were doing the same nation-wide. and that was back in March. i can't do anything like that here. in Darfur, people are still targets.

i feel a waste of energy and knowledge.

i learned a lot about Darfur and other issues like it, while working with Bethany in the spring. i've learned a lot while reading this book. i've learned a lot from peers and fellow passionate people.

i'm nearly consumed by the energy for this task. i'm at the point where i'm willing to pull out anything i can from companies my Roth IRA is invested in, if they're in any way connected to Sudan. i'll march straight up Capital Hill chanting if you give me a chance.

i need to be out there.

sitting here, with all this energy cooped up inside me, feeling so useless and yet so potent, i can think of only two solutions: either go to Khartoum personally, or likewise to D.C.

i need to be among the ranks of the marchers, the lobbyists, the mega-phone shouters and screamers, the political writers and journalists, the eager students and sacrificial soldiers. but i'm here, with an ever watchful eye for just such an opportunity.

gotta go fight.

standing at the edge of the cliff, what else is there to do. i've been backed into the corner by the indifference and ignorance around me. the people with the blank faces don't realize where i am, how close i am to the edge.

but now i've gotta take a stand, raise the banner, draw attention, raise awareness. shake things up. fight. things get dirty when people raise havoc. quiet is more destructive than loud protest. i gotta go join the fight.

Get into gear and make some noise.
-Archer

doing singleness the wrong way...

flipping shut the novel i checked out of the library here on the base a few days ago, a murder mystery called 'The Poet', i'm nearly to page 100 of the paperback, and the action's starting to kick into high gear, as the protagonist, Jack McEvoy--a homicide reporter at a Denver newspaper--stumbles onto a theory that link's his cop brother's recent suicide with another cop suicide 2000 miles away in Chicago, making it look like a serial killer. he sets his sights on Chicago, D.C., and the FBI HQ on the east coast, aiming to track down this story.

McEvoy's a 35-year-old bachelor who's lived in the same apartment for the past 9 years, working the same reporter beat at the paper.

reading about his life suddenly taking a turn for... (at least) the more interesting and exciting, i found myself strapping on my bag, slipping into my sandals, throwing on my shirt, shrugging sleep off, grabbing my 1.5 liter Kilimanjaro water bottle, with the label ripped off, and heading down the steps from my bunk in the dorm room, toward the bathroom. stop at the sink on the way out, scrub my face with water and wake myself up, then run my fingers through my hair that i'm growing out in a rather mottley fashion, and head out into the open courtyard, feeling invincible.

standing coolly in the shadows, my unkempt brown hair striking strange shadows across the tan bricks and chop-cut grass behind the short bushes, i breathe deeply, and suddenly realize the attitude shift that's come over me.

i suddenly feel like i'm on top of the world. i'm only going to check my email and perhaps blog a bit, really, so why this high? nothing fancy or new about me... just the bag i spent less than 14 bucks on in town, after getting a wad of cash out of the NBC ATM in Arusha. maybe it's because everything went so smoothly, or just because i am dwelling so much in God's goodness to me, that i'm frankly forgetting the key to all of this:

once i get to feeling this good, i'm likely to forget where the source of this joy really is.

i am liable to phase God out of the celebration, right at the kick-off.

i am on the verge of doing singleness the wrong way. where i start to get the hyper-inflated sense of self-worth, and my own ability to get involved and actually influence things. me and my intentionally shabby appearance begin to form an ego to go along with the care-freeness of it all.

i gotta remember--and reclaim--the simple truth of this only working if it's only about Jesus. not about being single.
the latter's great and all, but not if it's not filled in by something much, much better!

it's a daily thing: re-working on that. but it's good. just can't get too caught up with the crazy hair and the deadly hyper-inflation of Asher.

Peace.
Jesus.
Love.

-archer

Church ..part two..

"Jesus said to the people who believed in him, "'you are truly my disciples if you remain faithful to my teachings. and you will know the thruth, and the truth will set you free... So if the Son sets you free, you are truly free.'"
-John 8.31-32,36

all truth we ever learn is meant to point us toward the Son who truly craves a relationship with us. but, as Taylor pointed out, we are given the freedom to choose to live in freedom. or we can stick to our old ways. as many of Jesus' disciples deserted him in John 6.60-71, he humbly asked the 12, "are you also going to leave?" (v.67)

i can picture that revolutionary leader, already pushed into the ground by the religious leaders of the time, living his whole life both solely AS truth, and FOR truth. and when people refuse truth, whether given proof or no, it can destroy the good messenger. with sadness weighing on him, Jesus turned from the crowd to his twelve closest brothers, looking each of them in the eyes for a moment as he annunciated those pain-surged words. possibly on the verge of tears, he slows down his speech, letting each syllable bring his gaze to another apostle in the small huddle. the wind on the hillside is forced to the background of all thought for the apostles. the sun burning on their faces and the sand beneath their toes, uncomfortably shifting on the pads of their sandals--all sensation is forgotten and lost unto them. their leader, their beloved hero, the only person they have any real stock in... has just challenged them. perhaps, the apostles might think, if this is the messiah, doesn't he already know what i'm going to do? either way, they realize they definitely have the choice now. hard teachings will come a hundredfold by the time Jesus reaches Golgotha. this is one of the moments they can leave him and blend with the crowd.

given the choice, every time i face a hard teaching, it takes me weeks, often, to face up to what Jesus' words and example will mean for me. and these hard teachings will come a hundredfold by the time i reach Sheol. ever moment is one of those moments when i can leave him and slip into the massive deserting crowd. it's just too easy.

but with those eyes on the verge of tears, i already know i've got to stick by my master, my Father, the one who's invested so much in me. ignoring the sun, the wind, the sand... i've got to cross the line onto the other side. a daily Alamo challenge.

i think the whole Church faces it. there's not much we can do if we really know who we're hurting by saying no. if we really know who we're loving and pleasing by saying yes.

as each of the twelve cross the invisible line and move closer to their Rabbi--their Lord--they watch the tears in his eyes fade. a stray tear slides silently down his cheek. not one of the apostles blames him for it. greeted with a warm embrace, one by one, in the gathering dusk, this weak-seeming gesture is turned on its head and used in the most profound way it's ever been used troughout the course of all eternal history. in fact, they likely think, this is why i love him more--because he shows us how much he loves us. and this reciprocal love before the twelve sinners even have an inkling of the cross to come.

we know about the overabundance of love and sacrifice because the cross has already come. the Church needs to understand who she's betrothed to. we need to be faithful. to every word of teaching. to every gesture of acceptance. to every example of truth. to every ounce of real love.

Peace be with us all. in Jesus' name.

Church

"in relation to the Kingdom of God--what about the Church? firstly, she's not to draw attention to herself. as soon as she does so, she's lost the power and authority given her."
-Tony Taylor, of England (our speaker for the week, here at the DTS).

it's a grave reminder to me personally, as i begin an endeavor to write a critique on the Church's most "popular" problems she's facing today. perhaps common is a better word. but i'm sure that the former will actually shed more light on it, in some ways.

sadly, i'm walking a very tight rope in writing this little essay, since i am in danger of drawing attention not only to the Church, but also to myself. as much as i hope my [comparatively incredibly uneducated] words are taken seriously, respected and understoof... the last thing i want is the attention of others in the Church.

just as Marx and Engel became almost as famous as their Manifesto, and Luther as famous as his Theses (to the point where frankly all i know about the Theses is that it stood against indulgences, and i know much more about Luther himself).

it worries me that theologians generally have big names. Dr. King calls it the "Drum-Major Instinct". and i am not at all calling out any theologians for striving to be as famous as their theology. but it is interesting to me that they seem like they are not disappearing like Bobby Fisher. but then again, that generated more publicity than his known achievements.

so i guess it's not so purely an example of Dr. King's fear--though there are examples such as Bishop Spong--rather i believe it is a symptom of a leader-starved world. we're so lacking in strong leaders, as the world has nearly every generation since the Judges began to rule Israel. so, of course nearly anyone we can set our eyes on who knows what they're talking about, we nearly canonize them.

frankly, i've nearly done that very same thing to Tony Taylor as he's been teaching. it's so apparent that God's been speaking through him. and in realizing that we get blinded by the truth that is in front of us, and we stop there, we find an unsettling amount of admiration within ourselves toward the creation and not the Creator. we fail to move on, following in the direction the truth is leading us...

Eliska Dali

i know so little about her. but i had the chance to get to know her better a little over a year ago.

i met her on October 5, 2006, and never got to see her, or anyone else i met that day, ever again.

**that's her in the front early in 2006, protesting Alito, and the woman behind her is her counterpart. she doesn't seem to like being "safely distant" from her challenges.**

my brother, Micah, and i were at Willard Park in downtown Cleveland, with my friend from college, Bri. there were about 400 other people there throughout the morning and afternoon.

i was skipping a math class, Micah was skipping the whole day of high school sophomore classes, and Bri was skipping... God only knows what. that was sorta her thing last year. skipping classes, chilling with me (for the first part of the fall semester, until the lure of the Gamers' Guild dragged her away from me on most days :) ) during her lunch break and when she was supposed to be in class. oh no, wait, that day she didn't need to skip. October 5 was a thursday, and she only had classes on mondays and wednesdays. she'd come up to the school by bus just to join me on another couple of bus rides into the fringes of northern downtown Cleveland.

to march against the Bush Regime.

and that was where we met Eliska Dali. we had no idea she was one of the organizers and leaders of the protest and march, but since Bri and Micah (who'd come up with a friend of his, a kid on the school newspaper staff or something like that, to do a story) and i were clueless of how to get involved, we found Eliska early on. i think she was smoking. almost everyone there was. i probably stuck out like a sore thumb. maybe that's why she and Ray, another leader, came over to talk to us and hand out literature.

i was beginning to be really thankful i'd brought my satchel when i had found the need to put several newspapers from the U.S. Communist party in there to disperse back at school later. after handing us flyers and stuff for ourselves, we were invited to go to the heart of downtown: Public Square. we went there at lunch break on a thursday afternoon, and handed flyers to people in suits and ties, blazers and enough rolex merchandise to feed the city for the day. we also handed them to those who maybe weren't able to have lunch for the day. and of course in Cleveland, due to the oppression of poverty and the inadequte city systems, most of the latter were black. most of the former were, of course, white. and most of the former wouldn't even touch the papers.

and then you had the people who would grunt and walk off when they saw you. to be honest, we were a motly crew. Micah and i had really long hair at the time, we both had fingerless gloves. and not one of the three guys in that spot (Bri was the rebel, as usual, and was the only girl) hadn't shaved in God knows how long.

during the march, Micah was back somewheres in the middle, Bri and i were at the front, helping control the large blue banner amidst the terrifying gusts of autumn Cleveland wind. at one point Ray put the microphone to my lips as i held the banner in one hand, thrusting my other fist into the air with each beat of the chant we were all screaming.

those same men and women with the rolexes and clean-shaven faces watched from windows several stories away as i lost my voice, raising the morale of the 400 or so protestors, disturbing downtown rush-hour traffic.

it was a good day though. a pacifist organization called Food Not Bombs fed us at the end of the march, around 5.30 or 6ish. Bri lit up again. Eliska stood and talked with the three of us, as we finished our soup in styrofoam cups with plastic spoons that three other people had likely already used.

and then we headed out from there, and i parted ways with Eliska Dali and Ray. however, i maintined phone communique with both of them for several weeks afterwards, until the protest mentality in me died off, and my activism was geared once more FOR Africa, and no longer to heavily AGAINST Bush.
***
but recent events here at the base have brought that protest mentality back to mind. and Eliska's name naturally popped back into my head. i haven't learned anything of her fate ever after that day, but googling her name today revealed several interesting stories of her activism in the beginning of 2006.

i wonder where she is now. i wonder who she'll vote for next year. i wonder about too many things...

Love and Peace or Else, brothers and sisters.

the monster who got devoured by community

"i can't believe you can be so against what you once stood for!"

that's what i almost said to him.
my brother, Micah.

we were having a rather casual argument, as we sometimes do. i was trying to tell him why movements are so great, why men and women like Yoko Ono and Dr. King and Bono (sorta) and Lennon all give themselves to causes for a reason.

i tried to tell him that all change is made by small groups of people that grow into something large and influential enough. i reminded him of Amnesty International, of which i am a member. started by a single British professor in 1961, and has grown to nearly 2 million members whose letters have freed thousands of prisoners and victims and alleviated tensions and injustice all around the world in only 40 years.

he looked back at me with a smug look on his face that i couldn't crack. i just don't get how my brother, the boy with the cross branded on his left arm, and the Che Guevera clock (which is now no longer a clock so much as a small, glass poster, and is now also mine), could suddenly become somebody who's clearly so hopeless, with no faith in humanity, or even in humans. he's got no faith in anything, save Zarathustra's bold story of "making it on his own". he claims Jesus did it too, in his coy attempt to throw my own words back on me. but with his foot sticking plainly out of his mouth, i reminded him that forty days of fasting alone in the desert hardly counts as being alone. oh, and then i told him about the 12 disciples who were with him nearly everywhere he went.

he tried to tell me that since Zarathustra made it, anyone who wasn't weak could do it. he apparently had forgotten for the moment that good ole' Z is a fictional character. actually, i think that's when he tried to segway to Jesus. to him, Jesus is just as fictional, sometimes.

sometimes.


...BUT this isn't what i meant to get side-tracked by.

instead, i meant to tell you about another boy who had an american flag hanging proudly in his room, draped across his mirror with a chalky cross drawn on it. this boy believed with all his heart that it was america's sacred duty to follow George W. into battle and storm into Iraq in 02. he would have actually voted for W. the second time around, had he been old enough. this boy sickens me far more than Micah ever will. this boy believed in intolerance as the only way to change things for the better. this boy was anti-gay marriage and pro-war. (i.e. anti-love, and pro-hate) he was a thoroughbred american who wished he could've said the pledge of allegiance twice daily at school, rather than only on mondays in 8th grade.

this boy was going to join the navy, or the marines or something and fight for his country. he had a buzz cut already and everything about him stank of proud-to-be-an-american in the most disgusting form. it wasn't even flattering to the remaining good elements of the U.S.

this boy was frankly a self-righteous prick just like the best of them. could never recognize flaws in himself. believed he was always right. believed that america was supposed to be an all-christian nation. and that everyone who didn't believe what he did had to be converted, and he thought them more like scalps dangling from his belt, than actual souls, actually aching people. there was no love in this boy.

he was a monster.

i don't have that mirror in my room anymore. the american flag lies half-burnt in a black garbage bag somewhere in a dump.

i protested the "Bush Regime" on October 5, 2007 and felt almost more at home there, than i do half the time in church. it's funny how preotestors seem to realize they can do nothing on their own, and we sort of band together, as we all did that night to share a bowl of free soup, brought to us by an organization supporting the march, called "Food Not Bombs", i think. as a sister of mine shared a cigarette with a brother of mine, and both braced their backs against the cold downtown wind, i waited my turn for a used spoon, in order to eat half a cup of warm veggie soup in chicken broth.

after the march and everything, we wrapped up with a "die-in", which was by far, one of the most dramatic and patriotic experiences i've ever witnessed. watching video footgae from it later, i was shocked to find an elderly man in a wheel-chair shifting his weight and lowering himself to the chilled black-top of E. 9th street in the heart of Cleveland. during rush-hour.

riding the bus home that night with Micah, as the dim lights kicked in overhead in the fading autumn sun, i read from a communist newspaper about the similarities between Bush's and Hitler's. it was kinda freaky. as a middle-aged man walked past me, on his way out the front door of the 9X four-wheeled community driving machine, he looked down and complimented me on the white bandana around my knee with the word 'COEXIST' scrawled in dark permanent marker. the Islam crescent was the 'C', the Jewish Star of David was the 'X', and the Christian cross was the 'T'.

that bandana is now sewn onto a small black jacket i bought for the purpose of shaking things up and lacing it with lyrics and sayings and emblems of what i stand for. i named her Ruth. i'm wearing her now, for the first time since probably March this year.

she's beautiful, and reminds me of the kind of communion that comes from a strong, united purpose. i miss that union.

i'm hoping i'll find that soon, sometime in the coming couple of years.

anyone wanna go see that movie, "Across The Universe" with me sometime?

Love and Peace or Else.
-Archer

the real heroes

for what it's worth, i must tell you that great numbers of people doing small things with great love... they have just saved thousands of lives in India.

i get newsletters from many organizations asking for me to help with certain issues all around the world, largely affecting the sick and the poor. they are your burden just as much as they are mine. and they are my burden just as much as they are their own. no one gets off the hook.

in the case which the organization called CARE has been tracking and fighting for, in India, i just learned today that Novartis (a huge pharmaceutical company which has been pushing to make ILLEGAL, a score of generic brands of life-saving Anti-Retroviral drugs--ARVs--in India) has DROPPED its case!

i was first made aware of this struggle in the Indian courts sometime last fall, and from time to time, i've had new news. frankly i think all i ever did for this case was a generic letter online with maybe a couple personal tweaks, and my "signature". it's a lot when a lot of people are doing it. but i'm certainly no hero. the point is, many many people actually hand-wrote letters to the Indian government and none of it was the usual, tailored story that most of us with computers have the convenience of dealing with. i read a couple excerpts from these letters in the email newsletter i just got.

here's the excerpts that were among the many words shared with the Indian government that have, at least for a while, secured the affordable ARVs for India's poorest brothers and sisters... these two women are among the heroes of this battle!

"I hope you know what AIDS has done and is still doing in Africa . . I have three blood sisters who depend on ARV's for life. I may not be infected with AIDS but I am affected because I am nursing beloved ones who are infected and keeping orphans of those who are gone." -- Hannah , Zambia

"As a woman and mother of two children of my own, I ask you please drop this case against the Indian government. If I were sick and needed lifesaving drugs, I can't possibly imagine what it would be like to be denied those drugs. Please don't deny other women the chance to live." --Michelle, LA

i say again... only small things, with great love.
PAX.