Our Neighbors On The Streets: A Social Justice Perspective

The following poem emerges from my life and struggles.  In particular, it comes from a time a darkness in which the "triple challenges" of mental illness, addiction and homelessness made my life a living hell. The Ordeal Wednesday, June 27, 2012 The Ordeal by Wayne Martin Mellinger  None of us wants to descend into the devil's den, to experience absolute terror and unbearable misery, to sail across the River Styx and suffer horrible bodily pains, nights of endless tears and days of lost wandering. But this is an essential part of the sacred journey. This is "the Ordeal"--and there is no way to know the deepest spiritual truths if you have not come here. There is no way to prepare for this. There is no way to anticipate these hardships, for the horrors that shall befall you, and the sacrifices you shall have to make are unfathomable. Can you imagine running all night screaming like a banshee having some ghoulish demon chasing you into the dark fore...

ADBUSTERS BLOG Flash Encampments Occupy morphs into a new model! 126 comments   Adbusters  , 05 Jun 2012 More Sharing Services Share #OCCUPY #ows protest tactics PETER LEEMAN Hey all you wild cats, do-gooders and steadfast rebels out there, Our movement is living through a painful rebirth… “There has been a unfortunate consolidation of power in #OWS,” writes one founding Zuccotti. “This translates into ideological dominance and recurring lines of thought. We are facing a nauseating poverty of ideas.” Burned out, out of money, out of ideas… seduced by salaries, comfy offices, book deals, old lefty cash and minor celebrity status, some of the most prominent early heroes of our leaderless uprising are losing the edge that catalyzed last year’s one thousand encampments. Bit by bit, Occupy’s first generation is succumbing to an insidious institutionalization and ossification that could be fatal to our young spiritual insurrection unless we leap...

Comment is free Occupy must embrace the homeless and marginalised, not shun them 'Professionalising' Occupy in response to rightwing catcalls would be a serious error. This is the 99%, not the 75% Share 85 Email Kieron Monks guardian.co.uk ,  Tuesday 7 February 2012 09.30 EST Comments  ( … ) The Occupy protest at St Paul's cathederal, London. Photograph: Graeme Robertson An uncomfortable idea is gaining traction within  London's Occupy movement . "We have to learn from our mistakes," a leading figure from the  Bank of Ideas  told me last week. "We can't be this inclusive. Too much time and energy is being wasted babysitting people when we should be working on ideas and outreach." The fear is that the Occupy sites have lost direction and momentum as they increasingly come to resemble crisis shelters. Before  the 30 January eviction , over half of the 60-odd residents of the UBS building in the Ci...

> Blogs > Adbusters ADBUSTERS BLOG Occupy's Spiritual Quest The fork in the road ahead. 197 comments   Adbusters  , 24 May 2012 More Sharing Services Share #OCCUPY #OCCUPYWALLSTREET protest tactics zuccotti MARCUS DEMERY Dear occupiers, jammers, dreamers, Three years after the May 1968 uprising that swept the world, the great French philosopher Michel Foucault observed that a key strategy of power is to “appear inaccessible to events.” Power, Foucault argued with a nod towards 1968’s failed insurrection, acts to “dispel the shock of daily occurrences, to dissolve the event … to exclude the radical break introduced by events.” Forty years later, in light of Occupy, Foucault’s observation still strikes home. Despite achieving the impossible at unprecedented speed – sparking a global awakening, triggering a thousand people’s assemblies worldwide, and giving birth to a visceral anti-corporate, pro-democracy spiritual insurrecti...