I am not on it this year, for sure, and last year I dragged myself to the thing.Īgain, no expletives, no anti-Americanism, no antiwar, anti-patriotism or anti-politician rhetoric or song or poem. One face to the crowd on the 14 inch screen, then our three minutes of Andy Warhol fame, and then, please move on. Yet, on a day of earth benediction, the day of bringing some socialist political zest to the table, a day when Native Americans and First Nations should be front and center, when consumerism-commercialism should be immolated in a symbolic burning of the sales receipts around a big fire, instead we have the Visual Display Terminal (as in terminal disease terminal) as our entry point and end point. Talk about disruptive and destructive and killer technological shifts. The fact that this school system and those white collar jobs are now Zoom Rooms/Jobs, brought to us in the privacy of their closets or garages or fancy offices, that baseline has shifted big time since the lock down of a year ago. In a rural community, in a community based on retirement, and then making dollars from travelers clogging Highway 101, clogging hotels, restaurants, rest stops, you can’t expect any solidarity. No use asking me to make an alternative earth day for Lincoln County, some gathering on the beach or along a river (we have limitless beaches and thousands of creeks and rivers). On the one measly day of the year for celebrating ecosystems, waves, wind, soil, beach, harbor seals, eagles, gulls, cormorants, firs, pines and grasses, the decision to take this one indoors is emblematic of the colonized minds of the, shall I say, liberal class (sic).
There are a thousand major software peddlers readying the schmucks for a digital world of work, world of schooling, world of public engagement (disengagement), world of commerce, world of culture, the world of arts, music, literature, world of medicine and health care. That’s it, really, in the fake world of Google, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Clubhouse, Slack, and Zoom. The rules of Zoom like the rules of Earth Day 2021 are make nice, no contrarians, and alas, no one arguing. The people on the Pacific Coast, Oregon, Central Coast with no industries, winds whipping up air vortices, and air as clean as what it might be in the middle of the ocean, and yet, we have the old white folk planning for some more Zoom Doom fun.Īnd not only is this a Zoom Doom “same old usual suspects yakking fest,” but, in fact, some local yokel and state yokel politicians get to bullshit their way through five minutes of nonsense. There’s this Zoom thing coming round the corner, once again - Earth Day 2021. The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonial Conquest and Resistance Rashid Khalidiįear and Loathing in the Lone Star State E.R. No Bosses: A New Economy for a Better World Michael Albert Manufacturing Hate: How Africa was Demonized in Western Media Milton AllimadiĪnother Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present Yanis Varoufakis The Tragedy of American Science: From Truman to Trump Clifford D ConnerĮvermore Mihaela Melnic and Scott Thomas Outlar We Remember the Coming of the White Man Sarah Stewart and Raymond Yakeleya (Eds) Stand on Guard for Whom?: A People’s History of the Canadian Military Yves Engler
World War in Syria: Global Conflict on Middle Eastern Battlefields A.B.
Not the City on a Hill: Year-End Musings.