MEMORIAL DAY 2008
How many Americans know that combat veterans commit suicide three or four times as often as non-vets? That a quarter of the homeless population are veterans? That it takes more than five years to get the Veterans Administration to deal with claims filed by injured vets? That almost twenty percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans suffered brain injury? That our Veterans Administration stonewalls as many vets who try to get their legitimate benefits as it can?
Is that the best our nation can offer returning troops, the ones tens of thousands of our car magnets claim to support? Can we do no better than a cold park bench or sidewalk to sleep on? Unemployment? Neglect of their health care needs?
Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer and Republican Kit Bond have introduced legislation that would require the VA to care for the wounded and that would offer our vets help in re-adjusting to civilian life. It’s called the HONOR Act. Anyone who can dial a phone can call a Senator or Representative and ask that they work to get this law enacted.
We can also show demonstrate our loyalty to those who willingly served the country by learning more about the problems faced by returning veterans. And writing a check to one of the veterans organizations who are working to give vets what government refuses to supply. One local one is San Francisco based Swords to Plowshares at
www.swords-to-plowshares.org and another is www.veteransforpeace.org .
There really is enough for everyone’s need …
… but not for everyone’s greed.
There are two classes of people in our country: the majority of us who do the work which creates the wealth and pays the bills, and the tiny minority that has control of most productive assets and the wealth the rest of us have constructed with our labor.
It is in the interests of that minority to keep us divided so we cannot organize to oppose its policies. The means they use are racism, sexism, ageism, homophobia and religious conflict.
If we work together to end the prejudice, hate and fear that separate us, just imagine the kind of world we could have.
By: Beth Grimes, Another Advocate for equality.
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The Present
The Present
Human soul asks: Why?
Why am I here?
What is my mission?
Human mind asks: How?
How does the cosmos work?
How did the universe come to be?
Inner Voice replies:
You ask too many questions.
Your mission will come and find you,
although you may not recognize it when it does.
The universe is its own reason for being. Its
origins are none of your business.
Your life is a gift from your
mother, bought with her pain.
You cannot exchange it for another life.
You cannot return it and ask for money instead.
The Universe does not give refunds.
Open your gift. See all the blessings.
Say thank you.
Celebrate
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LABOR HISTORY MONTH
Never heard of Labor History Month? You’re not alone. Few Americans have. But the first day of May is International Workers Day. Never heard of that either? No surprise. You won’t learn about it in a school classroom, in your newspaper, on a radio station or the TV news. The day commemorates an event that happened right here in the USA. On this day in 1886, 180,000 working men went on strike for an eight hour work day. Although little noted in our nation, International Workers Day is celebrated in countries throughout the world.
We have come to take the eight hour day for granted, together with the two-day weekend. These are now legally mandated limits on how long an employee can be forced to work without being paid overtime. They didn’t drop from heaven. Organized workers fought long and hard to gain both. At the time the May Day strike of 1886 occurred, ten hours daily, six days a week were usual. Sometimes as much as sixteen hours.
May first, 1830, was the birthdate of a remarkable woman, Mary Harris, widely known as Mother Jones. It is fitting that she should be born on the anniversary of the beginnings of our own labor movement, for this feisty woman was a dedicated union organizer.
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