I got the best news today!! I have been accepted into the Rockwood Year-Long Leadership Program!! Leading from the Inside Out…this is a great honor, and I am so grateful to all the people who advocated to get me in, and I’m going to work hard to deserve it 🙂 WOOHOOOOOOO!!!!

I started the day off by walking across the Manhattan Bridge again (what a MARVELOUS way to start a day – that moment at the middle of the bridge where you feel you can see the world, the fat round old skool grafitti on the Manhattan side…), this time to breakfast at NOHO Star, which Laura Flanders intro’d me to the other day – yummy. This time I was there to meet with Frida Berrigan from the World Policy Institute. She’s dope, brilliant, just google her. Even her boyfriend is dope – he runs Added Value, the community farm in Red Hook. Frida and I spoke at a Bluestockings event  together late last year and I was so impressed with her that I determined to have conversations with her.

Today’s convo completely satisfied me, we talked about impeachment, acts of resistance, the military. She was telling me Hugh Thompson just died – he was the man who stopped and then exposed the massacre at My Lai during the Vietnam war (for which the U.S. military leader William Calley served but a few months once he was finally punished). The conversation reminded me of thoughts on the military I’ve had – my father is a U.S. ARMY officer and so I’ve grown up and been politicized with this discourse ongoing in my head. The military originally came into being as a protector of a new country against the founder-oppressor of Great Britian, and the constant push and pull in the military is between those who believe it should exist to protect and defend the peace, and those who believe that war is fun, challenging, is what makes men, and what keeps a nation in a superpower role and that a constant state of war is thus desirable. My father was stationed in the Pentagon during the years we all watched Rumsfeld, clearly from the latter camp I just described, rise to the top. A Rumsfeld military in the hands of an imperialistic and irresponsible administration is more dangerous than any weapon ever created. And what is a more logical conclusion than impeachment for the leader of that administration at this point? I think its fair…censure for blowjobs, impeach for huge wars that have immeasurable costs in dollars and lives. Who is going to organize that effort? Oh it was a great talk.

At the end of which I got the bill and it had the tipping thing on the bottom and – wow. I have been way overtipping.

Then I walked up for a media meeting with the one and only, the very great Tony Newman of the Drug Policy Alliance and the brilliant D-Willis whose going to be helping the League get media up to speed. Inspirational and challenging.

Then walked back down to Union Square – walking fool!! – and got on a climate crisis coalition call and then a catch-up with Malia Lazu, who was just in Venezuela with Harry Belafonte and Hugo Chavez. What a life force that woman has.

And on home for some great calls and some chats that made me really smile.

The Ruckus Society seems to be doing pretty good which warms my heart cause I think their work is some of the most important in the world at this point in history.

New Orleans Network is ROCKIN it down there – in spite of the fact that the Mayor dropped a really horrible and unrealistic plan today that entails communities having to prove they are economically viable in 4 months. Folks were expecting 3 years, maybe 1 year at the edge of sanity. 4 months to track down people and figure out – without offering them anything – if they want to return…its heartbreaking and counter to logic. The adage goes if you build it they will come. Looks like the firestarter who moved us with his calls for help during Katrina is looking to build something that isn’t for the people of New Orleans. Send all your love and support to on the ground NOLA organizers, they’ll need it for the battle to come.

Other sad news, one of my peeps in Milwaukee told me a little girl got shot in the neck at recess today – their work at the Campaign Against Violence is truly the deepest sort of uphill battle. I can’t think of words for that particular prayer, its just too incredibly sad.

The other day, in a good talk with a friend, she posed the question: how do you tell children who have grown up around constant violence to put down their guns? And the only conclusion we could come to is that you show them the world of possibilities beyond the world they know, the possibilities for their own people. The one thing our remarkably punitive justice system can’t master is real gun control, and we’ve globalized the madness in our international affairs, while socializing our own kids with the most realistically violent video games man can produce.

Oh I’m going on, but this day just created so much energy and thought in me, I love days like that. I’m feeling so on top of my game right now – I was telling friends yesterday that I can tell I am in a good mood cause now when i toke the good lord’s greens, instead of getting pensive and sad and calm, I get funny and uplifted and joyful. The nothing is always coming, for those of you who know the ideology of the Neverending Story (one of my favorite movies ever!), but it is our dreams that keep the world moving towards the light.

And so, on towards the light beloveds!