THIS IS NOT SPARTA by Scott Thompson nyone who has ever experienced the looming menace of a line of armored riot police advancing silently toward a street full of protesters knows that physical courage in the most ancient sense of the term is sometimes a necessity for activists. Power doesn’t much care for being defied, […]

OCCUPY SPIRITUALITY by Scott Thompson first heard about Occupy Wall Street on October 1, the day of the mass arrests on the Brooklyn Bridge. When MSNBC picked up the story, I turned to my wife, Cicely, and said, “I’ve been waiting for this my whole life. I wish we were in New York right now.” […]

THE VALUE OF DEMOCRACY by Davis L. Gonzalez oe Biden sent me an email asking for $5, as if he were a co-worker of mine who absent-mindedly left his wallet at home. Apparently, there’s an election going on and no less than six states–North Carolina, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Colorado, and Pennsylvania–hang in the balance. According […]

OCCUPY IS A CONSCIOUSNESS by James C. Henderson t the beginning of the Occupy movement, people often asked, what is Occupy? The answer was not forthcoming then, and it is still not clear to most. This is because Occupy is something new in politics, at least American politics. As a species that learns through analogous […]

THE DEFINITION OF INSANITY by Davis L. Gonzalez [intense_dropcap]A[/intense_dropcap]lbert Einstein is widely credited with this definition of insanity: Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. If this is an acceptable term for insanity, then I have concluded that we live in a country of lunatics. I’m not just referring […]

OCCUPATION by Athena M. Henderson The roar of trucks and motorcycles the dust and chaos of men in enemy uniforms. “Where are you going?” my mother asks. “To another town,” the Nazi Captain says. Where they kick in the doors of the church and order two young men into their truck. Offering of figs, quince, […]

BRIBERY by Zane Zodrow [intense_dropcap]I[/intense_dropcap]n case anyone has forgotten how our government operates, Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary offers this explanation: BRIBE: Money or favor given or promised to a person in a position of trust to influence his judgment or conduct. My friend Bob emailed the above definition to me recently. It was probably an […]

AUTONOMY AND SOLIDARITY by Scott Thompson ccording to social scientist Geert Hofstede, culture is the “collective programming” that leads members of a group to see the world in certain ways. Cultural programming determines how people think about issues such as authority, group membership and decision-making processes. Hofstede describes culture in terms of four dimensions or […]

TORTURES THE AMERICAN WAY Poetry by Athena M. Henderson Commentary by Scott Thompson Athena’s lifelong involvement with activism began when she served in the Greek Resistance against the Nazis as a young teenager. In 1967, a military junta known as the Regime of the Colonels seized power in Greece with the support of the CIA […]