there Ralf will wander the fork, and if Ghassan lovingly dreams it too, the gardner will measure about the sour mountain
Orin A. Hahn, DDS
We are here. Like it or not, for good or bad, we are here. Who are we? We are the
downtrodden and dispossesed, the self-torturing, the disenfranchised convicts,
drug and alcohol addicts, the unemployed and unemployable. We are the children of
poverty, financial and spiritual. We have and will have children of our own,
grandchildren too. We are ex-cons, uninsured, homeless, of many colors and speaking
many tongues. We are the enemy in what has become a domestic war against ourselves.
And who are you? You who like the tough talk of Tough on Crime? You who watch as
budgets are cut in education and health care while you militarize a police force?
Bullet-proof vests, automatic weapons, helicopters, tanks, robots ... the
testosterone is oozing through the streets, more prisons, longer sentences, tighten
the belt, spartan conditions, task forces, gang units, gun courts. And what is there
to show for it? Unemployent stays low because half the population oversees those
"out of the workforce", the dregs, the rabble, the enemy? Please tell me there is a
deeper reason. Do you feel safer? More humane? More like a cohesive society with a
shared sense of purpose, who can identify Us and Them? Do you live in a gated
community or gentrified neighborhood? By the way, have you read the Declaration of
Independence and US Constitution - or do you only know the first phrases?
It's about time we got together. Please know that I have yet to meet a convict who
wants their child to be a thief, an addict, a dealer, a prostitute, or a violent
individual. Most of us still have hope for ourselves even when stuck in the darkest
dilemmas, ruts and catch-22s. Most of us believe in crafting laws and instilling
order. Many of us have burrowed beneath the surface to find a spiritual sense of
being, an understanding force at least as powerful as those we succumbed to, and many
of use wouldn't escape if you opened the front door. Did you know that approximately
10 million Americans are either incarcerated, on probation, on parole or once were in
those categories? Each of those 10 million have families, friends, neighbors ... and
so closer and closer does the We interface with the You. Don't you think it's time we
talked?
Are you ready? Can you accept that the road we are travelling points toward a grim
and painful future? Do you have the heart to face monumental failures while bravely
struggling beyond where we are now? I know that some of you are, and that some of us
are, and this is what gives me hope. You need our insights just as we need your
structure. It is never over, especially when a real solution, a real treatment for
our sickness, is yet to begin.
In Solidarity,
Bruce Reilly (a.k.a Bruha)
P.O.Box 8274
Cranston, RI 02920 USA
P.S. - I am trying to conceptualize an effective guerilla media campaign to promote
this cause. Ideas are welcome. Collaboration is prayed.
right, the article was stored for months on sites around the
world, and you'd be able to tell people "idiot, don't ask this
question until you've read the FAQ, especially answer #42".
The periodic postings included several lists of newsgroups, along with
comments as to what the contents of the groups were supposed to be.
Anyone who had the time and energy could have put together a list like this,
and if they had posted it for several months running they would get some
measure of net.recognition for themselves as being the "official"
keeper of the "official" list. But don't delude yourself into
thinking that anything on the net was official in any real way; the
lists served to perpetuate common myths about who was talking about what
where, but that was no guarantee that things actually worked out that
way.
>PROPAGATION
>-----------
In the real old days, when it cost real money to make long distance
phone calls to send netnews around the world, some people were
able to get their management to look the other way when they
racked up multi-thousand dollar phone bills. These people were
called the "backbone cabal", and they had a disproportionate
influence on news traffic because, after all, they were managing
to get someone else to pay for it.
More recently, communications costs were (for many sites) buried in with
a general "internet service". If you wanted to have a disproportionate
influence on news traffic, you needed to be able to beg, borrow, buy or
steal access to great big disk drives (so that you could keep a full
feed) and lots of memory (so that you could feed a lot of sites at once).
There was a vigorous, competetive cash market for news feeds; you
could get a newsfeed from a local provider via modem or via Internet
in all 50 states of the USA, more than 50 countries, and via
satellite in most of North America. The notion that any one system
was a "pre-eminent site" was past;