Without the spinal cord, you could not move your body.

Without the spine itself, you could not stand tall and keep yourself upright.

Without a healthy backbone—literally or figuratively speaking—we cannot stand up for ourselves or others. We are symbolically spineless.

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One of my recent photos of my recent paintings:

#SprayCanProphet

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An article by Expendable Michael:

Huffing, Puffing and Blowing the UK House Down

In this digital age, we’ve all experienced situations in which a text message or e-mail was misconstrued because the person on the receiving end could not discern tone. Without the facial expressions, physical gestures, and vocal inflections gathered during face-to-face conversation, communication can often be challenging.

With that in mind, I am unilaterally announcing: “Face-to-Face February.” One month to explore the value of human contact and the role it can play in saving our eco-system.

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One of my recent photos:

You gotta stand fer something

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Poem: “haiku intervention"

Too often, we humans like to see ourselves as above or perhaps not even connected to the “animal” kingdom. But the more we learn about the species we underestimate, the more we can adjust our perceptions and behavior towards a more earth-friendly way of life.

Simple suggestion: Don’t demonize insects when it’s us humans who are treating the planet like it’s an orbiting outhouse.

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One of my recent photos:

#Cranium

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Poem: “look who’s back"

*235,000 miles have been channelized
*More than 600,000 miles are impounded behind dams
*More than 25,000 miles have been dredged for navigation

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One of my recent photos:

Ain’t it grand?

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Poem: “haiku pusher"

Born in the glorious violence of two tectonic plates pressing against each other until the land lifts and folds over itself, mountains link the sky to the ocean floor and have fired human (and animal?) imaginations since, well...forever.

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One of my recent photos:

Serving & protecting

Since I’ve already told you how today’s occupantscan learn from the labor movement and how important it is to #occupy filmmaking, how about a union-themed movie classic as a path toward activist inspiration? Read on…

Name the best-known early 1950s film with a union theme? Easy. That would be On the Waterfront. But Waterfront was not the early 1950s film with a union theme that Noam Chomsky called, “one of the greatest films ever made...couldn’t get it out of my mind for weeks.” That would be the sadly neglected 1953 film, Salt of the Earth.

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One of my recent photos:

Mixed messages

Only 3% of the Earth’s total water is freshwater. Of that, only 1% is available for human consumption. Do the math and you’ve got a grand total of 0.01% of the Earth’s total water being usable. Still, if utilized more judiciously, this amount is enough to support the world’s population three times over.

But when you consider that only about 8% of the planet’s freshwater goes for domestic use, it’s easy to recognize that global industry is the primary criminal and thus, the primary target for change.

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One of my recent OWS photos:

Expect us...

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One of my recent OWS videos:

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Rick the Cartoonist in The Occupied Times of London:

Click and scroll down a bit

Here in New York City, when Mayor Bloomberg’s private army goes on an arrest binge, the reasons range from trespassing to carrying books or food into Liberty Square (Zuccotti Park) to making signs to wearing masks to that old standby: disorderly conduct.

In other words, it’s illegal to conduct yourself in a disorderly manner.

But who’s discerning disorder from order? At Liberty Square, it’s those heavily armed folks wearing blue uniforms. The unarmed humans sharing free food, playing guitars, and setting up think tanks? They allegedly have no say in deciding what distinguishes order from disorder.

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One of my recent OWS photos:

MLK Day Union Rally

While we can’t know exactly how Dr. King would feel about the endless parade of US military interventions, his thoughts on another brutal intercession are also on the record. The Vietnamese, he said, “must see Americans as strange liberators ... For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy.”

King then sagely and prophetically added: “We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved ... What do they think as we test our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe?”

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One of my recent OWS photos:

imagine a heart
an atomic heart so warm
it melts barricades

My mother passed away four years ago on January 12, 2008. This experience is still teaching me previously unimaginable lessons about grief, sorrow, and loss because even in her death, my mother gave me one last, loving gift: My heart became broken open.

I fight it. Deny it. Defy it. Try to think it away but so many events in my life since January 12, 2008 keep bringing me back to the accepting that my heart is broken open—perhaps for a reason.

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One of my recent photos:

Choose sides