Tag: government

The protesters that began the expansive "Occupy Wall Street " movement are examples of the power of One Voice. They are not alone in the history of uprisings that have changed the course of history.

In my case,  a terrifying experience in a haunted house on an island outside Montreal  segued with injustice in the chambers of a private judge in the family court system. At the time, I felt I had no voice. So, I began to write the story of a world-weary American woman's story of transformation and empowerment in the French Canadian underground.

I wrote the following piece to remind myself that one must be brave and speak the truth for the good of the world.

                                                                                                                                                                         One Voice

     A man sat at an ornate  desk and gazed at a blank  parchment. On the paper he had agreed to write  a proclamation, a fiery statement that would be delivered to the King and all of his courtiers and officers. it was a document that  would irrevocably alter his life.

     He  realized he was jeopardizing everything he owned and held sacred. The lovely estate he had designed himself  and furnished with artifacts from around the world, the gardens he had tended and nurtured would be confiscated.  His servants would be out of jobs - employment they needed to survive. His cherished family would lose their comforts, and his wife would be reduced to working in the households of the nobles, if they would  take her at all. The prospects of his children be would horribly altered. His daughters' marital opportunities would be diminished and his sons' opportunities limited to those of farmer or laborer, rather than gentleman.

     Even worse, he understood if he wrote and signed the proclamation he would  likely be hung by the neck in the gallows. He would be publicly humiliated in front of his wife and children and all of the community that  looked up to him as a man of high position. Once he finished putting ink to the parchment his life as he knew it was over.

     Five men waited for the document - the well positioned men had chosen him to create the first draft. He had only written a few words, then just a few paragraphs, when he was compelled to stop. He was aghast at his own vehemence - he had called the King a tyrant! Surely the others would think him mad for using such an explosive word.

     Then, like one possessed, his pen began to scratch at the parchment, his hand desperately seeking to keep up with the words raging from his mind. Once he had written of the horrible deeds of the King against his countrymen, the lost lives and futures, insults to dignity and honour, crimes against his comrades, his brethren - there was no turning back. He completed the deed and signed the document with relish.

     The man gently picked up the parchment, still wet with the black ink from the crystal ink holder given to him as a present from his beloved father, and walked from the sun drenched room. His carriage waited outside, and within the hour he delivered the document to the five illustrious men. To his surprise, they did not attempt to edit his words, instead they reinforced them by signing their names. Then, it was delivered to the Commission, where each added their name to the list.  His voice became stronger as each signed the document, and it soon became a throng of cries from citizens who had been mistreated for too long.

     The voice of the man at the desk has never stopped speaking. His voice caused the downfall of a government. His voice helped to create a new constitution based on its precepts. His voice has resonated through three centuries, and continues to speak throughout the world. One man's proclamation is now viewed by most of mankind as  Divine Right - the Divine Right of the Individual for Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It marks the birth of democracy.

     The man was Thomas Jefferson and his proclamation -  The Declaration of Independence.

                                                                                      xxxx

     May we all be bold and brave in standing up for our God given rights -  and those of our  comrades.

One can only imagine the entrance to Sarah Palin's Parlor. Likely it is homey, filled with the smell of freshly cook jam, and the stuffed and mounted relics of her gamesmanship - perhaps like the picture featured below.

The photograph was taken in the parlor of the Chateau Tivoli in San Francisco while shooting film trailer for scene in “The House on Black Lake”.  In novel protagonist Alexandra Brighton is ushered into the stately summer home of Ruth and Ramey Sandeley and is aghast to see the lineup of exotic animal head trophies and artifacts decorating the elegant room. Ruth tells Alexandra that her husband believes when you look into a powerful animal’s eyes and take its life you are bound forever. Of course, this is not a good omen for Alexandra.

 Most hunters keep a souvenir of victims when they kill for sport, and not for survival. Yet, rarely do women lust for blood. “A woman gives life, and God, the father, takes it”, Ramey informs Alexandra. In the course of her journey she is betrayed by women with a thirst for second hand power and ultimately led into a patriarchal trap. Sarah Palin's hunting partner is not her mother, sister, or girl friend - it is her father. In her videotaped journey she finds a pioneer soul sister squatting in the depths of the Antarctic, who sews her own  flesh wounds and professes to love blood and guts in the manner in which other woman covet jewels. She is not a not bold feminist in a frontier land, but rather a conservative leader in a modern world. She does not shoot for sustenance, but rather for the glory of the kill, and the camera that records the killings seeps a taste of the barbaric into mainstream experience. A female who gives and takes life for sport is clearly an anomaly, in all of nature. Dominance cannot succeed without its hand maidens, and there are rewards for those who are willing to play the game. What the protagonist in the story does not realize is that she is the trophy. In the course mankind's recorded history the display of a sacrificed victim has always been a symbol of power and domination.

 Perhaps it is time for Sarah to clean her parlor of the relics of domination and fill it with trophies of empowerment. When she puts down the rifle and embraces mother earth, all creatures will feel more secure. A female role model that embodies the unique powers of the feminine, while igniting the loftier attributes of the male, carries the hope of a remarkable new world order.

 Holidays come and go and few remember what gifts they received the previous year, although certain unique presents are remembered for a lifetime. This season it is possible to give the perfect present, the gift of immortality. But you must act quickly as the offer expires December 27, 2011.

The First Amendment Project has assembled a group of thirty prominent authors of different genres who are auctioning character names in future projects on eBay. Among opportunities available at the auction, which can be found at http://3.ly/fapauction include the opportunity to be immortalized as a character in the next episode of the hit Showtime series, “Weeds” In addition to the character name, the winning bidder in the “Weeds” auction will receive a signed copy of the pilot script, the box set of DVDs of the first five seasons of the series and a “Weeds” baseball cap. Bidders will also have the chance to be an FBI agent or a stripper with a heart of gold in the next entry in Suzanne Brockmann’s Troubleshooters series; a villain or a victim in Thomas Perry’s next entry in the Jane Whitefield series, a wounded World War I soldier or drunken Bohemian in Andrew Sean Greer’s next novel, as a character in a new musical by Janet Burroway, or a character in a cartoon series by Ben Katchor, Chris Ware or T Campbell. Young adult authors Dan Gutman and Kevin J. Anderson are offering character names in the next entries in their Baseball Card Adventures and Star Challengers series, respectively, and Anastasia Blackwell offers readers opportunity to run away with the circus in her new romantic suspense novel/screenplay.

The auction, which began on November 26, is scheduled in tiers, with final bidding on December 27^th. Participating authors include Jenji Kohan, Andrew Sean Greer, Ayelet Waldman, Ben Katchor, Chris Ware, Dan Chaon, Dan Gutman, Dave Eggers, Derek Haas, Elinor Lipman, Francine Prose, Jane Smiley, Janet Burroway, Joshua Ferris, Kevin J. Anderson & Rebecca Moesta, Lorrie Moore, Margot Livesey, Mona Simpson, Nami Mun, Patrick DeWitt, Phillip Margolin, Rick Moody, Robert Mailer Anderson, Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum, Stacey D’Erasmo, Stuart Woods, Suzanne Brockmann, T Campbell, Thomas Perry, Vendela Vida, Anastasia Blackwell and Walter Kirn. In addition, authors Laura Benedict and Lisa See are offering “book club packages,” in which they supply multiple copies of one of their books and make a telephone call to the group

All proceeds will benefit First Amendment Project (FAP). FAP is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing free legal services on public interest free speech and free press matters. FAP serves its core constituency of activists, journalists, and artists by defending those who are sued because they have written or spoken about matters of public concern, representing those seeking access to government records and proceedings and representing those challenging the constitutionality of laws, regulations or governmental policies or practices that restrict the freedom of speech. See below for the list of participating authors and their corresponding auction dates

This is the third character name auction for First Amendment Project. The first two auctions, held in 2005 and 2006, earned over $170,000 for the organization.

More information about The First Amendment Project and Ebay auction go to:

http://www.thefirstamendment.org/news.html.