Brasil Continua Marchando! ( Brazil Marches On!)

 There is a lesson to be learned both in Brazil and in the USA: when leaders are well fed and the people are hungry, the government must be changed.  Here, and in Brazil, we have fat well fed leaders who watch or actively take part in making things worse for the poor.  The answer is to change government.  In Brazil the first challenge of the people has made the government stand still, but government actions so far are small and filled with illusions.

os ricos não precisam sonhar - eles têm;
os pobres não têm nada, mas seus sonhos

the rich do not need to dream--they have;
the poor have nothing but their dreams

The people in Brazil understand this and while the numbers of demonstrators has grown smaller, the anger and determination seems to have grown stronger. The government has time in this pause to come forward with actions to do what is needed: to spend on the neighborhoods that need streets and sanitation. To start making jobs for the people to do the work the people need.  To stop spending public monies to impress the world with marvelous architecture- when there are not enough schools and teachers do not get a living wage.  Healthcare has no better time than now for immediate action- every day costs something that cannot be remade- human suffering.
The time for progress is at hand, if the government delays or tries to use empty promises, they will have their hands full of public anger and refusals to allow things to go on as usual.  Strikes and deep interruptions will make the country unbearable- even for the rich. There is no comfort when there is no peace.

existe um caminho para a justiça e um caminho para a ruína.
Justiça é a que sobe o morro, é
a escalada mais difícil - o único caminho para o topo

there is a path to justice and a path to ruin.
Justice is the one that goes up the hill; it is
the hard climb-- the only way to the top

Brasil desperta

 Brazil Awakens!!!

 .

Brasil desperta
olhos, corações de repente abrir
eo som de pés marchando

It is the most welcome sign of progress when the people see the wrongs against them and say " NO More"  I read stories- young men who watched their mothers perish while receiving poor health care. Students who want more opportunity to climb the ladder for success. Parents who want better life for their children.  It has been going on for a long, long time  but now-- as if lifted by the same wind-- all of these hearts begin to fly....
 It is a blessed and rich country now  the people want to share the blessings..and for my part it is a wonderful thing to see.
A class of rich and powerful have grown on the backs of the poor. Corruption and influence have become tools of wealth.  Honest work has become a badge of relative poverty.  Low wages prevent movement in society, we become trapped while doing all that should be done: honest work, paying taxes, raising families, and obeying the law.

 uma pedra
uma pedra no meio do caminho  
para o progresso ...e justiça

This is not new but the anger is fresh.  The acceptance of injustice is not new but it has filled Brazilians to the brim...they can accept no more.  There is not a single event that lighted the fuse, a price increase in public transportation was like a prism in the midday sun- it focused light on one subject. It has burned quickly to ignite the black powder. It is nation that began like most of the Americas in an era of total loss of freedom for many to the gain of the few. 

The heat the Sun, 
the blood of its Saints, 
all  seems mixed with the power of the seas.

The beauty of land and people
remembered in loss of freedom: once endured in Black skin;
endured again in Dictatorship.
Now, it cannot be, because something rises from within.
A long simmered coal that glowed heat
until breath of spirit touched it thus;
 now, a fire burns...and burns!


 I can only hope that in the US the poor are watching and learning that action speaks louder than money...that Democracy is a thing of the People. Equality means making a society in which everyone has  a fair and reasonable opportunity to succeed.  Where the paths are made easier because we lift the road to meet our children's feet.  Where a stone in the road is where stumbling giants fall and the people stand strong

 ouvirmos
mesmo na escuridão ouvimos
sussurros da alma do sol

...hdm

Immigration Reform

There are basics: some wish to keep brown skinned immigrants out of the U.S.; this includes a significant sentiment among African -Americans.  Some wish to provide a legitimate path to citizenship for those born here, the issue(offspring) of persons with illegal status, some of whom are long term, upstanding residents with unresolved status issues.  There are also the pure politics, drawn from ascendant ambitions:  Republicans who want to be President because their egos demand the world's most influential personal vanity-"leader of the free world". 
It is alarming that the futures of so many gainfully employed and productive residents can be tied to an essentially insipid debate: that  millions of immigrants( i.e. the US population minus the Amerind peoples)feel worthy to adjudge the ambitions of people who simply wish to immigrate to find a better life. 
There are fundamental and fair questions: how many immigrants should we permit with a view towards improving social and economic conditions in the U.S..  How can we limit the cultural and racial biases that cause greater acceptance of and preferences for White Europeans than any other group.
The domestic politics have been divisive and inflammatory or- in a phrase- typically Republican.  As such, they have typically abdicated leadership in favor of the whims of wealthy donors.  The wealthy may actually see these question in terms of an abundance of low-waged agricultural workers and household help.  The nation cannot afford to be so blithely ignorant.  Immigration is a source of national economic growth. It is a benefit of a robust economy that we can attract talent and ambition from across the globe.
The politics of the reform legislation will perhaps play out this way: another law that provokes a flood of political money to both parties.  But on the Republican side it will enable further obstruction and government debilitation.  Because while our government is stalled in the political abyss of Republican sabotage, the world spins on: our food supply increasingly attenuated with chemical dependence, our air more lethal from toxic emissions. our water more scarce and commoditized for chemical agriculture, and fracking.  The world populations continue to blossom and our ability to house, hydrate, and feed them more tenuous.
One wonders, how long before the politics of freedom, which seems to burst out in place to place from time to time, will become incumbent with a greater issue: in a world of short supply of the necessities of life, will we continue to tolerate the influence of money in determining quality of life?  When the price of bread is treated like the price of oil, will we continue to accept the privileges of wealth?  There is one greater revolution in the making; one vast parallel-and- conscious rising as one. It will be to demand, then take, the basics of life as a right: air, water, food, space, justice, and social equality. 
Today it is nascent, hidden in the price of a potato-- the chemical de-evolution of global food supplies. The potato that twice has sustained the dynamic eras of world population growth; we are losing the potato--it is diminished from 4,000 varieties over 11,000 years of human social evolution into a plant that must be grown from a patented seed, and which cannot survive without 5-7 patented-chemical applications per acre, per year.  One that must be fortunate enough that nature does not develop an acute microbe to destroy it. It is a change that puts the world on a path to starvation without technical advances that apparently do not yet exist. 

In the dire place of human necessity, there is yet a seed of revolution; and it cannot be patented.