The story centers around Mary, a young and naive Latina who frequents a church run by some very sleazy White Boys double dipped in ersatz blood of the lamb and eager to hawk their apocalyptic message to whomever they can catch. One of them is a lineal descendant of The Professor from Gilligan’s Island; a stunted introvert and mad scientist with a home made technique for DNA extraction and manipulation. Seems that the sectarians have discovered another Shroud of Turin with Christ’s DNA still attached. This speeds them along on a plot to clone Jesus, use Him as homeboy to the Cause and rule the world…or what’s left of it after Armageddon.  Mary is the neo-virgin drafted to receive the none too immaculate conception of DNA administered by the scientist, surrounded by a chorus of charlatans. What verges on a scene from Hitchcock’s cutting room floor is saved by Alicia Sixtos’ utter mastery of her role as Mary. She is as sweet and dumb as they come, but with a requisite heart of gold that makes her believable as, well, the Mother of God…or something.

Of course Mary wouldn’t be complete without Joseph who 2000 years later and half a planet away from Bethlehem, is an African American mechanic with a fine talent for customizing low riders. He doesn’t even want cars to look alike, let alone people and has no truck for cloning the Son of God either. But he stands by his woman because he loves her through thick and thin and some really bizarre costume choices. James Jolly handles his role with depth and finesse and one never catches him acting, even when he grapples with the absurdity of it all while bathing baby and waiting for Mary to struggle with her inner demons.

Inner demons there are in plenty, too. When Jesus is born Black—and mute (!) He’s immediately cast out by the bad guy preachers, who turn Mary into Mary Magdalene and quickly recruit other naive Stepford moms willing to bear the holy offspring.  Suddenly, it isn’t the Second Coming anymore, but a whole block party; a flock of Sons of God right in the middle of East L.A. . Raymond Chandler -or Soupy Sales–couldn’t have done it better.

The Custom Mary holds together well in spite of some gritty camera work here and there; bits and pieces of animation and pseudo ecclesiastical trappings appear with strange meaning almost as if Dunnerstick is recalling apparitions of Angels. One of those angels not only leads Mary out of the desert where she’s gone in search of a miracle, but offers a well-formed commentary on the nature of things made by the Deity and how not to confuse them with mere hydrocarbon. Her comments are a lot more on point than anything out of Leviticus and remain as timeless as the desert—and the ’63 Chevy Impala—itself.

While there’s something to offend all kinds of Christians in The Custom Mary, the film leaves the viewer with worthy questions of its own; who owns religion, anyway, and what is faith made of? The faithful in The Custom Mary are made to pay for their credence and overcome the villains with truth mixed with just enough stretch to give it the kind of power it needs to get people motivated. Truth stretched enough to motivate people has been keeping churches filled and vision narrowed for some 2000 years and The Custom Mary is a welcome expanding of vision and a modern parable worthy of your time.

81 minutes. USA 2011.

Those in power here thought that the shrill shills of their hired media would be enough to scatter the Americans like so much chaff; inflicting pointless artificial and irrational divides among a people that have far more in common than what divides them. They thought that after a few years of endless propaganda our brains would sop up the drivel that passed for their “analysis” and that their views would become our own. Americans were intended to become mere consumers instead of citizens—pockets to be picked; commodities instead of individuals engaged in meaningful lives of their own making. We were expected to go shopping in response to terror attacks and buy duct tape and plastic and cower from unseen weapons that foriegn enemies intended for us. We were expected to be mere sheep; afraid, confused, trusting and weak.

We aren’t weak. Americans have never been weak. And there are enough of us in this land to counteract the fearful ones and stand up against the powerbrokers and thieves who mistakenly think the world is their private plaything. After a decade of insult, the Americans are finding a voice again, albeit halting and unsure. This voice is enunciated by Occupy.
This movement, first described and urged on by Adbusters Magazine grew from the agitated, frustrated and until now, powerless to make their grievances known. Those grievances are many and it has taken time for a cohesive voice to make itself heard from their efforts. Some say they are fools without a message, but people better read in history recall that the French who took the Bastille in 1789 didn’t have much to say, either—at first. The message came later as it does in all revolutions. Occupy seems to be in sync with similar efforts around the world made up of people who are tired of losing what they believed was theirs by custom and right.

Rights seem to have gone by the wayside, especially since nine-eleven. The Patriot Act, TSA, Obama’s outrageous claims to have a license to kill Americans without trial or even charges filed as was demonstrated in the Awlaki case—these and many other outrages were inflicted on a people who historically fought to uphold civil liberty for themselves and advance human rights around the world. Now, Americans are made to walk regressive steps away from their own heritage. The better ones show themselves unwilling to go backward on command.
Americans still haven’t won the rights Franklin Roosevelt intended to enact as part of the victory of World War II. Known as the Four Freedoms—Freedom of Speech and Expression, Freedom of Worship, Freedom From Want and Freedom From Fear, these have been eroded from our national life with all deliberate speed by government on behalf of the economic powers government serves. Even worse, the other worthy goals sought by Roosevelt at war’s end have been tragically suppressed. Roosevelt’s Second Bill of Rights never saw the light of day and now more than ever they are needed not only at home but around the world to combat the corporative, fascist states like the ones we defeated in 1945.
Defenders of corporatism like to throw the term “class warfare” against anyone who dares to fight back. It’s an old lowbrow gimmick that corporate media never fails to repeat along with “anti-American”. The beauty of the Occupy movement is that far from being a meaningless outburst (as Fox News described it) it is asymmetric—a protest in all directions; 360 degrees of 3-D angst against the way US society has been rigged against us. They are protesting everything. This very asymmetry makes it difficult for the corporate reactionaries—the real class warriors—to know how to react beyond the usual excessive shows of force. So far, excessive force has only made the movement grow in response to violence, yet the cops and politicians—like all stupid bullies—seem slow to learn this. The protests have so far been non-violent and the videos and pictures of taxpayer-paid anger management cases acting out their perverse impulses against the unarmed and non-combatant will only make them more hated—just as it does in all repressive countries where government relies on force and terror to have its way.

ailure of communication where Occupy is concerned is now happening in 100 American cities. Considering that the economy is getting worse by the day and that the only ones protesting about it are Occupy, it seems reasonable that more and more people will support them over time. “Tax the rich” and “End the wars” may not be as romantic as “ Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” but it’s enough for more and more people.

Occupy protests are a moral and legitimate way to express outrage and demand redress of grievances. They may accomplish some of what they say they want in two ways: One, by standing up to increased government violence against them, Occupy victims will gain sympathy and support the same way the civil rights marchers did fifty years ago. The more Wall Street and their whores in Congress and the White House engage in rage, the worse government will look—especially as the economic crisis deepens. The second way is through traditional organizing and countering the 360-degree corporate media blitz engineered by paid class warriors.

For instance, Occupy operatives could get government sponsored ID’s for poor and minority voters in the GOP-controlled states that have already begun fixing the 2012 elections by enacting repressive voting laws intended to keep Democratically inclined people from voting. If Republicans truly believe, as they say they do, that the quickest way to suppress something is to tax or regulate it, why have they chosen to tax, regulate and suppress voting by the poor or Democratically inclined?

Government and society always feature competition between public and private interests. Republicans claim that private interests have created much of the wealth that Americans have enjoyed, but the job of government is not to cater to private interests. Government is there to protect public interests. To the extent government—federal, state and local— is the unindicted co-conpirator and criminal accomplice for business interests, it’s corrupt. For a generation, the Republican party has waged class warfare against the public interest and the Democratic party has stood idly by and watched it happen—and begged for crumbs. Even when the American people elected a president on whom rested their successful hopes for a milestone achievement in race relations in these United States and the undoing of the Bush nightmare, Barack Obama and his party have shown themselves to be merely part of a rapidly expanding series of problems—and void of solutions.

It’s not just the class war waged by the GOP but the cowardly collapse of the Democrats that set the stage for Occupy. Occupy are the American people—the 99 percent—who are tired of being ripped off, ignored, abused and cheated. A WWII Japanese admiral once referred to our grandparents’ America as “a sleeping giant”. That giant is awakening again to find the fight against fascism at home needing the same defeat it once got abroad.

It’s time to man up and lend our strength to that giant effort.

THE SECOND BILL OF RIGHTS:
1. The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

2. The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

3. The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

4. The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

5. The right of every family to a decent home;

6. The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

7. The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

8. The right to a good education.

WMD founder Steve Garber with Desmond Tutu.

Steve Garber is, among other things, a San Diego plumber, poet and Zen practitioner who decided to make a difference in the futures of the US and Iraq. This is expressed in a movement to organize Americans willing to offer the Iraqi people—and all others involved in America’s longest war—a personal apology for the trauma, loss and devastation inflicted by American and coalition arms.
Garber was inspired by the words of Archbishop Desmond Tutu while listening to an interview with the Archbishop conducted by Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman. Tutu, to say the least, has said much on reconciliation and the need to recognize the transformative power of forgiveness during and after his term as chairman of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Created by Nelson Mandela’s Government of National Unity in 1995 to help South Africans come to terms with the legacy of Apartheid, Tutu’s efforts recognized the need and realized the benefits of reconciliation as a way to reclaim dignity, humanity and personal integrity from the past for both victims and perpetrators of violence to help create a future for both less poisoned by history.
Garber’s response to Tutu’s message led him to create an “Apology Project”— a collection of short videos made by individuals expressing remorse for the invasion of Iraq intended to be made available to all those impacted by the war. This includes American and coalition soldiers as well as the Iraqi people.
Sometimes known as the “I’m Sorry” project, Garber says that his aim is to “encourage healing through dialogue between all those involved in the Iraqi conflict.” After a slow start, the number of videos sent to the project increased to a steady stream of short declarations from people everywhere; mostly the result of word of mouth dissemination. “This is Mike from Austin, Texas. I’d like to say I’m sorry to the American and coalition forces, the Iraqi people and each of their families for the loss and suffering they have experienced because of this conflict.” Another said, “Hi, I’m Ben from Bisbee, Arizona…I feel that war is a travesty and it pains me to think that so many have suffered so much resulting from the violence. I’m sincerely sorry.” Many others are in a similar vein—usually just a few seconds long—as people step up to assert themselves and individual sense of being involved in events not of their choosing. As Garber is quick to point out, the Project is not about politics or even the Iraqi War as much as it is about empathy—to acknowledge human suffering and recognize the pain of  all those who suffered and so to pay them respect as fellow humans. It’s also about circumstance. Perhaps the contributors to the project feel a sense of responsibility as well as sorrow and are willing to own their expressions to those afflicted from what they could not stop. Participants in the project become more than mere spectators to events; they empower themselves to do what Tutu describes as the first step toward a future with more respect between peoples, acknowledgment of suffering, loss and a chance for progress with less ill will between those peoples affected by war.
The project grew into the WMD foundation started by Garber; Wisdom, Mediation and Dialog is dedicated to creating more peaceful communities throughout the world by echoing  Tutu’s message.  Continuing the development of a nonviolent philosophy to resolve conflict that can be used by a wide audience, the WMD Foundation has attracted a core of talent to its board skilled in communications, conflict resolution, negotiation and outreach that seeks to broaden its power by linking up with other like-minded groups. To that end, Garber and WMD associate Alexis Dixon met with Desmond Tutu on May 12 in Tacoma, Washington, to seek support and advice from the man that inspired them. As it turned out, Tutu did not recall the Goodman interview but was moved by Garber and Dixon’s wish to further dialogue toward a better world. The Archbishop listened and approved of the mens’ work and noted that those calling people to their higher selves can expect grave challenges along the way. “We are giants who want to remain dwarves,” Tutu told them. In the end, the Archbishop told them that what they are doing is good work and that he would pray for them. He emphasized that prayer is an action, heavy with meaning, and that dialog takes time.
The WMD Foundation is a noble attempt to bring some change into a world marred by lack of respect, transparency and empathy. Millions of people who had nothing to do with the Iraq War faced violence that overwhelmed them; their posterity will echo their pain for generations to come and their history will carry the stain of these times permanently. Others, mislead by cruel manipulators safe from harm, lost their lives and futures too, and this is the spur that moves a plumber from San Diego to stand up and be counted as a voice of reason and sanity for a growing number of people willing to assert their common humanity to tell those who fought on our behalf—as well as those who were our adversary—“I’m sorry.” The future, Garber asserts, can’t move forward without that acknowledgment.
WMDfoundation.org will offer the interested person information on how to say something that matters.

November, 1908:

The men entered the hideaway and poked around, eyeing whatever goods were present. They then shook the blankets and discovered the Indian. Her mourning was obvious by her shorn hair. Her deer thong-wrapped legs were swollen and she could not walk. She was weak, sick, and in pain and she shook with fear as the strangers looked her over. An attempt was made to communicate but with no success. Incredibly, after seeing the pitiful state this woman was in, the intruders ransacked the village, taking with them everything they could carry—even the food—leaving the woman to die. According to Apperson, he alone was appalled at his companions’ actions and protested their thievery. He claims he pleaded with the others that they should at least transport the woman to their camp for care but his protests fell on deaf ears. What these men had done with such casual ease was strip four terrified, starving people of their meager possessions, including items they needed to find food. They had handed down a death sentence, with no mercy or cause to the last surviving members of a people who had once inhabited, thrived, and survived the northern California region for thousands of years. In a fateful moment brought on by the actions of callous men, the Yahi people apparently had come to an end.

After the theives departed, the Indian man seen fishing at the creek returned. No food, tools, utensils, or comforts were left. It was he and his mother— alone. The other two never returned, nor was any sign of them ever found. They were gone. Dead. Likely drowned during their escape or eaten by one of the numerous predators in the back country. Before long, even the old woman was dead and the man stood completely alone.

The lone man survived the death sentence of 1908. With no home, shelter, tools, food, or companion he somehow found a way to live. Though grieving and alone, despair never overtook this last Yahi.

Three years passed since the raid on his village and the death of his family. It had been that long since he had heard a single utterance from the lips of another Yahi. Nearly dead from starvation, and perhaps desperate for human companionship, the man made a decision. Knowing he would die if he stayed at Deer Creek, and fearing he would be killed if he left, he took a chance.He departed the Yahi world and enter the world of the aliens who had decimated his people.

On the morning of August 29, 1911, in a slaughterhouse corral, two miles from Oroville, a nearly dead “wild man” was discovered, emaciated, exhausted, frightened, and starved. The sheriff took the Indian into custody, and was baffled as to what to do next. Locked in a cell, unable to communicate with any number of Indians brought before him, the traumatized man awaited his fate at the hands of people who thought he was insane and likely dangerous.

In a carnival atmosphere the “wild man” caught the imagination and attention of thousands of onlookers and curiosity seekers. News of his discovery reached two professors of anthropology at the University of California, Alfred L. Kroeber and T. T. Waterman. Both men had an interest in the human saga being played out in Oroville for several reasons. Beyond the obvious general anthropological interest, they had been searching for the lost “wild man” that had been sited three years earlier by the surveyor crew a few miles north of Oroville—in the Deer Creek region. They wondered if this could be him.

Two days after the man’s discovery, Waterman was on a train to Oroville to assume responsibility for the “wild man” per the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs’ instructions. Kroeber and Waterman became guardians of this last Yahi. For nearly five years he lived at the university’s museum, employed as a janitor and teaching the professors whatever he was able to communicate about the Yahi people. There were no other speakers of his tongue so communication was difficult and tedious. Kroeber persevered and managed to learn and communicate in ‘conversational’ Yahi, while the man learned about life in 20th century America.

The bond that developed between Kroeber and the man was, by all accounts, a close one. They both came to depend upon one another, not only for the pursuits of study they were engaged in, but on a personal level. For the man, this relationship must have been especially precious, for he had been alone for so long. Kroeber eventually named the man “Ishi”, which is Yahi for ‘man’. Yahi tradition prevented Ishi from speaking his own name or the names of the dead.

As Ishi told the Yahi story, Kroeber became anxious to see the country he spoke of. At first, Ishi resisted, afraid to revisit the places at which he had experienced both joy and sorrow. He told Kroeber that there were no chairs, tables or beds there, and very little to eat but eventually, he agreed to go. The results of the 1914 excursion to Yahi country were invaluable. Kroeber drew maps, marking crucial sites of Ishi’s life, and recorded the place names as the Yahi knew them. There were also photographs taken of both locations and of Ishi demonstrating the Yahi methods of crafting arrow heads, arrows, bows, spears and the other tools of his daily life. Kroeber recorded the past through living history in the present for the future. It was as if he had reached back in time, pulled forth a man of another age, and asked him; “Please show me what life was like long ago.” Ishi was physically contemporary, though culturally and socially antiquated.

The tale Ishi told was grim. The Yana peoples suffered the complete loss of their lands and way of life when the Americans came during the Gold Rush. In less than thirty years the peoples who once called the region home had gone into hiding in the harsh mountains where food was scarce and the chances for survival were slim. Ishi used to refer to the time of the American arrival as “when the stars fell”. Much of his life was spent watching his people fade away like animals facing extinction.

While still a child sometime in the 1870′s, Ishi’s own father was killed in a village massacre. The boy and his mother escaped by jumping into a nearby river. The Yahi who fought to preserve their territory against unequal odds and long range rifles were slaughtered until only a remnant band of 40 or so remained. The survivors of this tiny band hid successfully for nearly forty years, undetected by the outside world. It was firmly believed, even by locals who went up into the foothills of the Lassen, that the Yahi, or “Mill Creek Indians”, were a people of the past. Gone. No record of their history, origins, culture, or language had survived until Ishi walked down from the mountains.

This remarkable man was the last repository for the culture of a people who had lived in his region for some 2000 years. The records of his beliefs and myths, ways of life and tradition and language would have vanished forever as the clean sweep of American conquest overrode the lands and native peoples and assigned them a footnote in books that described them merely as the “Mill Creek Indians” who briefly and violently resisted American expansion. If Ishi held any animosity toward the American Californians he never showed it. He seemed happy enough to find some company even among those who regarded him as a curiosity. He was painfully shy around women and soon adopted American clothing, only reluctantly posing in the skins and rags of his former days. Shoes disgusted him while a penny whistle gave him hours of childlike pleasure. However, his mind was anything but dull. Ishi was asked what he thought when shown an increasingly popular modern wonder; the airplane. He simply asked, “Is there a white man up there?” Ishi was not fazed by the novelty of the modern world.

Ishi lived the last several years of his life at the San Francisco Anthropology Museum. He made bead-work quivers, and his bows showed the greatest craftsmanship. He did this in front of an enthralled public, 3 days a week as a living exhibit there.

Ishi soon encountered health problems that became harder to overcome. Exposure to large numbers of the public and foreign pathogens that he and his people had little ability to withstand took its toll and by 1915 he was diagnosed with tuberculosis, which in the days before antibiotics was a death sentence. The sentence for Ishi played out on March 23, 1916 at Berkeley where he had gone to be with his friend, Kroeber. Kroeber was not there; he was trying to get funding from politicians on behalf of his friend who died before Kroeber’s return.

Ishi was autopsied at the UC Berkeley Medical School. His body was cremated ashes sent to Mount Olivet Cemetery in Colma. His brain was removed and sent to the Smithsonian Institute in 1917 by Alfred Kroeber where it stayed for over eighty years, until other Yana tribes agitated for its return. In August, 2000 Ishi’s brain made it back to his closet relations; the Redding Rancheria and Pit River Tribe. Ishi’s remains were interred at an undisclosed location and it is likely that he finally had the song of the dead sung for him.

NEWS COMMENT BY J.A. RIPPO

As the economy sinks deeper, some people are motivated to become politically active in causes that matter to them. One of those people is Dave Peiser, who recently joined Moveon.org in its effort to confront mostly GOP congress members on issues that matter when it comes to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. As Peiser puts it, “We progressives believe that Republicans in general have been pursuing an agenda that destroys these “inalienable rights.”

Peiser and a Moveon group waited on Representative’s Darryl Issa in Vista on Tuesday, August 2 to protest what they believe are wrong directions that he happens to support.

The group entered the Congressman‘s office with signs proclaiming our concerns and disagreements with Republican policies and pledges. Two staff members, District Director Phil Paule and Senior Policy Advisor, John B. Franklin stood at the office entrance “and were almost cordial” in welcome. After protetors thanking Mr. Paule and Mr. Franklin for their public service, the conversation quickly turned loud and argumentative. As Peiser recalls, “Unfortunately our words to the staff were merely bouncing off them; not really being listened to as input to the congressman’s thoughts on issues. Thus, here is where the democracy lesson comes.”

A protestor reminded Franklin that Issa is in office to represent all of his constituents. At that point, Franklin let Issa’s cat out of the bag by replying that Issa “does not need to” represent all the constituents in his district. Franklin’s next line; “Issa was elected by a majority of his constituents who agree with his views and if you don’t agree, there’s an election in 2012,” summed up that Representative’s approach to both power and the public.

Going nowhere, in the usual direction of such confrontational meetings, it is hardly surprising that the protest soon broke up with nothing being accomplished; this after the usual veiled threats by staff about calling security, arrests and other expressions of naked power against individuals exercising their rights to be heard. What it says about Issa speaks volumes of the Representative’s ignorance in choosing staff with whom to interact with the public and of the Representative’s presumed views about whom he’s working for.

It is a common misconception indulged in by the dishonest and ignorant that only those who voted for a candidate matter following an election’s outcome. This idea has not found favor in the broad American history of politics for very good reason—if the concept became commonly accepted, it would bring complete anarchy to the soon-to-be destroyed system. Anyone could simply say that if they didn’t vote for an incumbent they were not bound by anything that incumbent did while in office.

It would also mean that no constituent who failed to vote for a Congress member who brought new economic benefit to his region should be able to use it, either. Didn’t support that new highway? Take the surface streets—after all, you voted against it, didn’t you?

Even a child in the third grade who had made it that far into his or her educational career by understanding how to follow rules might be expected to see the failure of that idea. It is a great and grim surprise that any staffer of any sitting Congressman should be so fantastically ignorant of basic Civics that he would say that his boss had no duty to the minority share of American citizenry from his district without first having first drunk too much gin.

Such failed concepts echo the failed ideas of a pre-Civil War Supreme Court Justice who infamously said that blacks have no rights the white man is bound to respect. A lot of changes have happened in the US since the late 1850′s and it is a mark of failure against Issa that he would tolerate anyone on his staff so backward in his knowledge of American governance and so willing to make it plain.

Never the less, the concept seems to have found growing favor among Republicans, especially since the administration of GW Bush who early in his presidency referred to his supporters as “good Americans” while ignoring others. Issa presumably follows this same idea. He did not return contacts from this newspaper prior before press time and it is perhaps likely that since its offices are not in his district he has no need to interact with anyone outside his favored circles.

We suggest to Franklin and Issa that high school was a very long time ago, and that remedial classes in American political structure are in order. No one supports anarchy and those who want a better America should be the last to champion that lost cause, even by default.

When times get tight and profit is down, a common mistake made by people with no business acumen is to raise prices for what they sell. In the case of city services, regulation is what they sell and their market is captive; every business has to buy–or else. Bureaucrats take it for granted that their budgets are sacrosanct and that all businesses roll in profits so going to the goose for another golden egg to keep the wheels of bureaucracy speeding along is the natural thing to do. It’ s a good thing people who think that way have government jobs because they’ d starve in the real world, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

SDPD is one such odd-thinking entity. Its Vice Squad regulates entertainment venues and in sets the rates for entertainment permits in San Diego and its new fees for them is based on a “quote cost recovery” approach that says that businesses regulated by Vice have to cough up all the coin Vice needs for its yearly budget. Permits for entertainment are source number one for this revenue. Other sources are licenses for holistic health practitioners, second hand dealers, bars, peep shows and other businesses that might become sources for crime. Entertainment venues of all kinds are seen as by Vice as fronts for drug and gang activity. This view has been around for the last half century if not longer. Of late, Vice no longer publishes its budget. It’ s budget is whatever they say it is and since SDPD has lost its media relations person and now requires emailed questions to be sent to whomever is on the end of a phone line with the usual bureaucratic lapses in returning messages as their usual tactic, news of their budget is likely to stay secret for longer than is good for business and the customers of those venues. Those who have a passing acquaintance with medieval Italian history will recognize a Black Hand when they see one. The tactics and philosophy of paying for “service” is no different from paying for “protection” . In San Diego the practices are elegantly indirect, combined and even lawful. They’re so smooth that even the rest of media can overlook them without breaking a sweat.

At the bottom of what appears to be a mere hike in fees is a sea change in thinking by the PD on how it earns its living. Vice has changed its form from a taxpayer paid, impartial function of government to a cash hungry predator looking to its ” customers” for increased revenue. This makes real what some libertarians have long yearned for–government function paid for entirely by those who consume it. What the crackpot theory doesn’t take into account is that government—in this case the PD—can force businesses to be their captive pockets to be picked.

Small venues perform some services that often go unsung: in the case of the coffeehouses, not only do they sell the caffein that keeps the citizens going through the motions daily, but many of them also provide small stages for new performers making their way into the mainstream. San Diego’ s coffeehouses can list some stellar names among those who started here: Jim Morrison of the Doors began at the Upper Cellar for starters; Tom Waits, Frank Zappa, The Cascades, Jewel, Blink 182 and many others are some others who began in the local coffee scene and the places they play in have discovered that entertainment pays if it’ s easy, cheap and unusual. Such elements are a way to make a local culture happen and grow. Making it much harder for those small venues to provide entertainment and afford SDPD is a direct threat against the growth of culture here. Every dime that disappears into the no longer public Vice budget is a deduction from creativity, talent, good music and a more human-scale society that allows some performers to provide what they know their public wants to hear. The higher cost of entertainment fee permits isn’t just more money for the cops—it’ s theft from business and and creatives in those businesses that shape the culture. It’s the inverse of the cops’ twisted assertion that entertainment equals crime; law enforcement equals suppression of things that make a community one’s own.

This shouldn’t be tolerated. Businesses do not need to work for the PD and creatives don’t need some secret editor making their music more difficult to find. Someday, the business community that is target number one for this odious kind of thing will have to get smart enough to organize effectively and lean on politicians long enough to push back against the City. If they don’t, they’ll find what every poor schmuck finds who gets convinced to pay for “protection”— that the cost always goes up and the terms won’t just bankrupt them, but directly harm everyone around them, too.

When pressed, some said that they didn’t want to seem like they intentionally polarized issues—which is another way to say they didn’t want to become involved. In reality, few wanted to rock any boats that would turn off collectors and critics and while this is understandable from a pay-the-bills/economic reality model, it begged questions from those who wonder what talent is for and what good is it when it sits idle in the face of tumultuous times?

More recently since the Prop. 8 fiasco befell gay Californians who saw their rights stripped from them, many in the local art scene looked the other way. Though some may not be much in sympathy with gay rights it seemed jarring that the local art community offered silence instead of art as an answer to one of the most egregious examples of discrimination in California in a generation.

This inertia hasn’t stopped many in the art world from establishing themselves on their own terms in their own fields, and nowhere is it an indictment of any individual who simply does not react to current events—even as current events shape the world that may or may not support artists’ work. But it seems that so many fine artists are like lifeguards sitting on a beach, content to preen for the bathing beauties and eat fried chicken rather than keep a sharp lookout for those in distress and answer with everything they’ve got when trouble happens. It begs the question—just what are they doing with all that talent, anyway?

Is painting so dead that it cannot follow the legacy of David, who created a mythos of the French Revolution that captured the spirit of those times and explained the age to the generations that followed? Is Caravaggio so forgotten to art that no one needs to follow his powerful religious imagery that empowered the Counter Reformation even against the rise of Protestant thinking and the modern political age? Does no one care to distill the temper of these times as Remington or even Rockwell did theirs? Why not? Why are the artists on the back bench of the world and its work? Why do so many ignore their power and fail to answer the upheaval of terror, war and depression?

What is the rationalization for having talent and not using it in the contest of ideas that will shape our future?

The world has enough diversions, surely, and no one needs another Snooki, Lady Gaga, Harry Potter or other idiot du jour to take our minds off what’s going on. But it always needs art to reflect the times people live in—if for no other reason than to inspire the best in us and to remind us that it isn’t enough to merely survive; that if life is to have any meaning it must have beauty and the clarity that artists can lend it.

So it was with some swelling pride of heritage that I saw a banner hoisted over India Street in San Diego’s Little Italy on September 11, 2001 in the hours following the attack on the WTC. I thought that those who lifted that banner did exactly the right thing. They, unlike so many millions of others at every level of society had the right perspective. We were hit, but not humbled. Attacked but not broken. Sure, we had been caught by surprise and lost thousands of people in a matter of hours. And it was a direct attack on United States; the first in generations. But unlike the doomsayers in the immediate aftermath—and for too long afterward—who pointed fingers at each other and swore that the US was crippled and might be destroyed by terrorism, at least a few people in a San Diego nieghborhood issued the right kind of message to any opponent who may have been looking for a response.

“You don’t scare me,” should have been the American response to 911. We should have realized that even as bad as the attack was life went on and the country we had on September 10 was still there. We should have been smart enough to realize that our freedom wasn’t the cause of the disaster, too.

Had we been smarter—or had we leaders fit to lead, we wouldn’t have been forced to weather the dismal assault on freedom that government has inflicted on us ever since.

Americans had to adapt to a new, less free way of being; imposed by a suddenly “security” minded government that thought it wise to grope old women and children before they boarded airline flights. We made it difficult for foreign born students to continue their education here, hoping to thwart terrorists, though the box-cutter brigade that led the raid on 911 were anything but geniuses enrolled in top schools. All we got from that move was a brain drain that impeded growth in the technology we’re addicted to. We made it harder to cross the border legally with goods—and cut the heart out of billions in US – Mexican trade which has added to the impoverishment of both nations and netted not one single “terrorist” in a decade. We hobbled financial transactions and banking and slowed the economy that ultimately fed the crash we suffer from now. And worst of all, we imposed a level of fear on our people that is now a kind of norm; one of knuckling under to unelected authority and even a willingness to spy on neighbors and associates that is completely at odds with American values and individualism. Privacy is out and the odious Patriot Act is in. Americans were led astray from their heritage after a single attack. Hardly the populace of land of the free—or home of the brave.

Obviously, it takes less to scare us than some of us thought.

That legacy of 911 needs to go. We need to cure ourselves of the ten year long addiction to fear that government has run on and the second class citizenship and way of life its imposed on the American people. We need to stop attacking ourselves and each other and giving credence to the degenerate warhawks who stand to gain power and make a killing off the fear industry.

September 11 began a fiasco that we’re still paying for and that is bankrupting us. We should have learned that the United States cannot function without freedoms we’ve traditionally enjoyed—the economy and nation isn’t built to be a police state and if we impose one, we’ll wreck what its taken two and half centuries to build. The last ten years ought to be a lesson to us all that security is not only a bad trade for freedom, it breaks the bank, impoverishes the people and cripples democracy to boot.

The politics of fear have debased politics since 911, too. From rambling nutcases ranting in public about Obama being some sort of muslim/terrorist/socialist/Kenyan spy—when he’s merely incompetent, weak and clueless—to the rise of the Tea Party; nothing brings out the tinfoil hat brigade like letting fear run free. Rick Perry, Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann and Ron Paul all owe their unworthy rise to the wingnut fearmongers who gained ground after the WTC attack. In a less crazed decade, these candidates would be referred to the outpatient clinics where they belong.

We deserve better. And those of us not blinded by the hysteria, blaming, xenophobic grandstanding by vile politicians and odious media hacks who spun vast fortunes out of spinning fear must become a vanguard in the years—or decades—to come, working for an America that does not cower on its knees no matter what our enemies may do. The kind of fear nurtured in high places for the rest of us to swallow is beneath our dignity and if it takes a louder handful to shout down the panic stricken and the cynical speculators in chaos, then those voices ought to rise and be heard. The sane have had enough of terrorists—both foreign and domestic—and must push back against those willing to make us less than what our heritage and history taught us to be.

And that is why every American ought to learn those Italian words. Every American ought to know that fear is the deadly enemy of freedom and that acting from fear gives our enemies an unearned victory—from our own American hands. Temi Solo Dio offers a perspective that says we can fear God and the uncontrollable if we want to—the rest we can deal with on the terms we devise with our wits about us. We have faced many enemies before—Indian, German, Japanese, Fascist, Communist, Confederate—and we didn’t defeat them by fearfully going off half-cocked and selling American freedom short. We beat them with superior strength brought about by superior thinking. Those who champion fear need a quick lesson in Italian; maybe it will improve their American sensibility if they get it.