MFTN: I Call For A Constitution 2.0

Untitled

Image by Brad Dougherty via Flickr

The Essays of The Man From the North by Rivera Sun
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Originally published Dec. 16, 2018
September 20, 2020

If we, the people, wrote a constitution now, what would go in it? Equal rights for women, men, non-binary, and undefined? Caps on wealth tied to poverty levels? Rights of nature? Reparations for past crimes, wrongs, and thefts? Limits on military spending? A free and open Internet? Abolition of mass incarceration, or the entire prison system; replaced with restorative and community justice? Free healthcare for all? Living wages or universal basic income? Would we keep corporate personhood or the electoral college?

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MFTN: The Sabotage of Division

Solidarity

Image by Thomas Hawk via Flickr

The Essays of The Man From the North by Rivera Sun
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Originally published Feb. 23, 2014
March 9, 2020

Enough! Enough of this senseless criticizing of one another. A Dandelion Insurrectionist who is imprisoned and beaten by the police is no more revolutionary than the mother who gets up in the morning and feeds her child. We all have tasks that are imperatives of our times and we must do them with humility. Those of us trying to make change through civil resistance are no nobler than the plumber trying to clear the shit out of the pipes.

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The Sabotage of Division

Solidarity

Image by Thomas Hawk via Flickr

The Essays of The Man From the North by Rivera Sun
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Originally published Feb. 23, 2014
February 25, 2019

Enough! Enough of this senseless criticizing of one another. A Dandelion Insurrectionist who is imprisoned and beaten by the police is no more revolutionary than the mother who gets up in the morning and feeds her child. We all have tasks that are imperatives of our times and we must do them with humility. Those of us trying to make change through civil resistance are no nobler than the plumber trying to clear the shit out of the pipes.

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Throw Off the Yoke of Indoctrination!

Unplugged

Image by kamleshmehta via Flickr

The Essays of The Man From the North by Rivera Sun
Writer, Dandelion Salad
February 11, 2019

We say we want change. So every few years, we elect new officials, and they continue to churn out more of the same policies, legislation, and rhetoric. The rich continue to get richer. The poor slide deeper into poverty. Corporations and the wealthy see pet projects and sweet deals passed through Congress. The People receive yet another bitter slap in the face.

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I Call For A Constitution 2.0

Untitled

Image by Brad Dougherty via Flickr

The Essays of The Man From the North by Rivera Sun
Writer, Dandelion Salad
December 16, 2018

If we, the people, wrote a constitution now, what would go in it? Equal rights for women, men, non-binary, and undefined? Caps on wealth tied to poverty levels? Rights of nature? Reparations for past crimes, wrongs, and thefts? Limits on military spending? A free and open Internet? Abolition of mass incarceration, or the entire prison system; replaced with restorative and community justice? Free healthcare for all? Living wages or universal basic income? Would we keep corporate personhood or the electoral college?

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The Time Is Up–The Time Is Now

Change For the Better

Image by Robert Couse-Baker via Flickr

The Essays of The Man From the North by Rivera Sun
Writer, Dandelion Salad
November 18, 2018

The time is up. The time is now. Gather the people to do the work: the healing, transformative, deepening work of building community, solutions, understanding, skills, knowledge, and hope. You must be the one to make a change, to step out of the rutted tracks of the looming train wreck that is our culture. You must have the courage to walk into the wilderness of what you don’t know and embrace the solutions that will save our lives.

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Elections and Politics are the Games of Elites

If voting made a difference

Image by Stacy Noland via Flickr

The Essays of The Man From the North by Rivera Sun
Writer, Dandelion Salad
November 2, 2018

The Vote – the beloved, abused, scorned, corrupted, stolen, hijacked, pointless, profound, hopeful, depressing, hard-won, cherished vote – is not the only way to take action for meaningful change. Currently, the elections operate in our nation like a cattle chute, all too often forcing us back into the deadly, no-win tracks of the two-party duopoly that serves only the moneyed class. It becomes a handy device for siphoning off the demand for revolutionary change by giving false hope that elected officials will actually enact their campaign promises once in office.

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Crisis in Consciousness by Graham Peebles

Capitalism Kills Love

Image by Jeremy hunsinger via Flickr

by Graham Peebles
Writer, Dandelion Salad
London, England
April 28, 2018

Our society is besieged by a series of interconnected crises. Millions of people around the world know this and are crying out for change, for a different way of living, for justice, peace and freedom.

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Transformation by Gaither Stewart

Capitalism isn't working

Image by Charles Hutchins via Flickr

by Gaither Stewart
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rome, Italy
September 21, 2016

“Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”
George Bernard Shaw

Change is a word that both intellectuals and the intelligentsia of America are discussing in these times. However, one is justified to wonder what kind of change they mean. As a rule when intellectuals/liberals speak of change, they mean reform (and not enough of it, at that: that is, the leisurely conforming of the lives of the collective with their own. The radical, politically-socially committed intelligentsia means something else and their thought and conclusions take another avenue of meaning: their aim is transformation or, if you prefer, radical change. However, it is an unfortunate paradox that no more than liberals, the intelligentsia does not always know what to do with its convictions.

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The Man From The North: The Sabotage of Division by Rivera Sun

Solidarity

Image by Thomas Hawk via Flickr

The Essays of The Man From the North by Rivera Sun
Writer, Dandelion Salad
February 23, 2014

The Man From the North is a fictional writer in Rivera Sun’s novel, The Dandelion Insurrection. The novel takes place in the near future, in “a time that looms around the corner of today”, when a rising police state controlled by the corporate-political elite have plunged the nation into the grip of a hidden dictatorship. In spite of severe surveillance and repression, the Man From the North’s banned articles circulate through the American populace, reporting on resistance and fomenting nonviolent revolution. The novel can be found at http://www.riverasun.com/online-store/the-dandelion-insurrection/.

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