The morning started out pretty slowly. I went to get the donuts at 8:40 AM and was the first one in the parking lot. Dr. John Theis is usually the first one out there but he is busy teaching a special course for the entire month of March.
I sat alone in the parking lot wondering if our other stalwarts Arthur Dietz, George Batten, Deborah Mowery, Stephanie Kelly, and Bambi would be there. Lo and behold Bambi pulled up. Well, it will at least be two of us. We can call it a group. Then George showed with his signs and we were ready to go.
We thought it was going to be the scantest showing of the year, after-all it is spring break in Texas. We were so wrong. People kept on coming, All our stalwarts showed sans Professor Stephen Davis who decided to take off this weekend to have fun at South by Southwest in Austin, shame on him – NOT!.
Then Tara, Cody, Daniel, and many others showed. To my wonderful surprise my daughter Ashley Willies who is in town for spring break from the terrorization of our alma mater (UT) showed up with her camera to take pictures and join us. I am awakening her activist bone.
All in all this was yet another wonderful experience bringing prescient issues to the forefront in our community. I know we are opening minds and making people think. We are out there rain or shine. Our neighbors know if there is a bunch of folks willing to do that they at least deserve to be listened to.
At the end of our one and a half hour “sustainable occupy” George and I had a vigorous discussion with a neighbor who started out completely against us. At the end after speaking with him inasmuch as he did not tell us, he left the discussion without being able to refute the very morality and truth that we represented. He went from belligerence to acceptance. In my book I know that he will listen to Fox News in a different light and in doing so he will convince himself to start voting in his own interest and in the interest of the country.
Our group has been on the corner of Kingwood Drive and Lake Houston Pkwy in our neighborhood for 13 consecutive weeks rain or shine and our local papers not once covered it in print even as their reporters were out 3 different times and interviewed various participants.
On another important note. The media will not reform itself because they are dependent on corporate funding via ads and commercials. We must be the media and get real information out. It is time to make corporate purchased media irrelevant. Another good example is the scant coverage OWS got last night while many issues of no value were in the news reel both in "Conservative" media and "Liberal" media.
This spring will be important in our body politic. The relevancy of our main stream media will be tested. Whether they step up or not is immaterial because new media will reign. Your camera phone, iPad, Xoom, etc is the recorder, Youtube, Facebook, Flickr, Reddit, and a myriad of websites, etc. is the medium, and you are the provider of real, prescient, and truthful news.
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My Book: As I See It: Class Warfare The Only Resort To Right Wing Doom Hardcopy: http://amzn.to/dt72c7 Kindle: http://amzn.to/lUFQCV iPad/iTunes: http://bit.ly/qB88Lk Twitter: http://twitter.com/egbertowillies |
