Peace Train for November 25, 2011
By JUDITH MOHLING
“LOOK AROUND / YOU ARE A PART / OF A GLOBAL UPRISING / WE ARE A CRY / FROM THE HEART / OF THE WORLD / WE ARE UNSTOPPABLE / ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE … OCCUPY EARTH / WE ARE WINNING / IT IS THE BEGINNING OF THE BEGINNING / DO NOT BE AFRAID / LOVE.”

These words were projected on the Verizon building in Manhattan last Thursday night as thousands of protesters crossed the Brooklyn Bridge. It was created by Mark Read, Max Nova and others, using “bat signal” technology: a large light that projects a silhouette of a bat on a cloud, as in Batman movies or in this case, words, on the smooth surface of part of the Verizon building. The letters were projected a phrase at a time from the apartment across the way of a single mom who agreed to be the source site of the magnificent light show. Max Nova is the son of Boulderites Kenneth
Nova and Wendy Rochman.

The protesters were electrified by it, and now people around the world who are watching it are electrified too.(.http://climate-connections.org/2011/11/21/the-boundless-creativity-of-occupy-wall-street-occupy-earth/)

It is this energetic, creative, determined quality of the Occupy Movement that I give thanks for on this Thanksgiving weekend. The Movement is a fresh wind blowing across this continent and over the planet, joining the Arab Spring and other movements of liberation. It is people realizing that they, we, are capable of changing the money driven power structure that we have into a system that works for people and the earth—not for profit for the few.

The Occupy Movement has been born of the simple belief that humanity could meet our common needs if we didn’t have the choking tentacles of the one percent squeezing profits from the 99% and from the earth.

In a letter to the editor of the Boulder Camera on November 23, Brian Underhill introduced a website (budget-sense.org) that he has created which gives ordinary people the ability to understand and create a US budget themselves, another example of people realizing that we are capable of taking on the task of self- government.

“This is choosing hope over despair,” Mark Read, one of the creators of the NYC light show says. “This is actively and resolutely making that choice. … I know we’re heading into winter in New York, but this feels like springtime.”