NOM and R.I.M., saving straight marriage one awkward acronym at a time.

First, do your research:
1. NOM ad about "the gathering storm" of gay marriage. And, the rainbow coalition of people gathering to "protect us from gay marriage:"

2. The audition videos for hilarious NOM video above:

And now, the main event:
3. Amazing. Thank you thank you gay actors, and straight actors. Thank you for your comedic literacy and perfect wit:

A Gaythering Storm from Jane Lynch

4. And finally, another little gem from Rachel Maddow:

Gay Slurs Lead to Child's Suicide

I found this tremendously important to watch and think about. Hearing this story too, makes me glad Austin has organizations like OutYouth, to help our young people with self-acceptance and raise the understanding, acceptance and celebration of diversity in Austin as well. There's so much further we could go, but at least we have resources to work with.

CocoRosie and their insulated world

I watched two interviews with CocoRosie and was struck by their disconnected behavior, as if somehow in their connection to each other and their art-music, they are unable/disinterested in connecting with the rest of the world. As a being who is interested in connecting to as many others in the world as possible, and doing so intentionally, I was disappointed to feel this disconnect from them. I love many of their songs, but did not love this. Watch them here, in order:

The first (can't embed).

The second:

They speak of their desire to insulate themselves from the world, create a private space, to make their music from. And this "artists as isolationists" belief is a thread that runs through all time and into the current moment. But I disagree with it heavily now. I do not see it as responsible to create art out of that space. I see it as intentional obliviousness. Willful ignorance of the scope of events going on in the world today. To me, artists, musicians, cultural creators, have an obligation to inform themselves of the contemporary world and history, of philosophy and realities, and then make their new works to further the dialogue or illuminate a problem, or even the best, solve one!

Art, music, culture, is our gift to the world and if we use it only to distance ourselves, or mock the present world as is, we are mis-using our gifts. We are taking advantage of capitalism to support our selfishness. We are feeding our egos.

A very bright article in the New York Times today, by Holland Cotter, has inspired me to think with optimism on how the art world can become. How this economic upheaval can create a whole new way of thinking and making. It's beyond inspiring. Read his absolutely articulate, wise article, "The Boom Is Over. Long Live The Art!" here.

Cornify it up

Just click it. And just keep on clicking it until you fall backwards from the bubbling glitterweight of the unicorns and rainbows.



For an explanation see: Cornify.com

Inauguration Poem for Obama, on Inauguration Day

As we watch the Inauguration with joy today, a re-post of my poem celebrating Obama's victory, the beauty of our collective connected humanity, and the conscious evolution we are undertaking.

Austin Celebrating in the Streets On Election Night After Obama Won!

A compilation of videos from the post Obama victory melee in downtown Austin, outside the Driskill on November 4th, 2008. My poem (posted above), "Above the Streetlights; The Night Obama Won," is a rumination on that night, what it meant for all of us, and what it will mean in our futures.

I'm glad for the bottom up media that documented that night and got these videos onto YouTube. It was a beautiful street party that night in Austin; jubilant beings finally feeling empowered and inspired by their government. Look at the people in the crowd laughing, dancing, hugging each other. And I've never seen radical young people sing the national anthem or wave a flag before!

MLK Day of Service in Austin

Tomorrow is the Martin Luther King Day of Service for the United Way and its partner agencies. The non-profit I work for runs Top Drawer Thrift and we'll be with a volunteer crew of ten people overhauling the back room and re-organizing the store so we can put out more donations.

Michelle and Barack Obama have been e-mailing their supporters, as you have no doubt noticed, encouraging them to participate in a nationwide day of service in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.. The day of service honors his commitment to service and non-violence.

Let's get out there and do some good work!

Above the Streetlights Poem with an ASL Interpreter

Dave Pokorney was also filming my poem at the Vets for Peace Concert. Here's his video, from Vimeo. Diane Delange is the incredible ASL interpreter next to me. Thank you Diane.

Above the Streetlights

My most recent poem, with mention of Austin at the beginning, performed at a Veteran's for Peace benefit concert in Gainesville, Florida.

Dark Friday: Wal-Mart Employee Trampled to Death

It's been time to re-think our brand of capitalism for a while, but this story is pretty pure evidence of our need to enhance empathy for others and tone down competitive consumerism.

New York Times Article: Wal-Mart Employee Trampled to Death by Customers

You may think that situation sounds absurd and you would never be a part of something so crazed, but really how often are we passive parts of this same system that creates behavior like the aforementioned? Let us stand up for something better in each small situation in which money and materials take precedence over cooperation and compassion so that larger, more obvious examples, like a Wal-Mart stampede, never occur.

A local example of this can be found at Blue Hanger (the Goodwill outlet on Springdale) when the employees are re-filling the bins and people wait like eager lions ready to elbow each other out of the way once they're allowed to start grabbing items. Just watch, and feel what it feels like instead to be a serene presence amongst that mayhem. See how it affects others and see how the feeling of competition even affects you when you're there. We are all connected! Let's start acknowledging it with our behavior!

Transgender Day of Remembrance, Austin

November 20th was TENT's (Transgender Education Network of Texas) Austin vigil at City Hall for International Transgender Day of Remembrance. Transgender Day of Remembrance is a day in honor of the lives of people who were killed because they did not conform to traditional gender norms. Some of those killed identified as transgender, transsexual, or none of the above, some dated someone who identified as something other than the traditional gender binary and were killed for doing so.

Each attendant was given a glow stick instead of a typical vigil candle. This proved to be a very sentimental symbol, as my sweetie and I still have our glow sticks sitting in our room and their glow fades a little more each day.

TENT's vigil honored those who were murdered for their radical gender identities by having twenty-nine empty chairs on the stage, one for each person murdered for their gender identity in 2008. At the very end of the vigil, one of the organizers read the full 2008 TDOR Names List, and as each name was read, someone from the crowd came up and sat in one of the seats. Live, human bodies, transgender, transexual, beautiful beings in varying expressions of gender, emerged from the crowd to populate the chairs. They then sat in silence and we all soaked in the reality of these killings.

There is still no legislation banning hate crimes based on gender identity. Some states still do not have legislation protecting transgender people from job discrimination. As a sidenote, Vermont, is the only state in America that has never had an anti-transgender murder occur in it.

Maya Angelou Writing a Poem about Obama

There's an associated press article out today about Maya Angelou beginning to write a poem about Obama. On election night, I wrote one too. I couldn't help but write; I had to keep myself from vaporizing into thrill beams.

The whole night, once the networks were seriously projecting that Obama had won, my cells spun dizzy like thimbles on their edges, dimpled with light. I watched, and was part of, a takeover of the streets in downtown Austin (I'll post a piece I wrote about it soon). We danced, we chanted "Si se puede!" and "Yes we did!" We stopped traffic. I hugged random people. Random people hugged me. Instead of New Year's it was New Era. The world change was booming down upon us and we had created it.

It was the ultimate in feeling one's ability to change the world. If you re-watch Obama's last speech of the campaign, posted here under the heading: "Virginia, let's go change the world," you'll see again the eloquent emotion-journey Barack takes his audience on. He moves from the microcosm to the macro in speaking about one person's ability to change the world (it's very near the end of the speech).

It was this feeling that I could feel on Tuesday night as we chanted in the streets. We all felt part of this victory. We had ownership over the outcome. Most of us had gone beyond just voting: some had driven others to the polls, some had called voters to get them to the polls, some had worked for the campaign for months. But most importantly, because Barack's intention was to empower citizens to feel like change was possible, that empowerment had taken root and threaded through our beings affecting all that we do.

We had changed. The molecules in our bodies had shifted and brightened up with energy. We felt our own power through the mass collective power that had worked together from all parts of the country to get Obama elected. We were all churning towards a common goal of changing the United States and thus the world.

As Obama said in his acceptance speech on Tuesday night:
"This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were.

It can't happen without you, without a new spirit of service, a new spirit of sacrifice.

So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each other."

I think that's the heart of this change, working together to elevate the collective. And so we begin...

Visualize President Obama

From: http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/gsxkmk
(I'm doing this now. This had Anna Sian and I teary-eyed).


Please join us on November 4th and invest ten minutes to one hour visualizing President Elect Barack Obama on inaugural day and being sworn in with Michelle by his side. See the flags flying, hear the crowd cheering! BE in the feeling of joy and celebration of such a triumphant moment.

During the primaries, this event had almost 1200 people signed up from more than 18 countries.

Now it's time to reconvene and use the power of prayer, mediation, focused intent and emotional visualization to bring this thing home.

Please sign up and tell us where you will be during your visualization time. Our last event had people from all over the US as well as from these countries: Netherlands, Canada, Ireland, Australia, Sweden, Germany, Jamaica, Kuwait, United Kingdom, Japan, South Africa, Nigeria, France, Finland, Costa Rica, St. Lucia/St. Kitts, Zambia, Sudan

Remember to let yourself see the inauguration in great detail. Imagine the weather, the motorcade, the world-wide attention, the crowds, the beautiful Obama family on the stage, etc. Allow yourself to FEEL the excitement you know will be reverberating through billions of people around the world. THIS IS OUR MOMENT! THIS IS OUR TIME!

I suggest we do this in two steps:

1. Before you go to bed on November 3rd spend from 10 minutes to 1 hour focused on the inauguration. Push aside any doubts about election day or whether the race will be called any particular time.

2. As soon as you awake on November 4th, before you even get out of bed, just allow the images of the inauguration to flow across the screen of your mind, almost like a dream. Maybe you even imagine the inaugural ball and Michelle and Barack dancing.

Throughout the day, you can return to this image. If you are doing GOTV like me, working the polls, serving as a lawyer to protect voting rights, or simply waiting in lines for AS LONG AS IT TAKES to vote. Be comforted by this image. FEEL the joy of it in your bones.

Remember to remain unattached to how things unfold on November 4th and focus instead on January 20th, 2009 - the first day of the Obama presidency.

Carl Sagan the wizard.

Charles Alexander meets Barack Obama

The Austinist's photo essay right now is a beautiful documentation of a meeting between Charles Alexander, an 86 year-old Boulder, Colorado resident and Barack Obama. Charles Alexander volunteers for the Obama campaign and entered a raffle at the local field office. Then, never having won anything in his life, we won the opportunity to meet Barack Obama.

Charles Alexander has had a long and remarkable life: He was born in East Texas and lived through the Great Depression, and military service in two wars. Charles has volunteered on political campaigns for forty years of his life. This year, Mr. Alexander's wife of 69 years passed away. Patrick Dentler, the writer for the Austinist, says this:

Charles entered the volunteer raffle contest to meet Barack Obama at the Boulder field office where he works--and won. He was able to shake hands, engage and even show off a picture of his wife with the man who might very well be the first black president of The United States...Charles, a man who cast his first ballot for FDR, just voted early for Barack Obama.

Together with you

The Avatar Professional Course just finished in Orlando, Florida on October 17th. (I’m just now getting to post this). Twelve hundred people from thirty countries came together for one week to learn how to connect to others across many types of borders, how to help others, how to work more efficiently and powerfully, and ultimately to contribute to the creation of an enlightened planetary civilization.

The borders we connected across went beyond countries and languages, to personalities, beliefs and behaviors. We connected as beings, present with each other lovingly. And, everyone was there because they wanted to make the world a better place. Everyone wanted to help others feel better, feel happier, feel more powerful and in control of their own lives. The beauty of that earnest goal, and the fact that 1200 people from all over the world wanted to make the world better (rather than hurt each other, fight, complain, suffer or kill) had me smiling, laughing and crying often.

One of my favorite aspects of the course was the young people there. There were harajuku kids from Japan, techno kids from Israel, former farmers and surfers from New Zealand, girls in kimonos, young monks, German kids with modified mullets, Irish girls in patterned tights and dresses, and American kids in t-shirts. All of us wearing our different national costumes and personality costumes, putting on and playing with different identities. At our cores, it became apparent, all of us humans are limitless beings. We are limitless beings enjoying the playtime of taking off and trying on different viewpoints, life experiences, and goals. In this we have simultaneous individuality and unity.

Over 70,000 people from around the world have gone through the basic Avatar training, over 12,000 have taken the Avatar Masters teacher training course. Avatar’s largest goal is to catalyze the integration of belief systems, to create world peace. “Once we realize that the only thing that separates us is beliefs, and beliefs can be created and dis-created with ease, the right and wrong game will cease, and world peace will ensue.”

I feel forever changed by the experience of looking into the faces of so many people from all over the world, whom I didn’t even know, and connecting with them with ease, smiling and sharing love. There is a lot to be learned there. And, I would add, now that I’ve been back at work for two weeks, there’s a lot we do as humans to keep other people from really knowing us. We do a lot of protecting, avoiding realness and pretending. Let’s change this! Let's begin now.

Vote No on CA Prop 8 and FL Prop 2

Florida is currently voting on Proposition 2, an amendment to the constitution that would define marriage as between a man and a woman and deny marriage rights to same-sex couples. California has similar legislation, Proposition 8. The cast of Ugly Betty stepped up to register their dissent about Proposition 8 in this video:

And here, in English as well:

I Met the Walrus

My friend Anna Sian sent this to me. The flow of the animation matches the feeling of John Lennon's words in a really beautiful way. I think it's important to be continuing to act for, talk about, work for, peace. Lennon's words are keenly potent right now.