This American Revolution – Thoughts on What’s Really American or UnAmerican! – by Jesse Hardin

by Anima on July 3rd, 2009

5 Comments

A timely essay to forward and share with folks of all walks:

This American Revolution
Thoughts on What’s Really American or UnAmerican!

by Jesse Hardin
canyonfamily@gmail.com

Whether you love the spirit of it or hate its martial airs, the 4th of July is one of the most meaningful of holidays, commemorating as it does a time when an empowered populous chose freedom and regional self determination over the rules and benefits of the British empire, when mostly good and brave hearted people opted to be outlaws rather than kowtow to what they saw as intrusive and unjust regulation from afar. 1776 was a time of revolutionary ideas, personal courage and individual liberty, a true high mark that we have slipped further away from every decade since.

This country was founded in the spirit of acting on one’s personal conscience. Belief in oneself, taking care of the family, love of the land, loyalty to one’s place. Personal initiative, willing risk, daring adventure, and attempting the seemingly impossible. Regionalism, self sufficiency and home rule. While I am distinctly a Libertarian not a nationalist, I must point out to every proud flag-waver that it is characteristically American and wholly patriotic to question, provoke and resist authority. To stand out from the crowd, dare to look or act different from the prevailing trend or fads. To listen and respond to the needs of our hearts. To heed not rules and orders so much as what we instinctively know to be right and wrong. To choose freedom and opportunity over “security” and regulation. To mouth off and make waves. To prefer disorganized, ineffectual and contending political interests over uni-body, uni-voice, all powerful, uncontested government. To do whatever the hell we want, so long as it does not harm or impinge upon the freedoms of others. To be compassionate but firm, peaceful by nature but fierce when defending what matters, deeply loving yet impressively strong.

And while I get sick and tired of hearing people, groups and ideas conveniently labeled “UnAmerican” all the time, I must say that if anything it is UnAmerican to conform, blend in or lay-back. To acquiesce, surrender, or compromise our core personal beliefs. To give up our dreams in order to make life easier for us, or change who we really are in order to be accepted by anybody or anything. To believe everything we read or automatically assume the media or government know best. To buckle under pressure, be blindly obedient or bow to vested authorities when when we know they have it wrong. While we are a proud democracy, it is nonetheless patently UnAmerican for us to assume the opinions of the majority are necessarily correct, or that “going with the flow” is always the best way to go. And while we honor the rule of law, we must still choose doing right even it means being labeled outlaws.

When Thomas Jefferson spoke about the need for a new revolution every generation, he was not talking about revolutionary technological leaps, “revolutionary legislation,” a “revolutionary new administration” or “revolutionary new prices.” He was pointing to no less than the periodic overturning of established political interests, preventing the solidification of power in the hands of any special interest group, making sure that national or global interests never run roughshod over local communities and concerns, ensuring that conscience and not finance be the primary determining factor in deciding the direction this country goes. He saw the benefits of fractious discourse and stalled regulation, disagreement and dissension. And he was also aware of the danger of monolithic systems as well as elite amalgams such as the largest international corporations have become.

By Thomas’ measure, we are several generations late in doing the work of revolution: reconfiguring, re-evolving, reinventing, recreating, and making real again. He knew this was not a matter of shifting trends so much as becoming new and honest over and over again, through the sacrifices and efforts of wild eyed patriots as we have always been called, and even if it means the shedding our American blood. Resistance and rethinking are not simply tales of history that we wax nostalgic about, it is our patriotic calling. While enjoying the festivities of July 4th, let us hear in the explosions of fireworks the thunder that awakens, and recognize in the colorful displays the infinite possibilities that await.

(share as you will… and always act on your conscience)

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Susan B.

July 5, 2009 at 9:45 am

Words straight to my soul…as always. thank you, Jesse!

I forwarded this to a couple of friends, and they were just blown away…
Crazy Spider

July 6, 2009 at 9:23 am

Your words ride the Arrow, which has quickened me, once again.

Hitting the Mark, directly to the center of my Heart.

Thank-you for your wisdom and ability to express, the VALIDATION, that my Spirit craves.

4 Winds!
Billie Potts

July 12, 2009 at 3:44 pm

Thanks for your 4th of July reflections Jesse.

My partner Sharon, and I spent most of that day in Albany, NY’s Arbor Hill, the original African American section of town, listening to Dr. Williams-Myers talk about Frederick Douglass’ “What is Your 4th of July to the Slave” oration delivered here in upstate NY in 1852. We were outdoors, behind the Stephen and Harriet Myers home, now being restored by the Capital district Underground Railroad Project, and the freedom seekers’ spirits were with us.

Today, I have been reviewing web sites for my annual gear-up/preparation to teach herbal medicine in 2009-2010, resources listing. Missing Michael Moore greatly, I was drawn to Anima and the Medicine Woman Tradition being located in a wild canyon of NM. Yeh! Herbalists truly living on the land and not jet-setting about from one gig/conference/ presentation to the next!
I finally gave up coordinating alternative healing at the major womyn’s festivals after 15 years because it took me away from the land at the peak of our very short growing season. Returned from Michigan one year to find the deer had sailed over the 48″ garden fencing and eaten my 6 year planting of E. angustifolia! They must have needed it, but it was a sign. Have restricted myself to only a few ‘away’ seminars, etc. a year and none between May and Labor Day – and my still deeply underground consulting practice.

Read and appreciated your autobiographical essay and felt Michael M. smiling that there were still other unrepentant hippie herb/SWland lovers following in his footsteps. We have been through parallel struggles to save 45 acres of hardscrabble northern Catskill Mountain land – which contains 7 distinct habitats, replenishing, replanting so many of the plants hunted to near extinction by 19th c. wildcrafters. And…of course, “developers” are breathing down our necks, even though the land is up a previously inaccessible mountain, and then 2 miles up an unpaved road. We’re still only 3 1/2 hrs. from NYC or Boston.

With your consent and that of your partners, I would like to include your site in my resources handout. Do you have dates/specifics yet for the Fall 2010 conference?

Blessed Be!
Always in greenhealing,
Billie Potts
Billie Potts

July 12, 2009 at 3:52 pm

Thanks for your 4th of July reflections Jesse.
Anima

July 12, 2009 at 4:32 pm

Thank you Susan, I’m glad you were moved and not put off by the uncompromising celebration of liberty, not at all incompatible with the spiritual or nature journeys. And the Four Winds, I will think of you when drawing energy to write my next pieces.

What a great surprise hearing from you, Billie Potts. Unless I am mistaken, we have a book you wrote in our guest library! Very pleased you can related to this post… you must know I run the risk of alienating certain people with our libertarian resolve, but then all our work is meant to be on the edge, helping others walk or better yet dance that edge themselves — where existence and change and freedom and possibilities and magic are most alive. The spiritual or personal work cannot be separated from the social and political, resisting voluntary conformity as much as external control, healing earth as self.

We’d love for you to list the upcoming conference, as we struggle to work out the myriad details necessary. “Traditions in Western Herbalism” conference dates are Sept 17-19. Getting the right speakers seems to be falling in place, but we could use the practical advice of experienced organizers including yourself if you know of any to speak to. A conference description is nearly ready, which I’m sure my partner Kiva would like to send you herself in order to extend her personal thanks and regards to you.

I hear you about conferencing taking away from intimate relationship with the land. Between 1985 and 1996 I organized and spoke/performed at hundreds of concert rallies, mixing music, spoken word and a call to immediate direct action (often a protest the following day!). The effect on people was huge, but I also felt the contradiction of giving talks about sense of place when I was months on the road away from my home and tending.

There were many reasons for us organizing the event including keeping a SW herbal community energized, and to ensure a conservationist and earthen-relationship emphasis, but also to make it possible for us and our healer allies to teach to a large group without getting too far from the sanctuary that needs us.

The site will be in Ojo Caliente, Ghost Ranch or somewhere else near Santa Fe, in the region where I first met and hung out with fellow sensualist and scofflaw Michael Moore. To hear from you that we are in any ways continuing his spirit and mission(s) is an honor.

When I was touring I did actions and shows in the Albany area, spoke at the school there, enjoyed the Finger Lakes, and played in the reflection pool of the capitol building as part of a CD action over state policies. You need not be all that many miles from the big city to be in the second growth feral jungles of the Catskills surging back into undisciplined life. Your doing the “restoration of self and land” work, so close to the belly of the beast and claws of the developers, is heroic as well as utterly necessary and intensely beautiful. We’re allied in this, and in the joy of not having to do this alone.

Slaves we’re not. Only servants to this planet, place and purpose.

Our best to you and Sharon.

Jesse Wolf & Family