Clear View Blog

I have been in discussion about the Safe California Act with my friend Jarvis Masters for the last two months or so.  As you may know, Jarvis has been on California’s Death Row for more than 22 years, convicted of a crime for which he is demonstrably innocent.  I have written about his case before, and will certainly return to it again.

He is deeply concerned about the impact of the Safe California Act, should it be passed.  Not so much about the abolition of the capital punishment in California, but about its limiting effect on the extensive appeals process and the meaning of the Act for inmates who are innocent.

It is late tonight and my time is limited, but I am including below commentary I found today by another California death row denizen, Darrell Lomax, who expresses the questions very well.  His letter was posted at <www.socialistworker.org>.

More later. Take good care.

Alan Senauke

*************

Death Sentence by Another Name

April 12, 2012

 Darrell Lomax is an innocent man who has been on death row at San Quentin State Prison in California for over 15 years. A poet, musician and activist, Darrell has been fighting for his freedom and advocating for justice. Here, he explains what’s at stake in a ballot initiative that would replace the death penalty with life without the possibility of parole sentences.

I AM responding to the proposed ballot initiative “SAFE (Savings, Accountability and Full Enforcement) California” that has garnered enough signatures to be on the November 2012 ballot for Californians to vote on.

The initiative was initially filed on August 26, 2011, by Jeanne Woodford, a retired warden of San Quentin State Prison and executive director of Death Penalty Focus, and it saddens me deeply that enough Californians have now signed petitions to qualify it for the ballot. I hope that this letter will enlighten you as to why this bill is unconstitutional and does a disservice to all innocent people, both on death row and beyond, and why it is wrong to advocate for a sentence of life without the possibility of parole (LWOP)–which is a death sentence simply being called by another name.

I myself am a factually innocent man who has been falsely imprisoned here on California’s death row for 15 years. Aside from the loss of my physical freedom, I have also lost contact with my family and have been deserted by my old friends. As if that is not cruel enough, I have been in a long fight with the federal public defenders’ office, which has tried to work with the attorney general’s office to deny me my constitutional right to a new trial and has refused to assign me state habeas counsel, even though this is mandated by law in my appeals process.

I have sought repeatedly to gain legal assistance for my complaints and to raise issues of my innocence in court. Sadly, my case is unique only in my steadfastness to fight on to get due process, and that the facts of my innocence are glaring and obvious. There are many people on death row who have been similarly mistreated and denied their rights in the appeals process.

So imagine, if you will, how absolutely horrifying it was to read that within Jeanne Woodford’s endorsement of the SAFE California initiative, she not only seeks to end the death penalty by re-sentencing death row prisoners to LWOP (the other death penalty), but to retroactively terminate the appeal rights of current death row prisoners, like myself.

Woodford aspires to sell to the California voter a dream of ending the death penalty and saving our cash-strapped government money, when in fact she really wants to redirect the money saved from denying prisoners the right to appeal their sentence and conviction into law enforcement agencies. These agencies have a proven track record of injustice and will only further sweep all the dirt and corruption of this police state under the rug.

WITHIN THE language of the SAFE California initiative, you will find the following disturbing language that acknowledges the very problems that I have raised earlier about the state of injustice that currently exists in our capital punishment system.

The SAFE California Act Section 2, finds and declares the following:

– 1. More than 100 innocent people have been sentenced to death in this country. (The actual number of people exonerated off death row currently stands at over 135.)

– 2. Some innocent people have been executed.

– 3. Experts have concluded that California remains at risk of executing innocent people.

– 4. Innocent people are wrongfully convicted because of faulty eyewitness identification, outdated forensic science and overzealous prosecutors.

– 5. The justice system is not doing what needs to be done to protect innocent people from coming to death row.

– 6. State law protects a prosecutor even if he/she intentionally sends an innocent person to prison or death row, thus preventing accountability.

Let’s take a moment to put these admissions in proper perspective. This reflects what many of us who have been fighting for real justice have known for years: the criminal justice system in this country and state is inherently flawed, and innocent people have died and will die as a result. Prosecutors who have willingly participated in this injustice are protected, not made accountable for their abuses of power and misconduct, and this is what is meant by “equality and fairness” under the law.

This initiative does nothing to address these problems and instead seeks to limit prisoner appeals, which would actually make things worse.

Also in the SAFE California initiative is language that insists that one of its missions is to “get murderers off the streets, brought to justice and punished with full enforcement of the law.” (Sections 2 and 3.)

However, you cannot find anywhere within the entire initiative where there is any proposal for how to implement any state laws that would hold corrupt law enforcement agents or prosecutors accountable for their misconduct or for sending an innocent person to death row–the equivalent of false imprisonment and attempted murder, or actual murder, if the person was executed.

How can such facts as listed above be admitted so candidly, but then SAFE California have no means by which to make change and no means by which to hold perpetrators of this injustice accountable?

JEANNE WOODFORD appears to have adopted a “sweep it under the rug” philosophy towards the justice system and doesn’t give a damn about justice or addressing any of the serious ailments of California’s broken justice system. She has insensitively proposed as a resolution in the initiative to overlook any and all factually innocent people currently on death row by eliminating appeals, and instead simply states that eliminating the execution of innocent people is somehow justice enough.

Her mission as outlined within the “purpose and intent” section includes the following goals:

– 1. End the death penalty.

– 2. Re-sentence death row inmates to life without the possibility of parole.

– 3. Terminate all death penalty appeals.

– 4. Require every prisoner with LWOP to work to pay into a victim compensation fund as desired by the prison.

Wait! I am certain that the state and federal constitutions guarantee citizens the right to utilize the writ of habeas corpus and challenge the legality and validity of their convictions, sentences and detentions.

Currently, California law mandates that all people given a death sentence are due a post-conviction appeal. This appeal includes both direct and habeas components. The California Supreme Court is responsible for providing appellate counsel for all indigent death row prisoners. There are over 300 people on death row in California who have been here for over 10 years, myself included, who have not yet received appointment of counsel. I have been waiting over 15 years to clear my name.

The very language of this initiative admits that, statistically, there is a one-in-nine probability that people on death row right now in the state are factually innocent–which means that approximately 77 people are awaiting justice.

The SAFE California initiative is no more than a slow death for all those currently incarcerated on California’s death row–still death just by a different name. It also seeks to retroactively terminate all death row prisoners’ appeal rights, which means more innocent people will die and more injustices will be carried out. How will it be possible for the innocent to prove their innocence?

Jeanne Woodford is on a mission to not only end the death penalty by bringing in “the other death penalty”–LWOP–but also to appeal to voters by callously limiting prisoner appeals, after admitting that the justice system is flawed and that innocent people are falsely sentenced to death row.

This initiative is not about saving lives, but about keeping innocent people behind bars and limiting their rights to clear their names.

Respectfully submitted,

Darrell Lomax

P.O. Box K-27402

San Quentin State Prison

San Quentin, CA 94974

Locked Door at Maggin Monastery, Yangon

Maggin monastery, in Yangon’s eastern Thingangyun Township, was a refuge for hundreds of dissident Burmese monks during 2007’s “Saffron Revolution.”  The Saffron Revolution began with local demonstrations against arbitrary and immediate price increases, which quickly became a national movement for democracy led by many thousands of monks.

On September 26 of 2007 the Burmese junta struck back. The military attacked many monasteries, ransacking Maggin, beating and arresting abbot U Eindaka and the other monks who had come for sanctuary.  A refuge as well for local people with AIDS and HIV, these patients were simply driven from the premises, left to fend for themselves in the midst of the violent military crackdown.  The monastery was trashed, wood doors and walls shattered, blood-stained robes tossed into corners, the gates padlocked and guarded by the junta’s watchmen. And that is how things remained for more than four years.

On January 13 three hundred political prisoners, including nearly forty incarcerated and disrobed monks, were released from prisons around Burma.  The following day a group of monks, struck the locks from Maggin’s doors and moved in.

The prisoner release is one aspect of change taking place in Burma/Myanmar in recent months.  How reliable or thoroughgoing a change we are seeing is still uncertain. The 2008 Constitutional referendum — conducted just days after Cyclone Nargis left 150,000 dead in southern Burma — reserves 25% of the assembly seats to the military, virtually guaranteeing their control of the political process.   The 2010 election gave 129 of 168 elected seats to the junta’s proxy Union Solidarity and Development Party.  Another 56 seats, as mandated, went to the military, leaving only 34 seats to be divided among a dozen other regional and ethnic parties. On the military front, there is active combat in Kachin state, Shan state, and elsewhere, with more than 60,000 Internally Displaced People (IDP) living with war and deprivation in these areas

Nonetheless, some prominent reformers are being released from prison and limited political reforms are going forward.  Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy is presently campaigning for seats in an April 1 by-election.  Western nations, looking for signs of progress, are starting to consider diplomatic relations and a softening of long-standing economic sanctions against the regime.  The real question is how to view the process of change inside Burma. And how to urge this process along.

Abbot Ashin Eindaka at Maggin Monastery

I met with three monks at Maggin (abbot U Eindaka, senior monk U Issariya, and Saffron Revolution leader Ashin Gambira) and Ashin Sandar Thiri at another monastery in mid-February. a week earlier Gambira had been arrested and taken for questioning by authorities investigating allegations of “squatting” at Maggin without registering with the Ministry of Religious Affairs, and breaking into two other monasteries in nearby in Bahan Township.

The same day we met, February 17, U Gambira dropped out of sight. As far as I know, he has not been seen since. The following day the state-run newspaper New Light of Myanmar wrote that: “The authorities concerned are taking legal steps to bring U Gambira to trial.” The New Light explained that Gambira, “…under complete political spell, has repeatedly broken Buddhist monks’ code of conduct and laws that every citizen need to abide by, in consideration of religion, Sasana (i.e. Buddhist teachings) and purity of Sasana.”  Maggin’s abbot, Ashin Eindaka, said, “I do not know where he is now. But I have seen today’s newspapers reports. When he left my monastery, it was still as a monk.”

Ashin Gambira at Maggin

***

 A friend was kind enough to set up a meeting with the four recently-released monks.  At Maggin monastery three of the monks were sitting with a handful of younger monastics and lay friends on the temple’s open veranda. The monastery comprises two buildings — an older wood frame temple dating back a hundred years, and a blue two-storey structure of cast concrete that already looks old beyond its years. As we talked workmen cleared rubble and ran blue plastic piping for water and electricity.

We took some time to get acquainted, to speak of mutual friends, and to create an atmosphere of safety given that I was a westerner and a new face. When I had been in Burma last November, with a lessening of restrictions and the first release of political prisoners, there was in the cities a kind of dizzying euphoria about the possibility of change. And an understandable attitude of wait and see.  Three or four months later I felt that people in all sectors of an expanding civil society were getting down to hard and particular work, settling in for the long haul. Speaking with these monks, we quickly sketched out their collective sense of present circumstances in Burma.

***

Speaking with the Monks

For the sake of confidentiality, comments below are not ascribed to individual monks.

Alan Senauke: What do you think about what’s going on in Myanmar now?  Are there changes happening?  Do you believe that they are real?

Monks: Laughter  No, no real change. The government is talking about changes, but the changes are very small.  There is so much left to do. There are still political prisoners. Many are left inside — forty-three monks in Mandalay, Insein, and other prisons. We know of others on the border who have gone to the U.N. refugee camps.

AS: Why do you think the government is releasing some prisoners?

Monks: They are afraid of the political changes. That’s why they had to release some of us. This government wants to make friends with Western countries and have the economic sanctions removed.

AS: So, does that give the monks and civil society a little power?

Monks: Outside countries may feel that this government is very polite. The new government and the old government are just taking off their uniforms and putting on civilian clothes.  After a few years, they may change.

AS: What do you think would help the process of change?

Monks: As you have said, we need peace in all of Burma.  No war, no deaths.  That would be the path to real democracy.

AS: What about the by-elections that are happening now?  Are they important?

Monks: I don’t think it very important, because the military has already taken a big piece of the assemblies for themselves. They only allow small things. They are holding onto the economy and the army. Last time there was cheating on the election results.  But maybe this time there will not be cheating. Everybody is watching.

AS:  Do you think a little choice and democracy is better than no choice?

Monks:  Right now have only a small influence…We will all have to do politics.  Longing for change is not enough.

AS: What do you mean by “do politics,” what are the politics?

Monks: As monks, we don’t work for power, like other political parties. We are standing in front of the people, protecting the people.

***

Our time was limited, and this was my last day in the country. The conversation was just beginning, but simply to meet and talk is a radical act.  As I was paying my respects to the monks, preparing to leave, one said quietly: “In the last twenty years we didn’t have such opportunities.  We couldn’t speak with foreigners.”  The opportunity for dialogue — all kinds of dialogue — is an encouraging sign.  But it is not enough.  Real change in Burma, or anywhere is a matter of access to resources, mutual accountability, and the power for people to determine the course of their own lives. When war has ended in Burma, when all the prisoners are free, when there are reasonable laws that apply to everyone — then we can start to celebrate.  Not yet.

Donations for the rebuilding of Maggin Monastery are much needed.  If you would like to make a donation please go to www.clearviewproject.org or send a tax-deductable check to Clear View Project, 1933 Russell Street, Berkeley, CA 94703.  I will make sure your gift gets to the right people.  If you have questions, write me at <alan@clearviewproject.org>

8 February 2012

I am resting between flights in Delhi, on my way to Burma (via Bangkok) after two good weeks among friends in India.  Happy to report that I am healthy.  Once again no digestive digressions, and the straightforward vegetarian routine of curry, rice, dal, chapatti seems to suit me fine.

After a first week shuttling between Mumbai, Nagpur, and Pune—with talks most every day, and even a few songs at a large Buddha Festival in Nagpur at the Diksha Bhumi, the site where Dr. B.R. Ambedkar led 400,000 untouchables to take refuge in 1956, I returned to Nagpur for a week of teaching at Nagaloka/Nagarjuna Training Institute.  This is a school for Dalit/untouchable Buddhist youth from poor rural districts all over India.  The students range from 19 to their early 20s.  They get eight months of residential training in Buddhist practice—with two meditation and chanting sessions daily—along with dharma study, and social praxis.  This year I taught from five or six Pali suttas, the Buddha’s words linking personal ethics and practice with his social thought, much of which remains relevant 2500 years later.

I love being with these young people, much the age of my own kids, which is why I have been coming back here each winter for the last few years.  Despite the challenges of poverty and continuing reality of caste oppression, they come to Nagaloka and blossom in an atmosphere of friendship, dharma, and critical thinking. This year, along with the first-year group there were about 20 or 25 second-year students, some of whom I have been in email contact with since last winter.  It is gratifying to see them maturing, setting goals of higher education and making plans to serve their communities at home by establishing practice and providing social services.

The practice has been established by friends in the Triratna Buddha Mahasangha, what used to called FWBO, or Friends of the Western Buddhist Order, the practice community established by the British Buddhist teacher and scholar Sangharakshita.   Indian order members have done remarkable work over the last thirty years, bringing dharma to the poorest of the poor.  On this trip (and previous visits) I owe thanks to Lokamitra, Mangesh Dahiwale, Vivekaratna, Nagamitra, Maitreyanth, and numerous others. And I leave my heart with the students, who shared their vivid stories with me, threw themselves into our study each day, and asked questions that push at the limits of my understanding.

If time and the internet permit, I will write again from Burma.  Otherwise, see you soon. Meanwhile, I will also share with you my comments last night at the Full Moon ceremony and rededication of the large Nagaloka walking Buddha.

Warmly,

Alan

 ***

Full Moon Celebration at Nagaloka

 Each month at the time of the full moon Buddhists everywhere take refuge in the Triple Gem and recite the ethical precepts that guide us. If we have committed any errors or have been hurtful to those around us, we repent our mistakes, renew our vows, and move forward.

Tonight in the cool air of Nagpur we stand at the feet of this great Buddha. As we rededicate our precepts, we rededicate this wonderful statue, making it shine anew.  This is a unique figure, tall and gleaming gold, striding forward with determination, just as Dr. Ambedkar moved forward for the liberation of all.  He began with his own Dalit communities, but the liberty, equality, and fraternity he valued was not for any one group. It was for all Indians and for all people everywhere.

The first step on the Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path is right view, the view of liberation and justice. I do not think of this as a religious goal, but as a human challenge. In 1942 Babasaheb Ambedkar he said: “The battle to me is a matter of joy… It is a battle for freedom. It is a battle for the reclamation of the human personality.”

So what is right view?  I believe the challenge for Buddhists in India and also in the West where I live, is to share common action and practice with the most oppressed and those most hungry for dhamma.

Sharing is the practice of dana paramita, the perfection of generosity. Traditionally, dana has three expressions.  Without expecting anything in return one offers: material things, fearlessness, and the dhamma itself.  Giving is not exactly the right word. The best way is to help people gain what they need by their own efforts.

Materially people require food, water, clothing, shelter, and medicine. We vow to help them acquire these requisites for life, even if we must give them from our own resources. Fearlessness is a mysterious gift that cannot be given.  It is the strength to face the unknown. When we demonstrate fearlessness, we allow others to find it in themselves.

The third kind of dana is the dhamma itself. This is the Ambedkar’s vision of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.  It is the practice itself: our daily meditation and our mindful social action. This kind of social action recognizes two realities: first, that our brothers and sisters facing caste oppression, racism, and poverty deserve and enlightened life; and second, that all people, regardless of position, caste, or wealth yearn to be free.  The dhamma is for everyone, high & low, rich & poor.

So let us rejoice in our presence here tonight.  And let us continue together along Buddha’s path, Dr. Ambedkar’s path, and along our own journey to peace and freedom.  Jai Bhim!

—  Hozan Alan Senauke

7 February 2012

Nagpur, India

Novice monk at Phaung Daw Oo in Mandalay

NOTE:  Since this letter was written, Jill Jameson and I have decided to return to Burma in February 2012 to offer training for activists and monks at their request.  We are drafting a proposal to several funding agencies, but your help with basic expenses can be a substantial help. — A.S.  

Click   http://www.clearviewproject.org/ to reach the Clear View Donation page

2 December 2011

Dear Friends,

When Clear View Project began in the fall of 2007, we were responding to the Saffron Revolution in Burma and intending to serve other friends in the spirit of the Bodhisattva’s open-handed generosity or dana.  Because of your great generosity we have been able to support the democracy movement in Burma, ex-untouchable Buddhists in India, and prisoners in the United States.  We need your continuing support to sustain our work.

Four years later, along with offerings of funds and training resources in India and Burma, Clear View has an active blog <clearviewblog.org> and an extensive website www.clearviewproject.org, informing and networking engaged Buddhists around the world. But, always, the most important part of our work is simply what happens between people — striving to understand and harmonize differences of culture, caste, rights, and religion.  We call this peacebuilding, in the truest sense of the word.

With your help, so far in 2011 we have been able to donate $9800 to imprisoned monks and to activists and organizers inside Burma and in exile.  We have also contributed $2700 to support Dalit Buddhist students in India at the Nagarjuna Training Institute/Nagaloka. We look forward to offering more funding before the year’s end.

***

Two weeks ago I returned from Asia, attending the International Network of Engaged Buddhists (INEB) conference in Bodhgaya, India, then on Burma with my friend Jill Jameson from Australia, offering training and visiting projects in that shadowed country.  At INEB, amid the bustle and poverty of full-tilt India, old and new friends gathered, dedicated to the peaceful transformation of society. In the place where Shakyamuni Buddha won enlightenment, each of us could step back from personal concerns, view the larger picture of social suffering, and explore strategies and approaches that might lessen that suffering.  There were meetings of monks from Burma and Sri Lanka, daily gatherings of Indian ex-untouchable students, workshops on gender, peacebuilding, right livelihood, sustainable environment, and more. There was a great sense of energy and mutual support building at the conference day by day.  I know that INEB’s connections and ideas will continue to flower. We also had a chance to visit both the great Buddhist sites and desperately poor slums surrounding them, straining to see that the potential for liberation is not some abstraction.  It depends on our dedication and connection with those in greatest need.

 Jill and I went from India to Burma for ten days of visits, witness, and short trainings.  From the moment we arrived in Yangon it was clear that things were changing.  The airport was busy, the streets and cafes were bustling, and smiling faces were easier to find.  In fact, recent elections, however flawed, have created a new space for civil society and critical dialogue with the government and among local organizations.  Honestly, however tentative, these are the first encouraging signs of change I have seen in twenty years of Burma work, underscored by President Obama’s recent decision to send Hillary Clinton to engage with Aung San Suu Kyi and the Burmese government.   Jill and I were able to work freely with young Buddhist environmentalists, activists, monks, interfaith leaders, schoolteachers, and recent political prisoners.  In each case they asked for very particular help: training to bridge differences and conflicts that cut across Burma’s peoples, ethnicities, and organizations.  These are the very approaches and skills necessary for a country moving from dictatorship to democracy.  We intend to provide these resources in 2012.

Other Plans

• As political prisoners in Burma are released — which seems a real likelihood in the near future — Clear View, in partnership with Burmese friends and resources, plans to offer workshops on conflict resolution, trauma reduction, and unlearning oppression within Burma.  Our emphasis is to develop local grassroots activists and trainers to do this work according to the ways of their culture.

• This coming February I will make an annual trip to visit India’s Dalit Buddhists and teach at Nagaloka, the remarkable training school in Nagpur.  We will study how gender roles and caste discrimination affect young Dalit women and men, and how Buddhist teachings can be used as a tool for gender and caste liberation.

• Work to sustain Adopt-a-Monk, support meditation in U.S prisons, end capital punishment in America…and more, as resources allow.  And we will keep informing Western Buddhist communities about developments in Burma/Myanmar

The Bodhisattva’s Embrace

The Bodhisattva’s Embrace: Dispatches From Engaged Buddhism’s Front Lines — my book from Clear View Press, continues to sell with the help of excellent reviews in Turning Wheel, Tricycle, Inquiring Mind, and Seeds of Peace.  You can purchase a copy from the Clear View website www.clearviewproject.org or from Amazon.com. And we’ll send a signed copy to any donor who makes a gift of $200 or more to Clear View Project.

What We Need

Our work depends on your generosity and support. Our overhead costs are minimal.  Our commitment is to work for the most oppressed around the world and at home, limited only by time and money. You can make a difference.

Please put a check in the enclosed envelope today. No amount is too small…or too large. $10 to $10,000. We will use your gift as wisely as we can.  We are also able to accept gifts of stock or designated program funds from foundations, and can help you work out the details. We are always grateful for your friendship.  Let me know if you have any suggestions or questions. Take good care.

 Warmly, in peace,

Alan S. 

 P.S. Thanks to Margaret Howe, Catherine Cascade, and Tyson Casey for all their dedicated work with Clear View.

This is written by my old friend Hilton Obenzinger.  Strikes just the right note for today.  Please enjoy the holiday, all we have to be thankful for, keeping in mind all those who have so little and live with untold suffering.

— Alan

Giving Thanks

                                  — Hilton Obenzinger

Thanks to this continent and our country, thanks for the mountains and canyons, fields, farms, and cities and towns, thanks for the beauty of wilderness and urban denseness, thanks for birds and bears, buffalos and bees, thanks for the wonders of geysers and the marvels of subways and highways, thanks for a beautiful tapestry of joy.

Thank you to the Iroquois, Tlingit, Lakota, Hopi, Navajo, Acoma, Yurok, Cherokee, Pequot, Creek, thanks to all the tribes and nations, thanks to the first people of the continent, thanks for what you have given despite all that was taken from you, thank you for your generosity despite the constant theft, despite the sickness and booze, the poverty and suicides, thank you for surviving and then returning to fight again at Alcatraz and Wounded Knee, thanks for enduring and resisting and thriving despite massacres and humiliations, thanks for teaching us all how to be true, how to be people of this continent, for respecting all those who came before and for the generations who will come after us.

Thanks to the first dinner guests, those who came over rough seas to build new lives, determined and bold despite their narrow views, despite what sins they would commit without accounting them sins while berating themselves for sins that do not require remorse, thanks to the people who have come since the first dinner guests, those people who braved rough seas and treacherous rivers to seek fairness and life, thanks to those heroes celebrated and unknown, who expect justice, who demand equality, who think they have a dream, thanks to the dreamers who want a decent life for themselves and for others, who want to worship without restraint, who want to flee religion without restraint, who have fought for freedom, thanks to whose who demonstrate, who sit in, who occupy, who silently wait at home to write letters, who muse over possibilities, who refuse to obey noxious orders, who blow whistles, who stop the lynch mob, who make beautiful art and sing songs, thanks to the freedom to be who we want, thanks for the respect, thanks for life and sex and choice and desire and compassion, thanks for the children, thanks for the way we help each other in need, for the energy and creativity of millions, for allowing us to be caretakers of our planet.

Thanks to our country despite its crimes, the violations of rights and violence, despite police clubs and gasses and bullets, despite the Klan, despite the greed of the plutocrats, despite the horror of endless wars, despite empire, exploitation, pain and deceit, despite a military larger than all others combined, despite the destruction of lands, the poisoning of waters, the sky filled with gases, despite the waters rising, the man-made droughts and floods, despite cruel discrimination, despite the murder of heroes, despite the crushing despair of ordinary people, despite the constant looting by corporations who regard themselves as persons, despite the death of millions of actual persons who cannot afford doctors, despite the poor education and numbing media, thanks to our country because it is ours, and it will be ours no matter what evil befalls us, ours to regain and it will be ours to tend to in its sickness, ours to share, ours to rejoice when the rivers run freely and salmon return to their spawning grounds, thank you for the harvests yet to come.

We are all the dinner guests, and each time the thankfulness can start again, each time we can forgive all the mistakes, we can make ourselves whole and our country whole each time we gather to eat, we can be the ones who embrace the world, who can laugh and make others laugh, and we can give thanks to the vast expanse of the sky, of the great cosmic immensity, give thanks to the multiplicity, to all creation, and we can join with everyone to be the ones who give thanks to each other.