Break Free from Fossil Fuels | 2 week global Wave of Escalated Action > Keep Coal, Oil + Gas In The Ground | Sat. May 14th

Actions are happening all over the world

On Saturday May 14th, all over the world, a coordinated action to break free from fossil fuels will take place. These actions will take place at strategic locations where people can come together. The southwest central hub is Los Angeles, California. People will meet at the City Hall at 1pm, 200 N. Spring St.

I wish to join from my current location in Tucson, Arizona, however I don’t have a vehicle or disposable income. It’s a 7.5 hour drive along Interstate 10. I just hitched to San Francisco 10 days ago, and frankly, would prefer to join people in a ride. nomadbeatz@graffiti.net If anyone reads this, perhaps a few vehicles could be coordinated. https://la.breakfree2016.org/transport/

Californians and people of the southwestern states will convene in L.A., home to the nation’s largest urban oil field in the United States—ground zero of California’s climate fight. We will demand that our elected leaders put an end to the oil and gas production that threaten the state’s health, environment and future. If California wants to uphold its legacy as a global climate leader, then we must keep oil and gas in the ground as we work toward establishing a sustainable energy economy.

In my case, I wish to attend the Los Angeles action. If anyone is interested in joining, here’s the link to get involved. https://la.breakfree2016.org/#join

Carol

Earth to Paris | Place to B | Heart Dimension

Earth to Paris Paris to Earth

Earth to Paris rallied people to urge world leaders to make bold committments to combat climate change World Leaders need to Hear from the World

As I excitedly told the custom’s agent returning from Paris with the words gushing out of me describing my adventure and the phenomenal gathering of people I had just been a part of, he responded smilingly, “Sounds like it was the place to be”. “Bah Oui Hey, THAT IS the NAME of it, Place to B!” And that is how the synchronicities were flying the entire time, in fact even before I knew that I’d be going there to participate.

And Indeed it was the Place to B.

Place to B and the Place to Brief homepage

It was the Place to Brief among climate activists, bloggers, journalists, entrepreneurs, artists and people representing their communities that have already been in the last years affected by global warming. This alternative media session of organized talks and workshops took place mostly under one roof, where many of the 600 people from 40 countries who attended it and participated, slept mostly under one roof. It was headquartered at the St. Christopher’s Inns, conveniently located at a triangular point within a few hundred meters of both the Gare de l’Est and the Gare du Nord, in central Paris. The event of information sharing was geared towards rewriting the story and presenting new ways to approach Climate Change from the media standpoint and learning about a plethora of techniques already successfully in practice to make a difference with better knowledge, understanding, information about degenerative agriculture as opposed to regenerative and sharing success stories of all sorts of entrepreneurs who are out in the world using their ingenuity and actions to dramatically affect peoples’ lives.

This epicenter gathering of people sharing information about ways to talk about climate change and sustainable alternatives and tremendously successful projects took place simultaneously during the two week sessions of heads of state meeting together just a bit northeast of Paris at the COP21, the Conference of Parties ‘Sustainable Innovation Forum 2015’.

Place to B set up by Anne-Sophie Novel and a team of 165 people to create this world-class event.

The Place to B and particularly the Place to Brief, was conceived of by a French journalist and writer

The Place to B: Place to Brief was conceived of and founded by the journalist and author Anne-Sophie Novel and the director of production Nicolas Bienvenue. They were surrounded by a team of people who coordinated the continuous flurry of learning events and entertainment, with a tremendous group of visiting presenters, entrepreneurs and activists who each delivered their scintillating information and testimonies of successes and inspirational savvy from all corners of the world. Anne-Sophie thought of the idea in response to the journalists being blocked out of the Copenhagen Climate Summit in 2009. She marched forward with her terrific idea of creating a focal point where activists and news media could gather, and more and more people joined in with their support and energy towards the idea. It certainly did involve a huge commitment and coordination from so many people, with a packed two week schedule of events.

I, as well as many people will be seeding this information. I’ve learned so much that I was unaware of, such as the distinction between degenerative and regenerative agriculture. We were all introduced to so many new perspectives and ways of looking at everything; new information about methods of agriculture, devices that can be made quite easily at a very low cost that can dramatically aid peoples’ lives, save lives and improve their quality of life. We were also endowed with a lot of historical insights peeling away what we don’t learn through the media, such as why the economy is the way it is, why the degradation of the environment has spun out of control the way it has with the evolution of the Western profit-driven capitalist world. Speakers like Amy Goodman, Vandana Shiva and Naomi Klein shared their powerful insights.

At the same time, there was an uncanny – as if carefully planned – theme of information that talked of re-creating the story, probing for different ways of framing the situation, different ways of presenting ‘climate change’ to the public. The event was infused with spirituality, in the sense of feeling a connectedness, a buzz of excitement coming from a group of people brimming with inspiration and aspirations. There was a palpable empathy there among the participants, who had come from all over the world, each inspired to learn, gather information and express their ideas. One felt a connection with others, with oneself and with the cause of tipping the direction that humanity has taken to a new trajectory. There were meditation classes, yoga sessions, dance, music, artist workshops, loads of media discussions, lectures and continual briefings about what was being discussed at the COP and more importantly, what we could all collaboratively and collectively learn from one another. Certainly, the task of all who were there, is to keep spreading this information of hope and the knowledge that we can each do something to make small changes that will aggregate to make vast ones.

Every Small Gesture Has Significance

Many little voices make a tremendous noise, and many little gestures, create big changes.

When you feel that you are here in service, and bow to that, opportunities will arise to allow you to act on that intention.

It was in a meditative state that I posed these questions, what may be the best thing for me to do to connect, to use my skills…and after a bunch of synchronicities fluttered towards me, I took a leap of faith to Paris within a week of learning about the Place to B through having reconnected with a former colleague of years back who happened to be one of the organizers.

One of the workshops I attended was the Transformational Media Summit : Storytelling and Media for a Better World. The New Story summit was hosted by Jeremy Wickremer, co-founder of Transformational Media Initiative In his presentation, Jeremy Wickremer spoke of the fact that each of us are potentially change-agents, with the capacity to do actions that can have a big impact on the environment – our own lives, our communities and the larger environment. And that what is more potent than merely drawing up solutions from a logical methodology, is to start with the right questions, which prompts creativity in itself.

Specifically, he mentioned that your intention – within the guise of a question – will often be answered. He more recently wrote in an article “Our Invisible World” about the fact that many things which steer human behavior, emotions, health, psychological and spiritual well-being have to do with the energy that lies beneath the actions. And that the common illnesses which affect modern man and the crisis of violence that threat human cultures, have to do with a disconnect. This disconnect is within our own selves, our patterns and habits of how we live our lives. There is a disconnect within ourselves, among one another and that humans have with other creatures and nature; which is presently resulting in the greatest magnitude of habitat destruction, dissemination of species and global ecological balances and health.

The biggest disharmony of all is perhaps our relationship with the natural world.

Eisenstein, in his Sustainable Man video about The New Story, which I wrote about in my other blog, talks of stepping out of this paradigm of control and allowing oneself to be of service to this larger body of which we all are a part. And that as we direct our questions and intent to ask ‘what we can do to serve?’ that indeed, the answers and direction will arise in response to the intention.

Daniel Goleman Ecological Intelligence: The Hidden Impacts of What We Buy

Daniel Goleman is the psychologist, science journalist and author of “Emotional Intelligence”. He posits that non-cognitive skills can matter as much as a person’s I.Q. (Intelligence Quotient) for workplace success in “Working with Emotional Intelligence”. In 2007, Goleman wrote about “Social Intelligence” and in 2009, “Ecological Intelligence: How Knowing the Hidden Impacts of What We Buy”

Besides the rational means of digesting information, there is the whole realm of the invisible. I’ll call it the domain of the heart. Herein lies the capacity of a person to intuit something and feel whether the information is in alignment with the words. A person can sense whether they feel good around a person, or uneasy. A person can have an impression beyond the rational, about whether the words of another person seem to convey the same as their gestures, or whether something is not quite in synch. One can sense whether something they read or see feels accurate and sound, or whether there is something amiss. Many animals can sense with a heightened capacity – with sense organs much more highly tuned to frequencies beyond those of human beings – to see, hear, detect movements and subtle alternations in the environment.

I mention the heart literally and figuratively as a metaphor. The heart is the central organ in the body – lets just talk about human beings – that is consistently circulating oxygen, nutrients and carrying away wastes throughout the body. The heart pumping station, is also by its nature generating an electromagnetic field which is larger than that produced by the brain. The heart also has a complex system of neurons, cells that are consistently transmitting information to the rest of the body. When the heart is in synch in the individual with feelings of joy and love, this invisible field expands. When an individual is more channeled into negative emotions of fear and anger, this field constricts.

The perception of the heart has everything to do with the health of all of the other organs of our body, of individual health in general, of the health of societies, permeating into healthy relationships with other organisms and with the health of the earth, which is an organism just as we are.

The heart is also metaphorically an organ of connection with others. Besides wonder, exuberance, joy and gratitude that a person can feel within him or herself, the words love, compassion and empathy typically imply a connection with another.

And as we begin to take tiny actions that follow the logic of the heart – which knows that each act is significant – the logic of the mind of the older world begins to be replaced. This power of repetition which can physically build muscles, is what occurs mentally, neurologically. Each time you think differently, you are rewiring your brain. This concept called Neuroplasticity has to do with the brain’s ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life. This rewiring allows the neurons (nerve cells) in the brain to compensate for injury and disease and to adjust their activities in response to new situations or to changes in their environment.

Listening to Intuition is the Wisdom of the Heart.

My introduction into the wisdom of the heart probably began through readings of Deepak Chopra. A physician and author, meditation guide and founder of the Chopra Center; who introduced this awareness that has been understood for Millenia in various Eastern spiritual traditions, of the effectiveness of meditation and this connection to the vast unknown dimension of energy. Chopra has teamed more recently with Oprah Winfrey to bring this domain of the spirit, of tapping into the hidden world of energy through stillness and meditation.

HRM Heart Rhythm Meditation synchronizes the breathe with the heart beat; coordinating the bodys respiratory, circulation and nervous systems into coherence

I then was introduced to the practice of ‘Heart Rhythm meditation’ which purports a harmonious and healing relationship within oneself and the universe beyond, through simply aligning the rhythm of one’s breathing to the rhythm of one’s heart beat. It is a practice introduced to the West by a Sufi Hazrat Inayat Khan who descended from Pashtuns, an ethnic group originally from Afghanistan and Pakistan. This meditation practice was brought to me by a certified AMA physician who understands the multidimensional healing that this practice provides – from reducing stress, to lowering blood pressure, creating a more harmonious heart rate and allowing oneself to access in this stillness, the domain of energy that stretches way beyond the physical heart and body.

HRM Heart Rhythm Meditation synchronizes the breathe with the heart beat; coordinating the bodys respiratory, circulation and nervous systems into coherence

So called ‘primitive people’, without having had the use of technological tools that more ‘advanced’ civilizations have had at their disposal and for their distraction, have had thousands of years of penetration into the invisible world that the modern Western world has only been starting to grasp is in the last 50 years. And with the spiritual and emotional well-being deficit that modern man has come to feel, this dis-ease of the human spirit, disconnect with oneself, growing obesity, growing psychological disorders and reliance on quick-fixes such as pharmaceuticals, and growing disharmony and feelings of isolation, have reached towards and cherished many ancient traditions that have evolved in the Eastern World to ease their dis-ease and treat their disharmony with something more than a quick fix of treating the symptoms instead of the disorder. They have reached towards practices of meditation, yoga, t’ai chi and walking into nature and silence, with a visceral understanding that these practices have short and long term benefits.

I will do my best to deliver in chewable-sized increments all that I’ve learned over a series of blogs.

COP21 Activists Sharing their Stories & Solutions to Seed the World

Snap decision to go to Paris to be among the flurry of events around the COP21 – which most people call cop as in policeman, rather than spelling out ‘see oh pee’. The actual commencement of the talks between the delegates began on the 30th of November. You can watch these live at any of the following links.
http://unfccc6.meta-fusion.com/cop21/           http://www.cop21paris.org/agenda
http://unfccc.int/meetings/paris_nov_2015/meeting/8926/php/view/schedule.php

Place de la République shoes Nov 29 representing marchers

The huge anticipated March in Paris was announced by the government on the 18th of November to be cancelled due to the attacks on the 13th in Paris. The French coalition of at least 250 different activist groups http://coalitionclimat21.org/en answered this by organizing a shoe in, where at Place du la Republique’ in Paris people placed their shoes, representing that their presence in spirit for the March.An Sung Sui as well as Pope Frances expedited their shoes to place them there as well.

Aung San Suu Kyi delivered her shoes

Pope Francis delivered his shoes to Place de la Republique

The photograph, compliments of a Frenchman from Lyon, who together with a group of other lawyers and judges are organizing legislation as a means to protect spaces that are ‘in between’ other countries’ ownership and property: the air, water…

10000 people form a human chain Place de la République

I’m so very fortunate to be staying at the St. Christopher’s Inns which has been occupied by Place to B

Place to B, Agenda COP 21 Events, Program, Seminars, Radio…

which is packed with continued events and information, speakers. There are 600 people booked here representing 40 different countries and a plethora of different movements. Many of the women in my dorm room in the hostel are members of Act!onaid | ActionAid International. Women who have come from numerous countries in Africa, the director from Johannesburg, South Africa.

An Inconvenient Youth, by Slater Jewell-Kemker

Basically all the different groups here have organized meetings and methods to place themselves and their activities into the public’s eye; organizing and staging peaceful & quiet public demonstrations in the streets to inform and place their activities into the public’s awareness. http://www.globalplatforms.org/about-activista

TM Transformational Media Summit Storytellers, media professionals and changemakers

I’m presently attending a workshop regarding ‘creative storytelling and how this compels people to action’. Hosted by Katherine Adams, a woman who has used her talents in many different ways, among which is the director of Goodness T.V. Reporters d’Espoire : Pour une information qui donne envied d’agir/Reporters of Hope: for information that fuels the desire to act Emotion is at the heart of creative storytelling and this is what will induce people into action. Stories that tell of innovative solutions can be shared so that these will spread all over the world. One person’s resilience and solutions can be shared. The words here among the network of people here at Place to B is talking about how the media has to change the way in the way that they transmit information. The message has to be towards the solution.

‘Climate Heroes’ film by Maxime Riché, Project Founder, Photographer

The day has been packed with a string of events; a summit with numerous different panelists talking to an audience of bloggers, writers, journalists, entrepreneurs, designers and more – a full repertoire of very valuable information that is being extended by people who have made differences in all different arenas. They and the messages they are exchanging are about making the necessary changes to the world – economically, politically and economically, from the bottom up. I’ve only participated for one day and am quite blown away with all of the captivating information shared through workshops I’ve attended, hosted by the Place to B platform of discussions about confirming new paradigms and ways to talk about a variety of subjects. Many of the talks are in French as well as English. This evening had big enough names and a big enough crowd to use a live simultaneous translator for Naomi Klein and the climate scientist James Hansen. At different times the Place to B program brings in musicians and artists to discuss as well as perform. There are lots of creative and passionate people who really are ‘following their bliss’. There’s a plethora of stimulation and fantastic exchanges that occur when you’re among a bunch of people with a mission to use their hearts and minds to make positive changes. Many of the talks are about how to change the paradigm of how the media and art can inspire the public with messages that deliver hope. And that change – which must be imminent – can best happen from the grass routes level, as people spread among one another success stories from all over the globe that ripple into more and more communities following to create more of the same.

I will be interviewing a few different people over the next weeks to add to my blog and sit some days at the location where the delegates are continuing their 2 week climate talks.

Calling for EChOACTiVate Partners & Core Team, Refugee Manpower, Best Weapon is Education & Empowerment

I have an idea which continues to evolve. I would like to know if any of you recipients – environmental organizations or individuals – can join with me or bring me under your wing so that we can do this together? I’d like to quickly put together a concise plan as a pitch for next week at the Paris Climate Talks, for people to take home and ponder. I have not yet booked a flight, however am willing to do so within the next 24 hours and will work continuously with others with research and development and writing a proposal sketch to present. By its nature, it involves many; a consensus of scientists, business advocates, governmental support as well as people within the communities where these physical structures would be built. It begins in Europe. The original idea which I had presented in August of this year, has a new twist. Specifically the manpower involving the placement, education and training of refugees, who working together with communities throughout Europe, would aspire to be cooperatively working in the implementation of structures that would be greening the environment and have business models that lead to a democratization of wealth. It would be a win:win situation; helping the climate, replacing petroleum and coal and dirty industries with clean ones, greening the environment, creating jobs for local European communities and for refugees, and would be empowering for any involved. I say yes, the money is there, it simply needs to be redirected; i.e. from weapons and military, to education and the building of a green infrastructure throughout Europe and the world.

In the 1970s, refugees from Vietnam, ‘boat people’ were introduced into various communities in the United States. My mother in central Pennsylvania volunteered to help one particular family which she was assigned to. She would go to their home regularly to tutor the family in English and help the three sons with their home work. Two of the boys became dentists and opened up a joint practice in the town I was raised in which just celebrated their 20th year anniversary. The other son is a doctor. The relationship between the two families has lasted to the present day. Their entire family have remained friends, and I’ve had several dental appointments with them when passing through town. They are genuinely kind people who have remained grateful and loyal to the initial help they received, ever since. In other words, many of the refugees are good people who wish simply to have security, opportunities for education and development for themselves and their children. In many ways their intent and self-determination will enhance the local communities they’ve been introduced into and ‘give back’ the chance they were given to survive and thrive.

Word cloud of involved actions in EChOACTiVate

This was my initial sketch – it’s the same information. I particularly need guidance in finding the right contact people and groups, to help to kindle this idea. I would appreciate any suggestions!

lets mots, les activité
pour EChOACTIvate

Often the biggest obstacle is not knowing exactly what we can do, or how to get started.

Often taking the first step is the hardest! Even finding information of how to accomplish things may involve more time than you feel that you have.

That’s where EChOACTiVate comes in!

This would at the same time deal with the world climate crisis by developing and building renewable energy structures, in areas where these are amenable and relevant to that environment. The systems would require monetary investment, yet ideally I visualize creating operations that are cooperative in nature, so that the builders and owners distribute the wealth among themselves and into the community, a more democratic form of business. Along with scientists and developers, I foresee an operation that would involve education and training, and finding in addition to citizens of that community, a placement of refugees, who would also be trained to be the man power behind the implementation of these renewable energy structures, community gardens, the building of literally green buildings, a planting of gardens and flowers and trees to create bee-highways, etc.

I had already conceived of this as a means of bringing together communities to participate, with the addition of a nature of celebration and gathering, with music together with the education. It has evolved however in the last week, in light of the continued incidents of terror around the globe. I feel that the edge of the sword of terror – if you will – is the reaction of the more radically charged Islamic peoples to the inequities and economic domination of the Western world, a structure that has been filtering throughout the world, which increases economic inequality and rather than delivering messages of cooperation, delivers ones of competition and materialism.

was EChOACTiVate ist

I would like people to join together with me or to invite me to begin delegating this idea into group that can manifest this. I need business minds, system developers, negotiators, lawyers, scientists and people passionate about the environment and animal habitat renewal and the democratization of wealth and power throughout the planet.

lo que tu puedes hacer con EChOACTiVate

Calling for EChOACTiVate Partners & a Core Team: to join and help to create the Non-Profit Mobile Task Force igniting Music, Education and ECOACTiV initiatives in communities around the world. The echo of results will propel others to also EChOACTiVate!

Contact me if you wish to partner, participate or guide me regarding what organizations may wish to act as a financial umbrella. ¡ echoactivate@gmail.com !

A myriad of individuals and environmental organizations have been warning as well as educating us about Climate Change and Global Warming and the continued threat of habitat loss and the destruction of many species. They inform us that we must change, that we need to act. It is clear that industry, particularly the dirty ones such as coal and petroleum, are cause to the more sweeping and devastating injuries to the the health and well-being of humans and species all over the planet. Yet our individual actions, collectively have wrought a lot of destruction, which can be reversed, through our adopting new habits. Certainly Obama’s new hislegislation will effectively persuade these larger monolithic companies to shift their practices, yet our future is also in our own hands. Our actions or non-action will determine our fate.

As we each learn – and share that information – about what we can do to transform our environments positively through action and taking ownership for its protection every where we go, we will produce dramatic results. Our individual actions will not only raise the quality of our own lives and the spaces we inhabit, but will collectively have an enormous impact. Since all of life is entirely interdependent, what we improve in our immediate environments will echo, and spread all over the planet. Through ‘dis-ease’, we will birth the remedies, to the point that they are the trend.

Various groups have been guiding us to have a voice among our legislatures. They offer solutions for what we can do. Climate Change and World Wildlife Fund and What We Can Do. Avaaz has a Avaaz has a Climate ToolKit. Recently Pope Frances expressed the urgent need of the world population to take action and ownership with his Pope Francis’ Encyclical: “Faith Climate Action Kit”. In the last 48 hours, the United States President Barack Obama addressed this urgency, pleading for the American people (and all the World) to take this seriously as a fact, and to ACT, with his “President Barack Obama’s “America’s Clean Power Plan””

Just as a flame or campfire draws peoples’ attention, so is music something that captivates and entrances people. Music can cause people to stop in their tracks. It engages all regardless of their cultural heritage or economic ‘status’. Music attracts the young and the elderly. It is a focal point. Music drives our passions. It is close to our hearts. That’s why EChOACTiVate is environmental action for the climate that is musically driven! Music will be the element that brings people together. The glue for social cohesion. And since we all have subjective musical tastes, EChOACTiVate will have to accommodate all sorts of musical tastes 🙂 EChOACTiVate will provide all sorts of music – from classical to country, rock to jazz, folk to punk – depending on the tastes of the particular community we engage with. Music is a force which inspires and energizes! EChOACTiVate will coordinate ecological action by bringing different members of the community into groups, according to their capabilities and interests.

Presently, we are at a pivotal point of urgency in terms of how our individual and collective actions and habits affect our environment. Our planet is either our hell or our heaven. If we continue along without doing anything and rely on ‘old world’ methods of generating power and fuel, our non-action will wreak more havoc and irreversible devastation.

Yet if we all work together and educate one another to make changes in our individual habits and choices towards investment in clean, renewable energy and fuel sources and divest from dirty energy, we will collectively impact our environment in an extremely positive way.

Our choices, habits and actions will make our own neighborhoods and towns more inviting and healthy for not only the humans who live there, but all the other indigenous creatures.

It is immanently clear that it is not our planet that is in peril, but the lives of most of the species inhabiting it. Our proactive actions must start imminently !-)

That’s where you, the public comes in. Let’s do this together. Let’s EChOACTiVate

EChOACTiVate is a community outreach program in the form of a mobile citizen action campaign. Like a ‘food truck’ that is mobile, EChOACTiVate is a ‘music/information stage’. It is a virtual portal of information to inform and act as a central information exchange point as well as a physical mobile team, which visits communities worldwide, to introduce the ‘How To’s” of the action the community decides to invest in, and catalyzes them to take implement their actions, through education and guidelines from mini DIY Do-It_yourself projects to more robust ones.

Arriving to the community to set up the stage, EChOACTiVate will coordinate the music and information to inspire and set the guidelines for task orientation, from the beginning stages through to its completion. EChOACTiVate will gather people together to initiate discussions on initiatives and help the members of the community to get started.

The projects are anything from education about what types of foods to eat and physical activities that can act as health prevention, to how to create friendly habitats in your own back yards and public spaces to attract pollinators and ensure the survival of many of the creatures that share our immediate environment. EChOACTiVate activities cover a vast breadth of choices. From planting trees, community gardens, to planting flowers and vegetation in your own backyards and on vertical fences and walls to attract biodiversity, creating bee-highways, land bridges over motorways for the safe passage of indigenous animals, DIY (do-it-yourself) installation of solar panels, windmills, wave and biomass energy procedures, trash clean-Up, ocean cleanup, ocean plastic removal, info-workshops on recycling and water conservation. EChOACTiVate will also provide and exchange information on more medium and long-term projects, demonstrating projects that are proven effective that require a team of scientists and engineers to construct.

We are at a tipping point concerning human induced climate change, which negatively impacts the lives of all species on the planet.

This has come about through the actions of the human species, and it can be reversed through the actions of the human species. If we physically and socially join together in our actions, it will make them that much easier to accomplish and more fun.

DoTheMath Gobal Climate Crisis Kumi Naidoo Greenpeace website

We all sometimes need that extra incentive. Coordinated through exchanges between our web-based non-profit and visiting team with a community, EChOACTiVate will deliver the information and the tools for that community of people to get started. The EChOACTiVate team will ‘land’ in a community through coordinated bi-lateral dialogue with a neighborhood or community that elects to take some ECOATIV measures. The mobile EChOACTiVate team will arrive in a town in the form of a one or two-day centralized stage. Where they combine music celebration with an information portal, that will organize that community into implementing action. The community will choose what projects are most relevant and needed in their area. The EChOACTiVate core team and volunteers will facilitate getting the community started; through providing the education, information – in the form of speakers and work-shops – to organize that community in their acquisition of tools (through local businesses) to mobilize them into action.

There are plenty of DIY – Do It Yourself – projects that citizens can implement through working together for a short period of time. EChOACTiVate will work with the consensus and the relevance of what a community needs and help them to get started. The capability and the means will come through people working together.

midsummer hitch nYc Einstein Love

EChOACTiVate

>>>>>introduces ecological and environmental proactive measures to individual communities, with music as the initial community binding glue. Music is often what brings people together. It is the virtual maypole, around which EChO -ReVoLuTioN unfolds >>> as a celebratory means of bringing people together and stepping out of their routine. And as communities and individuals empower themselves through their own works, their efforts and accomplishments will echo to other communities, giving others’ incentive to participate in their own EChO project.

MeaningS of EChO

That’s where you, the public comes in! Together we can do this! Each ECOACTV action will echo and inspire other communities to do the same. Our actions will reverberate. Others will be inspired to demonstrate how their community EChOACTiVated to make wonderful differences.

Echo by Alexandre Cabanel 1874 Mount Kithairon

Reiterating: EChOACTiVate is both a cyber portal providing information about the divers ECOACTV DIY Do-It-Yourself projects available for that community to decide upon, and a mobile stage (built of a the core EChOACTiVate team and volunteers) that arrive to the community to provide workshops, speakers and the strategy of what they will need to do to implement their plans of action.

I am one individual with a vision. I know that I want to participate and I know that it is dramatically more engaging to have some sort of celebration with music, to get my attention and find joy in socializing and participating. I wish to make EChOACTiVate a non-profit formed through a number of people who will partner with me. The more quickly I find people who wish to help me to build this, the more quickly we can use our skills and talents to make this dream into a reality.

Calling for partners and/or remote coworkers who work on a consultant/as needed basis: web developers, web designers, app developers, lawyers, accountants, program directors, educational coordinators, biologists, zoologists, climatologists, engineers, researchers, traveling fact gatherers of environmental adaptation success stories Worlwide, artists, musicians, stage hands, a mobile team of presenters and speakers, fundraisers and funding.

Schools could get involved in ‘Expeditionary Learning’ projects, learning by doing. Environmental projects involving energy conservation and the preservation of animal habitats involve: chemistry, biology, statistics, mathematics, geography, geology, environmental sciences and physics – all sorts of learning. As communities become involved to EChOACTiVate, they will learn not only about the dangers of non-action, with respect to erosion, draught, effects of pollutants, the dangers of industrialized farming and fishing and GMO’s, but they will learn about healthy alternatives and what actions – no matter how small – from preventive health measures to the ‘how-to’s’ of getting started in their project(s)>to make their immediate environments more eco-friendly and pleasant for all species.

Corporate, State or Federal could match funds raised by townspeople, (fragment of the U.S. Political campaign budget 🙂 and Federal andState government subsidies or drives to support projects from the simple to the more technically specialized projects involving higher material and equipment costs.

Putting people to work on a Worldwide level, one community at a time. ecoactivate.org will compile lists of the array of projects that communities opt to engage in and monitor and correlate the exchange in open forums in which the community decides on what they wish to do to be ECOACTV in their area and what they’ve accomplished, in the EChOACTiVate campaign rippling across the planet. ecoactivate.org is the portal to gather and exchange information, to coordinate the mobile EChOACTiVate presenters and musicians to come to your town in a face-to-face hands-on delivery and designation of plans for the community itself to implement.

This is a rough sketch! I need you to help me transform it into a reality.

Contact me if you wish to partner, participate or guide me regarding what organizations may wish to act as a financial umbrella. ¡ echoactivate@gmail.com !

§ a web-based interactive information portal ecoactivate.org (not yet constructed) providing information in categories of work projects and DIY information from simpler to more technically complex projects. The EChOACTiVate website will provide open forums for communities to investigate their options, suggest ECOACTV projects of their own and as well as to ask questions and work out schedules. The website will also project what different communities have accomplished with more success stories.

§ a mobile unit with a core team of organizers and educators visiting communities to catalyze their projects: including special guest musicians, educators, specialists and technicians upon Touch Down in that community. This occurs on a one or two day central area within the town, where information and a plan of action for the community to take for the project(s) they have decided to embark on, is provided.

§ This takes place on the “ECOACTV Opening Day’ – a celebration with music and education, vendors and informational work-shops. The EChOACTiVate core team and volunteers touch down to provide guidance and incentive, and certainly helping hands in the beginning stages.

§ The community has a continual ‘two-way’ information exchange, from offering information before the EChOACTiVate group has arrived in their town, to participating by inviting their own town musicians, bands and dj’s to perform for the Informational Opening day as well as during the days or weeks that the community is working on their project. I haven’t worked out the local noise ordinance rules, but this is an exceptional event during exceptional times requiring awareness and action.

§ The successes of various groups will be shared on the EChOACTiVate website and Facebook page as well as through an EChOACTiVate app for mobile devices, so that neighborhoods and communities can compare and display what they’ve accomplished; as well as to provide their feedback, comments and suggestions.

§ whereas digital technology can often isolate people, it can also bring them together to physically join one another:
• apps to record community progress & success stories
• competitions and challenges between communities

§ music is key; with live entertainment from musicians and bands on the opening day and special guests. The town can contribute their own live entertainment with musicians, bands creating their own acts on the Opening Day. Special guests will participate.

§ The Touch Down Opening Day will be the arena for the local citizens to assemble in a celebratory way with the music and food and/or product vendors. Side by side, they will participate in actively learning and sharing information, prior to being organized into groups to work together on teams, according to their physical size, strength, skills and expertise.

§ At this Opening event a series of workshops and meetings will take place to lay out the plans.

§ If a project thaT has been discusses between community members and the EChOACTiVate team in advance is of a more complex nature, EChOACTiVate will help to find consultants to bridge the information gap and parlay what the community’s options are. Educators, speakers, technical consultants and habitat specialists would contribute information on a variety of conservation and preservation topics as well as on themes specifically relevant to the articular chosen project by the community: to assist in determining the material, hardware and man-power needs to get the project started.
People do best, what they like to do most.

§ The EChOACTiVate website will also host live-streamed interactive telecasts of participating groups in other countries, as info-seminars as well as speeches consulting experts in the fields regarding whatever technology is being researched, developed and implemented.

§ As groups EChOACTiVate, their actions and own stories are shared by word-of-mouth, visitors to their town, twitter, Facebook, through the EChOACTiVate App revealing achievements and and on the echoactivate.org Success Stories section.

Each metamorphoses will echo…and invite others to EChOACTiVate and share their own success stories.

Did you hear what Memphis, or Cincinnati, Los Angeles, Pittsburg, Brooklyn, New Dehli, Sao Paulo, Montpelier, Barcelona or Guangxi did? What are you waiting for? Let’s do this. Let’s EChoACTiVate!

Engaging and coordinating local townspeople, businesses and industries to participate, draw resources and form teams of man-power to join together and take action together. Resulting in improved quality of their own environment and learning about all the ways that we the human species can adopt habits and develop awareness about our connection to our environment and to all other species. An public engagement in an environment of celebration, fun and learning, that delights and empowers the people as they transform their own environment.

This idea resulted from Carol Keiter, the blogger

Carol Keiter informational architect of EChOACTiVate

Carol holding the plastic globe

in her aim to follow her own path.

A tagcloud summing up Carol Keiter’s interests and passions.

Well, why not? > Donations showing your support of the evolution of EChOACTiVate as well as Carol Keiter’s writing, eBook, music composition, photography & illustrations are gratefully accepted!

What Humans Currently Do | Excerpt from “The Universe Story”

Our Solar System arose 4.5 Billion years ago. The Earth has evolved – through a series of transformations – to even enable life to form.

From the beginning, as our universe continues to evolve in its cosmogenesis, intelligent intent is present – at all levels > towards differentiation, autopoiesis and communion.

NASA image Cygnus Loop Supernova Stellar Explosion 15,000 years ago

 

Excerpts from the authors

Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry of “The Universe Story”

Ecological Buddhism – A Buddhist Response to Global Warming

Presently, the human race enters the The Ecozoic Era.

Brian Swimme is one of the main people with whom to study, to understand the cosmological shift necessary to a new cosmology.

 

 

“As the natural world recedes in its diversity and abundance, so the human finds itself impoverished in its economic resources, its imaginative powers, its human sensitivities and in significant aspects of its intellectual intuitions.”

Davastation of a Rainforest

 

Here’s a link to the footage of Forest Heroes from a drone of the devastation of a rainforest: Astra’s forest destruction in Indonesia.

 

“The pathos is that we are presently deliberately terminating the most awesome splendor that the planet has yet attained. We are extinguishing the rainforests, the most luxuriant life system of the entire planet, at the rate of an acre each second of each day. Each year we are destroying a rainforest area the size of Oklahoma.

Throughout the planet we are not only extinguishing present forms of life, yet also eliminating the very conditions for the renewal of life in some of its more elaborate forms.

We have moved from such evils as suicide, homicide, and genocide, to biocide and geocide, the killing of the life systems of the planet and the severe degradation if not the killing of the planet itself. We have moved from simple physical assault on the planet, to disturbance of the chemical balance of the planet through our petrochemical industries, to questionable manipulation of the genetic constitution of the living being of the planet by our genetic engineering, to the radioactive wasting of the planet through our nuclear industries.”

Bird sanctuary at Gulf Petrochemicals Industries Co.

 

Ironically, this image of a bird sanctuary at Gulf Petrochemicals Industries Co., is courtesy of the president of the Petro company. A public relations blog on how hunky dory everything is, with the company sitting on top of a fragile ecosystem.

 

 

“That human well-being could be achieved by diminishing the well being of the Earth, that a rising Gross Domestic Product could ignore the declining Gross Earth Product, is the basic flaw in the Wonderland Myth.”

momgoesgreen.com:my-thoughts-on-the-gulf-oil-spill

 

 

“These centuries of “progress” are now ending with increasing stress for the human is final evidence that;

what humans do to the outer world they do to their own interior world.

 

! Next Blog ¡ What we humans need to do in our emerging Echoic Era, to allow the paradigm shift in our conscious awareness to emerge.

We are Earth> Occupy the Planet!

Climate Change | Disruption the film | People’s Climate March nYc September 21st 2014

Climate Change is real.

Together We Can Do So Much

Coming up on the 21st of September on the autumnal equinox, is the Climate March in New York City organized by a number of global environmental organizations; 350.org, Avaaz, GoFossilFree.org, MoveOn.org, Greenpeace.org

Peoples_Climate_March September 21st in nYc

The U.S. government (NASA) National Aeronautics and Space Administration describe in detail on their website the indicators of climate change.

Climate Change Disruption
the film

“Climate. Change. Disruption” is a film by Kelly Nyks and Jared P. Scott. They ask you to be a part of the largest climate march in history.

Our actions matter!

And here’s a pic of Carol Keiter, the blogger, beneath one of the creatures featured by the photographer Joel Sartore, who is capturing photos of all the species, in his series, the photo ark.

Picture of primate, compliments of Joel Sartore’s photo catalogue of species and me, Carol Keiter the blogger

Worth Taking Your Time to Breath In All of This Message | Mother Earth

Our Earth, Our Home

I happened to look at this eloquent short video by Bitthu Sahgal brought to us through Upworthy. It brought tears to my eyes. Densely populated with images and edited so articulately that the message is profound. It is a testimony to our home, the earth, which humans share with all of its creatures. Our earth, our mother, is hurting, from what we humans have been doing. Human beings have the unique capacity to grasp this information, understand its implications and do something about it, before it is too late.

If You Live On Earth, You Must Watch This

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor” – Desmond Tutu.

In other words, one who witnesses something that is wrong and does nothing, is an accomplice.

Human Want and Greed

Slicing up the natural world until it looks like a circuit board

We Share Our Planet, Help Us Remind Those Who Forget

Politicians Discussing Global Warming

This sculpture by Issac Cordal in Berlin is called “Politicians discussing global warming.”

Below are several links to blogs I’ve written previously, regarding recognizing how precious our earth is, having compassion for the creatures that share this earth and leaning in to taking responsibility towards doing what we can to change our habits. We need to bring her back into balance, and make this our top priority.

https://carolkeiter.wordpress.com/2013/11/22/the-truth-earthlings-love-letter-to-the-earth-thich-nhat-hanh-kumi-naidoo-greenpeace-saving-the-earth-from-ourselves-only-after-cree-indians/

Global Warming

http://digesthis.wordpress.com/2012/11/21/dothemath-350-org-bill-mckibben-global-climate-crisis-washington-d-c/

WHAT WE CAN DO

Carbon Capture How It Happens

Read about and watch these videos to familiarize yourself with the impact of your actions & educate yourself about how your own personal actions can positively affect change!: The Story of Stuff: The Impact of Overconsumption on the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health-And How We Can Make It Better

The Story Of Stuff Project Annie Leonard

People’s Climate March September 21st NYC

Water Dragon

If you wish to donate to my cause of sharing information, please do so. If you are aware of any groups or individuals who may wish to listen to my intentions and help me to reach them, please help to guide me and put me together with those who may wish to financially help me reach these goals. My intentions are to continue to write, photograph, illustrate, compose music and basically communicate in order to educate the public about social injustice, raising peoples’ awareness about what they can do to have a lighter environmental footprint, advocating for animals through writing and producing music that gives a voice to creatures whose time is limited due to habitat loss and poaching as well as completing the writing of my interactive eBook which is geared as a multi-lingual educational tool involving a great deal of scientific discovery, for which I will compose music for a soundtrack. It all takes time, and it’s worth it. I’ll be happy to join a group full-time who are involved in projects of this sort as well.

My first intention was to blog this announcement: I must shift from merely writing blogs to gaining income through submitting articles to publications, and subsequently linking these to my blogs. It will be a much more convoluted process; taking the time and effort to research first what publications may want to print the information I write, and then after sending the query, waiting to hear from them. I have little choice, since I have no income whatsoever.

An article I will write promptly, is a social anthropological one. It came from a conversation that I had last evening, in which i was bringing up parallel points that are all cases involving increased community, at the cost of less freedom. The examples tied together are through people I have known who have delivered their first-hand observations of communities in which they lived. Hopefully, you will get to read this if one of the publications or internet magazine sites that I send the query to opt to print it.

Above the blogger below, is one among many of Joel Sartore’s photographs documenting species.

Picture of primate, compliments of Joel Sartore’s photo catalogue of species and me, Carol Keiter the blogger

http://digesthis.wordpress.com/2012/04/12/gross_domestic_problem_-why-measurement-of-wealth-depends-on-a-healthy-environment/

Greed & Profit-driven Aims to Protect Wealth & Power = Path of Destruction

This blog was incited by having read a comment on someone’s Facebook page, regarding a man’s decision to NOT give a TED Talk, because he wouldn’t be paid.

The idea of some kind of monetary compensation for presenting a TED talk never occurred to me. Of the many excellent presentations I’ve seen, shouldn’t the fact that one’s ideas are considered worthy enough to present them to an audience of potentially hundreds of millions of people, suffice? I was under the impression that the point of TED Talks is to spread ideas, for the good of humanity and all of the other species that cohabit this planet. Through the education and perspective I personally received through my family heritage and genetics, I have been granted a great deal of wealth; health, intelligence, analytical skills and an abundance of creativity. On top of that, I am physically fit, allowing me to move through this world unencumbered. I have education and knowledge, and the resourcefulness and curiosity to obtain more. Yet, I am teetering on the edge of financial poverty. Not because of poor planning, but because of my adventurous spirit combined with idealism, which leads to risk-taking. The wisdom I follow is from those who genuinely care about humanity and all of the other species with whom we share this planet. People like Albert Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Jr., Carl Gustav Jung, Deepak Chopra among others, including the wisdom coming from Native American Indians and literary and spiritual guides from the Middle East and Asia. I wish to continually create possibilities to learn and develop my skills, to be the best that I can be in order to give something back to the world. Reading about a person complaining because the TED talk doesn’t pay the presenter, irked me. It made me stop everything else, to comment. It ignited the fuse of my annoyance regarding the injustices I see presently in the world today.

Our world is corrupted by money, and the greed and drive of people to make a profit and protect their power, no matter the consequences. It is the large, incorporated manufacturers of the world, those who have invested in the extraction and transport of non-renewable energy, telecommunications, technology, pharmaceutical industries and those who control information, that often are responsible for the careless and myopic profit-making, resulting in the path of destruction of the environment and eradication of many of the species. The imbalance of wealth, lack of education and instability of the planet (human industry-induced global warming) are all a result of this misplaced greed of a small percentile. The vast majority of people and species, are all suffering from overpopulation and economic misfortune, driven by sustained ignorance.

Many of the scientists, teachers, artists and people with creative insights and ideas who genuinely help to guide people and make the world a better place, are NOT the movers and shakers. Presently, the “leaders” of the United States government are not elected for their insight and desire to do good and justly represent the people, they are corporate sponsored actors who tug the line, speak the voice of those who place them in these positions, for an inflationary cost that is disproportionate to what democratically chosen elections should cost. In the world today, those who have more wealth, are more easily able to carve paths that slide around the rules that everyone else must follow, making deductions, avoiding taxes through all sorts of loopholes, while the vast majority are just getting by. I am absolutely disgusted with the idea of people protecting their wealth and power, at the cost of others.

Malala Yousafzai

Do you think that Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani girl who passionately wants to improve the condition of women in Pakistan, by voicing the right of girls to receive an education (which will ripple to affect many other parts of the world) who was shot by the Taliban because of her courage and honesty, is driven by profit? I could go on, but I’ll share this in another forum – my own blog, for which incidentally, I earn absolutely no money, but am driven by my own passion to recirculate ideas and events, purely because of their value and the wish to share. Thank fucking DOG, because even the concept of GOD, by most religions, has been distorted and compelled by those wishing to sustain their wealth and power.

TED talk James Hansen | Tax on Fossil Fuel Companies < reduce CO2 to 350 ppm | WWF The 3% Solution

The scientist James Hansen gives an informed TED Talk presentation about ‘Climate Change’, pointing out a way that our government(s) could reduce the level of CO2 in the atmosphere, enough, to avoid the catastrophe that we are headed for. Knowing that it’s essential that we diminish the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in (ppm) part per million, to 350, Hansen has a plan; a tax on fossil fuel companies. And yet, our government(s) (the USA is up there on the guilty list) not only appear to ignore this fact, but are encouraging corporations to do all sorts of activities that will accelerate the rise in temperatures even more.

http://www.ted.com/talks/james_hansen_why_i_must_speak_out_about_climate_change.html

During the former Bush administration, Hansen was informed that he could no longer give talks without first having NASA censor them. At that time, the NASA Mission Statement, which Hansen had used previously to introduce his presentations, was suddenly no longer allowed. “To Understand and Protect the Home Planet”, was now omitted.

Hansen’s idea, is to diminish the level of CO2, by the government putting a tax on fossil fuel companies. This carbon fee on fossil fuel companies, would then be distributed equally to all (legal) residents, 100% of which could be used to stimulate the economy and innovations, to move us rapidly towards a clean energy future, with the government not keeping one dime.

Jim Dipeso Republicans for Environmental Protection, is quoted saying that this idea sounds, sound! In his words, it’s “Transparent. Market-based. Does not enlarge the government. Leaves energy decision to individual choices.. Sounds like a conservative climate plan.”

Yet, instead of placing a rising fee on carbon emissions to discourage the process, our government is forcing the public to subsidize it (400 – 500 B dollars per year, world-wide) and in fact, encouraging the extraction of every fossil fuels through: mountain top removal, longwall mining, fracking, tar sands, tar shale, deep ocean arctic drilling…A path which if continued, will not only ensure more environmental destruction, but also lead the world to the tipping point of ice-sheet disintegration, which will accelerate the warming process. This warming will inevitably commit a large fraction of the world’s species to distinction, besides the massive extremes in weather which are already occurring, resulting in massive famines…

And the longer we wait in taking action to divert this process, the more difficult it will become; until it will be irreversible.

A new report from WWF and CDP speak of “The 3% Solution: Driving Profits Through Carbon Reduction” as an initiative to move companies forward towards profitable and practical ways to reduce emissions to help curb climate change. The CEO’s of WWF and CDP were joined by Steven Swartz, a partner of McKinsey & Company, in a webcast unveiling their groundbreaking analysis. World Wildlife Fund reveal that climate change poses a fundamental threat to the places, people and species that WWF works to protect. The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) is an independent, non-profit organization working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by providing a global system for companies and cities to measure, disclose, manage and share vital environmental information. Working together, the two of them have chartered a means to instigate companies to substantially reduce carbon emissions, while increasing resiliency, ROI and profits, in “The 3% Solution“. The report launch can be viewed in a webcast recording which took place on June 18th, 2013.

http://www.350.org/

Incidentally, there have been recent detections by scientists of methane bubbling up from cracks in the permafrost in the continental shelf of the Arctic, which is 30 times more potent in trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. Read more about this in this Times article.

Congratulations Barack on Four More Years | Our Mission Has Just Begun

I’m sleepy and exhilarated. I’m sure that quite a number of people are exhausted after covering the presidential election countdown into the early morning hours, along with all of those on the East coast who stayed up waiting to listen to Obama’s acceptance speech at 1:30 in the morning.

Portrait of Obama made from many separate images – courtesy of Michael Moore’s website

There appeared to be a lot of obstacles towards people merely casting their votes, and I’m not talking about those whose homes had been washed away in the recent mega-storm. Some had to endure long lines, others, long distances to get to their poling places (on a Tuesday workday as opposed to a weekend), not to mention the new fleet of problems which naturally arose with the new legislation requiring people to have photo I.D.’s.

And yet Obama still won the hearts, and trust of enough of the population to bring him back in to finish what he has started. If not for the fact that the alternative, was so much dimmer. Romney‘s bumbled statements and stance switches pressed on people’s doubt. His large number of offspring and offshore money stashes made me nervous. Scary to think of how large his clan could become, taking over the White House for generations to come, if he were to assume the Mormon conventional role, populating more and more with multiple wives. I just watched for the first time a Moveon.org video (after the vote) regarding Romney’s double-sidedness, switching his views dramatically, depending on when he was talking.

And as the vote was being tallied I read in my inbox several of Michael Moore’s last desperate pleas to motivate people to go out and rock their vote towards giving Democracy a face. I had heard certain quite disappointing facts about Obama – through the movie Inside Job regarding the fact that Obama appointed some of the same culprits – investment bankers responsible for the financial scam of 2008 – into high posts within his administration, rather than prosecuting them. Hearing these details at the tail end of the documentary was not just disturbing, it was eerie. Here are the livid details elucidated in Michael Moore’s recent blog post ‘Tomorrow‘. I concur with Michael Moore’s words in a separate blog post imploring people to vote, ‘letter to a non-voter‘, that regardless of the mistakes Barack may have made and the mess that he stepped into – which was already severely tainted – like many people, I still ‘feel’ that he is genuine, and trust him. It would be very scary to have a man with 18 going on 46 Grandkids populating the U.S. Public Office with corporate domination; stripping peoples’ rights and toppling everything that so many people have worked for over the past 5 decades.

People need a leader who inspires and speaks poignantly about hope. Obama not only congratulated all Americans who went out to vote, regardless of who they voted for, but also spoke of the fact that the citizens of a Democracy have responsibilities that go along with their rights, to do what they can to help others and make concessions and compromises. They need to act with compassion and tolerance. You can see his acceptance speech here, if you missed it. Hurray! He also mentioned global warming, among innumerable other tasks that he (and we all) will have to deal with in the coming term. It’s up to all of us to recognize how our actions affect the climate, and to connect the dots regarding how climate change impacts extreme weather conditions.

As Tom Brokaw mentioned, Obama demonstrably spoke of inclusion (of all the different factions of people that make up the American people) as opposed to exclusion; in the fact that all people deserve the same rights to a brighter future, regardless of the color of their skin, race, age, sexual preference…

And as the newscasters mentioned, with the middle name Hussein, and in the grips of a recession, Barack Obama still came through to be the person that most of us chose to represent our voice. It’s also very interesting that Democrats won a majority in the Senate and several States chose to legalize marijuana. It’s up to all of us, to pressure him to live up to what we envision our government could provide. We all need to rally to implement positive change, in terms of healthcare, employment opportunities, transportation infrastructure, and to concentrate on peace-building rather than weapon building and defense. We still can choose to live up to those empowering American ideals that we have touted to the rest of the world.