#OWS

 Funny how Police have little problem arresting Occupy Wall Street Protesters, when you consider the Protesters are taking action on their behalf, as well as others of course.

   The Protesters seek a fair distribution of wealth, as in, Big Business pay your fair share.  Which can be directly traced to Police pay and benefits.  When Big Business pays its fair share, Police get the pay they deserve. More pay less worry. The less you pay the more the Police and their families suffer.  Freezes in hiring, elimination of overtime, cuts in their benefits and retirement.  The "Thin Blue Line" gets even thinner.  How safe are our streets then?

   When the Police kowtow to Rich people who think they're superior and above the Law it gives the impression of a Puppet Master pulling strings, or a Rich guy with pockets bloated with cash holding a sign that reads, "You don't get your scraps unless you do what WE say"! Looking at it as a matter of self interest, the Police are protecting the wrong people, merely because they hold the purse strings.

   The solution becomes very simple.  The Police are on the wrong side of the picket line.  Which begs the question, How long until they figure this out, or have they already?  If that's the case, I have to ask, will they cross the line and stand with the people and not the Corporations? How long before enough is enough?  What will it take for them to stand with their friends, family, and neighbors?  The family next door, the girl across the hall, their sons and daughters?

   How does one choose the side that won't let you into their neighborhood or building, unless you're wearing you're uniform, over the people you live with?

Reaction Is Not Response

  You know those commercials where if you need something you can just push the Easy Button?  I wish they were real!

  Newtown CT. School shooting is tragic and horrifying to all of us.  It is important after the normal process of grieving  outrage, and reaction, to take a step back and talk about tragedies like this with a calm rational perspective.   Not the usual talking that takes place during the event, which is talking at each other.

  Shouting over one and other to be heard and not listening is a normal part of dealing with such incomprehensible actions.  But we often forget an important part of the healing process, which is to listen.  This is probably the most important part of the healing process, arguably anyway.

  For example, Sussex County Delaware has to decided to put Guards in all it's schools to combat any future such events.  What they failed to do is take a step back and discuss the problem in an intellectual manner.  Which is ironic because all School systems in America are supposed to be based in intellectual thought.

  The words Guard and Combat should never be used as a solution for Schools.  Delaware has a created it's own reputation of putting metal detectors, guards, and police officers in it's High Schools, and as a result they have grown increasingly more violent.

  Yes, as a result!  A Schools intent is to develop and shape young minds.  And that's just what Delaware has done.  By treating Students as inferiors through searches, threats and constant scrutiny, we have developed in them a prisoner mentality.

  Walking through metal detectors and being searched does not make anyone feel safe.  We know it makes us safer because we are rational adults with the ability to discern the proper coarse needed to be safe.  But we don't feel it, we discern it.  Yet we expect children to be able to do the same.  They can't. Not yet anyway.  Not without experience.  And experience is what separates the men from the boys so to speak.

  I don't know what the correct answer is for making our Schools safer and no one person does either.  That will take rational adult conversations with as many people as possible, and the most important ingredient of all "listening".

  What I do know is, a child does not see the world as adults do.  Daily exposure to guards, gates and detectors will never inspire creativity.  Which is something else Schools are meant to do.  You can't open minds by locking doors.

  We don't currently have an answer for tragedies like Newtown, and we are not likely to have one any time soon, until we stop Reacting and start Responding.