What informs your understanding of how the world works? Do you trust that the corporate media will provide accurate interpretations of daily events? Do you trust exceedingly overpaid politicians, including the president, to have your interests and needs in mind when they make decisions that increase the wealth of the already wealthy, while adding to the burdens you bear in daily life? In these days of utter financial corruption, games within games, and spin on top of spin, what enlightens your understanding of what you experience?
Personally, I trust my eyes and ears. When I see the increase of homelessness and the lack of political mobilization to re-engineer the economy toward living-wage jobs, I realize that those in power don't represent my interests. When I hear politicians say, "Live within your means," as they reap millions and refuse to tax the wealthy, I realize that whatever else is going on, folks like me are getting screwed. When I both see and hear the commitment to permanent war, justification for loss of liberties, the increasing militarization of the police and its sidekick, incarceration of people of color, I realize that the floodwaters of fascism are rising and democracy is drowning.
Because I don't trust corporate media, corporate politicians and their corporate economic lifestyle to help me understand what I see, hear and feel, I turn to alternatives. In the coming weeks, we have two opportunities to perceive our reality differently. Neither opportunity will receive much publicity.
The first occurs May 28 at 7 p.m., at Town Hall. Dr. David Ray Griffin once more tries to illuminate what really happened 10 years ago on 9/11. The official story of 19 young men, mostly Saudi Arabians, miraculously evading military intelligence to crash into two buildings, thereby causing three to free-fall into their own footprint-size destruction, along with a bizzarro scenario of another plane crashing into the world's most heavily guarded building, strains any notion of living in a rational universe. And then, of course, the consequences: an unleashed empire of military-financial terror let loose on the world. Who benefits from this? I trust Griffin more than I do Obama to help me interpret these matters.
And then on June 4 at 7:30 p.m., David Barsamian, the award-winning director and founder of Alternative Radio will give a talk, "Imperial Media, Imperial Wars" at Trinity United Methodist Church, 6512 23rd Ave. NW. Barsamian's talk is hosted by University Behind Bars, a Washington state nonprofit that provides high school and post-secondary education to the incarcerated and educates the public about mass imprisonment. He has interviewed many of the great alternative voices that dissent from the official story: Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Eqbal Ahmad, Arundhati Roy, Edward Said and Tariq Ali.
Come and see and hear for yourself. Perhaps your world will change.