Author Archives: susanfey

Human Dignity

Human Dignity

Reforming our entire criminal justice system

Congressional action is necessary to implement respect for human dignity as a path toward healing the lasting damage caused by slavery and genocide in America.  Outlawing choke holds is a bandage where major surgery is required. Beyond choke-holds there are infinite methods both blatant and subtle to maim, torture and kill for those who have antisocial, psychopathic or sociopath tendencies.  Sociopaths, psychopaths and antisocial personalities are attracted to a system where they can control and brutalize others.  Such deep disturbances in personnel must be rooted out of our criminal justice system.

Multiple screening tests given by psychologists can root out such persons from our criminal justice system and can be used to qualify new recruits.  When such tests were routinely given, they repeatedly showed approximately 20% of persons applying for such positions are totally unsuited and should never be allowed to be in such positions of authority.  Administrators and unions didn’t like those results and stopped allowing the tests.  Such testing needs to now be federally mandated at all levels to clean up our police and criminal justice system and to support the honest civil servants who daily work in that system and the communities they are mandated to protect.  

Following the atrocities of Nazi rule, the German people wrote a new constitution with the intention to never repeat such atrocities.  Respect for human dignity was written into their constitution as the central core of their new government.  One result of this change was to abolish their entire former criminal justice system.  They replaced the Nazi system with a system based on human dignity.  They replaced their prisons with rehabilitation centers.  Rehabilitation replaced punishment. Unlike our system which returns criminals to society when their time is up regardless of their likelihood of recommitting crimes, the very successful German system returns persons to society only if and when they are rehabilitated and no longer a danger.  It also educates and trains them to be able to work as useful citizens benefiting everyone.  The result of this change In Germany is reduced crime, reduced prison population, reduced recidivism and reduced costs.

In 1922 the White House commissioned the Menninger Foundation to write a white paper evaluating our criminal justice system.  Their conclusion was that our criminal justice system is based on revenge and actually increases the criminality.  100 years later we are still using the same system.  Our current antiquated criminal justice system not only returns unrepentant criminals to society, it erodes the human dignity of those incarcerated as well as those in charge.  Proven psycho therapeutic practices need to replace our abusive system of punishment.

LEGISLATIVE ACTION STEPS: Mandate psychological screening of all current and incoming criminal justice personnel including administrators. Mandate reform of our entire criminal justice system based on human dignity, replacing prisons with rehabilitation centers. 

These are steps to protect all our citizens. Reform of policing is only the beginning of necessary changes in our criminal justice system. Honoring the human dignity of all people is the foundation of democracy and the underlying basis of American liberty.  Respect for human dignity is at the very heart of what makes democracy work.                                        

Contact: Susan Fey     susanfey@live.com

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Chicken Little and the First Woman President

The sky may not be falling but the earth is surely shaking these days. What to do about it. How can such an earth shaking thing be happening?

My presidential candidacy may have had the smallest contingency ever. So I thought – what would I do if I were president? What would you do? I looked at all the major world catastrophes and what assets we have and came up with a plan.

What I noticed was we need a slight adjustment, over all we have been doing very well. Being presidential means you put things in a good light. No one wants to follow you into the dark. In this country a lot of people have plenty to eat. Of course some are very hungry. Some slight adjustments when you are headed for the moon can make all the difference on which moon you land on.

So here is the plan: We’re it.
In fact we always have been.

What does that mean? What is she talking about?

The plan is da da – We’re it. You know what they say – if you are having trouble look in the mirror.

Now you know why my contingency was so small. But then a small group of dedicated people can change the world – so what the heck. What could be more fun. The truth is I haven’t spoken up much before.

My time has come. Da da!

Not me you say? Yup it’s us. Now you couch potatoes may think this is bad news and those of you out on the front lines working to make a positive difference might also disregard the magnificence of a plan that says -da da drum roll – We’re it.

Look at it this way. Remember the story of loaves and fishes? It was a miracle right? So here is how miracles work. I bet you have always wanted to know.

Imagine yourself there. This great prophet is going to speak out in the country. There are no taxies or freedom buses and it is a pretty long walk. What if you were going out to the country – no fast food restaurants -yikes -what to do?

Walking takes a while. Da da What would you do? Think now, you have lots of time or maybe you are in a hurry so I will tell you what I would do. I would pack a lunch and carry it under my flowing robe to keep it cool and so I wouldn’t have to share it unless I wanted to.

So Jesus being a very wise and kind soul says, “Let’s eat!” He asks a boy to gather some food from the crowd and the boy brings back a basket with a few loaves and fishes. Fantastic let’s share. Out behind folds in robes and under turbans come all kinds of delicious treasures. The overflow filled many baskets.

We have enough tools and wisdom to address every issue before us. There is plenty for us to share. Many are already on it. Let us join them and create the most magnificent time in human history.

Democracy isn’t just about voting. Democracy is the power of the people.
We’re it We’re magnificent and working together we can perform miracles.

Da Da!

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The Power of Government

The power of government is the people.
This has always been so.

We are being told that money
is the power in our government.

Money is only powerful
because we the people have created,
promoted and allowed it to be so.
Money is a great means of exchange.

The power of government is the people.
We decide how money is used.

We know there is great disparity
between the rich and poor
in our country and all over the world.

We are the ones who
can change life for the better.
There is plenty for all.
We can change how things are
structured and distributed.

The power of government is in the people.
In the United States we have the power of voting.

WE ARE THE MAJORITY!

We can run for office.
We are the ones who have the power
to make a difference.

Do you remember the young man who stood
stopping the tank in Tiananmen Square?
Repressive governments
are most afraid of the power of the people.

Great power comes with great responsibility.
We now know we are responsible for climate change.

We are making our environment deadly.
This awareness brings us the most awesome responsibility.
We know better now and we can do better.

We have all the tools we need to have the greatest,
healthiest, most prosperous and joyous lives
humans have ever had on this planet.

President Obama has said that
if the same number of folks came out to vote
in the midterm elections
that came out in the general elections
the middle class would be enjoying
a solid majority in government,
rather than being swamped
by the worst conservative elements.

The ruling majority in the United States
continues to sleep during campaigns,
confusing its own real interests
with the cosmetic interests of the rich.

We’ve got it damn it, we’ve got it.
All we have to do is get out the vote.

UP, UP majority. Vote.Vote!

Vote for Democrats!

Make all government do the will of the people.

Support Obama in making voting mandatory!

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The Game Changer

From my clear mountain view I see a new game. People come here looking for refuge from crowded polluted cities and electromagnetic frequencies (EMF’s) and Fukushima radiated salmon that are making them sick.

Meanwhile the Koch brothers are spending, spending, spending to make the reality of climate change appear to be a myth. Imagine having so much money you could attempt to fool all the people all the time. The Koch brothers are trying to avoid their oil investments becoming worthless.

The Arabs are a little smarter and trying to get ahead of the game. They are selling off their oil at a loss. They don’t have to worry. They have plenty of solar sunshine for sale. There is enough sunshine in the Sahara to power all of Europe.

Wouldn’t it be great if the Koch brothers invested in solar instead of myths? Wouldn’t it be great if they worked with us to deepen democracy instead of against us?

The new game is about the true value of what is important to people: air to breathe, water to drink, food to eat; being able to afford the necessities for a healthy life for your family; feeling safe in your community; being able to educate your children. This is not too much to ask.

The old game has terrible consequences. Pew research tells us that since our Great Recession, black’s net worth is now 1/13 of white’s. Hispanic’s net worth is now 1/10 of whites. When all your wealth is tied up in your home, losing it to corrupt banks is devastating.

There are consequences of having an oppressive governor of Wisconsin and ignorant Southern senators. When young black men from Milwaukee move to where there are jobs, they come back to the drug filled Milwaukee ghetto after discovering they do not have the education to get hired.

A southern Senator said his Mississippi delta school which was rated inadequate was “Good enough for the workers.” One form of perpetual slavery is to have an uneducated populace. Uneducated people create poverty for all. People are our most valuable resource. Such slavery holdover thinking is the reason his beautiful state is one of the poorest in the nation. The new game is valuing the dynamic worth of every person on earth. The new game is investing in our most precious resource – the brilliance of our people.

Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela and Gandhi have shown us the way. We marched in Selma to give black people the right to vote. Folks today feel hopeless toward government. A vote seems like a useless thing. A vote like a drop of water may seem of little value, but when votes are gathered together they are mighty. We still have the right to vote. We must use that right and vote damn it Vote.

President Obama said that if the same number of folks came out to vote in the midterm election that voted in the general election, the middle class would be enjoying a solid majority in government instead of being swamped by the worst conservative elements of the GOP.

Ordinary people are the ruling majority in the United States. Don’t let the media separate us into groups. Laborers are beginning to wake up. Women, civil rights advocates and environmentalists need to join the laborers. Stop sleeping during campaigns confusing our own real interests with the selfish and frivolous interests of the rich. We’ve got the majority damn it, we’ve got it! All we have to do is run for office and get out the vote.

UP, UP majority. Vote. Vote! Vote for Democrats! Support Obama in making voting mandatory.

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Foundations of a Prosperous Peace

We call forward every person on earth to come together as one magnificent force.

Together we can move toward peace and life sustaining policies. The present state of our world requires an uplifting transformation of consciousness, an opening of our hearts and minds. Democracy is about cooperating to create policies which serve the highest good for all concerned.

We can do this. 

We propose the radical idea that sustaining life itself is our most important priority.  The first step in that effort is just compensation of workers for the investment of their entire lives in their work.  It is time we  give workers ownership of what they create and pay living wages.   This justice is the beginning step toward peace.  Deep peace ensures the climate of cooperation trust and brotherly love necessary to address our most challenging tasks. 

 We now have the tools to create life sustaining transformation.  Our growing awareness that we are all interconnected is a beginning step. Public policies which support life itself are essential.  Here are a few of the primary agendas for us to address together.

 Air, water, food, clothing and shelter in that order are essential to human existence.  We do not know how many humans our planet will sustain.  We only survive for minutes without air, and days without food or water.  Our planet is designed to naturally purify the air, water and soil through recycling.  Each of these basic components of life is now too contaminated to function properly. The earth is so desecrated that species are becoming extinct and life itself is threatened.  We do not know if we have already exceeded the limits for the continuation of life itself.  Together we can create policies which promote life.

 Bedrock is fundamental to our continued existence on earth.  Bedrock is what we stand upon and build upon.  Not long ago we thought nothing of blowing up bedrock with nuclear bomb explosions later realizing besides the environmental contamination, we were self destructing through changing the seismic pressures in the very bedrock of the earth creating earthquakes.  Scientific evidence now shows fracking is creating seismic pressures in the moving continental plates of the earth fracturing the thin layer of bedrock covering earth.  Scientific evidence now points to fracking as the cause of an increase in major earthquakes, irreversible toxic contamination of ground water, and the depletion of water needed for agriculture and human consumption. Protecting our bedrock is fundamental to life on earth.

 Atomic energy is not clean energy.  It is dangerous, destructive, and contaminating.  We do not know how to process or safely store toxic atomic waste which remains lethal for centuries.  Non-polluting energy sources are already available.  We must rapidly replace the energy gained from fracking, atomic energy and fossil fuels.  We need energy policies which promote life itself.

 These are a few of our great challenges. These challenges call for us to summon the greatness within ourselves. These challenges and many more are our opportunities to take a tremendous leap forward for all human kind.  We can through joining together with one another, unite our efforts to create a joyful life sustaining future for our children and ourselves beyond our wildest dreams.

Peace is the foundation and the result of facing our challenges.  Justly rewarding workers worldwide for the investment of their entire lives is the foundation of peace. Democracy today is the vehicle for us to unite our efforts as one to sustain life on earth.  No one of us is exempt from this task.  This is a call for every person on earth to come together as one magnificent force.

 We can do this.

 

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Creating Democracy

Doesn’t it make sense to have creative flexible social relationships which benefit everyone?  We can create democratic structures specifically designed for each situation as a living, growing, learning process for all involved.  People all over the world are calling for democracy in their governments and work places.  They are building on the inspiration of the original dream of freedom on which the United States was founded.  The people of Tunisia are creating a government more democratic than our own.  They are learning from our omissions writing into their constitution equal rights for women and rights for the environment.  Organizations in our country are waking up to new democratic directions.  Despite or perhaps because of economic disparity, we are moving toward fairly compensating workers and giving women equal pay.  Social change which previously took millennia to occur is now occurring in decades and sometimes instantly. Change can come in the twinkling of an eye1.

 

Creative democracy enters the work place through CEO‘s and investors honoring, respecting and compensating workers for the fruits of their labor, giving workers a share of the profits of their labor. These are simple and powerful concepts whose time has come.  In the United States and around the world workers are beginning to create their own democratic corporations and to hire their own CEO’s.

 

Corporations are not bad. How corporations are organized, what their intentions are, and how their intentions are implemented are what make the difference as to whether a corporation is destructive or beneficial.   Profit is not bad.  The question is how are the profits used and to whose benefit.  Profits have the potential of creating great good.

 

 We learned from the totalitarian governments that top down management can be economically deadly.  When workers are compensated fairly, when they have ownership and participate in decision making: enthusiasm, inspiration and creativity flourish.  Quality and profits increase for everyone when workers are invested in the outcome of their labor.  When workers are in charge, they are more likely to produce products which benefit their community and environment.  

 

Purchasers of goods and services recognize the benefits of cooperative efforts. Creative democratic efforts flourish.  The companies and the workers thrive, as well as, the whole community when creative democratic organization is in place.  People appreciate and support organizations founded on right relationships.

1 Findhorn song

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Ed Ponder

In 1980 I had a powerful dream unlike any other I have had before or since that time.  When I awoke I told a friend, that I would be the first woman president of the United States.  His reply was that he didn’t think so.

I had to agree with him that it was an unlikely possibility.  The vision stayed with me over the years.  In 1989 I was attending a visioning workshop for coaches to assist the Chicago Public Schools to come up to national standards.  The vision workshop facilitator said that to implement your vision you have to share it.  I realized I was terrified at the thought of sharing my vision of becoming the first woman president.

Shortly after the visioning workshop I was at an organizational meeting for Earth Day ’90.  A stranger came up to me and asked me, “What do you do?”  I thought this was my chance to lean into sharing my vision.  I told him that I was running for president of the United States.  He asked me, “When?”.  I quickly calculated that the soonest I could be ready was 2004.  He responded that I looked like I was ready now.  He offered to take me home and gave me his card.  A year later I called him up telling him I decided to run for president in 1992.  We spent the next 9 years living and working together.

It turned out that man was Ed Ponder.  Ed is credited in the Illinois Blue Book as being the founder of the Environmental   Protection Agency.  He was instrumental in founding the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency which was used as the blueprint for founding the United States Environmental Protection Agency.  Ed became my mentor.  We worked for 9 years on technology to take all organic waste and turn it into products.  This technology is now being used all over the world to empower people to use their own waste as their source of energy.

  Ed supported my presidential campaign in 1992.  I ran for president again in 2004.  I have no intention of campaigning now for the presidential office. I am deeply committed to doing whatever I can do to assist our nation and the world toward healing solutions to the challenges we are now facing.  I believe a tremendous transformation is coming forward on all levels of our society.  Together we are the ones who can and will make that transformation wonderful.  I have given 34 years of thought to the changes which will make a lasting positive difference in our lives.   Which solutions we choose will make all the difference for our futures.  Deepening democracy is the key.

 

 

 

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Deepening Democracy Begins

Deepening Democracy Action Steps

The word “democracy” comes from the Greek words “power” and “people”.  Deepening Democracy is a movement taking place all over the world.  Deepening democracy in the financial sector brings greater wealth for all.  Deepening Democracy is not against corporations or against the wealthy. Empowering people is the purpose of democracies.  Cooperatives are about empowering people.  Deepening Democracy is about everyone thriving, everyone benefitting.  It is about abundance for all.

For hundreds of years there were kings and queens, royalty and serfs or peasants. The royalty controlled most of the wealth. Remember Robin Hood, even the animals in the forests belonged to the king.   In those days the serfs and peasants barely had enough wealth to clothe and feed themselves while royalty feasted. We inherited this system. Today there are full time workers who do not earn enough to feed themselves, and cannot pay their bills while CEO’s and stockholders feast. People are losing their homes while their pensions which the company promised them disappear. Just as in those olden times, those at the bottom are proportionally taxed the most.  This system is not democratic.  It does not support the power of people.

A democratic solution to our financial inequality today is cooperative action in the financial sector. There are many forms of cooperatives. A wonderful example of cooperative enterprise is the successful Mondragon Cooperative in the Basque region of Spain. Mondragon is the 10th largest corporation in Spain with 289 companies and cooperatives, 800,321 people and 15 technology centers. There are many companies in the United States which are successfully implementing cooperative practices. Southwest Airlines is an example of a successful employee ownership culture. My local grocery in Seattle includes the customers in its cooperative governance and profit sharing.  Our Silicon Valley geniuses set up companies with employee centered cultures. Cooperatives are a sign of economic wisdom and even brilliance.  The heart of cooperatives is respecting and valuing workers.

The beauty of cooperatives is that we can start them ourselves. Cooperatives can be worker owned and managed businesses. Cooperatives are a method for creating fairness in the distribution of financial wealth.  In the Basque Mondragon Cooperative the workers hire the CEOs of their enterprises and determine their salaries. The workers select the board of directors. Workers decide what products to manufacture or services to provide. They create the policies which will best serve their intentions.

Cooperatives increase social and environmental responsibility. Because the workers live in the community, they are most likely to choose policies which are for the benefit of the community and the environment. The shift toward worker responsibility becomes a shift toward greater product quality and financial equity, healthier work conditions and thriving community and environments. Enthusiasm and pride in accomplishments increase when workers are the ones making the decisions.

The government can encourage cooperatives through incentives and favorable legislation. For instance when a company decides to close its operating facility to move somewhere else, local governments can have in place legislation which supports, promotes and facilitates the use of the abandoned infrastructure for and by the employees. Such legislation benefits the employees as well as the health of the entire community.  It is important to elect persons who support cooperatives.

We have tremendous genius and power among us. We can create a beautiful healthy peaceful future for all.  Deepening democracy into all aspects of our lives is a key to greater loving caring and sharing, health wealth and happiness, abundance prosperity and riches for all.

 

 

 

 

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