Extinctions and Biological Meltdowns: Egalitarian Society-With or Without Humans?

Extinctions and Biological Meltdowns:   

Egalitarian Society-With or Without Humans?

Published MLK, Jr. Birthday, 1990

Dispatches from the Wildlands®

             Humans that oppress, oppress.  They attack humans of different colors, languages, ethnicities, sexualities, disabilities, handicaps, intelligence, emotions, cultures, ancestral and societal roots, spiritual beliefs, behavioral origins and protocols, and especially organized religions.

Humans never stop oppressing, frequently sadistically, nonhumans.  Armed to the hilt with self-generated Absolutes, humans somehow rationalize desperately attempting to kill all to “conquer”  Earth itself.

Absolutes Help Humans Righteously Believe, Invade, Conquer, and Destroy

Us/them/male/female/transgender(1)/white/red/black/brown/yellow

/intelligent/stupid/owner/slave/modern/primitive/rich/poor/imperialist/

democratic/believer/infidel/useful/extraneous, and “civilized”/wild are Absolutes that help humans righteously believe:

1. Indigenous humans (“The Real People”) and Indigenous species are inferior and deserve death, enslavement, or extinction.
2. Female humans are NOT competent to speak, own property, walk by their selves, vote, determine mates, choose activities, exercise reproductive rights, or openly socialize. To remind them, they must be beaten severely and often.
3. Young humans lack the fear of God. To instill that fear, they must be regularly beaten, preferably within inches of their lives.  If young humans remain unafraid of God, they must be disowned and abandoned.
4. Homosexual, bisexual, transgender(1), and adulterous females are disgusting degenerates that deserve public disgrace, stoning, and the most horrible, prolonged, and preferably public deaths possible.
5. Wild lands, wilderness, pure water, clean air all mean nothing without human management, control, and, ultimately, desecration and death.
6. Indigenous humans (“The Real People”) and all nonhumans coexisting with Earth’s most selfish humans are so unWorthy they are slaughtered without remorse and stripped of all universal God-given rights to their own growth, progress, communication, instinct, knowledge, and continued evolution.
7. Since human and nonhuman life is insignificant when compared to Commerce; it can be discarded, incarcerated, tortured, distorted, and eliminated; at the whim of selfish humans’ pursuing Greed and Empire.

Historically:  Possessions, money, gold and precious metals, economies, politics, academics, technologies, and organized religion all dictate how humans treat each other.

The norm is war, conscription, rape, murder, slavery, greed, forced conformity, intolerance toward independent thinking or questioning, substance abuse, air unsafe to breathe, water too poisonous to drink, deforestations, dead oceans, and extinctions of thousands of species.

Herstorically: Conquering a Living Planet and murdering all its integral Indigenous human and nonhuman components is insane.  Killing everything satisfies only fundamentalists who pray for the death of everyone and everything but themselves.

Selfishness, greed, and genocide are hardly worthy tools for managing Life’s Miracles.  Ignorance, cruelty, abuse, and disrespect are incompatible with planetary Reality.

If we apply herstorical knowledge; walls will fall, wars will end, conflicts become resolved, and humans will humbly relearn how to become a symbiotic component of Earth, instead of merely a mean-spirited parasite ruthlessly killing its beautiful and ever-so-generous hostess.

Non-Living (dead) Institutions–Banks, Corporations, Police States, Fascist Governments, Military Goons and Thugs, Media, Organized Religions and other Bureaucracies–Crumble

No longer able to convincingly project image over Truth, humans’ non-living (dead) institutions–banks, corporations, armed forces, governments, media, organized religions and other bureaucracies–crumble.  Power once usurped is reclaimed, first individually, then collectively.

Revolutionaries challenge lethal dominance of the most greedy and begin opening minds, hearts, and Souls to respect all humans, nonhumans, and Earth, from which all originate.  As humans relearn essential respect for themselves, they also begin reaccepting fellow planetary inhabitants.  Conversely, as humans relearn respect for planetary diversity, acceptance of diversity within our own species is a given.

Inevitably, this understanding bonds the civil rights (equal rights for humans) and deep ecology (equal rights for nonhumans) movements.  Civil rights, civil liberties, equal rights, economic justice, promoting diversity, and honoring rights of nonhumans are all parts of the same planetary movement:  Coexistence.

Coexistence honors equal rights for ALL, including the millions of interconnected species with whom humans share Destiny.

Coexistence–Not Just a Good Idea, It’s the Law!

             Coexistence is not just a quaint concept–It’s Planetary Natural Law!  This living message of equal rights is ingrained throughout all biotic communities and ensured by Nature’s fantastically brilliant and complex checks and balances.

Each species deserves its own moments under the Sun.  If the most selfish humans do not kill the host; Earth and all its unique species–each with D.N.A. found nowhere else–have exciting futures until and beyond Father Sun’s expansion past Earth’s orbit, as he ages.

Anthropocentric humans are troubled by Coexistence, because it rightfully places humans on an equal level with every other species.  This knowledge somehow diminishes their joys of killing, conquering, and ruling the world.  Religious fundamentalists crave Armageddon, not  Life!

Earth Is NOT a Helpless Victim

Let us remember Earth is not a helpless victim.  Earth is an intelligent, Divine living organism; fully capable of evaluating alternatives and exercising options.

If she chooses, Earth will end toxic relationships by changing parasites’ consumptive patterns and/or transforming parasites into symbionts.  To this end, our unique and Sacred living planet is endowed with unlimited means to send cues.

After cues are delivered, the next step is the parasites’.  Parasites can cling to outmoded consumption, thereby severing their own unique evolutionary branch and exterminating themselves.  “Deranged” parasites choose intelligence, alter their conduct, and continue their evolution.

Termination or symbiosis–Either way, Earth communicates clearly and her inhabitants must respond to the Reality expressed.

As the world community listens and responds to Earth, species may become extinct.  In the last 600 million years, species’ extinctions averaged one per year.  Now, due to the most selfish humans’ devastation of all species’ habitats worldwide, extinctions occur at least once-per-hour(2).  Thus begins biological meltdown.

Editor’s Notes:

1 =  “Transgender” not in original 1990 publication.

2 =  Since this was written in early 1990, species extinctions have multiplied exponentially.  A reputable current estimate is one unique species terminated every ten minutes.

3.  No skin pigmentation of humans holds a monopoly on “Indigenous.”

4.  “Indigenous Knowledge” sustains. “Empires” have no Knowledge and bode nothing but exploitation, theft, and murder.

5.  Currently, lighter-colored more selfish humans, originally from the northern hemisphere, maintain monopolistic “Empires,” that purposefully kill Indigenous Humans and annihilate Indigenous Knowledge that might threaten profits.

6.  “Indigenous Humans” become non-indigenous by invading, conquering and occupying.

7.  “Military Occupations” and “Indigenous” are mutually exclusive.

8.  “Empires” and “Democracy” are mutually exclusive.

© 1990 Paul Thomas Richards ©

____________________________________________________________________________

REV. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., ON THE INTERRELATEDNESS OF ALL COMMUNITIES:

            “Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states.  I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.  We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.  Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

“Letter from the Birmingham Jail,” April 16, 1963

____________________________________________________________________________

Read More Concerning Dr. King, Human Rights, Nonviolent Civil Disobedience, and Nonviolent Direct Action at:

MLK Jr. B-Day 1989:    EQUAL RIGHTS FOR ALL SPECIES!  Earth First!  Extends MLK’S Dream.

This Posting:  MLK Jr. B-Day 1990:  Extinctions and Biological Meltdowns: Egalitarian Society-With or Without Humans?

MLK Jr. B-Day 1991:    Montana FINALLY Approves MLK, Jr. B-Day:  48 States Down, 2 To Go.

_____________________________________

HUMILITY SERIES, VOL. B

____________________________________________________________________________

To Discuss Usage Rights and Other Projects,

Please Contact Paul Thomas Richards at: 711-406-225-4235 (T.T.Y.)

____________________________________________________________________________

“In Wildness is the Preservation of the World.”

Henry David Thoreau

April 23, 1851 Lecture

Concord Lyceum, Massachusetts

Montana FINALLY Approves Martin Luther King Jr. Day: 48 States Down, 2 To Go

Montana FINALLY Approves Martin Luther King Jr. Day:

48 States Down, 2 To Go

M.L.K., Jr. Birthday, 1991

First Publication © Feb. 20, 1991, In These Times 

All Other Rights © 1991 Paul Thomas Richards and

Dispatches from the Wildlands®

HELENA, MONTANA–Another bastion has fallen.  After years of struggle, Montana—home to “Indian Shoots,” ever-growing paramilitary white supremacist groups, and a U.S. congressman who publicly threatens Native Americans—has finally acknowledged the nation’s most prominent civil rights leader.

Montana now joins 47 other states that observe Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a federal holiday since 1986.  This leaves only two states, Arizona and New Hampshire that fail to honor the slain black activist.  A third state, North Dakota, commemorates Dr. King’s birthday with an unpaid holiday.

After Arizona voted in November against recognition of Dr. King, the National Football League showed its disgust by relocating the 1993 Super Bowl, originally schedule for the Phoenix/Tempe area.  The resulting controversy and national interest clearly helped Montana’s legislation.

“I think the holiday issue is bigger than we are.”

“Most legislators are beginning to understand the issue goes beyond Montana,” said the bill’s sponsor, Democratic Sen. Harry Fritz, who first proposed the measure in 1987.  “I think the holiday issue is bigger than we are.”

King holiday supporters held church services, public rallies, school programs, petition campaigns, and marches throughout the state and testified en masse at a Joint House/Senate legislative hearing held, appropriately enough, on January 21.

“This bill does not only benefit black people,” said Rev. Phillip Caldwell, chairman of the Great Falls N.A.A.C.P., at the hearing.  “Dr. King represented all Americans, all races, all backgrounds, all political persuasions.”

Native Americans, who comprise Montana’s largest minority—6 percent of the state’s total population—pushed hard for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, even after opponents offered a subterfuge “Chief Joseph Holiday.”

“Martin Luther King was a Communist.” 

Republican Sen. Jerry Noble sponsored the alternative plan to designate the third Monday in January as “Chief Joseph Day,” because “Martin Luther King was a Communist.”  Said Noble, “I selected Chief Joseph because his name is probably better known than a lot of other Indian chiefs.  If Montana had a King holiday, I would never close Jerry Noble Tires,” referring to his Great Falls business.

Caldwell said it was “ludicrous” for Noble, a man with “no record at all in speaking up for ethnic groups or civil rights” to suddenly be concerned about Native Americans.

Democratic Sen. Bill Yellowtail, the senate’s only Native American, also questioned Noble’s motives.  If legislators sincerely wished to respect Indians, Yellowtail said, they should convert the second Monday in October from “Columbus Day” to “Native American Day,” as was recently done in South Dakota.

Democratic Rep. Angela Russell, a member of the Crow Indian Tribe, said Montana’s embrace of Martin Luther King Jr. Day would “send a message to the nation that we will not tolerate racism.”

“There’s less than 800 colored people in Montana.  We have denied the colored people, Negroes in Montana, nothing that I know of.” 

Opponents of memorializing Dr. King denied the severity of Montana’s racial problems.  “There’s less than 800 colored people in Montana,” said Republican Sen. Jim Burnett.  “We have denied the colored people, Negroes in Montana, nothing that I know of.”

But, according the Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment, the number of hate crimes in the region rose from 265 to 320 in the past year—an increase of 21 percent.

Bob Hughes, a U.S. Justice Department official who released the figures in Spokane, Washington, said the survey represented less than half of the incidents that actually occur.

The Montana Human Rights Network reported that local government officials who publicly oppose white supremacists have received threats in Helena, Bozeman, Thompson Falls, and Billings.

“White” Montana Attracts Aryan Nation, Aryan Federation, White Separatist Alliance, League of Pace Amendment Advocates, and Christian Identity Movement

In their campaign, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day proponents stressed the need to challenge the Aryan Nation, Aryan Federation, White Separatist Alliance, League of Pace Amendment Advocates, the Christian Identity Movement, and other white supremacists attracted by Montana’s predominantly white population.

White Supremacists Sponsor an “Indian Shoot” in Montana’s Flathead Indian Reservation

Native Americans reported that dissatisfaction with Indian administration of treaty-guaranteed hunting, fishing, and water rights has led some whites to advertise an “Indian Shoot” in northwestern Montana’s Flathead Indian Reservation.

And, in the national political arena, U.S. Rep. Ron Marlenee, Montana’s Republican eastern district congressman, has directly appealed for white supremacists’ votes by condemning “militant” Indian tribes and by threatening to “jerk the purse strings very, very hard and very, very quickly,” if Montana’s Indian tribes continue their “abuse.”

Montana doesn’t need another winter holiday, “when there’s nothing to do but shovel snow.”

During House debate on honoring Dr. King, Republican Rep. Budd Gould said, “The only reason to vote for this bill is so we can go to bed tonight and say to ourselves, ‘we’re not racists, we’re not bigots.’  We can salve our consciences by saying we voted for the Martin Luther King Holiday.”  Montana doesn’t need another winter holiday, Gould continued, “when there’s nothing to do but shovel snow.”

In addition to calling Dr. King a Communist; opponents labeled King an adulterer, cheater, liar, and thief.  “There are too many unanswered questions as to what Martin Luther King really did stand for,” said Republican Rep. Robert Clark, who added that King “had a relationship with a lot of people that advocated overthrow of our government.  I think Dr. King may have been a pawn.”

But the bitterness of the attacks on Dr. King failed to offset a year of organization by dozens of religious, tribal, and human rights organizations.  Supportive letters and calls combined with increasingly unnerving national news coverage to generate surprising margins of victory:  39-11 in the Senate and 64-36 in the House.   The measure was signed into law February 8.

“I held my nose and voted ‘yes’.”

Republican Sen. Dave Rye said “I held my nose and voted ‘yes’,” due to constituents’ support for the holiday.  Democratic Rep. Jane DeBruycker said she was deluged by messages from her district after she voted against Martin Luther King Jr. Day in committee.  She switched her vote the next day, explaining, “I’m their voice.”

First Publication © Feb. 20, 1991, In These Times 

All Other Rights © 1991 Paul Thomas Richards and

Dispatches from the Wildlands®  © 1991

____________________________________________________________________________

REV. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., ON BEING LABELED AN EXTREMIST

“So I have not said to my people:  ‘Get rid of your discontent.’

           “Rather, I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action.  And, now, this approach is being termed extremist.

           “But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued t think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label.”

“Letter from the Birmingham Jail,” April 16, 1963

____________________________________________________________________________

Read More Concerning Rights and Liberty for All at:

MLK Jr. B-Day 1989:    EQUAL RIGHTS FOR ALL SPECIES!  Earth First!  Extends MLK’S Dream.

MLK Jr. B-Day 1990:    Extinctions and Biological Meltdowns:  Egalitarian Society-With or Without Humans?

This Posting:  MLK Jr. B-Day 1991:    Montana FINALLY Approves MLK, Jr. B-Day:  48 States Down, 2 To Go.

____________________________________________________________________________

HUMILITY SERIES, VOL. C

To Discuss Usage Rights and Other Projects,

Please Contact Paul Thomas Richards at: 711-406-225-4235 (T.T.Y.)

____________________________________________________________________________

“In Wildness is the Preservation of the World.”

Henry David Thoreau

April 23, 1851 Lecture

Concord Lyceum, Massachusetts