IMPLACABLE: Vanessa Dundon

Vanessa Dundon, also known as Sioux Z , has been working since September as a first responder at a blockade meant to protect the environment, a community's water supply, and their people's national treasure all at the same time. She is a Warrior woman, not merely in figure-of-speech, but in accordance with her Dine (Navajo) tribal traditions. Many tribes have warrior cultures and traditions that do not exclude women or associate empathy with weakness, and that emphasize service, self-sacrifice, courage and finding peaceful resolutions if at all possible.
Her duties involve listening and watching for other protesters who lose their temper and become aggressive or who antagonize police, and physically remove them form the front lines. So she was policing the front lines for people who are too angry to represent their movement properly. She also assisted injured protesters and carried them to safety. Both very physically and emotionally demanding jobs, but all in a days work for a No DAPL Pipeline first responder.

In the course of her service, Dundon suffered the loss of all her most treasured possessions after a raid at the North camp, when people were forbidden to return to highway 1806 to retrieve their belongings. Hers and many other people's belongings were later dumped in one area, having been badly damaged and soaked in what seemed to be urine and ammonia.
Last night, on November 27th 2016, an officer aimed a tear gas canister directly at her, after another officer pointed her out. Normally, tear gas canisters are aimed upward. The canister hit her in the eye and severed her retina. At this point, Vanessa has been told she may never see out of her right eye again.

After she was basically shot with the teargas canister, she pulled off her bandana and covered her injured eye, turning to run for safety. At that point, she was shot in the back with a rubber bullet, which brought her to the ground. Two other first responders then rushed to her side and carried her to safety.
She gave the following interview after the incident. Despite the physical and emotional tolls and losing almost everything she had, Vanessa, like many of her comrades – some of whom may now have to have amputations because of their injuries – has not given up. She gave this interview after her ordeal:

Due to receiving orders to participate in situations like this one, at least two police officers have turned in their badges. Media outlets owned by multinational corporations, like Fox and MSNBC, have generally failed to report on the treatment of the protesters, and some have even misreported acts committed against them as acts committed by them instead.

In a world torn by lies, where people hear only what they wish to hear and believe whatever makes them comfortable, real stories of those who face down terrible odds, pay heavy prices and keep fighting are priceless.

We applaud all heroines, of every shade in the human rainbow, who stand for what they believe in and who never give up. May her story and others be cried from the rooftops, and may they continue to inspire, as well as convict. We wish her and all her comrades a speedy, and complete, recovery.

- F.W.F.G.

To All That Was Lost, And Remembered

Yesterday, in my country, it is Memorial Day. A day to remember all our fallen soldiers through all the time that we have been a country, and I am mostly a pacifist. What should a pacifist do with Memorial Day? I don't believe in the last few wars we have had, and probably most of the wars we have ever had. There is also a fight in congress right now about making women register for the draft, or to simply abolish selective service in the first place. The draft is a big part of why I have issues with Memorial Day, so I will discuss both of these issues here.
I vote for abolishing the draft, for sure. If a situation arises that truely does call for the giving and taking of human life, those who volunteer to give and to take it are volunteering for tremendous sacrifice. Those who are compelled to do so are being sacrificed. There is a huge difference.
If a society under genuine threat to its very survival cannot generate enough people who care enough about it to fight for its survival, than I don't think it can be destroyed by its enemies anyway, because it has already been destroyed from within; the enemies just bring this to light and make it obvious. I definitely don't think it comes down to that for real as often as other Americans - and certainly the leadership here - seem to think, but I do realize it can happen. For those who choose to fight for what they believe is left, they should have that right.
One woman with the fury of a bear robbed of its cubs has ten times the fighting power of twenty plus men who don't even want to be there. If a woman loves her country that much, and feels that it is in peril and killing some people really will save it, she will have the fury of a mother bear whose cubs are in peril. Believe it. Men have more bone and muscle and fewer nerve endings in their skin, and in cultures like ours, who value the ability to exert force over others and in which that kind of thing inspires awe and respect, that extra dose of Testosterone (a growth hormone) is viewed as existing for wars and other instances of physical combat. Testosterone on the brain doesn't actually cause aggression, according to Dr. Robert Sapolsky, a Prof. of biology and neurology at Stanford University ("The Trouble With Testosterone" Sapolsky), but when the brain is in an aggressive mode for whatever reason, testosterone intensifies activity in the regions associated with aggression. It only happens if his passions are aroused that way though. If a man does not feel inclined to be aggressive, and that part of his brain in isn't turned on, than the T is not going to do that much. Therefore, it makes no sense to force unwilling males onto the battlefield when there are capable women who actually want to go.
I think it is sexist - not just against women but also against men, and definitely not in the man's (or the nation's) best interests - to have male selective service. The draft devalues a human life and a human will because it is a male human, while at the same time takes a condescending attitude toward women as far as our ability and prerogative to serve and protect those who depend on us or who we care for.

The worst thing is, so many wars fought in the Western world have been for someone's material gain, and many men's lives were sacrificed on the alter of greed. Leaders who call the shots on this never admit that this is what it is for, but it is nevertheless a serious problem. To say those who die in combat they were sent to against their will "served their country and preserved our freedom" is not really accurate in such cases. It doesn't feel like respect to say that this person who was forced against his will to give his life for something neither he nor I probably believed in "gave his life for my freedom"; it feels a lot more like the opposite of respect.

To forget about or ignore Memorial Day doesn't seem right either. So what am I supposed to do with Memorial Day? I think this year I finally worked out how I can respond to Memorial Day.

To all that were lost, all who were lost, I salute you. If you gave your life for a worthy cause, I salute you, you are not forgotten. If it was given by somebody else, either for a good cause or for plain old greed, I remember you, and I  acknowledge you, and the tragedy and injustice that really happened. I will not forget or ignore those lost in Vietnam for example, who were taken from your homes and dreams and plans to fight a war that wasn't your own, and you didn't get to ever come home. I will remember you too, and what really happened. I will call it exactly what it is, an injustice perpetrated by your government, who should have been protecting you, instead they sacrificed you and your family for who knows what, maybe for money or pride or for votes. I am sorry. I will celebrate Memorial Day praying for an end to selective service, and an end to corporate greed and political corruption, an end to a nation that has no respect for life and conscience, and the start of a new day when no one has to fear being called on to fight and die and even kill in a war that they can't call their own. I will pray for a day when the real and full stories behind every conflict can be properly reported and understood, and real solutions addressing root problems can be found instead of blood poured out again and again as time marches on.

To all those who willingly paid the ultimate price for freedom that actually wasn't preserved or achieved, whose genuine heart of a hero was exploited and abused by those in power, I remember. I will seek, daily, to make choices that will lead to a change so that those who sacrificed you for their wallet will not have the ability to do that anymore. I won't just remember, I will live to honor the memory.

I salute all the heroes who have fought on battlefields and off of them who are no longer with us, some who won, some who lost, all who gave their lives to making others free:

Crazy Horse,
Russell Means
Wilma Mankiller
Martin Luther King
Geronimo
Lozen
Coleste
Harriet Tubman
Alice Paul
Susan B. Anthony
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Victoria Woodhull
Sojourner Truth
Mohandas Gandhi
Wiwo Ken Sawa
Col. Robert Shaw, with more than 1/2 of the 54th Massachusetts regiment
and the many others whose names I do not know, your sacrifices, your causes, and your efforts are not forgotten and never will be, so long as there is breath in me.

May all our warriors rest in peace.

F.W.F.G.

Memorial Day was started by former slaves on May, 1, 1865 in Charleston, SC to honor 257 dead Union Soldiers who had been buried in a mass grave in a Confederate prison camp. They dug up the bodies and worked for 2 weeks to give them a proper burial as gratitude for fighting for their freedom. They then held a parade of 10,000 people led by 2,800 Black children where they marched, sang and celebrated.

Thanks to Abstrakt Goldsmith for this nugget of history that most of us never learned in school.

ATTENTION MEN! Please Respect Yourself

Guys, I want you to know something:

You need to respect yourself.

Hypothetically, if I sat and openly paid really cute guys to give me flowers, tell me all sorts of nice things about myself, and other such stuff they do in sappy movies and fairy tales... If I acted like I thought I really was this adored princess-y creature because of all this attention from guys I was blatantly dropping tips to the whole time, would you infer from that behavior that I respected myself?

If I bragged to all my girlfriend's about it openly, in public places, in order to show them how truly girly I really was, 'cuz, “Look, my traditional feminine needs are just oh-so-HUGE! What a big awesome woman I am! I have money and I can get a bunch of gold-digging hotties to give me attention with it! Aren't I just the Queen of the Hill” Would you respect me then, or think I had any for myself?

Do you realize what it looks like when you sit and pay girls to dance for you? And if you brag about it in restaurants and gas stations and parties?
You want somebody to jump on your lap when you come home, somebody to offer you beauty and vulnerability, and to think that you're worthy of those things. That's ok, but, by sitting and openly paying women to pretend to find you worthy, you are doing a masculine version of what I just described above. Calling 1-900 for explicit phone conversations is doing the same thing. That person on the phone doesn't care about you, doesn't really think that you are sexy and all-that-and-a-bag-of-chips, That person is merely as desperate for employment as the callers are for attention.... They're being paid to be dishonest with callers, pretending to like them and to respond well to them, and the caller blatantly pays to be lied to in order to facilitate lying to himself.

If you really, honestly have respect for yourself, you will never do that kind of stuff. Ever. Period.

If you treat yourself with respect, you will attract people who respect themselves and who respect you, but if you don't then you probably won't.

You will feel better about yourself, over time, if you just treat yourself with genuine respect no matter how you might feel (I've tried this, it really works!). Choose to respect yourself too much to reduce yourself to blatant self-deception. Deep down, you always know that stuff's not real, right? Stay real, and don't accept less than honest truth, and honest respect from others.

Respect yourself enough to stay real. Please.

Ok, that's all. Take care. <3