Give Me Liberty...

I started to add a little paint to the can itself to blend it into the painting…I am reading Give Me Liberty by Naomi Wolf right now. In it she discusses what our forefathers left us as Americans and how the processes to freedom have been usurped by 3-generations (or more) of power - so this is a political painting - I love crows - in this painting they symbolize death - they are bringing in the black and white of the Orwellian police state, overtaking the colorful jazz life of individual freedom -

It symbolizes for me my exact experience of living in America right now being surveilled, having friends tell me things like "I don't need privacy if I have nothing to hide", anonymity becoming illegal, the onset of the police state, etc - As far as I can tell, I can't change things - I have been one of the people who has been asleep to this for so long and not aware of it and also not aware of what I could do about it…

I started waking up in 2001 - 9/11 to be exact - as I was in NY and saw the inconsistencies… and saw how a country that was divided over "broken chads" suddenly became "united" behind "the war on terror" proposed by GWB….later I saw the episode in May 2001 of The Lone Gunman, which was about a commercial jet liner hitting the World Trade Center. In my world, there are no coincidences.

Then in 2010, I think it was, with the passing of the NDAA, I made a valiant effort to wake people up, but no one wanted to wake up. I remember withdrawing my money from Key Bank when they posted signs to remove hats and sunglasses. Now my credit union has that sign.

Slowly but surely the water begins to boil the pot of crabs - and we are all in the pot... and now it is probably too late, so the one thing I can do is educate myself about it… while I still can. Burying my head in the sand is no longer an option, so I am reading and painting … we'll see if I am given action to take at some point… or not.

but the "can", for me, is about how I as an American, have trivialized liberty to mean that saying I will have "a grande vanilla latte with soy milk" as "liberty" - I have symbols of freedom all around me, but they have become icons from the past, I might feel free, but I am not actually free - I don't practice liberty and the true meaning of happiness - the pursuit of happiness described in the Constitution meant, according to Naomi Wolf in her book p16 as decended from Greek Literature: "the development of one's full power as an individual, and one's respecting of the "sacred rights" and consciences of others in a condition of freedom". I am tied to tracking devices - cell phones, thinking they make me free… last night I watched a friend track her daughter on her iPhone - the daughter age 16 had gone out and not told mom where she was going - so mom just tracked her, smugly laughing about it, and definitely feeling like she had the upper hand… to me this is a horrifying display of lack of faith which has led to giving up our freedoms - for trivial satisfactions of our personal fears. I do it myself whenever I google someone and find their contact information and things about them on the internet - which I do all the time...friends who are smart people tell me they don't need privacy if they have nothing to hide. I don't think they have thought this through. Personally I need privacy to commune with God, for my sanity, and to create. It is a basic inalienable human right, which I have participated in allowing to be usurped, while I have been sleeping.