
Welcome to the 5th year of 100,000 Poets (Musicians, Artists, Mimes…) for Change, and the 2015 edition of The BeZine Online 100TPC Event! If you’ve done this before and you know the score, skip to the comments or Mister Linky at the bottom of the post and begin. If you are wondering, hey, what are you folks up to then check out some serious non-fiction here:
Our mission here today as poets, writers, artists, photographers, musicians and friends is a sort-of fission for change—a burning with and expression of the desire for peace, environmental and economic sustainability, social justice, inclusion, equity and opportunity for all. We seek through our art to do a bit of old-fashioned consciousness raising, to stimulate thought and action leading to the kind of change that is sustainable, compassionate and just, and to engage in the important theme of the issues facing humanity today—but all with a goal to alleviate suffering and foster peace. We don’t want to just “talk about it,” we want words, art and music that help us take action in some way for positive change wherever we are in our lives, in our world.
We see a complex inter-woven relationship between peace, sustainability, and social justice. We all recognize that when people are marginalized and disenfranchised, when they are effectively barred from opportunities for education and viable employment, when they can’t feed themselves or their families or are used as slave labor, there will inevitably be a backlash, and we’re seeing that now in violent conflicts, wars and dislocation. Climatologists have also linked climate change, with its severe weather changes and recent droughts, to the rise violence in the world, and even contributing to inequities in areas – like Syria – where a severe drought destabilized food production and the economy, contributing to the unrest that led to the civil war, according to one study.

There are too many people living on the streets and in refugee camps, too many whose lives are at subsistence level, too many children who die before the age of five (as many as four a minute dying from hunger, according to one reliable study—more info), too many youth walking through life with no education, no jobs and no hope. It can’t end well…

photo: The Telegraph
More than anything, our mission is a call to action, a call to work in your own communities where ever you are in the world, and to focus on the pressing local issues that contribute to conflict, injustice, and unsustainable economic and environmental practices. The kind of change we need may well have to be from the ground up, all of us working together to create peaceful, sustainable and just cultures that nurture the best in all the peoples of this world.
Poverty and homelessness are evergreen issues historically, but issues also embedded in social and political complexity. They benefit the rich, whose economic system keeps most of the rest of us as, at best, “wage slaves,” and all too many of us in poverty, without enough to provide for basic needs or housing (including the “working poor,” who hold low-paying jobs while CEOs are paid record-breaking salaries and bonuses in the global capitalist system). We are united in our cries against the structures of injustice, where the rich act as demigods and demagogues. We have to ask of what use will all their riches be in the face of this inconceivable suffering and the inevitable backlash from the marginalized and disenfranchised. We need fairness, not greed.
So, with this mission in mind, and with the complexity of the interrelationships of social justice, sustainability and peace as a framework, we focus on hunger and poverty, two basic issues and major threads in the system of inequality and injustice that need addressing throughout the world.
We look forward to what you have to share, whether the form is poetry, essay, fiction, art, photography, documentary, music, or hybrids of any of these—and we want to engage in an ongoing conversation through your comments on all of the above as you not only share your own work here today but visit and enjoy the work of others, supporting one another with your “likes” and comments, starting or entering into dialogues with writers, artists and musicians throughout the world and online viewers, readers, listeners.
Think globally, act locally, form community.
—Michael Dickel, Jerusalem (with G. Jamie Dedes, California, USA)
DIRECTIONS FOR PARTICIPATION
Share links to your relevant work or that of others in a comment or by using Mister Linky below. To use Mr. Linky, just click on the graphic. (Note: If you are sharing someone else’s work, please use your name in Mister Linky, so we can credit you as the contributor—we will give the author / artist name in the comments, from the link when we post the link in a comment.)
You may leave your links or works in the comment section below this post. If you are sharing the work of another poet or artist, however, please only use a link and not the work itself.
In addition to sharing, we encourage you to visit others and make connections and conversation. To visit the links, click on Mr. Linky (the Mister Linky graphic above) and then on the links you see there. (Some Mr. Linky-links can be viewed in the comments section after we re-post them.)
Thank you!
All links will be collected into a dedicated Page here at The BeZine and also archived at 100TPC.
Thank you for your participation. Let the conversation begin …
My father oils the spare spine.
‘You will need this’, He says.
I shall need more changes
in my pocket. The funny
thing- if you give away them
more you possess in the end.
‘Be the change’, he says, his
favorite quote, his hands
blurred from the movement,
a spine more and a spine less,
he says, Take care of this.
These days, he says, ‘They don’t make
spines anymore. Just GPS.’
Oh yes, I say. I twist my head,
place it on the side table.
My father inserts spine’s end.
And I begin to change.
My heart rings and tings
from the looseness of spares.
I shall give you some
if you come with me
to the hooting rally.
©All Rights- Kushal Poddar, 2015 (written on 11/September/15) Shared with permission at request of poet.
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I think my favorite take-away from this is “. . . they don’t make/ spines anymore. Just GPS.’
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Photos from #100TPC Santa Rosa, CA, USA, last night. https://www.facebook.com/terri.carrion/media_set?set=a.10208180024477273.1073741927.1201425594
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Thanks for the link. Looks like they did a whooping good job of it.
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I’ve just linked a poem of mine about the refugees. If anyone is interested, I have an online magazine for poems of protest about abuse of all kinds: http://www.iamnotasilentpoet.wordpress.com
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Reuben Woolley shared his poem, “footsteps,” on Mr. Linky.

(A Mr. Linky contribution)
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Of course we’re interested, Reuben. Headed your way now. Jamie Dedes 🙂
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Reuben also has a FB group, I Am Not A Silent Poet. https://www.facebook.com/groups/721114444630517/
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Thanks! Checking it out …
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… and I just Twitted it, Michael, if that’s the right word.
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Tweeted, but yes. I’ve Tweeted and have scheduled a tweet for after people in the US might have woken up on a Saturday morning 🙂
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My reminder post on my blog today includes a couple of videos and also Michael Rothenberg’s suggestion that we all fly white flags for refugees. See the post for details.
http://musingbymoonlight.com/2015/09/26/todays-the-day-the-miracle-is-love-the-message-is-peace/
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Don’t forget that we have quite a collection addressing poverty, homelessness and hunger in our September issue of “The BeZine” ….
https://intothebardo.wordpress.com
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John Anstie, As If

(A Mr. Linky contribution)
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Warsan Shire, Home (two contributors)

(A Mr. Linky contribution)
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… and both good ones.
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Maxamed Ibraahin Warsame ‘Hadraawi’, Society (Transl., posted on Poetry Translation Center)

(A Mr. Linky contribution)
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Thank you, John. Jamie Dedes helped a lot—it’s really a joint effort.
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The mission statement is spot on, Michael. It is as articulate and therefore comprehensible as it is comprehensive. Great work!
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Autumn Verellen, Poverty Poem—Just Another Day
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Fred Taban, Poverty.
(A Mr. Linky contribution)
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A poem by Langston Hughes (contributor anonymous).

(A Mr. Linky contribution)
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From Charles Elliot, “Food, Dignity, and the Commons: Frances Moore Lappé”
(A Mr. Linky contribution)
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We must all catch up on Frances Moore Lappe if we haven’t yet. She shares some excellent research and some very good – workable – ideas.
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From Aditi Angiras, Delhi, India
http://on.fb.me/1KIMk18
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100TPC World Conference, Salerno—June 2015 (Video with “Come to Salerno” (music by Ellis Ebakor and Flezzy Emese, Nigeria; video by Penny Kline, USA)
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Most enjoyable and cheerful … and cheering! People from all over.
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Reblogged this on Fragments of Michael Dickel and commented:
100TPC Event Today—Link your writing, art, musicm vidoes, blogs for peace, sustainability and social justice http://wp.me/p1gLT0-40n
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