Greetings Psychicbabble readers! I keep hoping USED KARMA will be back up by this issue, although the effects of retrograde planets continue to exert confusion in our intellectual environment. Thanks again to John Derrickson for mirroring this column at his PsyPlan site.
As regular Psychicbabble readers know, for the past year this column has discussed evolving awareness of the power of mass consciousness. The recent UPS strike received massive coverage in the anti-labor corporate media. Organized labor is spending massive amounts of money on union organizing activity, and the truth about worker exploitation is television news show talking head fodder. Suddenly the truth is coming out about the extent to which Americans lack full-time employment, and how part-timers and self-employed persons are ruthlessly exploited by corporate America.
Recent tragedies such as the horrific rape and attempted murder of Haitian immigrant Abner Louima by members of the New York Police Department's 70th Precinct and the shocking death of Princess Diana have served as focal points for mass consciousness. However, it is an interesting fact of nature that sometimes negative occurrences have positive consequences. 1 This column will examine how these recent events are uplifting millions of people into a different consciousness.
On a Saturday night in August of 1997, Abner Louima, a hard-working immigrant from Haiti, took his wife out to their favorite Caribbean nightclub in Brooklyn to dance, hear a good band and enjoy a night out together. At the end of the evening the Louimas were standing outside the club when a fight broke out between two women. Abner was one of the good Samaritans who attempted to separate the two women. The police were called. A melee ensued. Someone punched a police officer. The police seized Abner Louima, believing (wrongfully) that Abner was the person who punched the cop.
On the way to the 70th Precinct station house, the arresting officers told Abner that "nobody slugs a cop" and proceeded to beat him severely. Once at the station house, two police officers took Abner to the men's bathroom where one cop rammed a plunger up his rectum while the other officer held him down, resulting in severe intestinal injury and a gaping hole in Abner's bladder. The pair also rammed the plunger into Abner's mouth, breaking several teeth. As of this writing (new moon in Virgo), Abner Louima lies in a Brooklyn hospital fighting for his life.
When Abner was arrested, one of the police officers is alleged to have said "It's Guiliani time - it's not Dinkins time." Rudolph Guiliani is the current mayor of New York. David Dinkins was the last mayor, who was defeated by Guiliani after one term in office. Guiliani, a former district attorney, was elected with the usual Republican/rightist rhetoric about "being tough on crime." It goes without saying that Guiliani, as a former D.A., has a cozy relationship with the N.Y.P.D. The officer's statement about "Guiliani time" was an clear expression of this coziness. Obviously the 70th Precinct believed that the police in a Guiliani administration have license for the kind of cruelty most Americans believe happens only in third world countries.
In fact, the first two officers indicted in the incident both had prior complaints of brutality lodged against them before the Civilian Review Board, but the charges were dismissed in all instances. In 1994 the Mollen Commission Report (commissioned by former Mayor Dinkins) had found that there was a lax attitude in the Internal Affairs Department regarding police brutality, as well as outright cover-ups. Upon leaving offices, Dinkins had urged Guiliani to read the Mollen Report. Guiliani said it was "insubstantial." There have been other commission reports on New York's police brutality problem, but Guiliani had taken no action.
Suddenly the Louima incident explodes and Mayor Guiliani, facing an election in November, scurries around to take control of the situation. The City is riding the cops BIG TIME, and the effects are noticeable. For example, I live across the street from a block designated "NO STANDING ANYTIME." This seems like a clear instruction, right? Yet in the nearly seven (7) years that I have lived here, there have been car service limousines parked in that block for 8-12 hours a day. Neighborhood residents filed numerous complaints with the police about the noise from the limo drivers. While the noise problem was ultimately solved, the parking laws continued to be blatantly violated.
Clearly someone above the level of police we mere civilians are permitted to associate with is being paid off by the car services and/or the large corporations that employ them. Yet the day after the publicity surrounding the Abner Louima incident exploded, there was a police sergeant on my block at 5 PM shooing the limousines off of the block. This went on for a few days. Obviously word had come down from the top to make a big show of rooting out police corruption. (The limousines continue to stand in the forbidden zone unless the police come by to shoo them away, which now happens intermittently.)
They Mayor knows what is wrong with the police force, and in attempting to window dress the situation for an election, he is torturing the second biggest victims in this situation - the legions of hard-working, honest and dedicated New York City police officers. Let us not forget the good people in all the hoopla over the seriously misguided ones. This incident may well cost Rudolph Guiliani the election. If so, it's a perfect illustration of Pluto's regenerative powers as applied through the Sagittarian passion for truth and justice.
At the beginning of the calendar year, this column predicted that 1997 would spark a "Technicolor reprieve of the 1960s" that will characterize the tail end of the 20th century. Of course, with Pluto in Sagittarius, withheld truth gets exposed to the bright light of the Centaur's fire. The Abner Louima atrocity brought together all the other people who have marched before in protest about innocent New Yorkers killed and injured by New York police, along with New Yorkers of all races and religions and all walks of life to rally in front of City Hall to demand justice for Abner Louima, and to further demand that all citizens be afforded full human rights.
Although I did not march over the Brooklyn Bridge with the march organizers and their procession, I did greet them upon their arrival in Manhattan and marched with them around the block to the stage opposite City Hall. The entire experience was quite reminiscent of the demonstrations of the 1960s, in terms of the energy as well as the message. Many of the chants had a familiar ring - because we used them in the '60s. "No justice, no peace," "What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now!" "The people united will never be divided!" and "Power to the people!" rang out, along with an actual chorus of "We Shall Overcome." (Some of us insisted on changing the words to "We shall overcome today" instead of "We shall overcome someday.") Some of the speakers urged the crowd to face city hall while they shouted "What time is it?" and the people answered "It's the people's time."
Despite all the noise, signs, flags and plungers, the City Hall assembly was peaceful. 2 There was an energy of solidarity. One of the speakers reminded the crowd that the rally was not merely about black people or Haitian people, but about the struggle for human rights for all New Yorkers in the face of a brutal and repressive mayoral administration.
Why do we chant at demonstrations? Chanting is shamanic. It sets up a vibration between the chanters, the heavens and the Earth. It impacts our subconscious. It allows us to experience the energy of believing that all souls can live together on this planet with dignity and in peace, in love and harmony and with reverence for the Divine. This energy was definitely manifest at the Louima demonstration, and this energy is traveling around the planet. Look for it in your area!
The tragic death of the most photographed woman in the world, the late Diana Princess of Wales, shocked the world. As I watched the Sunday morning coverage on CNN with my companion, Bryan-David Kee, he compared the worldwide sentiment surrounding Diana's death with the death of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Indeed Bryan is correct. Not since the Kennedy assassination have we witnessed such a unifying worldwide event. It is important to note that this is a purely 20th century phenomenon, because global celebrity is a function of the corporate media.
How does this work? Remember, there are large corporate conglomerates that control much of the world's news coverage in multiple mediums. For example, many such empires subsume large holdings in television, radio, movies, music, publishing, telecommunications, satellites and much more. Since the Disney corporation owns the ABC television network, we're not likely to hear any news about worker exploitation and suppression of organized labor activity in Disney owned and operated businesses, are we? These large corporations, along with the advertisers who sponsor their drivel, exert enormous control over how the news is packaged and communicated.
Since these corporations benefit from celebrity, they have greatly expanded the notion of celebrity to serve their own interests. Why was Diana harassed by paparazzi? Because a good celebrity photograph can fetch a million dollars. Who pays such outrageous amounts to invade people's privacy? The corporate media conglomerates that resell those pictures. Princess Diana was one of their biggest moneymakers - she appeared on the cover of People magazine 43 times before her death, and again afterwards. The widespread grief surrounding her death produced a massive shift in consciousness.
The karma of this event is remarkable. The corporate media are, at long last, being hoisted on their own petard. Diana's death has awoken many people to the fact that the society we are living in is insane, that the cult of celebrity is insane, that the whole thing has been manipulated by the corporate media, and that their gargantuan greed ultimately led to the untimely death of one of the world's most beloved human beings. Even though information emerged that the driver was drunk, the public still blames the paparazzi. Serious conspiracy theorists are bold enough to suggest that perhaps the drunk driver story was fabricated by the corporate media in an attempt to deflect public attention from the shameful behavior of the biking photographers.
Diana's life also served to wake people up to the dysfunctionality of British royal and aristocratic culture. Here was a woman from a wealthy but dysfunctional country family (her mother ran off with another man when she was 6) who was a mediocre student in school, never went to college and had no sophistication at all. Then she was suddenly thrust into the limelight of massive publicity, which produced severe emotional distress resulting in bulimia and suicidal depression. Yet she battled with the Queen for the right to raise her sons herself, instead of leaving them to be raised by a nanny, as she and her former husband Charles were. Diana insisted on taking her children to amusement parks and ordinary places so they would know what the outside world was about. She showered them with unconditional love and unrestrained physical affection - the things of which she and Charles had been so deprived. Overcoming her all too publicized problems left her filled with wellsprings of compassion, and transformed her into the world's most poised and glamorous woman. She worked tirelessly for numerous charities. She inspired love wherever she went.
Yet she was denied the simple pleasures of a personal life, due to relentless persecution by the press. Publicly quoted sources claim that Diana was planning to retire from public life in November. Perhaps she finally found true love with Dodi El-Fayad. If they had married, they would never have been left alone by the press. By dying together, they have found a greater happiness together in spirit than the media conglomerates would ever have allowed them. Their deaths have sparked the dialogue that will change the balance of power on this planet for the benefit of all. So send love to Diana and Dodi - they feel your love, and they return it.
Copyright 1997 Marcy J. Gordon. All rights reserved. The author wants you to know you are free to copy and distribute this article for noncommercial purposes, provided you reproduce it in its entirety and credit the author. For quotation permission, please contact the author at mgordon@pipeline.com.
1 For example, heavily polluted cities have magnificent sunsets.
2 107 people were arrested after the return march back over the Brooklyn Bridge under questionable circumstances, but most of the demonstration went off without confrontation between the demonstrators and the police.
Psychicbabble is a service mark of Marcy J. Gordon Copyright © 1997 Marcy J. Gordon Webmaster - John G. Derrickson - 1997OCT04 Psychicbabble Archives