How Much--The Ginger Ninjas

How much
How much do I care about peace?
Do I care enough about peace to ride my bike to work?
To not say "it's too far", & instead just move closer and quit when I get there?
To say "Enough is enough is enough. I will not work for The Man anymore."
Do I care enough about peace to ride and ride and ride
Cleaning my mind until I find a real job working for everywhere everyone everything else in the world?
Not real like 9-to-5, real like keeps me alive.
Not real like Peter Jennings, real like Amy Goodman.
Not real like "somebody's got to do it", real like Earth Island Institute, Global Exchange, Doctors Without Borders, South Yuba River Citizens League.
Real like if I don't do it, who the hell will?
Do I care enough about peace to admit that inactions are actions, and all actions are votes, and not voting IS voting, not voting IS voting.
To vote with my mouth, my conscience & wallet, & my ballot while I'm at it.
To buy all organic all the time.
Always.
From sheets to roses to underwear to sprouts.
To cause a commotion at Safeway.
Say, "Let me know when you make the transition, and I might reconsider my decision to never shop here again."
To dig up my chemically-dependent, heavy-drinking lawn & replace it for good with a permaculture garden to share with my neighborhood.
To UPS 40 pounds of corn and 5 thousand gallons of water to my refugee penpal in Rwanda every day for a year before eating one more mouthful of pig, of chicken, of cow.
To build my house out of straw.
Make it small; fill it with compact fluorescents; super-insulate the water heater.
Make certain every splinter of wood is Jay Butterfly certified.
And once I built it, to stay home.
To not fly, to forsake air travel and it's out-sized, suicidal tendencies for warming up the planet; it's insatiable greed for there and here on the very same day.
Fuck those little plastic cups anyway.
Do I care enough about peace to let my fingers to the walking?
Right out the door of the business-as-usual yellow pages and into the national green pages every time the American in me can no longer resist the urge to consume.
To sell half my shit, then give half what's left today...except for the television must be destroyed before maiming the mind of one more little boy.
To have just one kid.
To adopt between one and eighty-eight.
To meditate on the origins of impatience, anger, & hate so that I may never yell at any of them or anyone else I love, or don't yet love.
To spend as much time with them as I do sending interoffice e-mail at my job (real or not).
To remember that the truth has been found.
I can't buy from Exxon without Prince William's Sound.
I can't buy from Chevron without hired helicopters gunning and going to the ground.
Not from Shell and that little thing with Ken Saro-wiwa.
Not from Unocal and their Ivy League pals
Shilling on Nightline, promoting the new Uzbeki-Afghani-Osama-Bin Pipeline.
And therefore to commit to a reduction in internal combustion.
To admit I'm addicted to my automobile.
My own two little axils of evil.
I keep finding myself back at the pump, with every finger on the trigger.
And I know, in that moment, they is me, I am them.
Pushed & sucked & pumped through a dirty oil filter.
Do I care enough about peace to sell my car?
To hitchhike, but refuse to ride in any SUV eight-commuter.
Range Rover, Range Rover, send our black soldiers right over.
Jesus Chrysler Honda Krishna!
I keep finding myself back at the outlet.
Ready to plug something else in or check something else out.
Do I care enough about peace to close the Gap?
Or at least stand in front of the Gap with a picket?
To never set foot in WalMart, Kmart, Waremart, Bi-mart, PetsMart, StarMart, or Starbucks again?
How about Home Depot?
To stop buying, stop buying, stop buying clothes made of oil sewn by 8-year-olds in dark factories on the other side of the planet;
Sold in stores built on wetlands, farmlands, once-quiet-lands, so-far-from-where-you-live-lands.
So hemmed in by asphalt, big trucks, broken glass, & mufflers;
So underserved by public transportation that driving there seems like the only reasonable way to get there;
But which are too cheap to pass up.
Do I care enough about peace to stop buying those clothes?
To shop instead at thrift stores?
To buy organic cotton, hemp, recycled clothes made by people I know who live on my street?
To acknowledge that peace is redwood trees standing.
Peace is worldwide family planning.
Peace is organic peach canning.
Peace is Maya Angelou in the Oval Office, sitting at the big desk.
Peace is live music in my kitchen.
Peace is your grandma riding her bike to the bus, to the farmer's market.
Peace is a living wage for the Columbian peasant who grew my cup of coffee.
Peace is the collective self-esteem of all the world's kids.
And I've got to wonder, if you took all the 10-year-olds in China, America, Afghanistan, Nigeria, & Mexico City & gathered all their self-esteem & put it in a laser beam of light & shot it into the night,
Would it make it to the Lincoln Bedroom?
Would it make it to the moon?
Do I care enough about peace to cut up my Discover card?
Send it back to the bankers who are using my money to finance the Three Gorges Dam?
To displace a million people?
Brown, voiceless people?
To drown the Great Yangtze and 5,000 years of cultural history beneath the largest chunk of cement ever conceived by Stanford University engineers?
To distrust scientists with technological cures for organizational problems, with DNA cures for tomatoes that ripen, and DDT cures for mosquitoes that bite, with nuclear cures for energy problems, nuclear cures for war problems, nuclear cures for nuclear waste problems.
This just in! Top scientists today have just announced that they have found a cure for ignorance!
All the newsmen blared, if Einstein was so smart, why didn't he see we weren't ready for MC to be squared?
To revolt every time some corporation commits an appropriation, steals a word, a plant, an idea, a gene, a famous face, a mental space, a sacred place, a 6th grade class.
Get the hell out of my watershed before I copyright our whole language & trademark your ass!
To boycott their labels.
Never worship their stars.
Carry scissors & markers, & stand in the street offering on-the-spot removal of swooshes from feet.
To educate myself in the arts of resistance by seeking out the real news in Boycott Action News, in WorldWatch, in Mother Jones, in AdBusters, in Yes! Magazine.
To climb & climb, up & up the ranks of the Ruckus Society.
To recycle, but only as a last resort after reusing, retreading, reducing, rejecting, rejoicing, & replacing our throw-away culture.
To carry a plate & cup in a bag on my shoulder
Ready to hold spontaneous nourishment without notice, without needing virgin old-growth disposable tableware.
And when the cashiers say: "paper or plastic?", I say "no, thank you."
To ask questions about everything I demonize, criticize, generalize, jeopardize, canonize, ostracize, memorize, advertise, or super-size.
About everything I say I can't live without.
About everything I stand for, sit for, work for, play for, pray for, pay for...live for.
About everything I eat, buy, do, make, facilitate, drive, consume, produce, wear, think, value, believe, throw away & leave behind.
Do I care enough about peace to light myself on fire on Las Vegas Boulevard?
To walk the talk.
To walk, and walk, and walk.
To walk to the White House.
To walk to Iraq.
To walk to no place in particular, holding a sign above my head that says:
"One Walker for Peace."
Ignoring mind closures and "no trespassing" signs, testosterone-fueled egos & the intentionally blind.
Planting tiny peace seeds in every fertile bare patch of human mind that I find.

Do I care enough about peace to ride my bike to work?