I googled to see if I could find news of the the 11 am April 15th protest at Union Square in New York City, and nothing came up (yet?). But I did find Chris Hedges’ speech, “Throw Out the Money Changers,” there. Here’s an excerpt:
Life is not only about us. We can never have justice until our neighbor has justice. And we can never recover our freedom until we are willing to sacrifice our comfort for open rebellion. The president has failed us. The Congress has failed us. The courts have failed us. The press has failed us. The universities have failed us. Our process of electoral democracy has failed us. There are no structures or institutions left that have not been contaminated or destroyed by corporations. And this means it is up to us. Civil disobedience, which will entail hardship and suffering, which will be long and difficult, which at its core means self-sacrifice, is the only mechanism left.
It may be the only collective mechanism; however, the most crucial action we can take is to shift ourselves out of the culture of fear and blame into the culture of love and compassion. This is a big order; the job of a lifetime!
And perhaps these two actions, outer and inner, collective and individual, are, at root, one and the same. To sacrifice the self, in both cases is to let go of identification with that part of us that fears not getting what we personally want or losing what we personally have. Instead, let us move below our chaotic egocentric minds into our silently beating hearts, where we share resonance with all of creation, and where, I have heard, and at times even experienced, all of creation is born.
Krishnamurti mentions somewhere that, in the evolution of the fetus, the first part of the body to be fully formed is the heart. Other organs, and the limbs, emerge out of the heart. We begin with the heart. Let us return to the heart.
