AUGUST 25, 2023 ON MY CORNER ASK YOUR VENDOR What organization has helped you the most (not including Groundcover News)? Peggy's house and MISSION. — Mike Jones, #113 Community Mental Health. — Gary Leverett, #554 None of them. Only Groundcover. — Joe Woods, #103 Purple House. — Teresa Basham, #570 Toss up between the Buddhist Center and Ann Arbor Coalition Against the War. — Ken Parks, #490 Washtenaw Camp Outreach and Weather Amnesty. — Jim Clark, #139 Community Mental Health and First Baptist in Ann Arbor. — Pony Bush, #305 Churches. Especially the breakfast church. — Roberto Isla Caballero, #347 GROUNDCOVER NEWS Groundcover News opens the door for a new publication Hi, My name is Elizabeth Kurtz, but I refer to myself as Lit, a name I gave myself shortly after losing my housing and landing on what we call “the streets.” “Lit” is short for Elizabeth because I found that outside of mainstream housing, there is little room for extra baggage — including one’s name. I was shocked during the 20112012 school year to be among 4000 teachers laid off and forced to reapply for our positions. Like many other teachers, I was not rehired, and in what seemed like in the blink of an eye I was living in my car. The adjustment was difficult and although I was reluctant to admit that I was “homeless” just like others who were scavenging in trash for cans and bottles or even selling the “homeless” paper, the reality set in. If I had any chance of survival after my savings and unemployment were depleted, I needed to have an income. The street paper concept, which started in New York during the 1980s and arrived in Ann Arbor in 2011 under the directorship of Susan Beckett, was a viable option, offering an opportunity to begin LIT KURTZ Groundcover vendor No. 159 of my own entitled, The Fringe. It offers an even more in-depth look at the lives of those who are unhoused. Groundcover and the street paper association have given many of those who are unhoused an ability to share our voices. They indeed offer a springboard and training ground for a publication such as mine. As an unhoused person, I know selling right away. I signed up and started selling and writing for it in 2013. By 2016, I was extremely honored that an article I wrote for Groundcover entitled “Living Out Here” placed as one of the top five finalists in the category of Best Vendor Contribution when the International Street Paper Conference (INSP) was held in Athens, Greece, making me the first Groundcover Vendor to receive that honor. Jim Clark received the same recognition in 2019. A decade following the first year that I sold for Groundcover, I am editing and publishing a magazine that it is necessary for a publication to exist that is seen through the lens of we who have experienced living through the crisis. The articles will be contributed by people who have experienced it as well. The first inaugural edition is dedicated to Earth Day because who knows more about the Earth than those who have been forced to live directly on its soil? This magazine will not only be in print but also online so that your friends and family from across the world can enjoy it. To find out more information about receiving a copy, please scan the QR included here. 3 The people are the power! In the 1960s and 70s “POWER TO THE PEOPLE” was a popular chant at rallies and marches. You could say it was a common mantra that carried the essence of the many movements for freedom. We need to consider power and how it works. What is its source? Meditar y analizar, as Fidel described his style, reflect and analyze. From science we know power as the ability to move an object. I propose we think of power as the ability to get things done. Labor is the basic power to work on whatever project until completion. Study Marx and Engels to understand alienated labor and what the emancipation of labor looks like. Erich Fromm is among the many thinkers who studied and wrote about alienation. My understanding is that when labor is a commodity in the market you lose agency of your labor power to those who buy your labor. If you agree to a written or unwritten contract, you lose any real ability to understand the results of your labor. Your power enters a maze of corporate KEN PARKS Groundcover vendor No. 490 processing which investors use to promote the greatest profit, regardless of the waste or damage. Dumping waste into the environment is a common practice. Landfills are a huge industry. Nuclear waste will be in toxic sites beyond any time we can measure. To take responsibility for the results of our actions means to use our power with awareness and not allow anyone to use our power for their capital accumulation fetish. Both Buddhism and Marxism use dialectics to understand the play of opposites, Buddhism focuses on the Middle Path between the extremes of eternalism and nihilism. Marxism focuses on the analysis of data to understand the material world. Lenin studied Hegel to work from the assumption that dialectics begins with the unity of opposites. I believe this unity is also the Middle Path. Everything is interrelated and interactive. “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism” by V.I.Lenin is an important study of World War One dynamics. The Introduction to “Medicine Buddha” by Thrangu Rinpoche is a good introduction to Buddhist thinking on the play of reality. Our imagination is empowered by words such as these and reality becomes a workable situation. I propose that “THE PEOPLE ARE THE POWER” is the slogan that best points to our shared reality. Labor power in particular has its source in the working class; to use our power to serve the Golden Rule is the way to live happily ever after. We all want our life to be in our own hands. Compliance culture demands that you use your power for the designs of others; this puts us in constant gridlock with our own aspirations. The system uses compliance to channel everything to march to the beat of empire as dictated by “the deciders,” as one or both President Bush(s) put it. Our body/mind unity can be experienced more completely as human beings if we practice natural breathing; it is the best step to a natural mind. There are many teachers of mind training. Both Zen and Tibetan spiritual friends have helped me. The power of calm and clear points to the importance of using our power to do creative activity with the intention to benefit all beings without exception. If we free our minds, the rest will follow. Patti LaBelle sang that song. If we share our labor power for the common good we can work to stop the march to nuclear war. Compost war, grow peace. Visit vfpgoldenruleproject.org.
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