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4 GROUNDCOVER NEWS STREET MYTH Roman gods in America Mythology has always been about two things: money and power. It’s the same today in America. We still live in ancient Rome, but it’s 2023. We have the “gods” up on top, or at least men who think they’re gods, billionaires whose families own and control everything. There are these few rich men on top living like emperors, and then there’s the rest of us on bottom. Just like Caesar thought he was immortal and compared himself to a god, these billionaires get into government and can do anything they want, and they always want more and more, so they become bored and psychopathic and chase fame or power or immortality. They have so much money they make up wars and conflicts to keep society distracted and divided. Myths about gods have always been about them. Billionaires today want to believe that they are the gods. They are the ones who own the news machine, the propaganda you hear on radio and television and social media. People buy all the myths they tell you and believe everything they say is the truth. They keep us working for them, to keep us at each other’s throats stuck in the trap believing that one day we might make it up to their level. But we never will — it’s just a myth. We keep believing what they tell us, like the American Dream. And they’ve had people believing since their ancestors back in Rome. These sorts of myths divide us against each other, and stop us from loving and respecting each JULIANO SANCHEZ Groundcover vendor No. 174 other as human beings. Racism is one of those myths. Society keeps pumping this into your head and embedding it in your mind through propaganda, that there are categories like Black and White. But skin color is just a story people in power have told to control the masses, so that we go on hating and fighting each other, distracted so that we never understand each other. People are always more complex than the myth. I appear Black to most people, but if you learned a little about my family history, you would know I’m a mix of African, indigenous Taino Cuban and white European ancestry from Europe. And everyone’s blood is the same color — red — anyway. People are so caught up in the myth they just look at someone and see Black or white, but that's too simple. That’s what they want you to believe. For people of color or minorities, mythology is a story of colonialism. I remember when growing up that my mother and grandmother in Cuba were so beautiful, with long, silky hair, and beautiful bronze skin. They were descended from Taíno, the indigenous peoples who first settled Cuba. But I grew up in New York and knew nothing about the Taíno; we grew up learning Spanish because the Taíno language was wiped out, along with their whole culture, which was killed off by Columbus and the Spanish when they enslaved them. Nobody talks about Taíno myths, but we all know about the Greek and Roman ones because American society developed out of that. We are built on Rome and Greece and a history of people’s heads being chopped off. When you talk about mythology, what you mean is slavery, injustice, imperialism — selfish, evil wrongdoing and the stuff that men in power have used to take over the world. Mythology is a history of control. Who’s got the power to make you believe? Rich people at the top live in their own world, maybe twenty rich families that own everything: the Rockefellers, the Du Ponts, the Gettys. All their ideas go back to Roman history and Julius Caesar. The emperors at the top, the billionaires, think they are immortal because they want their genetic line to keep hold of power over civilization, and they get their kicks by watching it like a chessboard. When you look at classical statues of Roman and Greek gods, it can be beautiful art, but it’s really just about control. Powerful men have always used gods and religions to trick the people and brainwash them with propaganda so they can control planet Earth. People on the bottom — the mortals — keep trying to work their way up from the gutter, and as long as they have some security — a house and a car and food to eat, they go on accepting how it is and believing that they can become “gods” someday too. But nobody ever reaches the top. The “gods” of capitalism are the ones who make us all sick trying to believe this myth that we need to become rich to be happy in the first place, and it just keeps us working for them and hating each other. We need to see the promise of capitalism for what it is — a myth. Billionaires are not happy; they are all miserable and psychopathic because they live in a fantasy world. I’m happier and healthier right down here on the street than all the gods. I’m down here with a simple life, with the trees and fresh air, and just the sun on my skin, my Cuban music, a simple diet, friends and conversations, life without owning anything or trying to chase after money or immortality or fame or power. Just love in the heart, that’s all you need. I’m happier without anything than they are with everything! We are all the same anyway; in the end we all go right back to dirt on this planet, no different than one another. You don’t need to believe any myths. All we need to do is find love in our hearts. All you need is right here in front of you. AUGUST 25, 2023 Medusa and the real monsters What does it mean to be seen as a monster? Ask any woman who’s been raped and then blamed for it. Think about Medusa. In the myth, she was once the most beautiful mortal woman in the world with the most gorgeous hair. Poseidon wanted her so much that he took her in a temple and raped her. The gods were jealous and angry, but they blamed her and punished her by turning her into a damn snake. She became so horrible that the sight turned others to stone and nobody could even approach her. Perseus finally came with his mirror shield and chopped her head off. Today, people still think Perseus was the hero of the story. But that’s not the way I look at it. I’m here to tell you the real way to think about it. Nobody understands Medusa. People never think about her perspective. It’s easier to just call someone a monster by looks like a monster — actually ended up in the situation they are in. Instead, society blames them for what happened and only sees what’s on the outside. How are there so many myths and legTERESA BASHAM Groundcover vendor No. 570 what you see on the outside. People refuse to try and understand and ask the question, how did she get that way? None of it was Medusa’s fault. It was those gods and men led around by their sexual desires and big egos, not by their brains or their hearts, that turned her into a monster to begin with. People never think about how somebody they see — who’s different than they are and ends around the world about women being evil? I can tell you: you’re reading things written by men! If a woman in our society gets raped, or if a boy gets molested by a priest, they have to deal with it for the rest of their lives, because society sees them — and they see themselves — as monsters, as no good, as evil and wicked. But the evil force was the person who did it to begin with and the society and the churches that protect them. Myth and legend come down to the government controlling what people believe. In the case of women, those who benefited from patriarchy created myths to reinforce the patriarchal structure. So when you read about Medusa, what you’re getting is what somebody wanted you to believe about women’s nature. Some people have no choice from the beginning about how they ended up where they are, on the street. Lots of us had jobs, homes, kids, families, everything, and it was taken away for some reason totally out of our control, like a medical bill, or an accident where someone gets hit by a car or truck. Some of us were put out on the street because someone took advantage of us, or we were laid off and lost our jobs, or something bad happened that’s not our fault. The way someone appears from a certain race can make it worse. For people who are Native Americans, for example, everything is harder because of the history of this country and what was done to us, and it’s much harder to get out of see MEDUSA page 10 

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