A Dollar Store Prophecy:
Not so long ago the dreams and visions that came to people were considered and respected as sacred guidance from Creation.
Some dreams and visions have become known today as “prophecies”, because the accuracy of them foretold the truth and consequences
about the choices human beings were given
regarding which road or path to live.
Knowledge nor political position is Power.
Power is the choice to use knowledge wisely for the greater good of All Life.
Abuse this Power and loose it.
What will you do when the truck doesn’t come to fill the dollar store shelves with cheap toxic food, plastic, chemicals and goods from China ?
As Arundhati Roy so eloquently wrote: “Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness – and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.
The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling – their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.
Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.
Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”
The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling – their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.
Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.
Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”
So, what else is possible?
As I look upon the big box stores that litter my community’s thinking, land and life with cheap, toxic food, plastic and clothes…Remembering when we did not know we were financially “poor” …when the wombs of hornos giving birth to sweet, spicy, savory foods from our relationship with water, earth and the seeds of life was the fabric that clothed us in cooperation and filled our bellies with belonging to earth and sky and each other.
Know this: When the land is paved over for airports, big box stores, etc.. that land dies from the toxic materials used to build such. That land will be toxic for generations, because you can not simply remove the concrete and parking lot and road materials from the land to be healthy again, because there are toxic materials used that leach into the earth below it. Yet some still think that paving over paradise will bring them security, through financial wealth, a security that is only temporary and at the cost of pollution to our water, earth and cultures. And the hand full of low paying “jobs” at best, are not “economic sovereignty”. So, the county got rid of Stan’s Treasure Island recycle store and instead opted for corporate trash to feed and cloth our community ? As if corporate trash is more acceptable than the free boxes for the “poor” ? We are not “poor” nor do we choose to be “victims” to corporate empire, faux economic models, and “rich” people’s “playgrounds”.
So I look upon these big box stores, and in my dream-visions I see their corporate masters leave due to the lack of business, no one buying their cheap, toxic, plastic goods… and I see infinite potential born from the Power of the Peoples….
In my dreams I see these big-box buildings being taken over as Public Commons Buildings, and being re-tooled with solar power, water catchments and compostable potties, because the current Planning and Zoning does not have adequate rules and regs insuring that the buildings that are being built adhere the environmental standards needed for Earth and Water “changes” of today.
And these Public Commons Buildings are returned to the People to give space for:
Seed storage, a locally grown Food Bank, a fabric and wool and leather, clothing and quilt sewing machine complex, an Artisan, local health products, and furniture complex, a Grain Mill, a fruit and food cannery, a community meat dehydrator, a Solar facility for solarizing ALL of our homes, and a real Nixmal tortillaria, and bakery…OR how about a storage building for our recyclable glass, until we have enough to sell or bring glass blowers to town, so that the glass is not just broken up and spread on the land ….or how about a trash sorting facility? remember the one we were promised ? ….to name only a few uses…..
In my dreams “every job” serves the life and culture of the People, the water is not pumped out of the Heart of Mountains, rather is reverently respected as the life blood from which we are all responsible for cooperatively caring and sharing….and so too is everything that we CHOOSE to build or not build done with the same remembering and reverence that Earth gives us Life.
In my dreams our community representative-politicians resist drinking and thinking from the kool-aid manufactured by the corporate-capitalist-unending-progress-unsustainable economic model, and then marketing it to our community; for if we allow our representatives to pump the water from the Heart of these Mountains and Pave Paradise, one day they will remember while walking the ghost towns of Taos valley, that “they thought they could bury us, but they did not know we are seeds”….
In my dreams this valley is a flourishing garden, with new orchards being planted as the older ones begin to retire and re-emerge into worm and compost farms.
Water sovereignty = Food sovereignty = Energy Sovereignty = Collective and Personal sovereignty.
In my dreams, when the roads wash out or crumble, or become too packed with ice and snow, both to the north and south of us… leaving the dollar store shelves bare, the people will Rise and take back the earth, return to planting seeds, and making adobes out of necessity and the love of life….
We all know that Earth herself will have the last say ~ She is already speaking to us.
Are we listening? Human beings are only one organism of the whole of earth’s children.
The harm to one is the harm to all. The honor of one is the honor of all.
~ * ~
There are so many wonderful human beings that have come to this Sacred valley, this Sacred place, Sacred Home, to live in harmonious relationship with earth, sky, culture and family.
Having traveled near and far, the issues everywhere are the same, the trash is the same trash made from the same corporate entities making chemical foods and plastic from oil, and the choices are the same. In the same way that this trash and chemically manufactured foods, chemical soaps, detergents, make-up, clothes - clogs rivers and streams, litters the ranchos and arroyos, fills the land dump, and is now islands of trash in the ocean…so too this trash and chemicals are clogging the arteries of our bodies, minds and life ways. What we do to the Earth, we do to ourselves.
There will be no peace without peace with Earth, Water, Air and Fire/SunLight. We as human beings were given sacred intelligence, to understand the natural laws of nature, for living in beautiful harmony with Earth. The time is Now, to Rise, for the future generations of water, land, all life and the human family.
So my beloved Town and County representatives and the Planning and Zoning regulators and all the people employed in The People’s halls of laws and regulations, remember that you work for the People, and the People, you and your future generations included, can not and will not flourish culturally or economically without a healthy Earth. What we allow to be put into our community we allow to be put into our bodies and minds. I am old and you are young, please take heed to these dream-visions and deeply consider the temporary wealth you may acquire, and at what cost to earth, water and culture, that is not computed in your antiquated economic models.
No Water, No Earth, no Life.
As representatives of the Peoples, it is your responsibility to seek out funding for culturally and ecologically healthy “economic” venues that will serve to nourish our community Sovereignty as a whole. Taos has everything that a people’s could need to grow enough food to feed everyone here, and create goods and services to trade with other communities… Another Dollar Store will not provide food, energy, economic and cultural sovereignty to Taos. Then again, if you build it, the People will take it back and do something useful with it, just as the dreams and visions of seeds have infinite potentiality to return to the earth and grow life.
Thank you for listening.
Sincerely,
Abril Mondragon resident on the Martinez land tract ~
