This world is now the blood in my veins
How can blood sleep? It has to pump through…
My veins dance burning with the blood of madness
The final laughter of the Magician.

– Jalal-ud-Din Rumi

Yesterday we had an amazing Barnstorm at the Castro Valley library which at times had close to forty people, including Harrison Weber, Regional Field Director for the Bernie campaign in our area, who initially had warned me he could only stay a few minutes but who remained until after we finished and engaged in passionate conversation with us all, even in the parking lot as we were leaving… At one point he referred, as a Jewish man, to the words of his grandfather when he was growing up about the importance of engagement and action to go good, which reminded me of my own Sephardi grandfather’s quoting of Hillel’s commandment:  If not me, who?  If not now, when?

So here we are again on another quest for the “impossible dream;” as an aging boomer vegetarian Buddhist-Catholic-interfaith cubana revolucionaria hippie, I am in one of those time warps that I was always so fond of in science fiction in which we are fighting for what appears, if you listen to the mass media, to be a lost cause, forgetting que una gota con ser poco con otra se hace aguacero, as Daniel Viglietti sings in his milonga de andar lejos, qué lejos está mi tierra y sin embargo que cerca… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZqnjC-1wzI.  Drop by drop, we become a downpour of people who are tired of having to postpone their dreams, y la pobreza es la misma; poverty remains the same.  Rather than succumb to the forces of pessimism and fear so prevalent in the society at large, we are called upon to romper el mapa, formar el mapa de todos, mestizos, negros y blancos… in other words, rather than the Trump view, our candidate’s view calls for breaking up the old map and creating a new one where we are all part of the map, all of us mixed, black and white…

Viglietti’s lyrics accompanied me as I figured out just who I was and what I was for and against in the late sixties, early seventies… He asks us to help him; last night many people of different races and ethnic origins, young and older, answered that call to change our world.  ¡Muchas gracias! to everyone who came out on a beautiful Sunday afternoon and signed up to help us start that walk back from the brink of extinction…

Qué lejos está mi tierra

y sin embargo que cerca

pues existe un territorio

donde la sangre se mezcla.

Tanta distancia y camino,

tan diferentes banderas,

y la pobreza es la misma

los mismos hombres esperan.

Yo quiero romper mi mapa,

formar el mapa de todos,

mestizos, negros y blancos;

trazarlo codo con codo.

Los ríos son como venas

de un cuerpo entero extendido

y es el color de la tierra

la sangre de los caídos.

No somos los extranjeros,

los extranjeros son otros;

son ellos los mercaderes

y los esclavos nosotros.

Yo quiero romper la vida

como cambiarla quisiera

ayúdeme, compañero;

ayúdeme, no demore,

que una gota con ser poco

con otra se hace aguacero.