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My backpack is on my lap. A Christmas gift is inside. So, as I shoot through this hole to Coney Island – what if I take out this little box and hold it in my hand. I know even before I open it that it is the perfect gift. The gift we all want. That’s right, it’s the cure to pain and suffering. It isn’t a drug. It is the complete cure to death and all the pain that precedes it. It is life. Life in a box. I don’t even have to open it. I know what it is. I can take it to my friend

All the culture that Obama and Clinton did not acknowledge does in fact exist – is born and growing. The secrecy and isolation of the Chinese/Obama meetings says it all. The rest of us are waiting outside, with the rising seas, the fires and droughts and freak storms. It is dawning on us that the Earth is the only government and the only god.

Freedom from the corporate Christmas is usually thought of as freedom from credit card debt. We’re not just escaping – we are creating. As we buy local – Local-lujah! – or as we substitute a holiday experience for a corporate product, we are making Peace, too. This is the secret revolution in giving that breaks the back of corporate fundamentalism. Peace is not fundamentalist. Peace does not have a belief system that threatens non-believers. Peace gives us the freedom to believe in many things, to ask an infinity of questions.

When Billy and I went to the World Social Forum in 2007 we encountered extremely widespread frustration with aid programs and the culture of dependence on the African Continent, particularly amongst African activists and organizers.