Gas is expensive, and all indications are that this is just beginning. Anger, fear and frustration mount as citizens wonder how gas prices got so high.  Depending who you listen to, global demand and our escalating consumption of the black gold are to blame.  If you believe that then you probably believe the oil companies are not making a profit. We currently have a presidential candidate, governors and legislators taunting the solution to initiate off shore drilling, and while we are at it, let’s go back to Alaska and spill some more oil there. The glaring realization that oil companies are making obscene profits is dismissed and downplayed by the media and congress that purports to inform and represent us.

It is time we, meaning you and I, get off of our collective asses and say “enough”! It is time we put our money where our mouth is and say NO to the oil companies.  Alternate means of energy must be considered and implemented NOW.  NO, NO and NO.  NO to more ill gained profits added to over the $600,000,000,000 oil companies have pocketed in the past eight years.  NO to any more off shore drilling or exploration. NO because I can report to you what I have witnessed when we say yes to the interest of the oil companies and their constituents. I am a witness to what happens when citizens believe that big money interest care anything about the effects that their money making ventures leave in their wake. I am a witness to the Exxon Valdez Prince William Sound oil spill in Alaska. I am a witness to the purposeful, perpetual unwillingness of Exxon to compensate, repair and make whole the people of Alaska affected by their tanker.
It has been over twenty years and the massive amount of money spent to avoid payment of their nasty spill lingers in one court or another.

I am a witness to the ashes and remains of once prosperous fishing villages and thriving communities that are now silent, dead, gone. I am a witness to the broken lives that had livelihoods to support them and their families with no place to start again and no money to start again.

I am a witness to the millions of dollars spent in Alaska on mock juries to determine if the oil companies would win the lawsuits against them. I was on one of the mock juries.  I was paid $100.00, as were many Alaskans, to tell the oil companies what they already knew – clean up your oily mess and compensate the people whose lives are forever altered by the spill. Big oil didn’t listen and it is crystal clear they never had any intention of cleaning up Alaskan shores or compensating its residents. I witnessed an impotent legislature and compromised court system that allowed EXXON to leave Alaska spoiled but continue to make money from its residents.

I am a witness. I am asking you to stand up and be a witness too.  Witnessing is a participatory action. It requires action by talking, walking, listening and standing. You talk to others and tell them to say no to exploration and windfall profit taxes given to oil companies. You walk to the store or wherever you can instead of drive. You listen to what your government is really saying by looking at what they are actually doing. The two variables should match. Finally you stand with the millions of other citizens of this country who are calling for gas boycotts. You boycott by writing, calling, e-mailing your legislators that drilling is unacceptable, oil companies must be taxed accordingly and criminal charges must be brought against speculators and any guilty party that is involved in higher energy cost.   Witnessing is not easy but it is necessary. But if we don’t, will California, New Jersey, Texas and any other shore that might have oil be the next Alaska pillage that I witnessed?

I welcome any comments, solutions and ideas that can help us be better witness. The time is now! Will you be a witness?

If you missed it live, you can see Barack’s speech about clinching the Democratic nomination for President here. Take a few minutes and become inspired to change the look of politics.

There is an elephant sitting in the living rooms, churches, and front seats of the majority of the cars in America. An elephant that is so big that there is no distinguishable space left in the room.

I am guilty of passing up, stepping in, and suffocating on the smell of old elephant dung. I borrow a line from Peter Finch in the movie NETWORK, “I am mad as hell and I am not going to take it anymore.” On that note, let us have a conversation and continue it specifically during this presidential election. Let us be brave enough and honest enough to take a stand. Because everything we say we believe is at stake if we don’t get this right.

As we get prepared to observe the frenzy leading up to the November election it is imperative that we do the following; Recognize that every fear that anyone has about a black man will be used as a lethal weapon. We must demand that a man’s race, a women’s gender or an individual’s age have nothing to do with the character or qualifications of our presidential nominee. We must demand the highest journalistic standards and ethics from our newspapers and news organizations. Not only must we demand it, we must do what we have not been willing to do which is stop participating in a process that isn’t empowering America. We must vote, march, picket, boycott, stand-up, protest, write letters, send e-mails and turn off televisions until the people whose checks we sign start to listen. We must have a dialogue that is inclusive. Racism makes people of all races uncomfortable. The only way for us to ever be comfortable is to take it apart and put it back together, and we must do that together.

I surmise that if the blogs, politicians, media, churches, families and educational institutions engage this country in dialogue about racism now, we will change the trajectory of our country and of the world by November. Our vote will not only put a change agent in office but also restore the principles and liberty our forefathers foresaw.

A discourse about racism is a lofty undertaking but it is vital in annihilating the poisonous talons of hate. Racism consumes us as Americans and leaches across the borders of this nation into other cultures and continents. We are all connected as humans, we are all one.

Let’s change the slow, insidious, harmful teachings and feelings of racism. I see no other choice. Not choosing to act would be similar to the flagrant neglect of our beautiful planet – the planet we’ve been relieving ourselves on for far too long. Future generations will suffer from our incompetence. We have dealt the same way with racism and its effects upon us. We have ducked, dodged, justified, tolerated and allowed racism to define good men and women as “less than”. Racism is the word that strangles what is best in us as Americans. Let us have a discourse and let our sun shine through.