Melançon Enterprises • a multidivision multinational since 1980

[very disorganized and the tangents need to be re-planted elsewhere but there's good stuff here]

An unabashed Milton Friedman acolyte made the point (a quotation?) that as long as exchanges are freely made between people, the net benefit has to be positive by definition.

Yes-- exactly-- but-- and there is a huge but-- there's little practical difference between a force-coerced exchange and an economic-coerced exchange. Indeed, it's the history and present of inequality to use force to back up the imposition of economic injustice.

Research the hell out of the costs born by society due to the way McDonald's does business:
- unhealthy food, cost of health care, lost productivity
- trash produced
- environmental destruction where cows graze, such as Amazon destruction
- loss/degredation of the local water table due to the parking lot
- contribution to global warming due to traffic
- underpayment of employees

One or two volunteers stand outside each of the 15,000 McDonald's 24/7 (or quickly learn when the busiest times are) and cheerfully ask people to pay a tax on their purchase to reflect its true cost.

People who peacefully broke into a high-security military compound to object to the insane nuclear arsenal there (for submarine-launchable Trident missiles) are being sent to prison for this non-violent civil disobedience, possibly for the rest of their lives, as we are talking about months in prison for a couple people in their 80s.

It was an a very stupid and evil decision by the government to prosecute and ask for lengthy prison terms. For shame.

I googled "where did the term social justice come from" and all that's on the first page is the reactionary establishments campaign to make people think it is a bad thing (seriously, the Heritage Foundation is openly out to get the phrase).

I'd just wanted to know when and who had thought it was a good idea to artificially separate (and prefer) the vague and wishy-washy social justice from the harder and clearer concepts of racial justice, economic justice, environmental justice, and, you know, justice.

We prefer organizer, because it implies effective action, doing work over the long haul, while activist has negative connotations in the sense of ineffective or sporadic action.

But everyone can't be an organizer, or not only an organizer, and some people clearly take action.

Used "amazing community activist, organizer, hope-for-humanity" for Kaveri.

Guess that works.

TODO: Link to Kasey's wonderful organizer and activist relationship essay (both are needed).

Stayed home working (fairly productively too, what a brutal week, i am sorry publisher, clients, and anyone else who wants me to finish something or who simply wants a piece of my time— it's just been a long, slow, slog for everything) while Grandpa and Mom and Nadia and her friend went to dinner at Fairway and to see the best jazz musicians on the Cape play at, uh, Willy's Gym.

Ah, that felt nice to write a multi-nested parenthetical phrased sentence that's well nigh incomprehensible. That stuff doesn't fly in a book. At least, i hope there's nothing like that in there.

José Padilla was held without charge, a blatant violation of the U.S. constitution, for three and a half years. (Ultimately he was charged and convicted with conspiring to kill, maim, and torture— the government dropped all charges that might require physical evidence including the dirty bomb claim that was pretty much constant in the media, but the flimsiness of his conviction is not the issue here. His right to justice for the three and a half years he was denied any legal process is the issue.)