Dreaming Upside Down...

One of the activities we do with groups here are reflections...this one I find especially thought provoking. This is segments of a piece called Dreaming Upside Down by Tom Peterson from Editor of Seeds.

"I dreamed the other night that all the maps in the world had been turned upside down. What had been north was now South, East was west.

...In my dream a cloud of anxieties closed around me. The United States was now at the bottom...Now that we’re at the bottom, would our resources and labor be exploited by the new top? Would Africa, Asian and Latin American nations structure world trade to their advantage?

….Would my neighbors and I have $2/day seasonal jobs on peach and strawberry plantations? Would the women and children work from dawn to dusk to scratch survival from the earth of California and Virginia? Would the fruit we picked be shipped from New Orleans and New York to Thai and Ethiopian children who hurriedly eat it with their cereal so they won’t miss the school bus? Would our children, then, go not to school but to fetch water from two miles away and to gather wood for cooking and heating?

….Would our economy be dependent upon the goodwill and whims of, say, Brazil? Would Brazil send war planes and guns to Washington D.C. to assure our willingness to pick apples, pecans and tobacco for export while our children went hungry? If we did revolt, would the Chilean government plot to put their favorite U.S. general in power and uphold him with military aid?

…Would we work in sweatshops to manufacture radios for the Chinese? Would our oil be shipped in tankers to Southeast Asia to run cars, air conditioners and microwave ovens while most of our towns were without electricity?

…I saw a mother in Houston crying because there were no more beans for her family. One of her children, a blond boy about six years old, listlessly watched her. He slowly turned his empty, haunting gaze toward me.

At that I awoke with a gasp. I saw I was in my own bed, in my own house. Everything was okay. It was a bad dream. I drifted back to sleep, thinking “It’s all right, I’m still on top.”

- By Tom Peterson

“Never doubt that a small group of concerned citizens can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has.” - Margaret Mead