By Laura Wells

I believe the group of People Who Want A Better World includes just about everybody I know. And we all have different issues that call to our hearts. Which issue is most important?

I’ve long thought that, in fact, "every issue is the most important issue." I came to this way of thinking because during every statewide Green Party campaign I ever ran, people told me, "Laura, this issue [fill in the blanks] is the most important issue and I think you should focus your entire campaign on this issue!"

Well, I could not do as everyone asked. I also tended not to do the laundry list of every important issue (though I think it is a perfectly good approach). Instead, I tended to focus on a few solutions, especially as related to finances in my campaigns for state controller. The solutions included Public Banking versus Wall Street Banking; Tax The Rich, DUH; and Fix Prop 13: keep the good and fix the bad!

Today I believe the most important issue the human species should be able to solve NOW, is stopping the genocide in Palestine.

Related to that, of all the important and interrelated Green Party 10 Key Values — statements that have integrity only because they are backed by the Green Party policy of taking no corporate money — I would point to this one: decentralization.

The concentration of power in a few hands, or a few groups, or a few countries, provides too great an "opportunity for mischief." The concentration of wealth is also important, but its worst effect is that it leads to a concentration of power. That centralization of power reduces everyone else’s power to live their own lives.

Where is there hope?

OK, so I'm a sucker for hope. Other people are afraid it's all false hope, or they prefer other terms; for example, truth-teller journalist Chris Hedges favors "having faith."

For my hope list I’ll use the Spanish word Ojalá, which is variously translated as "I wish" or "Hopefully" or "If Only."

(1) OJALÁ other nations will act in solidarity to counteract the immense domination of the US, which has been exerted through economic and military power.

(2) OJALÁ the United Nations gets restructured so that the General Assembly can act without fear of veto by the Security Council, whose permanent membership consists of some of the largest arms exporting nations in the world, as pointed out by Eduardo Galeano, Uruguayan author of the book The Open Veins of Latin America, and author of a poem called Ojalá that I included in a New Year’s blog in 2022. 

(3) OJALÁ that a promising movement involving the United Nations is successfully called into action. It’s called Lifeline for Palestine. In summary:

A super-majority of the world’s nations already support Palestine. Using a little known process — Uniting for Peace — our UN representatives have the numbers and the power to override the US veto to:

* Send a multinational protection force to Palestine providing food & medicine, ending the blockade, protecting civilians.

* 
Implement sanctions & a military embargo on Israel
.

* Withdraw Israel’s UN credentials, establish a war crimes tribunal & more.

What can we do? 

Add your support to Lifeline for Palestine actions. Stay healthy, and stay active in some issue that grabs you the most toward a better world.

Change your source of news, especially when it comes to news about other places in the world – such as Europe, China, Africa, and especially now, Venezuela. Inaccuracies (a polite way to say outright lies) abound in media that is aligned with, not counter to, the concentration of power in the world, including everything from Fox to PBS broadcasts, and The Guardian to The New York Times newspapers.  Consider CounterPunch, Chris Hedges, Black Agenda Report, Richard Wolff, and the print-only newspaper by Ralph Nader, Capitol Hill Citizen.

Another world is possible — otro mundo es posible,
Laura

LauraWells.org

P.S. One more hope. Ojalá the estimated 1000 women who were exploited by Epstein and friends will continue to come forward and speak out, and bring down the increasingly obvious and obscene oligarchy that is adversely affecting all the important issues of our world.

Photo: QNN