Freedom is already liberated! Where ever you go, you can see freedom in its upmost. Anyone who causes fear, anyone who is scared, anyone who loves, anyone who hates, anyone who is ignorant,innocent, apathetic, energetic, and utterly stupid, anyone who causes pain,violence,death they all are expressing freedom in all its grandeur.

This is what freedom is to me, and i am free to express and think this way because of it. Some would call this ignorant, i would agree. Some may consider it “Wrong”, they are right. This is because they truly are as free as any person can be, for they actually have the choice to think that way.

To answer the UN question, i would have to say this: “You all have failed your countries, your people, your family, your friends, and your world. Get some god damn sense in your skulls and achieve peace. To do so isn’t that hard, you just have to try.” Considering that is for the UN General Assembly and all the World Leaders, I really wont explain myself to anyone else who questions it. And again, to “liberate our sense of freedom from ignorance, apathy, and fear” all you need to do is accept those notions as choices of the people, and choice is (in my book) what freedom is.

To “safeguard freedom” for future generations…that too is simple to achieve. To do so all you need do is educate, promote learning, and to hold true to the fact that everyone has a choice, and you must acknowledge the choices of others (for better or worse) for if you don’t then you too become one that bars freedom through ignorance.

This is a rant, read it, read it, ignore it, it really doesn’t matter to me because i have the freedom to do such things. Good day,Good night, Live, or Die if you want, its up to you for ,like everyone, you are free.

Sean Gillis
Alamo, Texas, United States

People let’s look what’s really going down
In old Suvanna-bhumi there are gems in the ground
No rice on the table — oldest story in the book
Mercedes in a new city of generals and crooks
The Lady’s under lock and key, she says: “Freedom from fear!”
Monks and nuns are on the streets, shine their light through clouds of tears…

Chorus: Arise! Arise!

We’re standing side by side
And if you raise your weapons
We will look you in the eye
until the hate subsides
The eyes of the world
will look you in the eye….

Half a world away I’ve got a healthy pension planned
on slave labor and helicopters — and even heroin
Everything is normal here, everything is clean
Till I turn from 9 to 5 to that shining little screen
The Lady’s under lock and key, she says: “Freedom from fear!”
Monks and nuns out on the streets shine their light through clouds of tears…

Chorus : Arise! Arise!

We’re standing side by side
And if you raise your weapons
We will look you in the eye
until the fear subsides
The eyes of the world
will look you in the eye….

Everyone has the ears to hear the sound when people cry
Everyone’s a choice to make as we walk our own fine lines
So if I call you brother now, how will you reply?
No longer can we just abide in the “eye for an eye”!
The Lady’s under lock and key, she says: “Freedom from fear!”
Monks and nuns are on the street, shine that light through clouds of tears…

Chorus: Arise! Arise!

We’re standing side by side
And if you raise your weapons
We will look you in the eye
until the hate subsides
The eyes of the world
until the fear subsides
until those fires die…

The eyes of the world
The eyes of the world
The eyes of the world

by Martin Adam

Don’t take a minute to realize,
don’t take a moment to run,
don’t take a genius to understand that we prefer education over the gun.

Stop funding the Chinese for splendor of our Nations lost democratic dream. The veto of the powerhouse can seam hurtful at the seams. We’ll walk a thousand miles if it help’s our brothers and sisters even a foot. Four years have gone by now, and 3000 villages perish in soot.

Now it is our Monks that burned. How dare they take the holy men? First rape was the season, now it’s fire over them. Clubs don’t seem like torture, when black dogs of darkness bark our disease. We’d do anything to stop them as we fade with our immune disease.

Please take that moment to veto, or oven our children’s fire, hey everyone has a hobby, for Than Shwe, freedom is his desire.

by Jeffrey Karl Hellman
Film, Photography, and Visual Arts
Roy H. Park School of Communications, Ithaca College
www.JeffreyHellman.com
www.HonoringHome.com
www.ICFAB.org

I have enjoyed exploring what it means to be free by using processes that are themselves free. I play and record improvised music and also host a radio show where I interview people about social change and spirituality.

The Great Leap Forward airs weekly on Free Radio Santa Cruz, 101.1 FM, www.freakradio.org The radio station is an experiment in being free by being the media without any outside authority; FRSC is commercial-free, collectively-run and has been operating without a license from the US government since 1995.

Ever since I did an interview with Native American activist/musician John Trudell, I often choose to use the words “being free” instead of the word “freedom.” He pointed out to me that freedom has become “a habitual, lazy abstraction.” Trudell offered his personal way of liberating freedom; “Life is about responsibility,” he told me. “Freedom is an abstraction. Responsibility is not.”

In an interview with performance artist Laurie Anderson, I asked about the lyrics from her song Statue of Liberty; “Freedom is a scary thing / Not many people really want it.” She told me that, “A lot of people are scared of the responsibility that comes with freedom. The idea that you’re the only one in charge is too much for people.”

To be free is to experience life as it unfolds, without borders or rules. When we feel free, there are no conditions or authority that we accept or deny, submit to or rebel against. The authority of science, religion or politics can be helpful in communicating ideas that point to reality, but ideas can become a restriction if their meaning is codified and if free interpretation is sacrificed.

To be free is to be conscious that we have a choice in the way that we experience reality.

Marshall Rosenberg is the founder of Nonviolent Communication and in my interviews with him I’ve been reminded that we each choose where we place our attention in every moment. We have been taught to think that we are not free in how we experience reality; we may believe that the words and actions of others cause the feelings that we experience.

In this way we easily become slaves to moral judgment and we focus our attention on receiving rewards and avoiding punishment from teachers, parents, friends, lovers and everyone. Marshall Rosenberg turned it around this way, “People who are in touch with their feelings don’t make good slaves.”

The concept of time is also an authority that we trade our freedom for. To be free from the past and the future is to experience reality without conditions. When habitual tendencies are not present, reality is experienced with a curiosity and openness in the present and not within a closed relationship with the authority of past / future.

Become your own authority. Be free. “Be a lamp unto yourself,” said Buddha. “Do it yourself,” said Ian MacKaye from the punk bands Minor Threat and Fugazi.

Our individual expressions of being free are diverse and independent, yet interconnected. In Man’s Search For Meaning, Viktor Frankl writes, “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom.”

By John Malkin

Sounds of Freedom is my book of interviews with 16 musicians speaking about social change and spirituality including Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, Ani DiFranco, Utah Phillips, The Indigo Girls, Boots Riley, John Trudell, Michelle Shocked and Tom Morello. Sounds of Freedom has an introduction by Thich Nhat Hanh and comes with a music CD with one song from each of the artists interviewed.

Check out Sounds of Freedom at the Parallax Press website: www.parallax.org. I am currently putting together a book about punk rock and spirituality. Please contact me if you would enjoy being involved in this project or if you’d like more information about my writings, interviews or music: jsmalkin@hotmail.com

Perhaps to say that I had crossed the very ethers of time and space and glimpsed a daring look at freedom. Maybe even to have the audacity to say that I and I alone know the true meaning of freedom.

That I have reached that wonderful state of enlightenment that reveals all the answers to mankind’s questions would be a humbling thing to say. However, none of these are me.

I do know that I believe in freedom in many forms and shapes. I believe that my freedom does not necessarily equate to another’s meaning of freedom.

For some freedom is climbing the face of a mighty mountain, or sailing off a cliff into the sky. Perhaps it is but the freedom to wake up each morning to a roof over your head and something to eat. To have the freedom to write words that are not censored or the freedom to write words without fear of reprisal from a dictatorship seen or unseen, but real nevertheless.

I believe I have glimpsed freedom many times. I believe I have seen freedom in the eyes of a child, in the laughter of a young person or in the glimmer of wisdom of one who has lived many lifetimes.

In my own heart I have known freedom and loved freedom and stood for freedom and have taken freedom for granted. Perhaps that is my greatest sin. I have taken for granted that which many hundreds of thousands of people die looking for, hoping for, trusting for and fighting for – freedom.

But real freedom, well I believe I will have to continue my journey through this lifetime and perhaps along the way I will catch a few more glimpses of a wandering soul that has attained true freedom and in that moment perhaps I will grab just a taste of real freedom before I continue on my path.

by Ron Welling
Gladewater, TX USA