Alex Paramo

Friends, the final step of the Grand Fantastic Life of DJ Flo Fader (https://www.facebook.com/GFLoDJFF) are at hand. We have some great multimedia content from NYC and New Mexico, we now need your help to get to Savanna and complete this multimedia masterpiece that will stimulate all of your senses. Please click on the link to contribute. We have incentives at every level, when you contribute to our fundraising campaign. Thank you for your support!! Support Local Arts at +Community Publishing and by visiting http://communitypublishing.org/ also on Twitter @CPePublishing

A deeper look into sports as a microcosm of issues in our society. #JoinOurCommunity at http://communitypublishing.org

An incredible goal by Landon Donovan and call by Andres Cantor! Will Donovan had changed US fortunes yesterday? I think so. Read, comment, share my sports blog - (From the Left Field Bleechers) about this issue and the U.S. Soccer team. #JoinOurCommunity at http://communitypublishing.org/

Hey Friends my Blog has moved to Community Publishing's self hosted where all my blogs can be found! The newest blog by out Author Alex Paramo. Please follow, share, love, like...check out our new Website which will contain all of the wonderful blogs including Alex Paramo's - Please subscribe today and #JoinOurCommunity at http://communitypublishing.org

Hello tumblr followers. As many of you know, blogging on various platforms can get quite labor-intensive! Therefore, after careful consideration, I have decided to only blog from WordPress. Please follow me by following the link. Community Publishing will still have a presence on Tumblr through our Week In Review series. I hope to see and hear from you in the near future. Stay tuned for my newest blog series, "Out of left Field" which chronicles the world of sports like never before!

Alex Paramo Don't forget to support your local musicians, and artists of all mediums while promoting literacy in our community - http://communitypublishing.org

Alex Paramo I just read a disturbing article regarding the growing inequality in the United States. Our media has led us to believe that we are ALL having a tough time, during these tough times in this tough time economy. I guess the overt and covert message is that we all need to toughen up, stop complaining and get through this, but a closer look at the situation reveals that we have been once again duped by our corporate-media friends. The fact is that the top 1% in our country have have gained at least $6.1 trillion in the past five years. The media continues to lead us to believe that times are tough and they are but not for everyone. The stock market is worth 50% more than it was 5 years ago. The overwhelming majority of that windfall goes to the wealthiest 7% while the rest of us have seen our "wealth" drop by 4%. In fact, "In 2009 the average wealth for almost half of American families was ZERO (their debt exceeded their assets)." Why is this important you ask? Why should you care if you are firmly entrenched in the middle class with your 9-5, your pension plan and your walled/gated community? Well the income disparity in this country is at all-time high proportions. "Out of all developed and undeveloped countries with at least a quarter-million adults, the U.S. has the 4th-highest degree of wealth inequality in the world, trailing only Russia, Ukraine, and Lebanon." For the rest of us the threat is more immediate. A U.S, Congress composed of millionaires and multimillionaires, has decided to cut some funding for essential programs like; "Meals on Wheels" that helps seniors and the disabled, the Head Start program that helps low-income preschoolers enter the school system at the level of their more affluent peers (not to mention cuts to the food stamp and unemployment programs). While our "elected" representatives cut crucial funding for our nations most vulnerable, they continue to subsidize the oil and gas companies that are recording record profits. They continue to indirectly subsidize Walmart, which refuses to pay it's employees a live-able/fair wage and instead gives courses to it's employees on how to apply for federal assistance. Much of the information cited here was provided by an article written by Paul Buchheit who is the founder of the website: usagainstgreed.org. Who are the Us? When so many of us stand around passively, hoping and waiting for something to change? When so many of Us do not care and turn our backs on the most vulnerable? Who are the Us when so many cannot find jobs and too many of the jobs that are being "created" do not provide a high-school student with a suitable enough salary to pay their bills (never mind a head of house-hold). When everything seems so out of our control? The Us are the We, as in We the People. Unlike many, who unwittingly do the bidding of corporate execs, I am not against government. I believe in government: a government of the people, by the people for the people. The only way to take back our government from the corporate masters that corrupt it is to cut off the hand that feeds it. We need to get the money out of politics, now! Regardless of party, or ideological affiliation, we the people need to unite and reclaim our sovereignty. Until that time we will all be singing the same refrain, best said by the late Michael jackson: they don't really care about us!

"Overcoming poverty is not a task of charity, it is an act of justice. Like Slavery and Apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings. Sometimes it falls on a generation to be great. YOU can be that great generation. Let your greatness blossom.” Nelson Mandela once said,  and this is Mandela's message to my 7 year old daughter and her generation. It is the duty of OUR generation to pass this message on to our children and/or the children in our lives, to help create a society where our kids generation can eradicate poverty by identifying and destroying the root causes of poverty - greed, avarice and the lust for power, that consume the minds of the sociopaths that currently control our society/world. Regular folks can do this by simply caring for each other as fellow humans, and working together for the interests of all rather than for the interests of a few.

So now we stand together as a country at the precipice of disaster. Much like the miscalculation on the effects of climate change (the rate of change/damage is occurring faster than originally calculated) so the rate of decline for the U.S. is occurring at an exponential rate rather than in linear fashion. Fortunately, the Federal Government Child Labor Laws have kept us from jumping off the cliff to our eminent demise thus far but the sentiment to loosen the work restrictions for minors is gaining momentum on the right through the efforts of lunatic conservative extremist groups, no doubt financed by the Walmart's and Koch Brothers and their ideological kin. Below is a photograph taken by Lewis W. Hine of a child worker from his photo-essay Child Labor in America 1908-1912. I encourage you to take a look at these photos and let me know if this is the U.S. that we want to go back to. 

It is time that we have a comprehensive national strategy/plan to bolster up our public education system. A plan that includes leveling the playing field to ensure that every child, regardless of income, has an equal opportunity and access to a top-level, education that includes the Arts and extra-curricular activities. A plan that includes a strategy for developing our current crop of teachers, while also attracting talented individuals who are dissuaded from the profession due to the low pay. A plan that includes funds for parent education programs that would enable parents to sit down and help their children succeed academically. A plan that would place new/emergent technology at the finger-tips of our students. A plan that includes inserting peace strategies/education into the curriculum. Unless we demand increased funding by reorganizing our national priorities, we might have to enlist Olympic runners for our public school fundraisers. I would gladly vote that we take at least half of the military budget to finance the new national education plan and I think you would too.

The devastation, carnage, suffering and waste of resources of war are incalculable. In the U.S., at a time when we should be collaborating on solving issues involving affordable quality education, healthcare, multicultural understanding, and economic justice (to name a few), our leaders are contemplating violence against another nation yet again. Some of our best minds are wrapped up in research at our Universities creating weapons of mass destruction. Our creative minds in the media have been become bankrupt of integrity due to the corporate profit motive. The other guest entertainer at the concert was Mary Gauthier, acclaimed folk/americana musician who sang touching songs of personal suffering, redemption and self actualization. This morning I, like many people in the Albuquerque area, was awakened by the rumbling, determined, violent sounds of thunder. It caused me to reflect and think about how I might feel if my dear, precious Marisol had to wake up in the midst of the chaotic sounds of war: sounds of pain, suffering, death and disaster. I pray that is never to be the case for her, and that no child will ever have to experience that calamity. Unfortunately as I write this, that is the experience for many people around our world, and our country is on the precipice of contributing to the tragic chorus of war. Perhaps we all need to go through a personal transformation, like Mary Gauthier has, and find redemption by demanding from our leaders that they seek alternative solutions to conflict, build bridges of understanding, foster mercy and engender peace.