Poems for the Nation – 2

Yesterday we put the spotlight on the collection Poems for the Nation (1999)

Today, we reprint Allen’s contribution to that volume, “New Democracy Wish List”,  (with the full awareness of how it’s, of necessity, dated (both in the specificity of the references and also the progress made on some of the issues – not to mention, the sheer overwhelming cavalcade of data). Reading it in 2025, as against 1993, is obviously a very different experience. However, so much still comes through, so much remains relevant (alarmingly, increasingly relevant) – and, furthermore, it stands as a snapshot of his, both visionary and practical, extraordinarily acute political awareness.

New Democracy Wish List

Retro Axioms

“Progress” ended in the XX century

Hyper-rationalism reduces natural complexity of nature through narrow thought abstraction; Hyper-rationalization, hyper-industrialization & Hyper-technology create chaos.

U.S. command economy subsidizes fossil fuel and nuclear Energy & Science, Agriculture,
Air & Motor Transport, Banking, Communications, Military Industrial Complex, licit and illicit psycho-active Drugs, also rules Mass Media via FCC.
American Free Market is hi-tech myth with national socialist centralized regulation implicit
everywhere except small business & little magazines

Muscle power connected to appropriate high-tech might rehabilitate Earth.

Lacks &  Needs

Fossil fuels retard the planet. Detoxify America: tainted Fire poisons Earth, fouls Air and pollutes Water

Emphasize prevention and alternative medicine with medical insurance rebates for not using Self-insured health credits: like mythic China, “Only pay Doctor when you are well”.

Fund Ryan White Care Act, separate Church and State in Center for Disease Control, fund bleach kids needle exchange and plainspoken AIDS education, build infrastructure of decentralized community based health care preventative medicine early intervention clinics for poverty class disease-prone high-rise teens women & men living with AIDS & TB inner-city plagues

Coordinate National crash program to research inexpensive anti-AIDS medicines.

Separate Church & State in arts, education & civil law. Restore National Endowment for the Arts & FCC freedom from Fundamentalist political intrusion.

Sexuality’s loose not fixed. Legalize it.

Decriminalize addictive drug problem, doctors can cure addiction or provide maintenance if no cure. Reduce mass-million expense on narcotics-addicted political prisoners overcrowding courts & jails. Medicalize drug trade.

Decriminalize marijuana, its disadvantages are minor; reserve hemp grass as unadvertised private small cash crop for failing family farms, encourage hemp fabric industries.

Privatize and entrust psychedelics to medical educational priestly professions. End Military monopoly on LSD research and development.

End tobacco farming subsidies, cut use. Ex-Nicotine lobbyists working in Clinton’s new White House can stop smoking.

Shift agricultural subsidies towards grain beans & vegetable diet. Tax meat as a nutritional  agronomic & economic disaster.

With massive scale reforestation rural & in wilderness plant also universal urban tree rows.

Establish Civilian Conservation Corps for Urban home-steading, thin out corrupt local bureaucracies obstructing populist housing reconstruction.

Encourage international trade in Eco-technology in place of enabling codependency on weapons trade.

Inaugurate National “Limits of Growth” Program for Population/Land Use/Pollution.

Jump start national state & city human and industrial waste compost & recycling.

Honor primary and secondary school teachers, elevate respect, reward educators as handsomely as Plumbers, reduce class crowding to human size, under 15 students; encourage national child-care projects.

Take back money from SLA bankruptcy profiteer goniffs.

Purge military death squad subsidies in Salvador Guatemala, etc. We backed up dictators in Somalia,Liberia,Sudan, Angola, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Salvador, we’re responsible: admit it and then figure ways out,

Open CIA and FBI and NSA archives on Cointelpro raids, Government drug dealing, Kennedy/King assassinations, Iranian Contragate, Panama Deception, Vatican, Hand & Lavoro Bank thuggery, etc, including Bush-Noriega relations and other CIA client-agent scandals.

Open all secret files on J.Edgar Hoover-Cardinal Spellman-Roy Cohn-Joe McCarthy alcoholic Closet-Queen Conspiracy with Organized Crime  to sabotage the U.S.Labor Movement, Native African-American Hispanic & Gay minority leaderships; and blackmail U.S. Presidents Congress each other for half a century.

Get Government Secret Police   (DEA CIA FBI NSA etc.)  off our backs by the next millennium.

January 17, 1993

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