Theirs Smoked filled plays Behind closed doors Where there is no room In the halls of power Fore the wrest of us Relegated to copping democracy Round the public square
This protest poem deals with the reality that lack of transparency and accountability in government obliges citizens to apply political pressure through protests, demonstrations, and nonviolent civil disobedience. Sometimes justice demands circling city hall and other halls of power for around whole to fit in a public square. I am particularly proud of the “copping democracy” phrase subject to double meaning. Law enforcement is often poorly trained and cops bad attitudes toward nonviolent citizens exercising their first amendment rights and petitioning for redress of grievances. Judges and courts are often poorly equipped and acculturated to treating nonviolent protesters as more than common criminals. Our criminal justice system exacts a disproportionately high cost upon conscientious citizen protesters actively working to right wrongs in our government and communities. This disproportionately high cost on highly politically engaged activists stymies the vitality of our democracy and reinforces systemic injustices. May we learn to value the vital role protest and resistance play in actualizing a vital democracy.
POEM: Innocence — An Owed In A Sense Her innocence Was immune to their dis ease As be wilder And a tempt However tempered Only to be Dis missed As just A guile His innocence Deified awe bravery In the face Of accusations summoned As subdude As never a cur to them Posing the quest in Guise will Be guise Her bosom leaped […]...
POEM: Breath of Fresh Heir Each mourning Brings that which is light Though wanting to rest As the whirled spins under my feet I am Still Razed Too my feat Standing on Perhaps a singular word Mysteriously helled Together In God-ordained gravity Until that thirst Breath of fresh heir As awe is knew This poem is about coming out of […]...
Today, the Mitt Romney campaign held a “victory” rally at the Seagate center in downtown Toledo, Ohio. Top Pun ran into a mitt-full of cards as the Romney campaign drew a full house; but, as the rain fell, Top Pun declared victory is he drew a royal flush from the Romney campaign, being banned from the event even though possessing a ticket and a media pass. As the rain fell, Romney supporters lined up two by two around their concrete ark, hoping to save themselves from extinction. As the Romney-ites waded patiently to see their would-be monarch, I could tell by the many white faces that this wasn’t the servants entrance! Of course, there were many tanned Romney-ites, but most seem to have vacationed South, or had a tad freaky spray-on or tanning booth tan — perhaps emulating their feckless leader. Even given the many wet backs that were present, few would be mistaken for Latino. The only African-Americans I saw near the Romney lineup were button and T-shirt vendors.
Of course, across the street, there was an anti-Romney protest that was much more colorful! One protester even wrapped themselves in the flag, a gay pride flag, that is. Not wishing to be restrained by the designated “free speech zone,” I protested outside the box. I took the opportunity to walk back and forth on the sidewalk alongside the Romney lineup (with few unusual suspects), of course, with my signs:
The Romney crowd, perhaps not so surprisingly, responded with vitriol. At one point I chanted, “Can someone give me a nice hello, and end of this ugly vitriol.” One woman asked me if I even knew what a blind trust was. I trust that she did. Many in the Romney lineup told me to go to the other side of the street; I suppose in some attempt to keep like with like, and perhaps, hate with hate?! As I walked up and down the so-called Romney side of the street, even a sheriff’s deputy told me to get on the other side of the street. When I told him that I knew my rights, and that walking down the public sidewalk and not blocking the public sidewalk was simply exercising my free speech, the sheriff deputy responded: “Would you be walking along here if this were an Obama event?” I told him that if this Romney event were not happening, that I would have been in Bowling Green protesting the Obama campaign event (likely with a drone and anti-war message). He told me again that I could not be on the side of the street. When I persisted in claiming my first amendment free speech right to be there, he said that I was becoming disorderly. I turned and walked the other way, continuing to walk back and forth, but keeping an eye out for him and his comrades. The saddest part of this encounter is that the sheriff deputy was apparently proscribing a particular type of free speech — like free speech depends on whether you support Romney, Obama, another, or nobody at all!
The most popular response from the Romney crowd was: “Get a job,” often with some ‘hippie’ or ‘cut-your-hair’ comment thrown in for good measure. Occasionally, I responded with “I have a job; in fact, I am self-employed, I created my own job.” Sometimes I might throw in “I even left a government job,” but nary a poker face yielded any approval. Once, when a Romney-ite was particularly uncivil to me, and I requested that we at least be civil, a woman in the crowd showed approval. I did experience two Romney-ites threatening violence. The first was when I overheard a man say to the crowd, “Do you want me to beat up the hippie?” I asked him if he was threatening violence to me and he said, “It’s an offer.” The other person, a man, or perhaps man-wannabe, said “I’ll beat your face in.” I asked him if he was threatening violence to me and he said, “Yes.” I asked him if he’d like me to call law enforcement over and he said, “Yes.” Well, his bully talk didn’t faze my walk. Just goes to show, you can usually rely on the general cowardice of humankind (human-unkind?).
On this rainy day, God rained on the just and the unjust. Most of the Romney-ites hugged the publicly financed Seagate center rationally seeking shelter so as to not tax their dry wits. And, since the first shall be last and the last shall be first, I joined the Romney-ites, the end of a long line. I had secured online the night before my ticket to the event Being practically soaked to the bone, having paid my dews in the open streets, the ink was running on the ticket that I had printed out and the scanner failed to read it. I was told to wait for a higher power. What more irony could I ask for then cryptic ink running on a ruinous ticket. Of course, not relying on serendipitous irony, I had brought a brown manila envelope containing my tax returns for the last 10 years (actually, which are heavily redacted blank sheets of paper). Knowing that airport-like security was to be the order of the day, security personnel would likely ask me to open this envelope. Then, I would respond that I was hoping that if I gave Mitt my tax returns then maybe he would give me his. I knew that this would probably not be satisfactory, and my alleged tax returns would be declared a security threat and the irony would be complete! In the meantime, while I was waiting for a boss-man’s stamp of approval for entrance, the young man with a scanner, the first line of security, saw that I had registered by name as “Top Pun,” and he asked me for some ID. I showed him my media pass (shown below) and my driver’s license. I told him that I was the soul proprietor of the business, that I wrote a blog, and that I was going to report on this event. He asked me what kind of business it was. I told him that I make things like buttons and T-shirts, pointing to my mission statement emblazoned on the media pass and business card, “Maximizing Prophets.” He didn’t seem to have anything to say to this. Just then, a man came out and said that the doors would be closed and locked, so if you wanted to get in, get in now. The young man with a scanner tried to scan my ticket again and it worked! I went through the two sets of doors and got in a short line for their main security check. However, as I waited in the security line, another man told the dozen or so of us waiting at security that the fire marshal said they were full and we had to leave. We went outside. After a little while, someone came back out and said that we could go in again. Again, I got in the security line. Just as I had emptied my pockets and the woman at security asked about the brown manila envelope, a sheriff deputy called me back through the set of doors. The sheriff deputy instructed me that the event organizers would not let me in their event. There it was: I was officially uninvited from the Romney victory rally. Be the change you want to see in the world. Now, if we could only all get uninvited from a Romney victory rally…
I am finally uploaded a new batch of Occupy Wall Street designs. This batch of 125 political designs is mostly Occupy Wall Street designs, but there are also a large series of “stop socialism” designs, a large series of Fox news parodies, and a new line of designs: vegetarian. I still have hundreds of other designs made that I still need to upload, so stay tuned.
The designs below are linked to button products, but each of these designs is available in all of Top Pun’s products such as T-shirts, bumper stickers, mugs, magnets, key chains, sticker sheets, posters, and caps.
If you like what you see, you can check out all of my political designs, which also include more Occupy Wall Street related designs.
Gandhi Quote: First Ignore, Then Laugh, Fight, Win – POLITICAL BUTTON
This afternoon, protesters gathered outside the federal courthouse in Toledo Ohio as one of hundreds of protests Across the United States to bring awareness to the travesty of corporate personhood. The nationwide protests were sponsored by MoveToAmend.org. Move to Amend seeks a constitutional amendment which bans corporate personhood and reserves First Amendment rights for human beings. Most of the Toledo protesters were from Occupy Toledo, which cosponsored the protest. While the temperatures were in the teens, the protesters received warm responses from passersby in automobiles and trucks. There was an explanation of the purposes of Move to Amend as well as Mic checks and singing. Pictured below is me, the one and only Top Pun, holding my hand made signs — made by a human, not a corporation.
Top Pun in front of federal courhouse in Toledo, Ohio, at Move To Amend protest sponsored by Occupy Toledo
Below you can see a group of the protesters who braved the cold on a January Friday afternoon with a winter storm warning in effect.
Move to Amend Protesters
Please join us at Move to Amend Toledo or Occupy Toledo, or your own local or regional chapters of these groups, to bring an end to corporate personhood and reestablish humans as the appropriate and preeminent power in this nation. Thanks!
It’s “We the People”, not “We the Corporations.” Well, perhaps, for now, it’s “Wee the people!” But hang on, the people are pissed off, and the meek are getting ready. We are in fact the people we have been waiting for. Corporations never have and never will be our saviors. At best, they are tools… for people to use to better humanity as the people see fit, for the people’s benefit.
I am encouraging all the people of these United States to join in the effort to abolish corporate personhood through direct democracy. One national organization helping lead the way in abolishing corporate personhood is MovetoAmend.org. Here is a snippet from their website:
“On January 21, 2010, with its ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons, entitled by the U.S. Constitution to buy elections and run our government. Human beings are people; corporations are legal fictions.
We, the People of the United States of America, reject the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United, and move to amend our Constitution to firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights.
The Supreme Court is misguided in principle, and wrong on the law. In a democracy, the people rule. We Move to Amend.”
Here’s the Move to Amend amendment they propose:
Move to Amend 28th Amendment
Section 1 [A corporation is not a person and can be regulated]
The rights protected by the Constitution of the United States are the rights of natural persons only.
Artificial entities, such as corporations, limited liability companies, and other entities, established by the laws of any State, the United States, or any foreign state shall have no rights under this Constitution and are subject to regulation by the People, through Federal, State, or local law.
The privileges of artificial entities shall be determined by the People, through Federal, State, or local law, and shall not be construed to be inherent or inalienable.
Section 2 [Money is not speech and can be regulated]
Federal, State and local government shall regulate, limit, or prohibit contributions and expenditures, including a candidate’s own contributions and expenditures, for the purpose of influencing in any way the election of any candidate for public office or any ballot measure.
Federal, State and local government shall require that any permissible contributions and expenditures be publicly disclosed.
The judiciary shall not construe the spending of money to influence elections to be speech under the First Amendment.
Section 3
Nothing contained in this amendment shall be construed to abridge the freedom of the press.
Let’s abolish corporate personhood and end of the reign of legal fictions over our political and social life in these great United States, great because of the strength of its people, and great because laws can serve people not people serving legal fictions.
Top Pun's mission is to maximize prophets. Top Pun creates serious, funny, and seriously funny peace and justice designs which are available on your choice of
products such as buttons, T-shirts, and bumper stickers. Top Pun blogs to highlight additional facets of his word artistry such as pun-filled poetry and funny political satire, free posters, as well as political actions of local and global importance -- and don't forget the noncommercial, public health radio show available online, Just for the Health of It . Top Pun's serious playfulness ever reminds us that justice is no yoke, and the pun is mightier than the sword!
Sometimes justice demands circling city hall and other halls of power for around whole to fit in a public square. I am particularly proud of the “copping democracy” phrase subject to double meaning. Law enforcement is often poorly trained and cops bad attitudes toward nonviolent citizens exercising their first amendment rights and petitioning for redress of grievances. 
Judges and courts are often poorly equipped and acculturated to treating nonviolent protesters as more than common criminals. Our criminal justice system exacts a disproportionately high cost upon conscientious citizen protesters actively working to right wrongs in our government and communities. This disproportionately high cost on highly politically engaged activists stymies the vitality of our democracy and reinforces systemic injustices. May we learn to value the vital role protest and resistance play in actualizing a vital democracy.
![Globalize THIS - RESISTANCE [earth graphic] POLITICAL BUTTON](http://toppun.com/Political/Globalize-THIS-RESISTANCE-earth-graphic.gif)
