Epilogue
Self-Realization: A Hopeful Future
Once an opportunity has passed, regret is wasted time. However, sometimes I do indulge in such waste. My capacity to creatively administer money did not evolve into opportunities for creating more money, as I was able to do later in life. The time I was given the opportunity by a city administrator to participate in a public-private effort by the City of Tucson I did not make use of it for lack of awareness on how economics really works.
Had I known what I do now, here is what I could have done afterwards without government money: Run a few more Self-Help Housing Groups with the help of banks, since the enthusiasm and the demand was there. The second group we had in line for Self Help Housing never materialized after the City withdrew the funding, but with our past track record, it could have been done without the City. I could have:
- Do an inventory of what was available in Barrio Libre and after getting a contractor’s license, set up a ‘Barrio Construction Company Inc.
- Continue with TBA non-profit Inc. as a training ground by using one of the three remaining lots previously purchased, and with a loan, train, build, sell and use the profits to buy the next lot. The loan would be based on past track record and equity from the land. A nonprofit can receive profits, but they must be put back into the purpose of the nonprofit, not into any personal gain.
- Work an agreement of friendly interaction /competition with Kelly Rollins. As mentioned before, Mr. Rollins had an unusual talent in resurrecting and improving on the physical value of buildings in the Barrio. We all could learn from that, myself included. He also had the will and the resources. I don’t think he was prejudiced by race, only disconnected with those who did not share his economic goals. We could create a mutually acceptable connection, as well as keeping peace in none-shared expectations.
- Appeal to the Advisory Council to secure a private loan for the private Barrio Construction Co. to buy, build and sell. Recruit among the rehab crew, and the self-help housing families and hire top-notch people for key specialties. First one, then two, then several homes at a time, inside and outside the Barrio. 75% of the crew to be Barrio residents.
- Move or expand construction to the foothills. Appeal to all segments of the income scale. Purchase the Adobero yard. Expand the training and education arm through the TBA. To include architects, engineers, accountants, real estate, sales.
- Diversify and expand the company into Adobe restoration and new construction. 75% of the administration and management, and 50% of the work crew to be Barrio residents. Move on to building multiple units.
- Specializing in larger developments and resorts all over Arizona and beyond.
- Based on adobe technology, create a Home-Grown Barrio Builders could expand through the Southeast of the United States and become a source of employment, education, housing, and economic engine to protect and export the good qualities that the Hispanic culture has to offer: Family, Internal Pride, Work Ethics, Enjoyment of life in the present, and jobs well done. As well as creating an environment in which the freedom of upward mobility is not done at the expense of other values, and competition is based on human gains not only on economic/technological goals.
- Diversify in two directions: one cut-throat, aggressive, ambitious goal-oriented real estate sales, and the other a steady, high quality, more conservative Hispanic oriented Company. In this nation, there is plenty of room for both under one banner. Let the individual choose whom to work for.
According to the 20-60-20 Theory, 20% of the rehab crew would flourish in this process and become partners. 60% could end up here or into other fields of endeavor. The last 20%, (or by then only 2%), who knows. Hopefully, they’ll marry a good soul. But I missed that boat, at the age of thirty-four, I was about to start again. This time I would look after myself for a change, but I had learned to share the power.
| Lifting ourselves by the bootstraps and sharing the power.
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New Awareness
“Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. I am not unmindful of the fact that violence often brings about momentary results. Nations have frequently won their independence in battle. But despite temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace.”
– Dr. King
Serious Rambling Afterthoughts
How can a country be defeated? Is anyone doing it now? If so, who?
My experience in the Barrio events, directly and indirectly, changed substantially my liberal views about politics, democracy, economy, liberals, and conservatives, etc., but most of all, it allowed me to look toward the future and better understand why things are not what they appear to be. How there are misleading forces at work and positive forces behind much of what surrounds us. How to uncover an separate them?
While I avoided talking about politics or race while dealing with the TBA, now I don’t mind saying a few things that are highly unpopular. The use of terms like liberal or conservative, will pigeonhole people before you even start a conversation, and is detrimental to discourse because once they are mentioned, everyone thinks they know what you are and where you are going, and they stop listening. Moreover, the term “liberal” does not mean what it used to.
In my perspective, “liberal” has always been and will be, “Tell me what you think, and I’ll try to learn what I didn’t know, for even the simplest of persons may have something to enhance what I already know.” Anyone is free to disagree with that, or to add to it. That is being liberal! In other words, FREE to think.
However, whereas it used to mean “open minded” and “free thinking,” now it has moved towards “intolerant” and “politically correct” which means, “if you don’t think like I do, you are deplorable.” Being liberal as the label is used today is a blatant contradiction to freedom of thought and speech, it is a free pass to distort the truth if it is toward your ideological leanings (FISA court). The term ‘liberalism’ has been hijacked! Today, liberals think to have exclusivity to the truth, their truth, which only they can identify and label it.
I love my independence and I believe in sharing power, which means that I will support and promote the independence of others and their freedom to excel. I may not be super competitive, but I do recognize the extreme value of fair competition, which is of course related to survival. Competition and Sharing Power at the same time is like talking, walking, and chewing gum at the same time. Some people are not capable of it.
I say all of this because after my adventure in the Barrio, it has always intrigued me as to why it is possible that there are intelligent individuals who follow the ideology of big government and the trappings of socialism. It is because of greed and personal gain, or that there must be some value to paternalism? Just because I fail to see the value does not mean it does not exist. Sharing power is not sharing wealth. It means sharing the ability to obtain wealth, power, happiness, safety, freedom, but some people don’t like that. They would rather put that in the hands of the government, as if the Government, even if elected, by definition is always going to come on the side of the people. Mussolini and Hitler both said the same thing, and there were also good people then who waited too long to see what was coming. Jefferson said, “a strong Government that gives you everything can also take away everything.”
Venezuelans at one time thought that Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro were good for the people and the country. Cubans initially thought that Fidel Castro was beneficial. When Adolf Hitler began his power grab, Europe didn’t pay attention. It took these populations too long to realize they were being deceived. You could see the counter wave of reaction slowly, much too slowly, moving across each of those countries, awareness came too late to reverse the damage in progress. These negative changes were real, but the population didn’t listen on time.
Is there any country now being defeated? Is anyone doing it now? In Europe? Latin America? Who? What about the USA? If a country can obtain world power, would they not do it when the conditions are proper, like a weak government, to weaken it further?
I prefer common sense to intelligence and wisdom to intellectual brilliance. The Founding Fathers were very liberal, even radical, they broke with tradition. Today, they are considered conservative and traditional, and irrelevant, all because some were slave owners, the very same malady they had successfully begun to do away with, with the idea that ‘all men are created equal’. Go figure!
The Constitution, a liberal and radical document, created this country in over 200 years for what it is. Today, some people want to change it at will arguing that today the Constitution is irrelevant, unless it is malleable and subject to change at their convenience, convincing others to go back to the old ways of the rule by the Elite, the Estate, or globalization, other people’s idea or how the world should be, which hasn’t worked. The Conservatives, on the other hand, are often stuck in tradition and cry out against every attempt to change, leaving out the innovator, the creative, and the pathfinder. The Republican Party fails in simple things. For example, why do they not establish a task force to go into low-income neighborhoods and promote and facilitate voting with good, solid and simple education about the value of the Constitution, and the value of good economic conditions, and the value of the family?
It is not a happy medium that we need. It is a common-sense-approach to solving old problems in changing times. Conservatives have also not successfully solved a series of social problems, and by standing still they never will. Well-intended liberals have failed miserably in areas they claim to be concerned about, not demanding results. Waggling in promises with no results. As a matter of fact, they create more of what they give lip service to be solving. Unbeknownst to them, liberals are very selfish, while fooling themselves into thinking they are very giving. But worst, many are being deceived as useful idiots. Wake up!
Look at the high crime yesterday in Chicago, Detroit, and San Francisco, decaying cities with long history of control by liberals. All five of the most criminal ranking cities in the United States, and with the most gun control laws, to be only selectively enforced, including Baltimore and New Orleans, have been led by Democrat governors for more than 30 years. This applies to cities, not to states, which exhibit too much of a mix. Is that a coincidence? Illegal immigration may change that. California has reached its peak with real liberalism, but now it is beginning to decline under intolerant liberalism with only a few towns and local regions preserving law and order. The five worst cities in the United States also rank among the 50 cities with the most violent crimes in the world. There must be a clear-cut reason for this. It is not just coincidence that all five happen to be run by Democrat. The United States stands high in the numbers of violence with guns, but remove those cities from the equation, and the United States moves to be among the nations with the least crime with guns. Only five or six Democrat cities can make all the difference.
I challenge community organizers and politicians to think back to the beginning of their careers. What was their agenda then? What is it now? How much have they scrutinized the source of their information, their basics, their facts, their resources, their own and other’s intent, their ultimate goals?
Is Oregon now in decline too? I had intense arguments with the man who took me into his home and taught me about his logging trade. He promoted entrepreneurship. He undertook a trade from which he made millions by hard work and clever negotiations. A man who lends me money when I needed it to buy wheels. He listened politely to my arguments against his livelihood, while I chose carefully at that time the ecological wisdom of my points. He said the “new growth” on the hills, after reforestation, which he did, would be healthier and thicker than the previous lumber, and would help prevent the out of control expanding forest fires, assisting nature itself in other responses to climate, contributing to good ecological health, allowing for all creatures to coexist. We disagreed, but he still helped me. Our arguments became moot one year when I paid him and his family another one of my visits. They were ruined, ‘the powers that be’ had found a nearly extinct spotted owl in the acres and acres of land he now owned, and his property and surroundings was condemned to logging, to cattle grazing, to building any new habitation, to agriculture, and to raising chickens. And just like that, his hard work and wealth went from much to nil. Who is been displaced? So much for “do not Californicate Oregon.”
The power of the owl? Or the power of preserving nature? Is human part of nature? Could there have been better ways to preserve that owl, was it necessary to reverse natural extinction? or was there a hidden agenda in such an irresponsible ecological response?
Is the owl a victim that needs to be saved, and at what expense, or at what solution? How about an equitable replacement? Is this the case of don’t let a crisis go to waste? Kill the logging industry for an owl. Why kill the strongest economic engine of Oregon? Is this anti-economy? Or is the owl really the symbol that will help us save the world? Nature has been extinguishing species by the millions throughout the ages, but if we keep repeating this interference, in the long run, how are we going to eat? Is to make humans an endanger species to make humans the victim and then try to save them from… from whom…? Science by humans is often wrong, always correcting itself, what if it were in fact another ‘natural’ cause of ecology, and man is not the reason for the owls’ demise? And saving it could be creating an irreparable rupture? The road to hell can be paved with good intentions.
Generally, in the United States, the family seem to be disintegrating all over, and the black population has fallen into the hands of greedy self-serving manipulators with a seditious agenda. Despite the many good Democrats, Democrat leadership have rearranged priorities and to them today it is: Power Before Country. China’s money in their pocket before the interest of the USA. (This also applies to many Republicans, just not as many.) There is no sharing power on the Democrat’s side. It is all about control. This malady is percolating all the way down from the top of the agencies that are supposed to keep us safe. Therefore, for me, there is no room in the Democratic Party as it is now. Nor in the Republican Party either, unless they wake up and get rid of the bogus sold-out politicians they also have. None to happen until the Media is shaken up with a balance of power in the press.
Organizing makes you more conscious of the fake efforts, and the long-range implications of issues that cross an invisible line, and flip-flop good values turning them into cruel hooks. Those behind these changes are not many, how to identify them? I have pointed out how at the beginning the Democrats in the City Commission were unanimously in support of the efforts of the TBA to improve the physical side of the Barrio. Then as time went on, when the protection of property and human rights began to be in favor of the individual, and the residents began to increase their power and wealth, the Republicans came to our support, and the Democrats went against us and supported the City Department instead. The Democrats won. This raises the question of wherever so-called minorities are intentionally or accidentally kept as second-class citizens instead of being encouraged to be independent and equal by that party. Is this intentional? How can so many decent Democrats not see these consequences? Can’t we see the envelope of the Government Deplorable Cycle, and the increasing usurping of the nation’s strength through the effort of the enemy from within? Beware of the call for, – and the increasing acceptance – of violence. One party’s acceptance only. Beware when you see fires in in the news in your TV screen.
Republicans, on the other hand, turn the other way and do not look at cleaning their own house first until a crisis blows up in their midst. So much emphasis on the individual doing their own thing, while overlooking when one of their own is stealing, or when a group is being maligned until it hits their pocketbooks. Maybe they are not as street smart as Democrats. They ignore corruption until it is too blatant, or until they are part of it, then they overreact and shoot each other in the foot to eradicate it. Democrats hide corruption and hypocrisy and protect each other better. Yet, Republicans have more benevolent attitude, preferring to personally donate money while Democrats prefer to pay taxes and let the government do the social work. That is simply a difference of priorities, but it is also a difference in effectiveness. However, I cannot in good conscience be a Republican because too many of them are also guilty of indulging in a scheme that benefits themselves under the table before the nation, such as in Foreign Aid funds. In the meantime, others with different intentions are infiltrating to the top and creating mayhem. As a result, the two parties are drifting farther apart, except at the top, through sublimation of goals they both tend to lose their core values equally. Then at the very top, hidden from the public view, they mutually cooperate in private, smile and drink beer together.
Realigning voting districts, further polarizing the two parties, became a mistake. The initial intent to offer a fighting chance to minorities to elect one of their own, has no longer healthy results. To be elected today you must be extreme.
Lawmakers must abide by the same laws they selected for the rest of us in this country. Regrettably, they do not.
Corruption is widespread. Term limits is needed to break the deep hold of power exercised by those with 20 to 40 years term in the same politics. When I started with the Barrio I knew little of economics, even if I managed the government funds wisely. But I gained experience by making the money available grow by the wise use of those it benefited. Common sense. Politicians have none of the business experiences gained by taking economic risks with one’s own money, paying the consequence for mistakes, instead they use other people’s money (taxes) and never hurt for their mistakes. Most people in politics never gain real business knowledge, only in kickbacks from deals they make. We need ethical business people in politics, and term limits.
A tendency towards thinking “globally” is appealing. However, globalization and democracy cannot exist simultaneously. It is like diversity and globalization which cannot coexist either. Don’t we hear the same person, the same writer, talking out of both sides of their mouth? Globalization and socialism go together because power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts undeniably. Individuality and equality in freedom agrees with equity, not with mathematical equality.
Professionals, the architects, planners, etc., should not try to impose on cultural urbanism. Instead, set down the safety laws, provide tools to select from, and let the indigenous develop and update their own environment.
Some people may consider absurd, but it is worth considering that dogmatic obedience to science is trying to displace or replace the dogmatic obedience or even spiritual connection to religion. Instead of accepting both as valuable. Science is used by politicians to try and remove people’s choice using governmental control, like it has been tried with eugenics. Or when the word ‘race’ or racism was originated by scientists trying to scientifically differentiate between looks and build’s in people, calling it race, and look at what a calamity they have created. This is displayed when pro-scientist-oriented individuals become zealots and impose their thinking, same as the typical frailty of religious zealots. It is the human need of spirituality despite their denying it that drives the corrupted to want to replace the one for the other.
America is being fragmented by intent. Our best tool to combat control by the few is our culture, safeguarding individuality, competition, and our Constitution because of the separation of powers.
Community organizers can be a dangerous group. I challenge any organizer to think deeply on what they are doing, how they have been taught, what their agenda really is? What is the result of their actions on their fellow man? Does it lead to Liberty or to Control? And why are we doing what we do? Is the temptation and opportunity to control a good reason for doing so? We need to think more.
My Proposal: Study the two different sets of 13 and 14 rules for organizing and choose if to be part of a problem or part of a solution. To try to build-up power, or to share it, to obtain change. When is authority acceptable, and when to question it?
Evil exists. Reality and corruption interfere. Without balance of powers, the government’s monopoly at all levels will end up being controlled by few strong individuals. The same for the Media. Enhance the spread of evil, or curtail it.
However, the hope for humankind is when the maximum number of individuals are free to be themselves, educated, and competing in a free market. Consensus is the best method for decision making. When an elite group reaches a higher level of knowledge, they try to take over.
I hope you have caught on to the fact that organizers and the established media can be more dangerous and deadly than the mentally insane individual who cruelly shoots into a crowd inside a school, and after some try to blame guns. Groups whose common goal follows Alinsky’s rules in attacking authority, disrupting and destroying the status quo, and replacing the existing form of government by an autocratic one dressed up in fancy names, using good sounding words. Groups like Marxism, Communism, Socialism, Radical Islamic (Sharia Law), and subgroups like Black Power, KKK, Antifa, ACORN, and several Media organizations, etc. They promote the criminal by calling them victims, and when crime increases, call for gun control. Government control. You can tell them apart by their words and mostly actions, their leaders are intending to divide people despite claims to ‘unity’
Let each reader reach his/her own conclusions. I have tried to identify rocks under which to look for the presence of the enemy from within,
I saw in the Barrio’s struggle a smaller-scale version of the world, and the way of using the Rules above.
“Organizer” uses tools at their disposal. If you are reading this, and you find yourself in alignment with, or in support of the rhetoric of any of these groups above, including the Progressive Democrats, for whom freedom is redefined by “… the primary task of the state is ‘creating’ individuals versus ‘protecting’ individuals”, expand your research for information and do some soul searching effort, and consider the long term damage you may be causing in the world.
Joseph Stalin famously said, “Education is a weapon whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and whom it is aimed”, public schools have become a weapon, beware of why they are pushing free college, free pre-K, and free daycare in welfare bills.
The Barrio people, the rehab crew, the self-help housing owners, they all experienced the transformation that results from ignoring assimilation, and instead turning inward to cultural pride, family and country, a renewed self-fulfilling-life, doing what is right, without waiting for leaders or followers, simply active participation with self-determination, teamwork and the true love of a life well lived while maintaining all cultural and religious values, and respecting those of others.
Here is a lightly modified quote from Edgar Allan Poe who said:
“The ninety-nine [human] are with dreams and content. But the hope of the world made new is from the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true.”
To this I add, “I wish you’ll make it your turn, dear reader, to increase the odds and strive to be one of them…, one of the few, and become the many, to share your power and culture with the many in America. Don’t let others fool you and control you.
For a new beginning it is neither right nor left nor center, it is common sense. The world needs you. And never, never give up!”
Now Is Our New Beginning