thanks to jimmy's encouragement, i went out and rocked a poem about gambling and war at cal slam last night. felt very intense and vulnerable. slamming was coo... it's all love there, not as competitive or cutthroat as i imagined it to be. good environment there, it's actually quite chill.

wonderful e-mail from junichi:

"The discrepancies in how we value human lives shows up every day. As of October 14, over 9000 Iraqi civilians may have been killed and at least 20,000 civilians injured in Iraq since the opening of George Bush's war. 329 United States servicemen and 51 British servicemen have died, and 1,815 U.S. servicemen have been wounded. The US is detaining 5000 people in Guantanamo Bay. Since they're not letting in international observers or the Red Cross and since we don't even know some of their names, for all we know, this could be another concentration camp.

In her radio show yesterday, Laura Flanders (weekdays at 10 am, 91.7 FM) pointed out that of the $87 billion of the Iraq and Afghanistan Reconstruction package, only 1% goes to Kabul. Afghanistan would get $800 million and Iraq would only get $20 billion, which is almost 25 times as much. And yet, the populations of the two countries are roughly the same. Today, after decades of war supported by the United States, Afghans are in horrendous shape.

Have we come to the point that believing every life is equally valuable is a revolutionary idea?"

thanks sara for waking me in time for class.