Art by Sophie Wilkins
Category Archives: General
“I teach you rebellion! Come out of the masses. Stand alone like a lion and live your life according to your own light.” ~OSHO
Be mindful what you say after you say, “I Am…” Those two tiny words contain powerful magic. ~ Jeff Foster
“Some of us aren’t meant to belong. Some of us have to turn the world upside down and shake the hell out of it until we make our own place in it.” ~Elizabeth Lowell, Remember Summer
Women in India are increasingly turning to women-only taxi services like Mumbai-based Viira Cabs whose female drivers are all trained in martial arts and carry pepper spray and batons. The company is the brainchild of 35-year-old entrepreneur and social activist Preeti Sharma Menon, who wanted to create a service to help women feel comfortable traveling any time of day in a country with a poor record on women’s safety. The trend toward women-only taxi companies in India has grown even more prominent in recent weeks after a reported rape by an Uber cab driver led to the service being banned in New Delhi earlier this month. In discussing the idea behind her business, Menon explains, “I was looking for something new to do and I wanted to do something that would make a difference.” She adds that, in addition to training in self-defense, the drivers also undergo extensive training in driving skills and customer relations since finding qualified drivers was initially a challenge: “[t]he biggest ongoing challenge is that there are no ready women drivers. We have to source, mobilize, train and employ drivers… Our motor school focuses on training women exclusively from low income groups. Viira means brave women, who have been limited to temporary unskilled jobs due to lack of skills and opportunities but have decided to change their lives.” Many of Viira’s drivers are the sole bread-winners in their families and the steady income has helped many rise out of poverty. Raju Chergat, one of Viira’s drivers, says, “Before, my salary was very low, but now my income has gone up – so it makes a difference. I am independent. I am not under anyone’s dominance. I am master of my own will and I can take care of my household.” Mumbai’s women are thrilled with the availability of safe transportation. Sajna Sivan, a regular customer of Viira, says her work as a photographer is easier when she knows she can call for a Viira Cab: “I have lot of late nights. So when that happens I don’t want to randomly take a car with all my equipment. I’d rather get someone with whom I feel comfortable.”
Always inspiring to hear about women helping and empowering each other. Love this.
Thanks to A Mighty Girl for this post.
“And if the captors slave master false news caster and war benefactors knew a love like ours they would go thirsty with their lives and come to us with lost magic in their memory and we will feed them when they come to us on their knees weighed down from weaponry begging forgiveness and water we will share our medicine until they weep at the resemblance of our faces they will remember our names and their numbers will crumble to dust bankrupt, their blood money will be as worthless as their guns.” ~Climbing PoeTree, spoken word duo
Art by Anthony Freda
“It is time for the young women of Mother Earth to step forward into the center of the Sacred Circle in wise, courageous,unified, spiritual action for protecting and preserving all that we hold sacred!” ~Deloria Lane Many Grey Horses, Kainai,First Nation
“We know who we are. We are the dispossessed, the outcasts, and the outsiders, rebels with a cause who have upturned the mulch of our dead lives and seeded those fertile fields with incendiary visions of our future selves. Having already subverted the norm, we renunciate dominator culture’s status quo of everything and drift happily disconnected ‒ babes in the abyss ‒ wavering in the ambiguity fog of dislocation. Free-floating between old worlds and new, guided only by the shining paths of mother evolution. We have passed over, we have passed the point of no-return and since there is no turning back, we celebrate the momentum lifting us on the wings of perception, grace, and whatever skills we have earned from surviving the inevitable catastrophe of self. Only when we are over, does our real life begin.” ~Antero Allli
Thinking of you today John. So grateful for your music and all you did to spread the message of love and peace. May we carry on the torch to victory♥
“If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliche that must have been left behind in the Sixties, that’s his problem. Love and peace are eternal.” ~John Lennon
“Do you know what you are? You are a manuscript of a divine letter. You are a mirror reflecting a noble face. This universe is not outside of you. Look inside yourself; everything that you want, you are already that.” ~Rumi
Thanks to Liane Buck for this one. Beautiful.
Under The Blue Door 