Are there children on this street?
Sylvia Shawcross
Come with me again? Yes? It’s just down this slate-coloured street.
The sun so bright in a blue sky and the clouds white. It is not yet noon and the air is crisp and clean, no longer acrid with the smoke of distant fires and the people are there.
They are like leaves in the winds of autumn, rustling and shifting in all those colours on the grey pavement. Sometimes they cluster together but eventually they become a murmuring, like a flock of birds snaking en masse past the quiet buildings where people used to work and sometimes still do.
They are chanting.
At the beginning the people have been safely corralled to the sidewalks before they march. One side seems draped in rainbows and many wearing medical masks. Strange in a funny way as there is no rain nor smoke and no serious virus whispering at nostrils that we know. They have a few dramatic ones; one a parrot in green with a moustache gesturing —easily understood by those who know how broken one must feel to seek such attention. One with a pink bicycle. She is well known, a plump prostitute for lesbian rights in a flowered skirt. She is in fine fettle and cheery.
They are all mostly white people if that is what you choose to focus on. We didn’t much do that once but now we do again. They have white arms and necks. We do not know who many are because of the masks. Oh, those masks even still. The muting. The broken I/thou. The stranger. The one to whom questions are not asked.
“Trans rights are human rights” they bawl and shriek and shout. Pain is there—amidst the clamouring. They operate with not so much passion as before as if they are tired or they don’t want to be there. They are rigid and serious for the most part. They are the “counter protestors” organized and sent by the unions. By the government. For the hour or so they were there together, a protected small group. In front of them the police from another city stand sentinel. So many police officers. Not our own.
Their anti-protest group was small in number by comparison. Perhaps that is why they left with only a few rainbow-haired stragglers lingering to fight the good fight. They were paid to protest, some would say. The cynical ones. Or the honest ones. Take your pick on which is true. Any opinion on that is as valid as the next. It can only be known that there were not as many for whatever reason.
The other group stayed much longer. The ones who called for the protest and they are massive in number. Their faces open to the free air and there are smiles and sometimes understated anger. No pain. They have not perhaps yet been hurt enough or else they are used to the suffering of life and they can wear it now without deference to victimhood. Many are immigrants. Many are not.
“Leave the kids alone” they chant. “No more silence” they yell. They are all colours of humans. A strange mingling of cultures, religions and heritage. The mennonites in long denim dresses and the muslim women in hijabs. The men are mostly bearded in the way that men make statements now. Pointed or scraggled or fluffed or braided. Long or short or barely there. It is their decoration.
There are children on this street. They are brightly celebratory to be out. Eventually a bit bored, kicking stray bits down the street and playing tag or yawning into their mothers’ skirts.
After the march the lingerers have small skirmishes. “You who have no children are telling me how to raise my children,” yells one. “Trans rights are human rights. Trans rights are human rights.” “Leave the kids alone.” There is some scuffling and a woman is grabbed by the not-from-here police officers and a man rushes in to stop them. He is lead away in cuffs. He tried to help he said.
There is a strange unease because it is as if one side is fighting the other but they are in different battles altogether. As if one was saying ban guns to the other side they’ve actually voted to send off to war. It makes no sense. It never did.
There is a young girl crying in her mother’s arms. We do not know yet why. There are the contagions of rumours and some say that the protests have been unbelievable in Montreal and Toronto. We don’t know yet. We won’t know. We know that mainstream media will not tell us much. They have stopped doing that. They lead always with climate stories and move then through trivia to have us all sophomorically stupid now. We know this.
Most now wait for the ones on the ground with cameras. They tell us truths. They are the only ones to listen to now. As long as we are still able to. Before they are shut down too. We wait for the news. We are isolated from truth like children. But they will not leave us alone. And we are tired again. Like we were before. Tired of the talking heads.
But that is not why we came down this street—to bewail the injustice served like gruel salad to us everyday by a stale media; a cafeteria cook’s fare when we all paid for a gourmet meal. It is there. It is seen. It is experienced. It is what it is. No. We came down this street to see what you did not see.
Which side of the street did you pick to walk on?
Don’t tell me now. I led you down the middle.
There is no one there much except six horses snorting and foaming a bit at one point. The mounted police on their backs rigid with authority watching. The horses were more bored than the children and simply wanted some oats and a green field. They were there against their will. What did they care for all of this? The coloured clusters of humans making noise. They probably knew more than we all did.
We came down the street to see what you did not see. I led you down the middle. That is where love lives. Love lives in the in-between.
It is all being done in the name of love. Love for the children on both sides.
Love lives in the in-between. That is the best place to meet. We used to talk to each other there. Once.
Love lived in there when viruses raged and people were certain they were right and others were wrong. Love lived lonely there when wars were raging and wherever the people faced each other in passion and in pain. Love lived in the silence of truths not spoken when lies were louder. Love lived lonely there. And it still does. Love lies in the in-between. Can you not see this? I did not take you down this street for you not to.
That’s where love lives except perhaps for the horses which was a slavery. If you must walk in the middle do not strive to be a horse with a soldier on your back who can only dream of green fields.
Written concerning the 1MillionMarch4Children, Ottawa, Canada 20 Sept 2023 which was a parental rights protest and not an anti-trans protest for the record. Meanwhile, the UN Security Council had a meeting. So here’s an earworm. Did I do this before? Probably.
Quote for the foreseeable future (Thankyou moneycircus)
History says, don’t hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope & history rhyme.So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that further shore Is reachable from here,”
Visit my substack if so inclined.
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And there are so many other kinds of “children” which are missing from where they used to be.
World Animal Day: These Iconic Endlings Remind Us of All the Species that Still Need Saving – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization
By utilizing social media so much we are *missing* a huge opportunity to reach those many people who are still uneducated about the tyranny of Covid. (Thanks to the commenter, Penelope, on this site, for helping catalyze me to use printed material to put in the hands of people.) We need to remember that most people are still in the dark about the horrible agenda unfolding. And many of these people are not ‘dialed in’ to the few alternative sites that tell the truth. Our social media posts are falling on the ears of the already converted—that is, if they reach any at all due to censorship and shadow banning.
The solution is ‘simple’: We need to put printed material in the hands of people. I urge you to start by ‘simply’ printing and passing out the brochure whose link is below. And I encourage you later to consider making your own brochures on other topics; below I give you some ideas for doing that. Passing out brochures *in person* is satisfying. And it *does* reach those who have never heard of the countervailing ideas on the Covid/masking tyranny. I think if you read the brochure you will see it does a good job of being provocative and informative. The material may not be ‘news’ to you and I, but I assure you most people you hand a brochure to will have never heard of these facts.
The *ready-to-print* 4-page brochure uses material from Off-Guardian and other sources to demolish the lies and propaganda around Covid and masks. (see bottom of this comment on where to download). A good bit of the material is from the Off-Guardian piece, “40 Facts You Need to Know: the Real Story of Covid”. The Off-Guardian ’40 Facts’ article is, by itself, earth-shattering to those—most people!– who have been kept in the dark by the lying mainstream media. As the Off-Guardian says, ‘Facts Really Should Be Sacred’. Be proud you are putting in people’s hands material which help to crumble the putrid lies and distortions of the Global Predators. Maybe Orwell said the following or maybe he didn’t, but it is worth repeating because it is true: “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” See below why a physical brochure can do things a post on social media often cannot do.
You can pass them out to those you pass by or who are next to in a shopping line, etc. Brochures can be distributed clandestinely, too—in mailboxes, on doorsteps etc. And you can mail them—even anonymously–to friends, acquaintances and others for whom you can find a mailing address. Mailing anonymously to some may help to overcome the cognitive dissonance many have, because without knowing who sent it the recipients can then more easily absorb the content rather than conjure up old baggage or judgments from the past concerning the sender.
You can use this brochure as is, or modify or excerpt it. I also encourage you to consider making your own brochures or leaflets in the future about different topics that you know people need to understand regarding the unfolding tyranny. There are so many good writers here in the comment section. Please use your passion and writing ability to put your words on paper and then literally into the hands of others. Even if you’re not ‘a writer’ you can make a powerful brochure by copying and pasting great posts of others you’ve found on twitter or telegram or Off-Guardian, etc. You don’t need to pass out *hundreds* of brochures—even a handful is a blow against this tyranny. Do whatever you can, whenever you can. Carry some copies with you wherever you go and leave them in an opportune place or with someone who appears receptive. It is very satisfying to know there is a chance the recipient will learn something important. Especially when you contrast that with the ‘void’ of talking ‘into’ social media where we often are preaching to the converted.
Besides, social media are censoring and ‘shadow banning’ many posts from ever being seen by many, or any. Even ‘followers’ are often not seeing posts you make. Therefore, passing out brochures can be a ‘radical’ way to reach others. This applies especially to those glued to the Vegas-like screens while scrolling endlessly as if in a hypnotic trance. Indeed, as commenters in Off-Guardian have pointed out, almost the entire population seems unable to look up from their screens and engage with the world around them. They truly do appear to be in a trance. Handing a brochure to them might be a small, or even large, act of liberation.
With all the flashing lights and sounds of our smartphones & computers we may have forgotten the power of the printed word on real paper in the hands of those who need it. We need to ‘push the envelope’ here because the clock is ticking. You will be a ‘publisher’ by printing a brochure. Tried and true. Tangible. Hot off the press. Leaflets and manifestos have started revolutions. It may turn out that social media, while enlightening, may be seducing us into staying inside a social media *box*, bereft of real contact with real people (and where we are monitored). Weren’t all past revolutions and social change catalyzed by people-to-people, face-to-face and through the printed word on paper that we held in our hands? A physical brochure is not the same as another brain-fatiguing email out of a hundred emails that are unopened in one’s inbox. Having a brochure brought home to read is a respite from emails and it is a recipe for revolution. Yes, it costs money to print brochures. But spending money on actually reaching people—rather than talking into the echo chambers of social media—is extremely satisfying. In fact, you could say this is one of the best ways to spend money at this mind-boggling time when psychopaths are instituting worldwide high-tech slavery and depopulation.
Of course, it doesn’t have to be ‘either/or’: using social media or passing out brochures. It can be both. So please *supplement* your valuable time with periods where you pass out brochures instead of doing everything on social media.
The 4-page brochure can be downloaded as a *ready-to-print* PDF from my google drive here:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1DsowCSh5KJXlIjNB2IOdVw2cn_ezn9ue?usp=sharing
You can print it double-sided on one sheet of 11×17 (A3) size paper and fold it once to make a 4-page brochure. Or if printing on 11×17 is inconvenient then it can be printed double sided on two pages of regular printer paper, and stapled. The following Substack has the brochure copy but it is in Substack’s format so it is not ‘ready-to-print’. But with some work it can be made ‘ready-to-print’ if for some reason the google drive link above is not working: https://passoutbrochuresfightthepower.substack.com
Sorry to be my usual negative self, but the difficulty of passing along any information in any format to those who have no inkling what lies behind the current narratives and events is simply that, since they haven’t already discovered what’s going on they have no reason to put greater credibility into this alternative information.
Nor do they have any basis for assuming alternate views have greater credibility than the prevailing narratives. If they’ve already accepted official narratives, simply telling them these narratives are misleading could not possibly convince them.
This is the dilemma most of the articles that have appeared on OffG either hint at or state outright. No one has found a way to shake them out of their lethargic acceptance of official narratives – and this is the essential first step toward enlightening them as to what’s actually happening.
This is not so much an information battle as it is an existential battle. It’s not so much about telling them what they need to know as convincing them there’s much more out there they need to know – and convincing them to start looking.
You make some good points, and the task is indeed daunting. I would be interested to hear what you have to say after you read the 4-page brochure referenced in my post elsewhere here. I believe there is material there that can, to use your words, “shake them out of their lethargic acceptance of official narratives”. (that is, shake *some* of them. Many cannot be shaken.) And that some people would indeed be “convinced there’s much more out there they need to know, and to start looking”. Why? Because I wrote it well enough to be provocative and by using the words from really fine material from great sources, including OffGuardian. Most people being handed the brochure will never even have heard of the OffGuardian. The brochure would be their first exposure to it. That is a good thing and worthy of pursuit.
Remember, most people have never even heard there is another narrative. All most people have had is the sanctioned convid1984 narrative. So it is difficult to fault them when they live in a sea of lies and propaganda. I do, however, know people who would never be curious to open themselves to anything alternative—in other words, the hopelessly brainwashed. But not everyone is like that. There are many who are brainwashed—but not *hopelessly* brainwashed
Furthermore, giving people a brochure or newspaper with alternative views simply hasn’t been done by many of us, including you I assume. (I did it when I was in high school and it did have a huge effect.) You and I and the others here on this forum spend most of our time conversing with each other. I suggest you print out my ‘ready-to-print’ brochure and distribute it in various ways: clandestinely on door steps, or mailing it (anonymously or not), etc. And/or make your own brochure that uses your considerable writing talents (I’ve been an admirer of your other posts).
The point is: to try, Howard. Don’t jump to conclusions it will fail without having ‘run the experiment’ and don’t throw in the towel without having tried.
Andy Grammer with the PS22 Chorus
https://youtu.be/KL9qp0FNEzU
Good mushrooms yeah !
Thank you Sylvia, for words of hope in the midst of insanity, and for the wash of goodwill and hope (and love) you provide.
Yes, many (all?) of those leading the trans protests are paid agents, small in number but well organised, well funded and well publicized. And with plenty of clout in shaping policy. But what of their, shall we call them, “followers”? They also are few in number, true, but they are not paid. What are they? Some are just angry, some are inveterate seekers after what passes for pleasure or for thrills in this crazy world, some have been brainwashed, and some are confused even to the point of mental illness. What do we say to them? How do we treat them when we encounter them? As fellow human beings. And then there are the “gender confused” children and the teenagers growing up in the midst of this insanity; my husband is a high school teacher and has seen their numbers rising. Whatever we may say of the adult leaders and their adult followers, this is not the children’s/teenagers’ fault. What can save them from this madness? Can our love for them do it? If not, then nothing — short of direct divine intervention (for which I pray) — do so.
The time to save the children is long since passed. That time was thousands of years ago, when the devilish idea of hierarchy, power and rulership first reared its ugly Hydra heads. That was when all the heads of the Hydra should have been lopped off; but it wasn’t. And now it’s too late.
Now the maniacs are fully in charge of humanity. Not the trannies or any such silliness. But the scientists, who are now free to pursue maniacal horrors unchecked.
They’ve created a human-pig hybrid – ostensibly to harvest organs; but the creator says it won’t work – but it’s a good base to build on. (I could link to the article in globalresearch.ca but I won’t – it’s too disgusting.)
If there’s a devil, he wears, not horns, but a white lab coat splattered with the blood of untold innocents.
If you feel you must or need to take the attitude that all is hopeless, you can do so. As for me, I will continue to try to defeat evil (and ignorance…and despair) with love and good will. Call me a fool if you like.
The maniacs will, of course, self-destruct in the end because their multitude of dystopias cannot and will not work. The problem is all the damage they’ll do until then.
Propaganda, Eugenics, Gender
There is no protest. Never has been, never will be. It’s all a ruse.
I discovered this Tuesday afternoon while visiting a 91 year old acquaintance who was watching TV (which is what all 91 year olds do except for the joggers). She was watching (on our very own Harford County, MD TV station) a re-broadcast of the July 4th Parade.
That’s when it hit me: I stand alone in my hatred of parades. I hate, despise, detest, abhor, even eschew them. But all 8 billion others on the planet Love A Parade. Except there can be just so many parades in a year. So what do they do? just send their longing begging the rest of the year?
No! They found a way around the problem. They have a protest! Anything – everything – is protestable. Any excuse for a parade. A Trans Parade; an Anti-Trans Parade – you name it, the more the merrier. Come one, come all – to the
ParadeProtest.And in honor of my epiphany at the July 4th Parade this past Tuesday Oct 3rd, here’s a song (which I won’t hear because the sound on my $150 refurbished computer died Wednesday evening at 9:59 P.M).
The Moody Blues – “Tuesday Afternoon” (Official Video) – YouTube
Thanks for referencing me, Sylvia.
The quote is from Seamus Heaney’s The Cure at Troy, after Robert Fitzgerald, a translator and interpreter of the Greek classics.
Words are how ideas cascade down the generations.
‘We do not know yet why. There are the contagions of rumours and some say that the protests have been unbelievable in Montreal and Toronto. We don’t know yet. We won’t know. We know that mainstream media will not tell us much. They have stopped doing that. They lead always with climate stories and move then through trivia to have us all sophomorically stupid now. We know this.’
There is a very simple consequence to this truth, Sylvia Shawcross: organise a mass disengagement from the MSM. If you never look at the MSM, you won’t worry about whether or not they report on what is important to you. You will find alternative sources who DO.
It’s very unhealthy to rant and rave about what the MSM ought to be doing when you have no power to change what they actually do do. There are very few people indeed who can do that: Rupert Murdoch is one, a few other billionaires also have the power.
I refuse to watch BBC news and have done for several years. They all travel all over the world yet tell us all that the green crisis means that we should all forgo air travel forevermore. They actively promoted the Covid19 genocide, led by the execrable geography graduate, Hugh Pym. They lie about the weather, about climate, about science. And they ban you if you stand up to their lies, just like the Guardian did and still does.
I won’t be going back to the BBC news, because they are an organ of the Deep State. I won’t be going back to the Guardian because American neo-cons don’t sell their newly acquired outfits to ‘communists’. I won’t be returning to papers that say that £200bn for an upgrade to nuclear weapons is value for money but £50bn is too much for a new railway. I won’t be paying a single penny to newspapers that cover up the £300bn scamdemic fiscal criminality and now try to sing ‘Happy Days are Here Again!’
The time for forgiveness of the MSM is past. 9/11 showed their true colours, the 2008 financial crash showed the leopard hadn’t changed its spots, the Covid scamdemic showed that they will never change.
They must be ignored and hopefully their fiscal solvency will disappear with it.
In my opinion there are two ways to look at what you are discussing here. One way is your way, which is certainly viable and useful: ignore the sources of the problem if you have not power to change them, and focus on other things where you do have power to influence (correct me if I have made a wrong assumption.)
The other way is to be a warrior that points out problems at their source in an effort to get more people to see what it is you are pointing out. If we lived in a world with a huge volcano in the middle of our island, that everyone knew about, but could do nothing about, certainly you would not spend miserable day after miserable day complaining about it. But if you lived on that island where only a quarter of your fellow inhabitants knew about the dangers of the volcano, and the other 3/4s didn’t, but were continuously being influenced by it without being aware of its dangers, you might spend some time trying to convince them there is a problem building the village directly underneath it thinking its mild warmth was a good thing.
Maybe not a good analogy, but I tried.
I definitely believe beating a dead horse is not the only way to effectuate change, but I for one have decided to continuously beat that horse with the hope that more people see it is laying there dead in the street. Maybe this is pointless, and you know what, it probably is. But I can’t think of any other way to live with myself.
FWIW, I agree with you on this one. So many of us only wish to hear the truth – but the truth is only true in reference to the lies. We need to know both the truth and the lies in order to determine the strategy behind the lies.
It isn’t so much what the MSM says as it is how they say it that’s calculated to influence people. We already know they seek to appeal to some deeper something in people – after all, “news” per se simply goes in one ear and out the other. It’s the job of the news media to make people care about the “news.”
“The other way is to be a warrior that points out problems at their source…”
Warrior??
In newspeak maybe
We have to do our duty. If we know there is a dark hole or dangerous volcano near we warn people 3 times. Plight done.
If people dont react, we start building Noah’s Arch again to get away from the shithole ourselves, and we have every right to do so.
I am part of a (very small) group that protests on a major throughfare in Victoria, BC, every week in front of two mainstream media buildings with logos showing. We are acting as town criers. At the top of many posters – “Did media inform you of this?” then headlines about one of the many major issues of our dark time completely ignored by mass media. Other posters – about the tyranny that is the endgame of censorship. We all wear tulip buttons, representing an individual commitment to freedom of speech, right of assembly, right to information, etc., etc.
The ratio of thumbs up to middle fingers up grows every week. Fast enough? Probably not. Many people now thank us as they pass, shout “Keep doing what you’re doing!” (By the way, this is not ALL that we are doing.) Does this help? Is there passive activism? Does passive ever become active? I don’t know. I simply know that we who are there agree that we must continue.
Thank you for your efforts and I am one of the thumbs up and horn honking supporters.
Thankfully there is the National Post newspaper -that has comments that are broad and critical of the vax,the Government,US proxy war, gender identity and trans issues.And,today I found out there were critical comments in the Vancouver Sun-on BC ‘s reinstatement of mask mandate requirements in all healthcare facilities.A CTV poll-another Canadian msm outlet- posted a poll and 89% said they would not be getting a booster for the new variant.
They will get the booster. They are just trying to put pressure on the government to get $100 for doing it.
Its typical for the sheeple to blackmail their governments threatening to infect the entire global vaccinated population if they dont get a buck out of it.
What can a government do? Just asking.
Tom: regarding your good words “you might spend some time trying to convince them there is a problem… with the hope that more people see it”, please take a look at my post above (https://off-guardian.org/2023/10/06/are-there-children-on-this-street/#comment-632078) which encourages people to try and convince others using a tried-and-true method but which method has been sidelined due to the mesmerizing appeal of social media.
‘Tom’ should be ‘Todd’
I think your analogy is a very good one, Todd.
I live in Iceland, and we have had three years in a row of earthquake spells, some of which are followed up by volcanic eruptions – the last one was this year, and not very far from Reykjavik either…
Scientists are pretty much agreed that the peninsula, near which Reykjavik is situated, is on a tectonic divide, half of which wants to go to America, and the other half to the European continent.
We are reckoned to be well overdue for the next of the estimated regular, really-serious 100-year quakes recorded in history, but nobody really knows what will happen.
The island’s capital is notorious for having been established in a rather stupid place…
Icelanders don’t worry about it, because it has been an underlying threat since the first settlements here, but at least they do know about that threat, and therefore seem to know how best to prepare for any emergencies that may occur.
Even the otherwise craven media don’t hesitate to point out the dangers – and they even seem proud of their Icelandic coolness in the face of potential catastrophe, but, as you say, the job of warning people is accomplished as a priority.
Houses are well built, and our type of earthquake is rarely stronger than 5 on the Richter scale (which is still pretty nasty, and does have some repercussions on buildings, although they don’t actually fall down…), but the last series of regular quakes this year really began to get on my nerves.
The first one or two, okay.
But when they come at half-hour intervals for a week – all day and all night, your self-possession begins to melt and your body begins to react.
With some people, a certain amount of panic ensues, but with me, I find myself getting angry – pointlessly, of course.
Now to get back on topic, the last three and a half years constitute a very long time for people to be living with great underlying mistrust and uncertainty with regard to where the world we live in is headed.
Which makes your determination to warn and warn seem like the only possible thing to do – especially since we are not only talking about the whims of powerful Nature here, but about uncertainty which has been deliberately inflicted upon us by manipulation and deception, and already at great and obvious cost.
To my mind, this is the most horrible crime imaginable.
MSM, for all intents and purposes, is State media, a branch of Government.
Ignoring the mass media, the politicians, the government, all of them fucks is a given. Prerequisite. But that’s only the first step. Exiting this putrid society. The next step is starting a new life, based on anarchy as opposed to hierarchy. Abandoning the concept of authority and interacting and transacting on a horizontal basis.
For that, people have to change within. It’s not a societal change. It’s a spiritual change. People gotta grow some balls, become self-reliant, self-confident, learn to function as independent individuals, as opposed to being nondescript societal units.
Protest per se is ridiculous. Fuck protest. What are people protesting? The fact that authority orders them to do something they don’t like? Well, fuck authority! Who needs authority! Protest implicitly puts one in an inferior, subordinate position.
“Give em bread and circuses and wire, and wood, and bricks and cement, so they can build walls between each other”
Is that a true quote.?