Standing Up for Home: No More Kings

Today while I am physically thousands of miles away from home, in my heart and soul, I am right there in the middle of Los Angeles,  standing prayerfully, proudly, mindfully and lovingly amid countless friends and colleagues - ordinary folks of great courage -  who push back against the tide of cruelty and oppression that rises around us.

I have been here on the Animal Defenders International Wildlife Sanctuary in South Africa for the past few weeks to learn more deeply about the dynamics of manifesting compassion in our everyday lives. I have been here to quiet my mind and listen to the whisper of the grasslands and her community of creatures and to breathe in the strength and resilience of the Earth that we all need as we engage in this struggle for nothing less than her survival and our own.

Here, standing on the soil of rural Africa, I feel the vibrant reality of the profound and truly mysterious connection that weaves all of us together. I recall the bizarre and miraculous story of a huge circus lion whose family had just been torn away from him.  Ignoring his grief and rage, his panic and helplessness, the circus forced him to perform, to lunge through a ring of fire and over the head of a “volunteer” chosen from the crowd.  As he did so that night he managed to  grab her by the neck and drag her around the arena.  He could have killed her easily but instead dragged her and deliberately never bit down. That night she had oddly chosen to wear an outfit with an especially heavy collar. That night alone the show was being broadcasted widely. The woman could have easily been killed. Smith would have been killed as well. Yet both survived, shaken but alive. The filmed scene aired to a huge audience. The abuse and cruelty it revealed shattered the illusion that imprisoned animals like to do dangerous, often painful and wildly unnatural acts. It showed the circus breaking up a living being’s family, taking away his children, his brother, his life. He rebelled. Bizarrely that rebellion saved him.

The world is a mysterious place. Our connections to one another run deep. Today, March 28^th, 2026, wherever we are, we are home - in Los Angeles and New York and small towns and crowded cities, on reservations and forgotten communities of conscience, and on farms and in board rooms and under the freeway over-passes - standing up for decency and justice for all of us, rebelling against the destruction of democracy.

We are a strong people. Courageous. Kind. Men and women of great character. Young people who will not stand down, who demand a planet with a future. We come from many cultures, many backgrounds, many practices. We all want decency. Plenty. Safety for our families. We rebel against naked cruelty and unbridled greed.

Our differences are real. But the basics remain the same. We want safety for ourselves and our families. We want the respect we are due. We want enough power over our own lives to be safe and to find a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction.

Today we rise up together all across this great land. We rise up together around this globe to resist the forces of violence and bullying.  We rise up and stand together for an ethic of love and decency. And soon everywhere you look you will find us as we will keep rising together.