In the run up to the big day of December 21st, Toward Freedom held a 60th anniversary End of the World Party, hosted by TF president Robin Lloyd at her home in Burlington. Conviviality tinged by anxiety about the apocalypse and aided and abetted by a delicious Mayan Punch, set the mood of the evening. We gathered in the salon to share our predictions for the next five years.
Editor Ben Dangl reminded us that the Mayan people did not predict the end of the world but foresaw, through their astronomical calculations, the galactic shift from one cycle to another. PREDICTION: In Guatemala, made up largely of Mayan people who endured a devastating genocide from 1960 until the peace accords of 1996, an indigenous-led political party will take power through elections, getting rid of current right-wing President Otto Peréz Molina. They will start an unprecedented human rights and judicial investigation into the crimes of the genocide, which will end up implicating the Democratic and Republican political parties in the US, leading to their dissolution. This will bring in an era of justice in the US and the election of a progressive president!
Laurie Larson pointed to her open palm and said “This is our galaxy spinning. Here,” pointing to her little finger, “is planet earth. Our solar system makes a shift across the equator of the galaxy every 26,000 years. This astronomical event is happening more or less now. Tesla and Einstein, etc. said that ‘the field is the thing’, and the field we will be immersed in will be reversing (if it didn’t already around 1998).” She joked: “Everyone should be ‘outstanding in a field’ on the 21st. Hopefully, consciousness is the Ur-ground of matter, and we can change our collective consciousness toward freedom (and peace), thereby changing reality.” PREDICTION: “What’s male is/will be female, what’s white is/will be black. Mark my word; touch the earth.”
Greg Guma: Economic inequality will continue to increase. That means more social protest. One form will be a new urban squatter movement. Foreclosed property and even abandoned office buildings will become fair game. We’ll also have more extreme weather. As a result, we’ll need to modernize the federal government for the new War on Weather – which is what it will be called on Fox news.
The forecast also calls for heat waves, droughts and heavy downpours. We can expect increasing hurricane wind speeds, intense rainfall and higher storm surge levels. Basically we’ll see more extreme winter weather and – in a plus for surfers – extreme wave heights.
Crowding and competition for land will increase the threat of war. As global warming depletes resources, small countries will battle for territory and resources. On the other hand, climate change will also uncover new habitable areas, particularly in the Arctic, and set off a new rush to exploit untapped resources.
What will be happening politically? When Hillary Clinton doesn’t run for president in 2016 the Democrats will have a primary season that looks like the 2012 Republican clown show. Result: Chris Christie becomes president. But Christie has a heart attack after getting angry at a press conference and dies. As a result South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley becomes the first woman president – and also the first Indian-American who attends both Sikh and Methodist services on Sundays. However, as a result of her positions on social issues she will be defeated in her 2020 re-election bid by…Senator Elizabeth Warren.
Genevieve Jacobs led us in a song from 10,000 years before the birth of Christ. Ommmmm.
April Howard read a poem by Joy Harlo: Perhaps the world ends here . “The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live. …” She continued: In a mobile society the concept of home and tradition happens at the kitchen table. It is a safe place where living happens. PREDICTION: The kitchen table will continue to be our community, even if we are in this very mobile society where home is a relative thing that changes from generation to generation. Yes, our community is our kitchen table.
Dian Mueller: Having gone from Christianity to paganism through the new age movement, I remember that when talk of the Global Convergence 2012 got started there was lots of fear mongering but also dialogue and research. We’re coming to a totally new age. According to Hinduism, we are in the depths of the three ages when people are the most divided. When we finally let ourselves enter the Golden Age, we will realize that we are each part of one another and we will live in peace and harmony for the next 5,200 years.
Charlotte Dennett: There’s a lot of really bad stuff going on and a lot of pushing back. All the horrible things that the Bush administration pushed through are beginning to see justice on a global level. We are now seeing dictators put on trial for their crimes, in ways that couldn’t be conceived of 20 years ago. PREDICTION: The day will come when Bush will be put on trial for murder.
The typhoon in the Philippines changed consciousness at the climate talks at Doha. I see a beginning of a movement – 0il, tar sands, pipelines: consciousness is growing and people now understand the cause of global warming. The Arab spring…something is happening in the world. We thought we were going to have the election stolen; now it is the right wing who is shocked and scared. Obama won but we have to push him. Consciousness is the new paradigm. Freedom evolves; a meme called freedom may get us there. PREDICTION: There will be Occupy study groups on the one percent. Young people will experience a change in consciousness and lead the revolution.
Peggy Luhrs: Expectations cause events. I expect the end of patriarchy, of wargasms, of the weaponization of space and the war on weather. It’s more and more about connecting. PREDICTION: Amidst the insanity of disconnection and birthing of war, women will continue to rise.
Jerry Colby: The One Percenters don’t need any of us any more, not even as consumers. They’ve got China rising and India rising. That is the explanation for the reversal of all the reforms that we’ve known, and for the attack on the New Deal coalition. PREDICTION: In Vermont we have a real opportunity with the tar sands pipeline. We will send a message to the rest of the country that it’s possible to stand up to these people. We will name them. We’re on the line. We’re heading for a big struggle.
Will Bennington: Our brothers and sisters and comrades from Mexico, Guatemala and other parts of Latin America who live in VT, and who work tirelessly to provide us with food, will see justice and will have the benefit of the full rights that Vermont citizens have access to: they will 
have the right to transportation, to dignified work, to feed themselves and to move freely through our society regardless of their documentation status. Migrant Justice will see huge victories, and coalitions of farm workers across the state will see huge victories that will ripple across the nation to places like Arizona and Florida.
The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change will be called out for the complete farce that it is and for its complete inability to solve the global climate crisis. Programs like REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) will be realized for the false solutions that they are and for perpetuating a green capitalism that will only kill the planet quicker than the current model of capitalism.
Genetically engineered trees will be defeated. We will never see them. We will never see them because of the work of organizations like La Via Campesina, Indigenous Environmental Network and Global Justice Ecology Project. Furthermore, the UN will realize that the only solution to climate crisis is small farms, like peasant farms in Latin America and Tamarack Hollow Farm in VT.
The VT Workers Center will see the realization of its Declaration of Human Rights. All Vermonters will be able to be guided by the principles of universality, equity, transparency, participation and accountability. All state policies will abide by these five principles. Rising Tide VT and the people of Addison County will stop the Addison County pipe line from traveling under Lake Champlain and will realize that this is a false solution that is inhibiting VT’s ability to make drastic real change by focusing on energy sovereignty and community rights to energy, and the ability of low income Vermonters to heat their homes in ways that are sustainable for all.
And then we will see the fall of global capitalism. And the US will not be the leader: it will come from the south and we will follow in their footsteps.
Danilo Lopez: I come from Chiapas, Mexico. In five years there will be an important change: my compañeros will leave fear behind. In my state we will have a better democracy so people won’t have to migrate. The indigenous community will not be harassed by the government but will be able to live in peace.
Robin Lloyd: Anger over the continual drone bombing of Pakistan leads to an uprising and the overthrow of the government. Amidst the ensuing heightened nuclear confrontation between India and Pakistan, the global anti-nuclear movement intervenes and brings them both to the negotiating table. In a spirit of global good will, Israel and Iran agree to a Middle East nuclear weapons free zone.