Lucky White Girl

Hablamos muchos idiomas: Language access at the USSF

I feel much rejuvenated this morning.  My volunteer shift signing up other volunteers was over (people are pretty much done with wanting to be volunteers at this point) so this morning I got to go to workshops.  I started early. I wanted to hear an introduction to the solidarity economy lecture but when I got there the tent was deserted.  I have various observations of the day so far, but I thought I'd start with some reflections on language access here at the US Social Forum.

After discovering there was no introduction to the solidarity economy to be had, I went next door to hear a panel discussion on poor people's economic human rights.  I mostly watched the interpreter and tried to imagine doing such work (what sorts of little tricks I could use like how to make yourself heard even though the english speakers are applauding what you're still in the process of translating).  The panelists though all waited on the interpreter and the transition was smooth and seamless. 

The next thing I went to, a workshop on 21st century Socialism, was all in Spanish but here they did the interpretation differently.  They gave headphones to the English speakers so that you couldn't hear the interpretation at all if you didn't want to.  I don't think I like this approach as much.  It's very segregated and one result was the speakers here don't wait on the interpretors.  It seemed like the interpreters were not getting stressed out about it but to me it'd be highly stressful.   Maybe they had an idea of the speeches beforehand.  Knowing the relevant vocabulary and even just having a general idea of what someone's going to say helps a lot, I think.

Having the conference be so multi-lingual is one of the things I really like about the Social Forum.  I kinda took it for granted until I saw that the article in the local paper mentioned this as an example of how "politically-correct" and radical we are.  Really?  If we were an international trade association meeting here this weekend they wouldn't think it radical and progressive that there is support for multiple languages, why is it different for us?  As if this were not another kind of globalization, a globalization of people coming together who are fed up with the world as it is.  As if, despite the slogan plastered all over this town right now, we weren't talking of creating other worlds.  Worlds where many voices are heard, a post-post-modern world that is characterized by multiplicity and real (read: participatory) democracy.

Someone today (her name was Adrianna I think) mentioned something today about having a radical process and not just radical content in our movement and I think this is a good example. 

I met Karl Marx!

... well, okay I met Fenton Wilkinson playing Karl Marx in a production of Howard Zinn's play Marx in Soho but I swear it was possibly almost as inspiring as meeting the original.  (Well, actually I don't know if I'd want to meet the original ---we'd probably have a very awkward conversation) But I was reinvigorated by this event tonight.  Beginning with something the woman who introduced the play said about the Independent Progressive Politics Network... I can't find the quote at the moment (I think the recording I made didn't turn out) but it was something about working for electoral change (out of immediate need?) while also believing in the fundamental corruptness of the system as such.  Just the idea that they don't find this inherently contradictory intrigues me.  Not in a judgemental way at all.  I'm just curious.  I want to know more about their thinking on this. Could this actually be a logical strategy? hmmmm....

Then Mr. Marx came on stage and expounded on the nature of capitalism and the working class and the purpose of theorizing and philosophizing about the world... you know, the usual stuff.  He even gave some glimpses into his personal life, his relationship with his wife Jenny and his children.  It was very superficial by nature (but it is just supposed to be an introduction) and didn't distinguish between oh, let's say early Marx and later Marx (really how would they do that? we change so much throughout the course of a lifetime!  It's common sense but still we expect people maybe especially historical people to be static pictures) and it didn't portray any um... what's the word?  Things that would make him a complex character?  Ambiguities?  A man as smart as Marx must've had a lot of ambiguities.  His head must've held lots of contradictory thoughts at the same time.  But ya know, this wasn't a character-study.  It was more like Marx for dummies.

Nonetheless this show really got me excited.  Especially the part where he talks about the Paris Commune  when for the first (and only?) time Marx's vision of democratic communism* was actually tried out and how we can and should think about how we could get there again.... how we're even closer than we think to being able to do so.  I'd like to think more about that too.  I have lots and lots to think about tonight.  Tomorrow's another looooong day.

* democratic communism is a term that I know is technically redundant when talking about Marx's idea of communism but I still feel it clarifies things to add it in.

The tragedy of the commons is the theft of the commons

Aristotle wrote in Politics that "that which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it" thereby initiating the "tragedy of the commons" theories which hold that if everyone has access to a common resource no one has the incentive to take care of that resource. 

I was reminded of this today when watching this excellent documentary here at the Social Forum about the privitazation of water.  Thirst is a film that looks at three communities where this has been an issue.  In Stockton, California the mayor had the brilliant idea that the city could save money by privatizing the water company and local residents campaigned hard for the right just to vote on the issue (they were unsuccessful apparently).  Bolivia, however, was adament about kicking out Bechtel who wanted to do the same thing in their country.  And in India a man named Rajendra Singh travels across the country organizing communities to resist the selling of this precious resource to private corporations.  One of the women interviewed said that this idea of privatizing all the water in the world is like the "theft of the commons" by the corporations.

Isn't that an interesting way of putting it?  The "theft of the commons".  True, eh?  Water is an essential natural resource that belongs to all of us.  Anyone who tries to claim it for him or herself (corporate or not) is insane.

To steal something that belongs to everyone.... Isn't that just what people who believe in the "tragedy of the commons" theories are worried about?  That people in their own self-interest will just take all they can (e.g. add another sheep to their herd and another and another and another ad infinitum) and not think about sustainability (e.g. how many sheep the pasture can support)?   In other words, that they will externalize their costs (onto the environment) while internalizing the profits (from having yet one more in their herd).

What's the point of all this?  Just that I thought it ironic that some people use the "tragedy of the commons" theory to argue for privatization which, as the water wars demonstrate, is clearly NOT in the public's best interest.  And that the REAL tragedy of the commons is the THEFT of the commons (beause then there are no more commons).

I think that we have to be careful about pushing the analogy too far but the validity of the first scenario --a sort of free-for-all where anyone can do anything (e.g. add as many sheep as the pasture will bear) with little or no regulation by the community does NOT mean that the opposite extreme --the second scenario (privatization)-- is therefore the right way to go.  They both lead to the same place in my book... lack of incentive to do the two absolutely essential things here: a.) care for the land and b.) share the resources.   In fact, they're not opposites at all... they're the same thing, aren't they?

Just a thought inspired by another day at the Social Forum....now off to watch Marx in Soho!  Happy evening everyone!

Day 2: USSF

It might be just that I'm getting the hang of things here but things seem better organized to me today than they did yesterday.  Believe it or not, I successfully became a somewhat helpful volunteer staffing the volunteer table this morning (we still need yet MORE volunteers by the way!  Come by the volunteer table in the Civic Center if you can work a 4 hour shift at some point during the weekend!).  Before the afternoon workshops started i even got some time to take some photos (and found myself both photographer and photographed: a man from the Atlanta-Constitution came up and asked my name because he had taken my picture while I was taking pictures of an Iraq War memorial).  Then I made it to my first workshop on building solidarity with Venezuela.  It was pretty good but I was hoping for more information on specific programs the Chavez government is starting up and only one of the speakers talked about stuff like that (that I remember).  The rest talked about building solidarity movements (well, that was the name of the session after all!).  I'm really interested in these community and workers' councils they are starting up down there as a way of decentralizing power.  --ooh gotta run, next workshop session is starting: "The Wars Abroad and at Home: Connecting militarism, growth of prisons, immigration and the global economy" (sponsored byt the AFSC --the Quakers)... just to give ya a little taste of some of the workshops those of us here in Atlanta are getting to experience. 

The world is full of beautiful people.

Does the downtown Atlanta police station always have half a dozen police officers standing around outside the front of their building?  Maybe.  Do the Atlanta police always walk around with a thick wad of plastic zip handcuffs?  Probably not.  And that helicopter hovering low a few blocks away?  That must be where I want to go!

Welcome to the first ever US Social Forum in Atlanta, GA!  It's hot.  Bring water.  There are lots of people here.  Workshops start tomorrow and there are so many that I want to be in at least six places at once!  The organization of all this isn't bad, considering.  I only saw three food tents though, and it took half an hour to 45 minutes to get through the line to eat but that's okay because I got to meet a social worker from Boston and we traded stories about living and working in South America (he went to Nicaragua during the 80s with the Sandinistas).  He wants to know how I became a Marxist.  I didn't know what to say so I said it was because I love to read.  But I didn't get a chance to explain because we had to go to different registration lines.  So, Carlos (it was Carlos, wasn't it?), what I meant was, it's like why Ortega told them to teach the people to read.  Reading is subversive.  In and of itself.  Because reading makes everything else possible.  Opens worlds where alternatives exist.  Breaks the myth that the way we do things now is the way we always will do them because that's the way we always have done them.  Reading and dreaming and imagining is where it all starts.  So maybe I became a Marxist because I learned to read.  And paid attention to the world around me.  It's not hard to see that capitalism hurts lots and lots of people. 

The girl above was very cool-looking so I took her picture.  Come on down to Atlanta, y'all... you can meet lots of beautiful people who are reading and dreaming and imagining new ways of doing things.  See ya! :-)

p.s. here's a link to a video the guy sitting next to me is posting about a multi-issue caravan he was on this past week.  I haven't seen it yet so y'all tell me if it's cool or not!

US Social Forum

All this talk in the world about how to respond to the overwhelming brute force of a world dominated by a single super power.  What about those of us who live in that single superpower? 

Well, with a mix of trepidation and eager anticipation I'm off to the first ever US Social Forum in Atlanta.    The reluctance comes of recently wondering what in the world made me think I would enjoy sitting through long bouts of talk and discussion and whether or not I will get annoyed with the indecisiveness and infighting that I've found characterizes activist movements on the left.  But.  It's in Atlanta, it's practically in my backyard.  And you never know.  Things could be different this time.  Filled with love and harmony!  (Imagine that!).... don't say it.  I know I'm too cynical!

I'm volunteering to staff an info table and when I'm not doing that I'll be taking photos so that will give me something to occupy myself with.  At the very least I hope I meet a few people and make a few new contacts.  Lord, help me not to get annoyed with the shrill, the obnoxious or the extremely flakey.

I hope my cat doesn't pee on my bed while I'm gone.

Spoken word: The terms of the debate.

There's something about calling yourself a Marxist or a Feminist that makes people's eyes turn red.  They immediately want to debate you.  They will win, they say.  You can just see them dancing around you like a boxer, "c'mon, c'mon, c'mon" they chant.  They want to debate you, they want to win, they want to beat you up (metaphorically, that is).  This is the new Cold War, you standing in for a less tangible, more threatening target.  And if you say no, it's because you're chicken, it's because you know you're gonna be the loser in this ring where they will set the terms of the debate because they know if they get you on the defensive they've already won.  And that's the point.  To win.  The point is not to honestly explore the ideas, even though they'll swear until they're blue in the face that it is, oh it is the point, they'll say they really just want to understand. 

Bullshit. 

The hardest lesson I've had to learn about life is that people don't always mean what they say.  And it's not even always because their motives are nefarious it's just because that's the way it is.  They might not even intend to.  They just do it.  They just say it and don't think about if it's really true or not.  It's supposed to be true and that becomes good enough.

Don't believe them.  They don't want to understand.  They want to win.  They don't question; they challenge.  They want to win.  They want to be right; they want to win.  They want you to say --convincingly, not sarcastically-- that oh, they've changed your mind, made you see the light, maybe you will have to reconsider.

And then they'll be super nice to you and invite you out to lunch. 

They will pay because they know they've won.  The red threat defeated once again.

Two approaches to best films lists.

Last week or so the American Film Institute came out with the same old list of Top 100 movies by US film-makers and as always it's populated with the usual candidates.  Citizen Kane, Casablanca, Apocolypse Now, the Godfather.  A few years back the film critic for the Chicago Reader, Jonathan Rosenbaum, wrote a famous critique of the AFI's list and suggested an alternative one of his own.  His column burned up critic's circles and is now an oft-cited list for those who felt the AFI's list was uninspired.

I think the question that divides the two camps, traditionalists like the AFI versus non-traditionalists like Rosenbaum, is this: what do you want from a top 100 list?  Do you want an historical approach that will teach you about the movies that got American cinema to its current state?  Or do you want a list of movies that are challenging and innovative for a contemporary audience today? 

If you want the former, go with the AFI's list.  Citizen Kane is number one because of what it did to send movies off in an entirely new direction back then.  The movies on the AFI list were all innovative for their time.  That's the key.  It's hard for us now to really see that sometimes because they've been so copied and influential that it seems conventional to us. 

This is a pretty good rule for watching and appreciating old movies generally. You have to place them in their context as much as possible.  What was going on in the world back then?  What was the director responding to?  I was reminded of this when some friends and I watched Romero's Night of the Living Dead recently. There's a lot in that movie that it's easy for a modern audience to miss because we're in such a different social context then were audiences in the late 60s. People watching back then, for example, would have picked up more on the parallels between some of the fake news footage about the zombies and the real news footage they were watching every night on the evening news about the war in Vietnam.

Also, an audience nowadays wouldn't think twice about having a black man be the hero in a movie of and by white people but when Romero made Night of the Living Dead, black people were facing police dogs and fire hoses and trying to win the right just to eat in the same restaurants as white people.  Ben, a black man, is the most sympathetic character in the film and when he shoots a white man, the audience is positioned to view the action sympathetically.  In real life, such actions might've gotten him lynched in certain parts of the country.  So in a sense, a really good movie is a victim of its own success in breaking down barriers that then become commonplace.

On the other hand, maybe you're not looking for a lesson on film history.  Maybe you just want to see really good films that have really profound things to say about the world around us.  Then you want a different kind of Top 100 list.  That's what Jonathan Rosenbaum's list is and that's what my own still-in-progress list is.  These are movies that shake us up and challenge us to see the world in new ways.  They have something important and profound to say about the human condition, sometimes that's dark and heavy and sometimes that's light and funny but it's always moving and insightful.  Obviously there will be some overlap with a historically oriented evolutionary list, but generally the films on a list that takes such an approach would, by necessity, be somewhat (though not exclusively) more contemporary. 

I'm not saying that either of these approaches is better than the other; it all depends on what you want to get out of a good movie.  I do suspect though that unless you are a film history buff, sometimes those old classics like Citizen Kane isn't what you're looking for at all.  Better in that case to see something that really turns your world upside down.  After all, isn't that what art is supposed to do?

LWG's Great films List

Review for new readers: I'm writing a 100 Films list because I believe film is a fine art, revealing just as much about ourselves and about human nature as do the greatest paintings, works of literature and pieces of music that people have created throughout the centuries.

These films are in no particular order, other than the order in which they've come into my head.  Like I mentioned in this post, I think there are different sorts of best films lists (those that teach us about the evolution of film-making and what was new and innovative for past audiences, and those that list films that challenge and inspire our own generation.  This list is one of the latter category.   I really think each of these films has something beautiful, profound and insightful to say about the human situation.  Eventually there will be 100.  I will periodically add to the list and repost it as it grows.

41.) The Night of the Hunter (1955)

40.) Me and you and everyone we know.  Miranda July

39.) The Stepford Wives (2004)  I just now got around to seeing this because I had no idea that it was, as my friend described "feminist sci-fi".  It's so funny I don't even mind that it's slightly flawed towards the end (if you carry the analogy out to the end it ends up that it's a woman who is responsible for patriarchy! and a man is required to liberate the women from their robot selves).  Oh and I could see an argument for a better positioning of the gay guy's character ('cause if he's gonna be a comic stereotype shouldn't that be his robot personality instead of his real one?)  Whatever.  The rest of the film is funny enough to make me overlook lots and if you know me, that's saying something!

38.) Pan's Labyrinth (2006).  Guillermo del Toro.  An imaginative political fairy tale for adults who need to be reinspired to never give up even in the face of great evil and that if we resist such evil, the beauty of humanity will most certainly triumph.

37.) Nausicaa of the Valley of the Winds  (1984).  Hayao Myazaki.  Early 80s anime about the dangers of war, racism and intolerance.

36.) Sprited Away (2001).  Hayao Myazaki.  A little girl discovers an alternative spirit world populated by creatures in a bathhouse who have to clean up the effects of human greed and carelessness.  Responsible stewardship/ environmentalist themes.

35.) Boys Don't Cry (1999).  Hillary Swank's best role ever.  Disturbing true story about what happened to someone who challenged gender roles a little too much for a small-minded mid-western town.

34.) A History of Violence (2005).  David Cronenberg.

33.) Iron-Jawed Angels. (2004).  What's this? A made-for-tv movie on this list?  Yep, this is really, really good and not just because it has Hillary Swank as an early 20th century sufferagette.  It really shows the sacrifices previous generations made to give us all the rights and privileges we have today. 

32.) Talk to her/Hable con ella.  (2002).  Pedro Almodovar.  An odd sort of love story that has it's own poetry.

31.)  La fabuleux destin d'Amelie Poulain (2001).  Sweet, whimsical and full of poetic justice.  Watch this when you need to feel re-inspired by humanity.

30.)  El Aura (2005). Ricardo Darin (also starring in #8 below) is one of my favorite actors and he shines in this role of the thoughtful romantic genius who stumbles upon a crime ring in Argentina and can't leave it alone even when his own life is threatened.  A smart film with a smart actor for smart people!

29.)  Starter for 10 (2006).  A smart comedy by Tom Vaughn about a working class kid who goes off to college in Britain in the 1980s.

28.) Grindhouse (2007) Quentin Tarantino with Robert Rodriguez.  Not for everyone but if you are a movie-goer of the very open-minded sort, you'll see the beauty of this double-feature.  An excellent tribute to the b-movies of urban grunge theaters, this film is not for the weak-hearted but I would rate it as the best film of 2007.

27.) Undertow (2004) David Gordan Green.  Roger Ebert called this the best film of 2004. Watch out, fast moving, complex, heart-pounding plot.  A dark and suffocating picture of a dysfunctional family set in the boonies.

26.) All the Real Girls. (2003).  Hot up and coming director from the US South, David Gordan Green made the realest film I know about young love and relationships. Warning: do not watch this film if you've recently suffered heartbreak; it's immensely sad.

25.)  Shallow Grave. (1994).  Danny Boyle again.  If you can't trust your friends....

Zombie flicks..... as always it's other humans who are just as dangerous as the zombies!

24.) 28 Days Later (2002). Danny Boyle of Trainspotting fame.  This is a *great* scary movie similar to the premise of Stephen King's The Stand.  Fast spreading virus makes people angry, violent, fast-moving zombies.  Smart plot but not as smartly political as Romero's.  The new sequel 28 Weeks Later is good but doesn't live up to this one.

23.) Day of the Dead (1985)  Last of the trilogy, often overlooked, I have to admit that I also liked the other two better than this one at first but that doesn't mean this one's not worth checking out.

22.) Dawn of the Dead (1978) The target of Romero's biting satire this time is mindless consumerism.  Again, notice the important/heroic roles people of color and women play.  New semi-feminist themes appear also.

21.) Night of the Living Dead (1968) George Romero's original classic, the one that started it all. Subtle political undertones about the Cold War, "containment" policies, fear of something "out there" and the dysfuntional power struggles that pose almost as much threat as the walking dead themselves!   It's easy for modern audiences to miss the radicalness of a film from that era having a black man as the hero and an audience watching in 1968 would've picked up on more parallels between the cinematography of the film and what they would've been seeing on their nightly news broadcasts about the war in Vietnam but if you are aware of such things and look for them, this film quickly becomes way more than just a "zombie flick"

20.) My Own Private Idaho (1991) Gus van Sant. For those who love playing with liberal adaptations of Shakespeare.

19.) 25th Hour (2002) Spike Lee.  Man has 24 hours left before reporting to prison to serve a life sentence.  What would you do?

18.) Leaving Las Vegas (1995) Mike Figgis.  For anyone who's ever been lonely or all washed-up...

17.) Boyz N' the Hood (1991) John Singleton.  A more traditional storyline about race and poverty than Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing but less innovative than the latter.  See the two together and make your own decision.

16.) Norma Rae (1979) Martin Ritt. Sally Field broke out of the Gidget-mode by doing this working-class hero movie.  Classic union-flick just as applicable to the world today  "The people united..."

15.) Midnight Cowboy (1969) John Schlesinger. The sixties.  Pipe dreams.  Dustin Hoffman.  Gotta love 'em.

14.) The Thin Red Line (1998).  Director Terrence Malick, whose other films appear on this list, returned to the director's chair after twenty years to make this movie about the Battle of Guadalcanal that you won't easily forget. One of the best depictions of what war is.

13.) A Huey P. Newton Story (2001) Spike Lee.  Roger Guenveur Smith does a powerful monologue as Huey P. Newton that, I imagine, is every bit as powerful as the legendary man himself. 

12.) Gods and Monsters (1998) Bill Condon.  A fictionalized drama based on the life of James Whale, the creator of the original Frankenstein movies, an openly gay director in an era where that just wasn't done.  The music, the acting, the set, everything in this movie sings praises to a life well lived.

11.) All About my Mother (1999)  Pedro Almodovar.  Spain.  All about relationships, especially with mothers.  See #1, All About Eve.

10.) Looking for Richard (1996) Kind of a making-of movie about Richard III, kind of an adaptation of the play, but also an examination of the famous play itself with commentary and montages of scenes from various productions.  A Shakespeare lover's dream.

9.) Days of Heaven (1978) Terrence Malick.  Visually stunning film.  Like seeing Ansel Adams photographs in motion and with an excellent storyline.

8.) Nueve Reinas (2000)  If you like chess, you'll love this movie by Argentinian director Fabian Belinsky!  More twists and turns than an Agatha Christie novel.

7.) Do the Right Thing (1989) Spike Lee.  The wakeup call to a whole generation.

6.) Resevoir Dogs (1992) Tarantino.  Contains a scene which is the greatest visual (nonverbal) argument for nonviolence I've ever seen.

5.) La Battaglia di Algeri (1966) Want to see a movie about what's happening today in Iraq?  Watch this one about what was happening with the French occupation of Algeria in the 60s.  Hauntingly similar, this movie sounds an alarm to those who occupy foreign lands in the pursuit of "national security".  Longer post about this movie here.

4.) Swimming to Cambodia (1987) Spaulding Gray depicts the horror of war just sitting in a chair on a stage talking better than any action movie ever made. 

3.) The Vanishing (1988)  A flim by the Dutch director George Sluizer.  Not to be confused with the later US version, which stunk.  This is a modern day existential fable about human meaninglessness, existence and the pursuit of truth.

2.) Smoke Signals (1998)  Real life with funny parts.  Written by one of our greatest contemporary writers, Sherman Alexie.

1.)  All About Eve (1950)  The inspiration for creating this list.  Wow, what a movie! This is the film that saved Bette Davis' career.  In an era when actresses were considered washed up by age 40, Davis snagged this role and made history.  Contemporary movies still make references to this classic.  See #11.

All About Bette Davis and the ugly truth about women and ageing

You know, sometimes I talk about movies on this blog and I even have an on-going (much-neglected) list of what will eventually be my 100 Great Films but it's pretty rare that I pick a film and talk about it in length.  All About Eve is one that is so good and so important I think it merits just that sort of post.  All About Eve is a scathingly accurate and unromantic picture of how women in the West were viewed in the mid-20th century (and sometimes stil are by certain people).

Bette Davis plays a 40 year old aging star named Margo Channing.  Eve, played by Anne Baxter, is an ardent young fan who manages to slip herself into Margo's life and becomes her personal assistant.  The first time you watch the film all your attention is on Eve who seems so loyal and dedicated to Margo it's almost creepy (i.e. What's she really up to, eh?) 

But the second time you watch it you notice just how complex and fascinating Margo's character is.  Horrified of being upstaged by her young understudy, Margo is haughty and proud but also insecure and vulnerable.  Don't be quick to dislike her because of her vanity and obsession with youth.  She knows that the impossible is what's expected of women in the world she lives in and her despair at ever being able to live up those expectations of perfect, age-less beauty is very real and very poignant.

The problem with Margo is pretty well summed up by an accusation slung at her by Lloyd, the playwrite in whose play she stars in: "There comes a time that the piano realizes that it has not written the concerto,".  And that's the harsh, ugly reality of women in the 50s, especially women in film and theater: they were pianos on which the writers, directors and producers played and as one aged and got a few nicks and scratches on it, they could be replaced with newer, younger versions.  Margo's pain is the pain of someone realizing how disposable she is in such a world.

In the film, Margo eventually gives up and retires from the theater world to play the wife role to her man, but ironically in real life for Bette Davis, it was the opposite.  She had something in common with Margo; in 1950 people thought she, too, was all washed up as an actress.  Until she made this film and her career did a 180.  From that point on, she became the commanding screen presence she's remembered for today.

So is this honest portrayal of 1950s sexism enough to say that All About Eve is a feminist flick?  I think so.  The older women in the film are very conscious of their getting the short end of the stick and they don't accept the adage to "age gracefully", quietly exiting stage right as the next line of to-be-objectified women rises up front and center to replace them.  They are angry that their worth in a society so obsessed with youth and beauty has gone down simply because they've gotten older.  Never is Margo's talent as an actress put into doubt.  It's all about the packaging.  And it's not just actresses that have to/had to live with this.  Margo's best friend, Karen, a housewife, also has the youth/beauty standard to live up to.  When her playwrite husband (the same one that lobbed the "you're just the piano" jab at Margo above) tells her that her cynicism is "something [she's] acquired since [she] left Radcliffe!" she retorts "The cynicism you refer to, I acquired the day I discovered I was different from little boys!"

This is a very harsh film that is uncomfortable at times to watch, especially if you're a woman and you wish things were more different from that era instead of just slightly different.  For all the misty-eyed romanticism we see of the 1950s, this is a film filled with painful truth and accuracy and that, for me, makes it one of the best.

Traveling by bus in the US: A primer

Not that I mean to sound conceited about it or anything (because there is a certain category of folks to whom such a claim would sound admirable) but I have done a significant amount of bus travel in my life.  I've been on rickety old former school buses in Guatemala re-incarnated into gentle metal mammoths belching diesel fumes into the air as they careen along green mountainsides loaded down with people, tourists, chickens, bags of maiz and sometimes goats and pigs.  I've been on luxurious double-decker Pullman buses in South America with reclining plush seats, air conditioning and Jackie Chan movies.  And I've been in dingy Greyhound buses with malfunctioning toilets easing in and out of dirty downtowns in cities across the US.  No matter where you are, buses in some form or another, are the ultimate in proletariat transportation!  They are, arguably, the best way to really see a country and its people (the only near comparisons I can think of being trains and bicycles, but that's another post).

This is not meant to imply that I've thoroughly enjoyed every bus ride I've ever taken!  I've never been so car-sick as I was one time on a bus traveling from Manizales back to Bogota, Colombia.  I thought I was going to die and so did several of my nearest co-passengers (even the driver felt sorry for me)!  And I remember a similar one in Guatemala when I thought my kidneys were going to burst and they would have to bury me alongside the ambulant venders selling bags of water and frozen bananas.  Crossing the border from Guatemala into Chiapas once we were stopped by an Army roadblock and everyone had to get off and be searched for contraband.

But I have had way more plesant experiences on buses than unplesant ones.  Once I sat next to an older man I swear was Gabriel Garcia Marquez and fell asleep with my head on his shoulder.  Once when I was in high school and snuk out for the weekend to go visit my boyfriend in Savannah (telling my parents I had gone to a friends house), a man on the Greyhound serenaded us from DeLand to Daytona with his mellow acoustic guitar tunes and every one seemed caught up in the glow of unexpected intimacy of strangers. (And it was still a good trip, even though when I got back I found out I had been caught because my truck had been towed from behind the bus station while I was gone and my parents duly notified by the company!)

No journey is really complete, I think, if it does not involve a long bus ride upon which to reflect.

In the US we have few inter-city and inter-state bus systems and by far the most popular and well known is Greyhound.  I'm planning another bus trip in a few days so that got me thinking about writing a post about the subject.  It's definitely a good way to go, but before you pack your bags and hop on the 'hound, take a minute to consider the golden rule of bus travel which I've learned in my years of bus riding:

Above all else, when taking the bus in the US, consider the route between your destinations.  If there is no major highway between your point A and your point B you might want to reconsider.  Try bus-free alternatives instead such as hitch-hiking, train-hopping or car-sharing if you cannot bike or walk because even if the two cities are physically close, if there's no direct bus route between them you'll end up going to a hub somewhere and waiting on a transfer.  For example, my folks live in a little town about an hour and a half from where I live but I would never consider taking the bus there.  It would take at least eight hours as I would have to first go north to transfer in Jacksonville then wait for another bus going south through Daytona then to Tampa via Orlando.  In that amount of time I could've biked the distance from here to there and stopped to have a dip in one of the fresh-water springs in the national forest along the way.

On the other hand, if you're traveling between two major cities linked by an interstate, it's pretty wasteful NOT to take the bus.  Gainesville to Atlanta for example is 7 hours 20 minutes, only an hour or so more than driving a car, PLUS it's safer, PLUS they're almost always on time, PLUS you don't have to worry about where to leave your car when you get there, PLUS there's a MARTA (Atlanta metro) stop right there and PLUS you can get a lot of reading and thinking done along the way. 

The same is true going the other way, south from Gainesville to Tampa/St. Pete but last I rode that route the bus didn't use the interstate much but made lots of little meandering jogs to stop off at small towns along the way.  It is very scenic but it takes about twice the time as driving it.

Buses in the US are not as colorful nor as convenient as they are in other countries.  There's no doorman or small boy riding shotgun and yelling out the name of the destination in a voice that echoes through the misty morning of a third world bus depot where women in huipils cook fresh arepas or tortillas and serve strong lukewarm coffee for hungry travelers in hole-in-the-wall restaurants.   But you WILL share your ride with grandmothers and young people, hippies and recovering drug addicts.  And maybe if you're very lucky, there will be some long-haired romantic on board who will break out the guitar and sing you some beautiful old love songs along the way.

Lucky White Girl's FAQs

Basic questions first:

Q.  Why is your blog called "Lucky White Girl"?
A.  See this post.

Q. Is there anything here for me if I'm looking for the following search terms or any variation(s) thereof: "white girl sucks" "black man does white girl" "luxemborg sex movies" or "19th century girl cunt photos"*? 
A. No.

Q.  Are you a Marxist?
A.  Yes.  Marx was a 19th century social theorist/philosopher who developed certain theories of economics, history and sociology.  But, unlike a lot of eggheads, instead of just talking big ideas he felt it was important that people use those big ideas to make real change in the world around them. Remember what 19th century Europe looked like?  To get a better idea pick up any Charles Dickens novel.  That's what Marx saw and that's what he was trying to change.  So in short, Marx was not only a pretty smart dude, he was a smart dude with a big heart. 

Now the thing about Marx's theories is that they are really complex and nuanced (sorta like reality!) and like all good theories there's all sorts of juicey stuff in them that people can tease out and emphasize or de-emphasize.  The result is a whole load of Marxists who might not seem to agree on very much but are all indeed "Marxists".  To call oneself a Marxist is not to say that you subscribe to a singluar vision of Marxism (embodied perhaps in some dusty tome entitled The Official Approved Version of Marx's Theories of Everything).  It just means that Marx's ideas are sufficiently influencial and important in your own worldview that you feel the need to give him a nod.  Also, it lets others know where you're coming from.  Although in the case of a school of thought that has been so maligned as Marxism (in other words about which so much confusion and misinterpretation exists), that might be easier in theory than in practice but in the end I feel it's more helpful and accurate to say that I'm a Marxist.

Q. Are you a feminist?
A. Duh!

Q. Why?
A. I think women should be included in the category of people.  Some of us are even competent adults!

Q. What kind of feminist are you?
A. I've found useful analysis in many different kinds of feminist theory but the one that most consistently gives me the "best results" (in other words the one that does what a theory should do, which is to explain the world or some aspect of it in a comprehensible way) is Marxist-Feminism.  It's just what works for me based on my own life experience.  I don't insist that everyone feel the same way about it.  Like religion, I think it's mostly a matter of personal preference.

Q. Okay, so what's a Marxist-feminist?
A. A Marxist-feminist is someone whose outlook on the world is characterized by a Marxist-influenced theory of feminism.  Marxist-feminism is not the same as Marxism though; it's its own animal.  (Like a mule is not a horse or a donkey but is derived from both).  Standpoint Theory is a kind of Marxist-feminism which I use a lot in every day life (here's an example in this post) but before you get to Standpoint (which privileges certain knowledges --such as the knowledge of the oppressed-- over others) first you have to understand some non-positivist epistemologies [epistemology, by the way, is a big word but a really simple concept, it just means "theory of knowledge" or how we know what we know (e.g. what is truth?)].  For more on feminist epistemology read this post. 

Non-positivist or post-positivist theories of epistemology challenge the positivists' idea that there is One Universal Absolute Truth that is measurable and quantifiable.  (Positivists are the people who are very into the scientific method for example).  Think Enlightenment folks with their calibers measuring and studying the world.  The non-positivist alternative idea that there exists multiple truths that are relative rather than a singular truth that is absolute, is a general characteristic of post-modern theory.  If you've encountered post-modernism before you're well positioned to understand Standpoint.  If realty is a social construct, then there are multiple realities and multiple truths. 

But if everyone has a different grasp on the idea of truth, what does that mean for how we manage the world and organize all the information around us into a coherent manner?  And what does that mean for our notions of justice and fairness?  This is where Standpoint comes in.  Standpoint theory says that those who most directly experience the underside of the system, --those whose lives are most affected by its cruelties and abuses-- have special insight into the realities of that system and therefore we can privilege their knowledge (at least on that particular subject) over the knowledges of others who are benefitted by the system.  It comes from the slave-master analogy of Marx (that the slave is in a better position to understand the institution of slavery than the master is because of his/her lived experience.  In short, standpoint theory is a way of avoiding the nihilism and dead-end-ness of post-modern epistemologies.  I promise to write a longer post about this in the future to explain this better.

Q. Do you think there's a role for the uber-wealthy in an economic ecosystem?
A.  Well I think the use of the term "ecosystem" in that question is a bit problematic.  "Ecosystem" implies not only a complicated web of finely balanced relationships but also one that is "natural" and even sacred.  There's nothing sacred about any economic system.  And there's nothing natural about it either.  An economic system is something devised by human beings in order to regulate the production and distribution of goods and services amongst them.  It may be just or injust but it's never natural.  It's not something that just happens.  That doesn't mean it's bad; it just means every economic system was created by humans and therefore can be changed by humans.  If you don't like the one you got, advocate for alternatives. 

Q. You didn't answer the question.
A.  Sorry.  Is there (or more accurately should there be) a role for the uber-wealthy in an economic system?   In my opinion, no.  Until goods and services are non-exhaustable and infinite (thereby making them un-valuable), if some people have more than their fair share that means others are having to get by with less.  It's a zero-sum game.  Remember kindergarten?  Share your toys! ;-)

Q. Are you always such a literalist?
A. Yes.  Sorry.  It's very annoying, I know, but, especially when talking about philosophy or any other heady subject it's helpful to be as precise as possible.  Generally, I don't use words lightly.  I say what I mean and I mean what I say.

Q. I noticed you used to have a tagline that said "because it's all about race, class and gender"... which one of these do you think is most important and why?
A.  There's not a "most important" in that equation, it's an interlocking matrix. Now you could --and a lot of social scientists do-- try to isolate any one of them for the purposes of the scientific method (see above) but I fundamentally disagree with this approach.  Even if such things could be operationalizable (made measurable) it wouldn't be "real" to study them in isolation; it'd just be a game, an abstraction that doesn't reflect reality and is therefore relatively worthless for the purposes of explaining the world.  And if that's not the whole point of the social sciences I don't know what is.

Q. Are you saying you don't believe in the scientific method?
A.  Bingo!  I'm saying that I don't believe in the scientific method for the social sciences.  The scientific method works great for the physical world but not for the social.  Social facts are not the same as physical facts.

Q. Are you accepting more questions?

A.  Yes, please use the comments section below to ask away!

---
*Actual search terms used within the past 24 hours by which visitors have found this site.

The bloody side of economics: the case of Chiquita Banana in Colombia

For Kyle of Immigration Orange who solicited posts on this subject.

A few months ago it came out that Chiquita Banana admitted to paying "protection money" to right wing terrorist groups in Colombia.   In Colombia, a country still engaged in a 40 year old ongoing low-scale civil war, this is nothing new.  For a company that works in the area that Chiquita did* (an area that has a heavy presence of armed actors), to have to pay una vacuna to ensure their continued operation is pretty normal.  It's one of the ways the illegal armed groups on both sides finance their war.  It is, however, the first time a US company has admitted such actions to US authorities and it's notable --and commendable-- that it was the US Justice Department who was one of the ones who initiated the investigation (Colombians complain that in their country corruption and apathy mean something like this is rarely investigated).

But Chiquita did more than allow themselves to be extorted, according to this article from La Semana. The general manager of the Chiquita subsidiary, Banadex, met personally with the infamous Carlos Castaño, former head of the largest paramilitary group in the country, the AUC.  Banadex even smuggled in 3,400 AK-47s and millions of rounds of ammunition for the group.  That's not simple extortion; that's active collaboration with a terrorist organization. 

"During the time Chiquita was paying the paramilitaries, thousands of people across Colombia died at the hands of the right-wing militias" (according to this article from the Christian Science Monitor).  For many of them, being affiliated with a union made them targets.  Colombia is the most dangerous country on the planet for a union organizer.  Paying off/working with the paramilitaries is not exactly an effective policy if your goal is to protect workers. If your goal is to intimadate them however it makes much more sense.  It is reasonable to inquire into what sort of incentives a company doing business in that country would have to collaborate with a terrorist organization that targets those trying to subvert or protect themselves from the capitalist system.

And, still, a big business in alliance with paramilitary forces in Colombia is not anything new.  It's long been known that Coca-Cola used paramilitary thugs to intimidate workers as well (for more info see www.killercoke.org).  As the article from La Semana says:

"The Chiquita case reveals the responsibility of the private sector for the reach of paramilitary dominion in large parts of the country.  And just as we speak of the para-political alliance, there is also a para-industrial alliance"

That's the nature of the conflict in Colombia.  The war is between right-wing paramilitary forces that support neoliberal economics in which the few become wealthy while the majority remain poor and Marxist guerrilla groups who, inspired by Che Guevara and Fidel Castro and the wave of insurrectionary movements across Latin America in the 1960s, believe that it is not only possible but imperative that a different system be put into place.  And both sides are willing to kill and die for what they believe in.

Any particular corporation may engage in bloody practices such as these but those of us concerned with justice have to ask why.  It’s not because of an irrational hatred for humanity.  It’s because such behavior is profitable. In a neoliberal economic system, a corporation thinks only of the bottom line; human life is of secondary concern.  It’s a bloody political economy.

To pressure individual companies to NOT rely on paramilitary armies to make a country safe for capitalism is like trying to convince water to NOT flow downhill.  We can put some dams up but that will just redirect the flow.  Until we have an economic system that does not encourage or give incentive to this sort of behavior more cases of gross human rights violations will continue to occur.

So sure, boycott Coca-Cola and condemn Chiquita for being shitty corporate citizens, but understanding the bigger picture of the role economics plays in the world of business and politics pushes us further towards a more lasting resolution to human rights violations by corporations not only in Colombia but around the world.

* Chiquita sold off its Colombian subsidiary in 2004.

News in stupidity

File this one under Stupid News of the Day.  I've been thinking about doing a translation certification program here at UF.  In the US there is no requirement for translators to be certified but I believe it helps in getting jobs and being a child of the liberal tradition, I believe that getting a fancy piece of paper increases my net worth in Educated Human-ness. 

So when I found out today that I cannot enroll in the program any longer because the university is in the process of re-evaluating it I wanted to know why.  Was it a lack of interest on the part of students?  No.  Budget cuts?  Amazingly, not that either.  No, the program is being cut because they cannot find a home for it. 

That's right.  It's been housed under the Latin American Studies department but LAS can't support the program indefinitely and it's not just a Latin American Studies program, the languages one can get certified in are entirely global... everything from Afrikaans to Vietnamese.  So the program is, essentially, homeless. 

This was the ONLY translation program in Florida.  In a time when we live in an increasingly globalized world the university eliminates a popular and useful program because of "taxonomy".  Go figure.

2nd LWG Creative Protest Award

Okay I like this one because it's not only creative it's practical.  In Toronto, tired of waiting for the city to install the new bike lanes it approved three years ago, some bike rights activists have taken the responsibility on themselves and starting creating guerrilla bicycle only lanes on Toronto streets.  Congratulations to "The Other Urban Repair Squad" for this creative, useful action to promote public safety!

Thanks Charlie!

Dear Gov. Crist,
I want to thank you for slashing taxes and devastating the budgets of our local city and county governments.  After all, government = bad.  Private corporations = good.  I'm sure Wal-Mart will step in to take up the slack and start providing services to our local homeless residents (population +/-800) and maybe Dollar General will start offering discount elderly assistance programs.  (My own parents are wealthy so they won't be affected by these cuts in social services but I'm sure they appreciate you lowering their tax burden). 

As for myself, well, I'm not wealthy but I personally don't mind using shabby, poorly maintained public roadways, overgrown parks and dangerously unsafe playgrounds for my kids (heck, survival of the fittest you know!)  As for public education, let's see if we can make it to the very top of the list of countries with the worst public education in the world!  We like to be number 1 in this country!  People should be homeschooling anyway.

The cuts to police and fire departments though are a little hard to take.  I can't see how this wouldn't also harm the wealthy.  Maybe it's time for privatization in this area as well?  I know private police forces sound alarmingly like paramilitary/militia forces but we gotta do what we gotta do.  All in the name of security and privatization.

I hope everything turns out all right with this tax cut deal.  If not, unlike our Resident in the White House, I trust you will figure out a way to get us out of the mess you got us into.

Sincerely,
barb howe of www.luckywhitegirl.com

Egalitarianism of the Internet undermines society says elitest

Oh no, not another polemic about the downfall of humanity via our technology! Not to worry, this one's stupid.   Andrew Keen, author of the new book, The Cult of the Amateur: How today's internet is killing our culture is worried that the democratization of information is undermining traditional authority bases and therefore the downfall of Western civilization is not far off.  "I prefer the wisdom of the professional" he says, as opposed to the wisdom of the masses who are unreliable and potentially subversive and can only result in chaos and anarchy. 

I guess the perspective on it all is very different from where Mr. Keen stands.  (toldja I use standpoint theory in every day life!)

What we should REALLY be concerned with in the immigration reform bill

On one of my recent posts about guest worker programs Mimenbro wondered about whether it was really true that employers using the guestworker programs are not required to pay their guest workers the minimum wage.  Good question!  So I'm doing more research on the subject.  I don't have a clear answer yet; it seems to be that if they are required to pay a minimum wage there's little/no enforcement of the requirement (plus I would imagine it wouldn't apply to agricultural workers anyway as none of them --domestic or foreign-- are entitled to a minimum wage anyway).  But I did find lots more articles and editorials criticizing the programs for this than I did back in February when I first started looking into the subject in this post. 

One of the best articles I found was this one by Linda Chavez-Thompson of the AFL-CIO writing of her own experience spending her summers doing farm work as a young girl:

"For foreign workers toiling as "guest workers" (or "braceros") alongside us in the cotton fields, the five-day work week was an impossible luxury. They were often stiffed on wages, and health care was simply non-existent... although most people like to think of bracero programs as a phenomenon of the past, the reality is that their legacy of exploitation and abuse continues to thrive in contemporary American society through modern guest worker programs such as the H2-A and H2-B." [and this was published on Forbes.com (yes, Forbes!]

Chavez-Thompson says there are laws on the books but enforcement is "almost nonexistant" and workers have little recourse to complain. 

The best way to guarantee the rights and wages of all workers in this country is to give every immigrant the opportunity to become a citizen, with all the rights and duties that entails. [Amen to that!]

The exploitation of immigrant workers hurts us all. When standards are driven down for some workers, they are driven down for all workers. For this same reason, guest worker programs must be squarely rejected. Because workers in these programs are always dependent on their host employers for both their livelihoods and legal status, these programs create a disenfranchised underclass of workers.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel agrees.  He says guest worker programs are "the closest thing I've ever seen to slavery" (source: Southern Poverty Law Center report by the way they have an online petition you can sign here). 

And here's another article, this one from Time magazine (don't get more mainstream than that!)  Although this one is admittedly more concerned about whether guest worker programs "work" rather than if they are exploitative to workers the author does clearly state this:

By definition, guest workers are tremendously vulnerable. And of all the steps in the process, none is more ripe for abuse than the recruiting of workers back in their home countries....

Well, I beg to differ on that last point as it seems to me that getting exploited by employers here or getting exploited by recruiters there is about the same thing in the long run and I feel much more responsible for the actions of people and companies within my own country, I'd say it's the former that concerns me more (which doesn't mean I condone the latter).  The article doesn't go any further into the potential for abuses but an article in the Sun-Sentinel delivers this sentence in the opening paragraph of this editorial:

[Guestworkers] are routinely cheated out of wages, forced to live in substandard conditions, and denied basic medical benefits.

Simple as that.  All of these articles, commentaries and editorials seem good news to me because, as I mentioned, a few months ago I found very little on guest worker programs.  Thanks to the controversial immigration bill that has changed somewhat.  That's a good thing, but to get back to the original question I think I would say that after this latest round of research it seems that there is a consensus that whatever the laws may be about minimum wage requirements it's clear it's all too easy for those requirements to be ignored.  It's a program ripe for abuse and that should be the real center of concern about this [now stalled out] immigration bill.

Guest worker programs: The mountain comes to Mohammad

Another thought on guest worker programs.  Here's an interesting way to look at them: In this era of neoliberal economic globalization, where multi-national corporations can move their sweatshops around to the country desperate enough to offer the most misery and exploitation of their workers and thus the more profit for the corporation, who is the corporate sector left out of this game? 

Of course it's the big agribusiness companies who can't move fields of corn and wheat as easily as Nike can move a maquiladora.  So it seems to me, the point of the guestworker programs is a case of if Mohammad can't come to the mountain, the mountain can come to Mohammad.  If you can't move your company to the third world, you can bring the third world to the US, in a sense.  A permanent subclass of workers, they call it.  The slave class maybe they will come to be known.  A new era in globalization!  And few people are talking about it.

Anyone else concerned about worker's rights in this immigration bill?

The thing that bothers me about the debate over the immigration bill is that my concerns aren't really reflected by either the Dems or the Republicans.  As I understand it, Republicans are concerned about letting people become citizens (they call this giving them amnesty) and (some) Dems are concerned about depressing wages here in the US.  It's this latter that at least reflects part of my concern, though still not nearly all of it.  I want to hear someone talking about the dangerous potential for exploitation that these guestworker programs carry with them.  How revolting it is that we would let corporations import workers who then are entirely dependent on that corporation for their legal standing in this country.  How companies can use that to hire workers who will work for less, not being bound by minimum wage laws.  How they might use them to take away workers only leverage with a company: their mass numbers, sidestepping unions with their irksome demands for fair wages and humane working conditions.  I'm not saying this happens in all cases where companies have hired foreign workers but I am saying that it has happened.  Why?  Because there's nothing in these guest worker programs to prevent them from happening.  There are few safeguards here.  In my previous posts there are links to stories that chronicle some of the abuses of foreign workers under such programs.  Cases of people living in inhuman living conditions and being paid sub-minimum wages.

But few people talking about how the new immigration bill would affect immigrants themselves.  It seems it's another case of it being taboo to care about human life beyond those who happen to have been born in this country.  All these lives worth so much less...

The new immigration bill is currently stalled out in the Senate.  NPR story: <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10819109">Guest Workers Vote Stalls Immigration Bill</a>.  I say good riddance.  Someone please proposal an alternative that reflects a new, humane, progressive immigration policy for this country!  Please?  Even if it doesn't pass it will help people like me at least feel like we're not alone out here in our concern for workers and worker's rights, no matter what country they come from.

For more information, see my past posts on guestworker programs:
More sad stories about guestworker programs
A bit of history of guestworker programs in the US
And We should be outraged: guest worker programs mean slavery and exploitation in the US.

Also MigraMatters seems to be a highly informative blog on the subject, filled with tons of information and good analysis.

If our Congress won't end the occupation, their Parliament will!

Iraqi lawmakers aren't spineless in the face of their head-of-state, why must ours be?

"There will be no such a thing as a blank check for renewing the U.N. mandate anymore, any renewal will be attached to a timetable for a complete withdrawal."

Aternet Exclusive:
Iraqi lawmakers pass resolution that may force end to occupation

Maybe we can learn from them!

Cost of hunger: $90 BILLION

Hmmm... this is interesting.  Sodhexho --you know that huge food services corporation that brings you lunch on campus (corporate profile here)-- commissioned this study which the Washington Times is reporting on today evaluating the cost of hunger in the United States.  90 billion dollars is the number they came up with.  90 BILLION!

"We ought to debate this," said J. Larry Brown, founding director of the Center on Hunger and Poverty at Brandeis University and lead author of the report, "because if we're right, we're spending far more by letting hunger exist than it would cost to end it."

End it how, he doesn't say but the article mentioned that the federal food stamp program is up for renewal this year in Congress. I can't find anything about that online... anyone know anything?

For the record I'm all for expanding federal and state food stamp programs.  Food is not a privilege; it's a right.