Lucky White Girl

Bob Herbert:

Proud to be a liberal.

"Without the many great and noble deeds of liberals over the past six or seven decades, America would hardly be recognizable to today’s young people. Liberals (including liberal Republicans, who have since been mostly drummed out of the party) ended legalized racial segregation and gender discrimination.

Humiliation imposed by custom and enforced by government had been the order of the day for blacks and women before men and women of good will and liberal persuasion stepped up their long (and not yet ended) campaign to change things. Liberals gave this country Head Start and legal services and the food stamp program. They fought for cleaner air (there was a time when you could barely see Los Angeles) and cleaner water (there were rivers in America that actually caught fire).

Liberals. Your food is safer because of them, and so are your children’s clothing and toys. Your workplace is safer. Your ability (or that of your children or grandchildren) to go to college is manifestly easier.

It would take volumes to adequately cover the enhancements to the quality of American lives and the greatness of American society that have been wrought by people whose politics were unabashedly liberal. It is a track record that deserves to be celebrated, not ridiculed or scorned."

The party of stupid.

Paul Krugman's column yesterday is pure gold.  The GOP has seemed really desperate lately.  I think they're grasping at straws.

So the G.O.P. has found its issue for the 2008 election. For the next three months the party plans to keep chanting: “Drill here! Drill now! Drill here! Drill now! Four legs good, two legs bad!” O.K., I added that last part.

<snip> know-nothingism — the insistence that there are simple, brute-force, instant-gratification answers to every problem, and that there’s something effeminate and weak about anyone who suggests otherwise — has become the core of Republican policy and political strategy. The [GOP]’s de facto slogan has become: “Real men don’t think things through.”

Impeach now. We can do it!

Kucinich will introduce articles of impeacment again THIS FRIDAY!  We need to support him!

Veterans for Peace has kicked off an intensive 7 day campaign here in DC to urge support for this effort.

FOR THE NEXT 7 CRITICAL DAYS CALL YOUR CONGRESSMAN AND DEMAND IMPEACHMENT. If they are for impeachment have them push the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Rep Conyers, to act now. We need as many calls, emails and letters as possible before July 25th. GET YOUR FRIENDS AND NEGHBORS TO CALL.

If you are able come to Washington, DC, July 24th will be an impeachment lobbying day where we will personally visit Congressmen demanding impeachment. On July 25th we will attend a Judiciary Committee Hearing, and then meet with Rep. Conyers.

CALL 202-224-3121 for the house switchboard and LEAVE A MESSAGE FOR YOUR OWN CONGRESSMAN TO IMPEACH. Find your Congress Member by ZIP Code.

Sign the petition.

Kucinich is my hero!

Reads all 35 articles of impeachment on the House floor yesterday.  Wish I coulda been there.  I'da been so proud!

Here are the articles:

Article I
    Creating a Secret Propaganda Campaign to Manufacture a False Case for War     Against Iraq.
Article II
    Falsely, Systematically, and with Criminal Intent Conflating the Attacks of September 11, 2001, With Misrepresentation of Iraq as a Security Threat as Part of Fraudulent Justification for a War of Aggression.
Article III
    Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe Iraq Possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction, to Manufacture a False Case for War.
Article IV
    Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe Iraq     Posed an Imminent Threat to the United States.
Article V
    Illegally Misspending Funds to Secretly Begin a War of Aggression.
Article VI
    Invading Iraq in Violation of the Requirements of H. J. Res114.
Article VII
    Invading Iraq Absent a Declaration of War.
Article VIII
    Invading Iraq, A Sovereign Nation, in Violation of the UN Charter.

Read the rest here.

Thanks EJ!

Finally!  I've been waiting for someone to say something that makes a little bit of sense in the Obama-Wright controversy.  No surprise that EJ Dionne steps up to the plate, pointing out the hypocrisy of how quick our society is to condemn radical black preachers while being more diplomatic and understanding of racist white preachers who say things like "God doesn't hear the prayers of the Jews" and call the Catholic church "the anti-Christ". 

I disagree with the biblical scholar he quotes towards the end of the piece who says Wright was wrong to cloak himself in the mantle of a prophet because "prophets of old didn't announce their prophetic prerogatives at press conferences and press clubs".  Well, duh! They lived 2,000 years ago!  That has nothing to do with anything.  I think we do have prophets today just as human society had prophets 2,000 years ago and just as we will 2,000 years from now.  Who knows how they're going to deliver their messages?  Prophets just might use press conferences and press clubs to speak truth to power.  Whether Rev. Wright is one or not is up for debate but it's silly to attack the means of delivery instead of the message.

Immigrants. Identity. Illegal. Invasion.

Look at this map. Isn't it cool?  It's so simple on the surface: just a map of the Lakota Nation (see this post from the unapologetic Mexican).  But the more I look at it in the context of the current climate/controversies involving immigration in this country I think it raises all sorts of good and necessary complications around ideas of nations and borders and the interactions between humans across those imaginary lines. 

When you look at this map and I say "immigrants" who/what comes to mind?

What if I say "border security" --what does that make you think of looking at this map?

"Law and Order"?  "Illegal"?

"Invasion"?

These are words the anti-migrant crowd (e.g. Lou Dobbs, Pat Buchanan etc.) use in abundance when the subject is the US Mexico border and the desperately poor people who cross it looking for a better life.

History gives so much perspective on contemporary issues.  I'll give a little anecdote: I'm home visiting my folks for the holidays and my mom, as usual, says something to the effect of "I don't mind immigrants; I just wish they would learn English!" and it sounds reasonable but she says it with such anger that I know there's something else going on there under the surface.  It's not just about language --not really.  Because my little 70 year old white mother never has to worry about someone not speaking English to her.  She doesn't know many non-English speaking people.  My group of bilingual, multicultural friends is way more diverse than hers and I can't think of any friends of mine who don't speak English (even those in South America)!  So there's got to be something else going on there.

Over dinner I mention that my friend Paul recently came to visit.  Paul's parents are from Belguim and he was born in Argentina and raised in Fort Lauderdale.  He speaks English and French.  My mom was curious as to why he doesn't speak English and Spanish if he was born in Argentina.  I explained: His parents --like a lot of Europeans-- went to South America during and after the second World War.  And like a lot of immigrant groups when they got there they hung out with other Belgians and didn't learn much Spanish.  Sound familiar? I asked her. 

It's hard to learn another language --a fact never less understood than by those who have never tried to do so (my mother would fall into that category).   And it's freakin' hard to try to live and work in a country where you don't speak the language.  I know from personal experience that it's utterly exhausting.  It took every ounce of energy I had when I first got to Colombia to even to do the simplest of tasks (take the bus; buy groceries; have a vague idea of what's going on around in my immediate surroundings).  Life depends on language and when you're in a foreign world; you can't learn the new language fast enough.  But it takes time.  Especially if you're an adult.  And especially if you are not in the foreign land out of choice but by economic necessity the temptation to retreat into the familiar sounds and cadences of your mother tongue can be irresistible.   Heaven forbid, we get tired!

This is all the same thing.  No matter where we are now, no matter where we go in the future: we've been there before.  One day we are the migrants and the next someone else is.  Today we have plenty, tomorrow it's us asking for help/another chance/a better chance.  No matter how hard we try the world just refuses to congeal itself into a frozen unchanging mass.  Immigrants come and immigrants go and the flow of people and languages and cultures continues, messing up those little imaginary lines and convenient boxes.

Thank goodness for that.

The Story of Stuff: GREAT movie for this time of year!

The Story of Stuff a really smart woman explains the way the capitalist system works: externalize the costs; internalize the profits. 

I like the end where she says there are many points of intervention in this toxic system and people are working at many junctures: environmental, labor, human rights... etc.  There are many points of resistance in the matrix.

Emphasis on "Happy": Consequences of economic insecurity

Madeline Bunting had a column in The Guardian a few weeks ago about the economics of insecurity.  Security and insecurity is a favorite subject of mine because the concept is so pliable.  What is security?  It's a goal we're always striving for; it's been ever more prominent and elusive since 9/11 but rarely do we ask what it would mean, exactly, --what it would take-- for us to feel "secure"?  Are we talking about military superiority so overwhelming that no one would dare attack us physically?  Or do we mean food security: knowing we grow and produce enough food to feed ourselves?  What about social security: knowing that one's government provides safety nets for its population so that we don't all have to live at the mercy of fate?  Then of course there's economic security and that's the one Bunting talks about in her article.  Our current economic system is built on economic INsecurity, and overconsumption as a whole is "a mal-adaptive type of coping mechanism".  And what are the consequences of that (besides global warming and the general destruction of the planet)?

"there is a madness at the heart of this economic model with its terrible environmental costs. It's best illustrated by a graph used by the US psychologist Tim Kasser at a Whitehall seminar last week. One line, representing personal income, has soared over the past 40 years; the other line marks those who describe themselves as "very happy", and has remained the same. The gap between the two yawns ever wider. All this consumption is not necessary to our happiness....

The brilliance of this economic system built on insecurity is that it is self-reinforcing. The more insecure you are, the more materialistic; the more materialistic, the more insecure. As Kasser has shown, materialistic values (which are on the increase among teenagers on both sides of the Atlantic) make you more anxious, more vulnerable to depression and less cooperative. Studies show that people know what the real sources of lasting human fulfilment are - good relationships, self-acceptance, community feeling - but they face a formidable alliance of political and economic interests that have a vested interest in distracting them from that insight to ensure they work longer hours and spend more money.

The task we're faced with now is how to turn that equation around: go from a high-anxiety high-consumption mode of life to a low-anxiety low-consumption one.  A low-consumption economy would be "oriented towards facilitating the real sources of human fulfilment":

Hearteningly, we know it can be done - our parents and grandparents managed it in the second world war. This useful analogy, explored by Andrew Simms in his book Ecological Debt, demonstrates the critical role of government. In the early 1940s, a dramatic drop in household consumption was achieved - not by relying on the good intentions of individuals ... but by the government orchestrating a massive propaganda exercise combined with a rationing system and a luxury tax.

So, yes it's good to buy eco-friendly laundry detergent but to really make a change we need to act en masse.  That's why the UN's Climate Change Conference in Bali this week is so important and that's why a movement that relies on individual good intentions has never-- and will never-- change the world.  All the great progressive changes in society were based on communal action (sometimes sparked by a brave individual but eventually carried out communally).  In this age of globalization our community is now the whole world.  Some things just require a group effort.  As that famous presidential candidate once said, "it takes a village", eh?

This system would work if only reality would cooperate!

Okay so say we decide that global warming is a GOOD thing and we want to encourage folks to burn EVEN MORE FOSSIL FUELS at every opportunity because, you know, we like flooded cities and stifling air pollution and the like.  ;-)

If such were the case, a smart government might decide to CREATE INCENTIVES to encourage folks to burn as many fossil fuels as possible when they travel.  They might come up with a system such as this:  Make train travel EXPENSIVE and make air travel CHEAP.  That way people --even people who don't like to fly-- would be forced to fly out of economic necessity and burn I don't know how many hundreds of pounds more fossil fuels than they would otherwise.  Isn't that a great idea? 

yeah... that's the system we have now.  :-(

DC to my hometown in Florida
via airplane: $150
via train: $300

It's soooo frustrating.

What's scarier than rampaging zombies?

I live in a little college town in Florida.  Here, we have this local theater company who puts on plays in this historic building downtown.   Currently, in honor of the season, they are putting on a production of Night of the Living Dead.  What could be scarier than rampaging zombies?  We gotta go see it!  And so we did. 

First of all I should admit that this theater is so known for its safe, unchallenging, "fun" plays that I haven't ever been very motivated to go see very many of them.  And on the rare occasions that I do, I always walk away with the same impression: gee, that was mildly amusing and maybe rather cute but not very daring or profound.  But with George Romero's movie as the basis of the script how could they disappoint?

For those unfamiliar with the movie, the original Night of the Living Dead movie was made in 1968 at the height of the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement.  Seen within that context, the movie is very daring and provocative.  Fear of something "out there", a great threat to "life as we know it", talk of "containment", and "cures" that are as bad as the disease (the only way to kill zombies is to shoot them in the head and many non-zombies are killed not by zombies but by other humans trying to kill zombies)!  And in the middle of all this is a great power struggle between an older "law and order" white man and a young rebellious black man in which the more sympathetic character of the two is --amazingly enough now remember this was 1968-- the black man.  Wow!

It's one of the greatest films of all time and admittedly it'd be hard for a play to achieve something like the level of ingenuity of the original movie, but the story line is so ripe for biting political commentary updated for the 21st century that you'd have to have your head in the sand to waste it. And wasted it was. The Hippodrome's was a cute version that I really wanted to like --and probably would have if I didn't know how brilliant the Romero movie was-- but it could have been so much more.

The play was fun: the set impressive, the acting superb and the dancing zombies quite freaky-looking.  Ben, the black man, was played by Armando Acevedo, in jeans and a muscle-revealing white tank and to their credit, they did maintain somewhat the social power dynamic of the movie while updating it to 21st century prejudices.  Ben could've been an illegal immigrant or a farmworker.  Mr. Cooper the white man was perfect in his polo shirt and slacks.  I also appreciated it all being adapted to our area with lots of local references (Barbara and Johnny come from Tallahassee and the zombie attack takes place in Gainesville).  But that's about as far as they push the envelope in this one.

Okay you might say, so it was maybe a tad on the bland side but what's wrong with that?  Isn't Halloween supposed to be about having fun?  Sure, but how much fun is it when it's obvious that stuff has been intentionally toned down so as not to offend the funding sources?

Here's an example: At one point in the play a woman in the audience stands up with a microphone and plays a local news anchor reporting on the situation.  In the list of preparations the city has undertaken she tells us that Ted and Linda McGurn, two locally famous wealthy developers, have opened a zombie-free "SafeSpace" downtown.   Now, practically that entire audience would know "SafeSpace" as the name of a one-stop center that the city has been trying for years to open to provide services for the homeless.  The reason it has taken so long is because there are some pretty powerful interests who are aligned against such charitable endeavors in the downtown area.  The biggest and most powerful of those interests are --yes, indeed-- the McGurns!  It was the perfect setup and they just turned and walked away leaving everyone smiling painfully at a lame quip about parking enforcement! 

The McGurns, you see, are one of the largest donors to the Hippodrome State Theater.   Can you spell i-n-f-l-u-e-n-c-e?

Alright, I can understand not wanting to deliberately piss off your largest donors with personal jibes at their heartlessness towards the poor but ignoring the themes of racism, patriotism and militarism that are so present in the movie sunk the rest of the play for me.  There are so many rich parallels to George W's America.  The part, for example, in the story where the other young man trapped in the house is chosen to go out and face the zombies alone.  Romero put that scene in the movie for a reason: He's the young, loyal, good all-American boy going off to fight the good fight.  (hmmm... haven't seen anything like that on the news around here lately, have you?)  They could have played America the Beautiful, for example, during the scene where he's saying goodbye to his girlfriend, throwing red, white and blue lights on them as they embrace for the last time, both knowing they're likely to never see each other again.  Instead, the playwrights here made it a cheezy melodramatic dance scene as if it were a romantic comedy relevant to nothing.

The USA of 1968 and the USA of 2007 have a lot in common.  The climate of fear G.W's America rivals that of Romero's time.  What better way to illustrate that point than with a classic zombie story all about what people will do when faced with an incomprehensible threat of "epic proportions"? 

So you see the first lesson in art patronage: money buys good entertainment but not-so-good art. 

I've said it before and I'll keep saying it until they prove otherwise, if you want to be entertained, the Hippodrome is the place to go.  If you want to see real provocative performances, you'll have to look somewhere else.  Because in a country once again so firmly in the grip of paranoia, nothing's scarier than safe zombies. 

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

Don't Blame Bush

Paul Krugman had an excellent editorial in Friday's New York Times:

I’ve been looking at the race for the Republican presidential nomination, and I’ve come to a disturbing conclusion: maybe we’ve all been too hard on President Bush.

No, I haven’t lost my mind. Mr. Bush has degraded our government and undermined the rule of law; he has led us into strategic disaster and moral squalor.

But the leading contenders for the Republican nomination have given us little reason to believe they would behave differently. Why should they? The principles Mr. Bush has betrayed are principles today’s G.O.P., dominated by movement conservatives, no longer honors. In fact, rank-and-file Republicans continue to approve strongly of Mr. Bush’s policies — and the more un-American the policy, the more they support it.

You have to be a subscriber to read the full article on the NY Times but you can also read it here for free on Common Dreams.

Five men.

What a country!  Only in the USA can five men dictate medical decisions for an entire nation.  Five men.  The personal morals of those five men --not medical science, not my own discretion-- but just the conscience of those five men now limit my medical options if --god forbid-- it ever became necessary to preserve my health for me to have this particular abortion procedure.  Five fucking men. 

Excuse me if I'm a little resentful of this.  For some facts about the procedure the men have banned read this post.  It's tone of outrage captures my feelings perfectly.

Read Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's dissent (with Justices Stevens, Souter and Breyer joining). (thanks to Bitch PhD for the link).  It's excellent.

This is a huge step backwards for women in this country.

some thoughts on corporate media and the US postal service, the "culture of violence" in the US and the passing of a great human rights activist

The US Postal Service is switching from giving small publishers cheaper rates for mailing magazines to giving the largest corporate media publishers the best deals.  What will this do to freedom of speech:

"The new rates, which go into effect on July 15, were developed with no public involvement or congressional oversight, and the increased costs could damage hundreds, even thousands, of smaller publications, possibly putting many out of business.

What the Post Office is planning to do now, in the dark of night, is implement a rate structure that gives the best prices to the biggest publishers, hence letting them lock in their market position and lessen the threat of any new competition. The new rates could make it almost impossible to launch a new magazine, unless it is spawned by a huge conglomerate" (read the full article on CommonDreams).

On the shootings at Virginia Tech I feel adding my own revulsion to the mix won't mean much.  I don't have any new or interesting takes on the matter.  I generally agree with this question:

How many mass killings does the American public have to witness before its government gets serious about gun control?...For America's federal government to take gun control seriously, nothing less than mass armed insurrection is required. Were the public ever to act on the principles of their own Declaration of Independence, for example - "That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive ... it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government" - Congress would shut down the gun industry in a heartbeat.  (editorial by Lionel Shriver for the Guardian, UK).

And the sentiments expressed in this editorial in La Jornada from Mexico about the connections between US foreign policy and creating a "culture of violence" here at home, a point never more eloquently made than in the film Bowling for Columbine.

“The United States is immersed in a culture of fear directed at the population by the government and special interests and orchestrated by the news media, mainly television stations.” It is a form of control, he emphasized, similar to that which was used by the Nazi regime in Germany between 1933 and 1945.

And finally María Julia Hernandez has died.  Who was she?  An intrepid human rights fighter who brought the horrors of cases like the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador to the world's attention.  She was 68.  To learn more about her and her life's work read this excellent obituary from The Economist.

Orwell with a twist: We have NOT always been at war

They say moving house is one of  the most stressful of life experiences, right up there along with divorce and death of a loved one.  I think it has something to do with the fact that memories are hidden amongst and embedded in the material stuff of our lives that we are involved in packing into boxes, especially those not normally out on display.  There is something about an object being shoved into a closet or slid behind a sofa that seems to imbibe it with extra potent memories.  Being out of sight makes it stronger like the inner layers of an onion.

When I was in high school (and later in art school) I had one of those large black portfolios to carry my drawings in.  It was covered with bumper stickers from the issues of those days, not much different from the issues of today: human rights, Amnesty International, “stop the war”.   Stop the war? My first thought was “which war was I talking about then?”  Could it have been the first Gulf War under Bush Sr?  Or the Yugoslavian war under Clinton?  The low-level barely-noticeable-in-the-corporate-controlled-media war on Iraq that continued during the 90s mostly in the form of economic sanctions reinforced by regular bombings of no-fly zones?

I'm not sure which war was going on when I found those stickers and stuck about 20 of them all over this personal sized billboard I carried around with me, but I thought it was interesting how much a verb tense can say about political reality.  Stop the war. As if to reinforce that illusion that there has not been a steady stream of wars that my country has engaged in since the mid-20^th century.  It's Orwell with a twist: we have not always been at war with [fill-in-the-blank]; if our country clearly is at war then it's an aberration from our normal course of peaceful co-existence with the rest of the world.  It reminded me of the naive shock I felt upon first finding out that my country was of a type that would have a military training school in Fort Benning where soldiers from all over Latin America could come to learn the techniques they would need not to fight the soldiers of other armies, but to keep their own restless populations in line.  They employed techniques that according to manuals released under FOIA requests included torture (this was pre-9-11 when FOIA –Freedom of Information Act-- requests were still possible).  This was before Abu Ghraib when the news casters and political pundits expressed shock and outrage that the US military machine would commit such abuses. 

The portfolio with its stickers reminded me of the high school idealist I used to be. It was a time when I wouldn't have noticed anything at all misleading about a bumper sticker that says simply stop the war.  I still believed that the 1991 Gulf War which took place when I was fourteen was the first time my country had been at war in my lifetime.  I still believed that war was an aberration for my democratic country, not the modus operandi of a super power.  In fact, I still believed I lived in a democratic country instead of a country that is rapidly replacing its remaining shreds of actual democractic practice with a lot of hot air and lip service.  Simulcra, not substance, is the nature of postmodern democracy.

The point of all this is not to pontificate on how much wiser I am now, or ever how the world turned out to be so much more complicated than I ever could have imagined back then, but how wars, whether carried out by visible means with aircraft carriers and bombs or by less visible means by economic sanctions and covert warfare have always been with us during the history of this country and how we have grown so used to warfare as a constant way of life that now we don't even know what peace means.  To most people in this country the US was at peace during the decade between 1991 and September 11, 2001.   It brings a whole new meaning to pax americana.

For further reading/issues referenced:
Global Issues: Iraq sanctions
Global Policy Forum: Sanctions Against Iraq

"Are you participating in the revolution today or are you just wading through life?''

Continuing my mini-research into guestworker programs here in the States I ran across this quote in an unhelpful article that otherwise didn't really say much.  The quote comes from a man the author knew who ran a fruitstand in Miami.

"He was always reading a book that was written by some unknown author the page's [sic] edges were worn from being turned time and again....There were passages from books like Book of the Dead, Coming Out of the Darkness Into the Light, Wretched of the Earth, Black Skin, White Mask and When Things Fall Apart."

What powerful words.  I copied them onto a note card and taped it to the wall by the door where I'd see it everyday.  It's a good sentiment.  I need such a reminder.  I'm not saying kill yourself for a good cause.  I'm not saying lead an unhealthy, unbalanced life and die an early death for the sake of social change.  (We need you to stay alive and stay active.)  I am saying all of us should do something every single day, even if it's just a small thing, to change the course of the world.  And that we shouldn't let ourselves get overwhelmed by the enormity of the task; our actions don't have to be monumental, just enough to keep us from complacency. 

I know all this sounds very trite and meaningless.  I'm trying to keep it from just being a public service announcement but I was just thinking that for me, when I think of concrete examples of things I can do every day it really helps.  A friend of mine working tirelessly --even obsessively-- on a campaign for the Florida Coalition for Peace & Justice used to have a sign taped to his computer asking "What have you done to advance the culture of peace today?"  We are citizens living in Hitler's Germany, we are abolitionists fighting for human dignity --don't think that the stakes aren't just as high.  We're living in one of the most important times in human history.  "Are you participating in the revolution today or are you just wading through life?" 

Guest worker programs: great for corporations, bad for workers

Excellent editorial by David Bacon for TomPaine.com:

"Guest worker programs are low-wage schemes, intended to supply plentiful labor to corporate employers at a price they want to pay... "
                                                                     --Legalizing an Underclass.

Guest workers are completely at the mercy of the corporation.  Anyone who doesn't work fast enough or who agitates for more just conditions can be blacklisted and deported.  Sounds like a great way to get around all the rights worker's have struggled for for over a hundred years.  Welcome back to the 19th century!

 

What Biden says about white racism

This is a pretty thoughtful analysis of the latest example of politician-foot-in-mouth disease.  And ya gotta loooove the accompanying graphic! 

I heard one of the commentators' on NPR say something like the thing about Biden is that he's a rarity amongst politicians --so candid and honest in a world of careful constructed artifice and spin and what a shame if this snafu puts a damper on that spirit of frankness that he has.  Well... okay, I can see the usefulness of that; I do like it when people are up front about their feelings.  But I wish the commentator'd gone further to say something about how Biden's honesty reveals once more how ingrained racism is in our culture that he could essentially say that people of color aren't normally so clean and smart and articulate as Barak Obama.  Anyway go read Zuky's post about narratives.  It says it much better. 

For his part, I think Obama handled it with much grace.  The dude's got class and that classiness just made Biden seem like a washed up archaic archtype.

Duke rape case: little to celebrate

The rape charges against the three Duke Lacrosse players were dropped today.  Since LWG was one of the blogs that was outraged when this story broke and tried to help raise a cry for an investigation of her allegations I thought I should share some thoughts on this occasion. 

First and foremost, I'm proud to have stood in solidarity with the woman then and I'm proud now to stand in solidarity with her now.  Why?  Because something unsavory went on at that party that reeks of racism, sexism and classism.  That has NOT changed and it says something very troubling about our whole society generally and the cultural climate of Raleigh North Carolina specifically.  There is something unsavory that reeks of racism, sexism and classism in the hate mail this blog receives every time the story makes headlines again.

That the rape charges were dropped does not mean that the men are innocent.

"The men are still charged with kidnapping, for allegedly holding the woman against her will, and sexual offense. Under state law, a rape charge requires vaginal intercourse, while sexual offense covers any sexual act. In dropping the rape charges, Nifong did not specify what sex acts prosecutors now believe occurred (from the Guardian Unlimited story).

That the rape charges were dropped does not mean that the men did the right thing, that they acted humanely, that their actions were honorable or that they did not sully the name of their team, their institution and their families.  That the charges were dropped means only that it can't be proven that they acted criminally.  If it were a crime to be sexist, racist bastards, it'd be a different matter.  The evidence of their behavior that night in that respect at least is apparent.  If I were them, I think I would feel the need for reconciliation right now rather than triumphalism.  I see very little to celebrate in this case.

So what's the upshot of all this?  What does it all mean?  In the end I think we did the right thing.  We listened to a poor, young black woman who accused wealthy, young white men of a crime.  We took her seriously.  Thirty years ago it might not have even gone this far.  If the fact that these boys behaved as they did is cause for shame, the fact that the rest of the nation reacted as we did --with shock and outrage-- is cause for hope.  And no one person embodies that right response better than District Attorney Mike Nifong.  That the charges were dropped doesn't mean he didn't do his job; it means he did.  He took some serious allegations very seriously.  In my book that makes him a decent DA.  He'll sleep well tonight.  Mr. Nifong, I'm sure you already know, but you did the right thing.

As for what it all means... I think a lot of questions still need to be asked.  Why was this woman so poor she had to work as a stripper for rich white men?  Why is there such a class divide in Raleigh, NC and in the whole US of A?  Why do some people feel so jubilant right now and interpret this news as dropped charges as a victory of rich white men over a poor black woman?  I think it's yet another reminder that we still have a long way to go here.  There's still a lot of healing to be done and a great need for reconciliation. 

This is not a victory for the players.  The only victory here is that originally the team and the school didn't want to investigate this woman's allegations but public outcry and a courageous DA resisted that.   They did the right thing.  They listened to her and they did investigate.  That's the real victory. 

"Merry Christmas".... or else!

I was reading yet another article on the artificially constructed "war" on Christmas and was struck by how aggressive the "Christmas and Christmas ONLY" crowd can be.  These people seem very angry.  Maybe that's the new spirit of the season?  How ugly.  Leave it to the conservatives to convert a nice well wishing sentiment into a mean-spirited display of unfriendly politics. 

"Merry Christmas!!" I've heard people growl at the cashier if he/she didn't say it to them.

Is that a threat?

Latest foreign news translation: The legacy of Vicente Fox

La Jornada:
Skyrocketing Migration to U.S. is a Failure of Fox Administration

This NPR newstory also discusses Fox's legacy as well as the contentious transition of power.

Latest foreign news translation

Diario Decuyo, Argentina
What Would Bush Exchange to Accept  a Second Vietnam?

A "crime" to be homeless? Rethinking absurdities in attitudes about homelessness

We are so used to thinking and talking about the homeless in a dehumanizing way that we forget how dehumanizing it is.  It comes naturally: "They're so lazy!" "Why don't they get a job like the rest of us?"  "Moochers!".  Sometimes to combat this hegemonic thinking it helps to turn the tables on ourselves and talk about others like we talk about them, just to see how ridiculous it sounds.  The following is an excerpt from the HOME Van newsletter by Arupa Chiarini questioning of the absurdity of the logic that we often use in association with homeless individuals.  It's the best thing I've read in a long, long time.
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The criminalization of homeless people in Gainesville is so extreme that it invites comparison to government under the Taliban.  If you are homeless in Gainesville it is illegal to sleep at night, and it is illegal to urinate or defacate during the nighttime hours, when no  restroom facilities are provided.  Homeless people who are arrested for these "crimes" are usually denied bail, on the grounds that they have no permanent address.  People spend weeks, and sometimes months, in jail awaiting a court date for the "crimes"  they have committed.  More affluent citizens demand that homeless people be kept far, far away from their homes, businesses and schools on the grounds that, after all, many homeless people are criminals!  It is a circle of terror and oppression that has caused immeasureable suffering, including premature death, among the frail, elderly, and disabled citizens who are chronically homeless in Gainesville.

I understood the criminalization of homelessess in a whole new way during the winter of 2002-2003, the Home Van's first winter of providing services.  On bitter cold nights we would give our folks a sandwich, a cup of cocoa, a blanket - and then leave them out there and go back to our warm homes!  The pain of this was almost unbearable.  Imagine giving your disabled child or your elderly parent a blanket and a little food, on a January night, and then leaving her or him on a city street and going home to a hot shower and a warm bed!  This is exactly what we found ourselves doing.  We had no choice!  You can't bring 200 people  home for the  night.

Home Van volunteers, and other community groups providing direct services, experienced this horror every winter until last year, when Holy Trinity opened their doors to homeless people, every winter night for three months.

This year, as I have mentioned over and over again, we have no effective winter shelter!  We are back in the nightmare.

Society criminalizes homeless people in order to avoid unbearable guilt.  If I can tell myself that homeless people are criminals who deserve to sleep outdoors, then I can feel okay about myself.

City Commissioners go on ride outs with GPD in order to see law enforcement activities for themselves.  The same policy needs to be in effect in regards to our homeless people.  City Commissioners should go out with the Home Van, or a similar group such as Fire of God Ministries, and participate - for even one night - in caring for homeless people.  Never again would they be able to speak of "The Homeless" like some herd of cows that can be moved from one pasture to another for the convenience of business owners or neighborhoods.  They might not rest well in their beds on winter nights, until they have provided shelter for  homeless people in an effective and timely manner.
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The HOME (Homeless Outreach Mobile Effort) Van, by the way, is an endeavor we started a few years ago in an attempt to provide much needed services to people who are unable to get around easily in order to access the few services the city does provide the homeless.  We discovered that many of those living in the woods around the city are old, infirm or disabled.  The need was great. We started bringing gift bags of food and necessities (such as toiletries, socks) to various "camps" around town.  The response was overwhelming.  We met people in wheelchairs and on crutches, veterans, elderly people, and people with mental illnesses.  It's hard enough to get around in our city without a car, imagine doing it in a wheelchair!

It's a public embarrassment that our city does so little for its most vulnerable citizens.

Putting things in perspective.

US and Russian arsenals pose greater threat to world peace and security than Kim Jong il. 

La Jornada editorial (Mexico).

The people united: Fast for Darfur

About a week ago I got an email from my sister saying how we should all boycott Citgo, the Venezuelan oil company, because their president (Venezuela's, not Citgo's) called our president a bad name.  Bush has used similar language in his own ideological speeches.  Nothing more encouraging than two heads of states acting like two six-year olds!  At the time I just rolled my eyes in exasperation at the childishness of some people, not only the name-calling heads of states but the boycott-calling people who take such rhetoric seriously (though the boycott wasn't my sister's idea; she just forwarded the email).

But when I wrote back to my sister (who surely will think twice about sending me anything political in the furture) I tried to not just say "hey this is a dumb idea".  I tried to find something positive to say about it.  So it occurred to me that there is some (surely unintended) good news in that email: it's an example that even for conservatives the power of the people to effect social and political change is far from forgotten.  Even conservatives know that "the people united can never be defeated".  And I was glad to see that when they saw something they didn't like, their first thought was to organize a boycott.  To me, that says something very reassuring about the citizenry of this country: they may be asleep a lot of the time but if they ever woke up, boy! watch out!  Despite what corporate controlled curricula would have us believe, here in the United States, we do have a long tradition of active social movements and popular resistence (just read People's History for a long list of examples).  We've always been that way in the past and if we wanted to, we could be a powerful force for change in the future as well.

So I thought this was appropriate today as I walked through campus and saw green fliers plastered everywhere about a very important event tomorrow (or today, depending on when you read this): International Fast for Darfur Day: "Tomorrow, Oct. 6, we, Students Taking Action Now: Darfur (STAND), are once again asking the community to stand up. STAND will be hosting Darfur Fast, an event designed to demonstrate unity with the people of Darfur, raise awareness of the genocide, and fundraise for relief efforts" (from their call to action).  Here in Gainesville some human rights groups are calling for people to wear green to express their solidarity.

I'm glad my sister and other concerned citizens of this country care about internatonal politics.  I'm glad they recognize the power they have inherent.  I'm glad they're willing to inconvenience themselves to take a political stand.  But when you think about the state of the world and the scope of the problems facing humanity, it doesn't take a genius to figure out which is more important: putting a stop to name-calling or putting a stop to genocide.  Even two six year olds could figure it out.

For more information:

SudanWatch blog

A Q&A on Darfur from the BBC...