FORECASTING RAIN

Prisons: The Ultimate in "Social Spending"

2012-01-23T19:48:00.000-05:00

In many ways the New Deal was one of the worst things that has ever happened in the history of humankind. That is a strong statement, unless you consider the possible alternatives. Capitalism was collapsing in the 1930's. If you believe, as I do, that much of the pain and suffering that the world has endured since is directly because of the prevailing economic order, then you can blame FDR.

What? He's your liberal hero of the century?

Why?

The people who marched and struggled and bled for the eight hour day, the weekend, minimum wages, and an end to child labor were unionized laborers. FDR did what he had to to preserve the system as much as he could given the immense amount of social unrest in light of capitalism having begun to crumble. And it was a victory for the elite.

How? The welfare state.

And now we find ourselves with the second great economic collapse in the history of Capitalism. And despite what the media might have you think, the reasons are clear:

Productivity is the amount of "stuff" made per hour. If you understand that in order for Capitalists to make money, that stuff cannot just be produced--it has to be purchased. Ultimately, wage-earners in the United States are expected to buy up most of that stuff (and they mostly did during the "Fordism" era of Capitalism). But when you have wages plateau and productivity continues to rise, the workers can no longer afford all that stuff. If workers cannot afford to buy up all that surplus stuff since the 70's by relying on their wages, then how is it getting bought up? How is the inevitable drop in aggregate demand avoided?

That's a 2 part answer: debt, and the State. Mostly everyone is familiar with the former of these answers and the mumbo jumbo that goes with it: credit default swaps, sub-prime mortgages, credit cards, etc. But few seem to understand the latter, especially among liberals and the left.

When each worker produces this much more than can be affordability consumed by society, it leads to a whole lot of junk left over that is sitting in a warehouse somewhere and a whole lot of labor that isn't being translated into capital for the boss. This is what Marx termed "overproduction" or "over-accumulation." When this happens, the capitalist needs 2 things to happen,

(1) Some productively employed people need to stop producing for society, and

(2) The level of consumption needs to be preserved.

If only (1) happens, then the amount of people taking in cash to be able to consume drops even more, which leads to a further drop in aggregate demand. If only (2) happens, that is, if people are just given more money by the boss so that they can consume more, then the cut the bosses get from increasing productivity goes to the workers instead. So what does (1) plus (2) equal? The state, buying a lot of stuff for people who are kept unemployed, or unproductively employed.

Below is a graph of US government spending. It's almost creepy how much this graph has in common with the one above:

Liberals like to pretend that all this spending is helping us. You know, social safety net, make the poor not as poor, pay for it using all that wealth of the rich.

Except the more "social spending" we seem to do, the bigger the gap between the rich and the poor becomes. So who exactly is all this spending helping? You might expect a group of people who crash land on a desert island would have a higher quality of life then the people being "helped out" by our urban projects and welfare roles. And then you have success stories like education:

And then you have all the countless government jobs, the kind that add nothing of value to our society. I am not picking on the unfortunate souls who happen to find themselves in these jobs.

So what is the real effect of all this spending? The real reason is there's is a lot of stuff out there that the leisure class needs to be bought up, and they are happy to have the government to buy it for us when we're not able. That's why we've built fighter jets that the melt in the rain, "bridges to nowhere," and why we've subsidized for corn that gets thrown in a barn somewhere to rot. People act like federal spending is somehow charity for "lazy social leeches" or, the liberal alternative, "those poor people who just can't seem to be able to help themselves." But you don't make anyone richer by buying them food, prescription drugs, or even DVD players. The people who get rich from all this are the people who get paid: capitalists.

There is no better example this then the prison-industrial complex.

Angela Davis wrote "Are Prisons Obsolete," in 2003, aiming at prisons as the next major focus of American abolition. Michelle Alexander's recently published "The New Jim Crow" demonstrates the undismissable links between our racial caste system and the emergence of our prison state. Experience, for those who have it, and simple reflection for those that don't, tells us that the term "corrections" is laughable given the contemporary prison system. Our system is not about treatment or rehabilitation. It is not even about punishment (though this is often how it is sold to the more fearful or zealously law-and-order types among us. It is about profit.

Prison combine the two most important functions for government during overproduction. It prevents workers from producing, and it leads to huge amounts of consumption.

It costs more money to lock up someone for a year in New Jersey then to send them to Princeton. Check out this great graphic by publicadministration.net, which describes the outrageous bill that the State is willing to pay to "protect" us. From whom? Non-violent drug offenders, mostly of color, mostly poor. Alexander lays out in horrifying detail the policing practices that turn a social problem that effects every race almost equally (drug use) into a "war" that is a form of racialized social control not unlike Jim Crow. It is this racist system that leads to such high rates of imprisonment for people of color: in 2007 the rate of incarceration for white men was 773 per 100,000, for black men 4,618 per 100,000, despite the fact that rates of drug use and sales among whites and blacks are more or less the same.

"Our research shows that blacks comprise 62.7 percent and whites 36.7 percent of all drug offenders admitted to state prison, even though federal surveys and other data detailed in this report show clearly that this racial disparity bears scant relation to racial differences in drug offending. There are, for example, five times more white drug users than black. Relative to population, black men are admitted to state prison on drug charges at a rate that is 13.4 times greater than that of white men. In large part because of the extraordinary racial disparities in incarceration for drug offenses, blacks are incarcerated for all offenses at 8.2 times the rate of whites. One in every 20 black men over the age of 18 in the United States is in state or federal prison, compared to one in 180 white men." -Human Rights Watch

The left in this country has been off track for a long time. They have come to believe that the state will protect the vulnerable from the excesses of capitalism. They have confused a workers' state with a welfare state. But the state's role in capitalism, regardless of the form of that state, is not to protect us; it is to serve the rich. Administer the affairs of the ruling class. And in a welfare state society like the United States or Europe, the state is meant to protect consumption when it is threatened by capitalists' own avarice. Not seeing this, many on the left have embraced state charity, instead of helping to organize working class people to take care of their own needs, resist their oppressors, and find empowerment. They have looked to above for salvation instead of working to build it from the ground up. And they have been complicit in giving the rich the biggest possible tool--in the form of the state--to use against us all. And it's getting bigger all the time. Think about it: if a big state could or would protect us from capitalism, then why is corporate power, and the gap between the rich and the poor, worse now then ever?

A Dream

2011-12-18T18:35:00.001-05:00

Tell me if this sounds idealistic and immature:

It is my belief that a racist white working class man from, say, South Boston, and a young black woman who has only know white people in the context of discrimination and prejudice who is from, say, Roxbury, could find themselves fighting side by side for their mutual salvation at an Occupy protest, could lock arms in defiance of the police state that has oppressed them both, and in a moment of co-empowerment find solidarity that transcends prejudice. It is my conviction that such moments are all that can really meant by "smash racism." And, it is my hope that the revolutionaries of the Occupy movement will embrace these moments, as opposed to preventing them before they can happen.

Talk, As Long As You Don't Incite

2011-12-08T09:49:00.001-05:00

"Little in the way of expression is outlawed under the United States Constitution, but an act which incites a lawful forceful response is unlikely to pass as expressive speech."
-Justice Frances A. McIntyre

I'm not a lawyer. But this line is truly terrifying. It seems to me that the only sort of free speech that needs protection by the Bill of Rights is speech that incites an otherwise "lawful" forceful response. This interpretation seemingly gives any legislative body the right to pass laws legalizing a forceful responses to any speech they see fit, and thus strip said speech of any First Amendment protection. The question is not whether the Constitution "outlaws" expression; the question is whether it prevents local and state executives and legislatures from outlawing expression. According McIntyre, it doesn't. Meaning, there is no utility to the Bill of Rights at all.

Also, I remember there being something about "assembly" in the First Amendment as well, though McIntyre seems to have neglected to mention that in his decision (you can read the entire thing here).

The fact is everyone should have realized that the courts would side with Menino regardless of the merits of the case. This demonstrates that the system is corrupt whenever the rights of ordinary citizens are concerned, particularly when they are taking part in activities that threaten the system itself (even if those actions only consist of speech and assembly). If you search your feelings, I am confident that you will come to the same conclusion I have; in this case, the law meant nothing. Which begs the question, why have the law at all? Why have these courts? Why should we ask for something (protection) from a corrupt system instead of doing it ourselves? If the system has made it explicitly clear, yet again, that rights are only afforded to those that either have a lot of money or don't expect anything to change, then why are we pleading with that system instead of trying to bring it down?

"I Worked Really Hard to Get Where I Am"

2011-12-07T00:16:00.001-05:00

I hear this all the time. It is meant to somehow be proof that the meritocracy is real.

I think it mostly has to do with people feeling threatened that you are taking something away from them by suggestion that "hard work" isn't actually the key to success that people pretend it is. As if you are accusing them of cheating. Or maybe people are still steaming about lazy co-workers they had somewhere down a few rungs on the ladder. Either way, it is not at all relevant.

Imagine for a second that each number stands for a kind of person. 1s are people that have worked really hard and have been rewarded with upward mobility; they have "pulled themselves up by their bootstraps." (Ignore for a second that no one ever does this all by themselves.) 2s are people that are rich but don't work very hard, and so on.

When people claim that they belong to group 1, and that that somehow proves we live in a meritocracy, what they are saying is "If there is anyone who is a 1, then the meritocracy is real." But that's not true. We only have a meritocracy if groups 2 and 3 don't exist. There can be a handful of people in group 1, and of course, there is. But there is a TON of people in groups 2 and 3 as well. As a social worker, I work everyday with people in group 3. Most of our country is actually inhabited by group 3.

And, to be even clearer, groups 2 and 3 don't just exist, they are essential for Capitalism. Profit is only made by exploiting surplus labor; that is, people need to be made to work harder then they get paid for (group 3). In fact, most of the people who are actually producing value for society are not considered "successful."

So next time someone pulls this out don't argue with them about whether its true or not. Just explain to them that that doesn't actually matter.

Two Victories Worth Being Proud Of

2011-10-26T16:03:00.000-04:00

I have a dilemma to propose to you. There are two major victories for the Occupy movement so far that are really worth mentioning. It is difficult to tell which one is more worth being proud of.

Victory #1: "Outing the Ringers"
Thanks to Jay Smooth for so eloquently explaining the mess we've made for TV talking heads.

I can't say it better than Jay Smooth did, but it does bring me great satisfaction, and it should bring us ALL great satisfaction. The more ridiculous these mouthpieces start to look, and the more ridiculous their defends start to look, the less people will be willing to take them seriously. And that's a great thing.

Victory #2: "Outing the Imposters"
Victory number 2 was touched on by Chris Hedges in this recent column, as well as an interview he did down at Occupy Wall Street (around 4:19)

There are a lot of people out there who have spoken a lot of empty words and meanwhile deliberately sold out the people they pretended to represent. None are more despicable than the politicians who make up the Democratic Party. At least the GOP is honest about working for rich people day in and day out. The Democrats have always been willing to give lip service in order to channel honest grievances into a corrupt and fruitless political process for their own sakes. But Hedges is right to call out unions and Moveon.org as well, and we can add the million other faux progressive organizations to that list. Over the next few months we will watch as these hypocrites scramble to try to avoid their impending irrelevance, either by attempting to co-opt us or by simply hitching a ride: "This what we had in mind the whole time, we swear!" That's the important thing to remember--any organization that was serious in its opposition to the United States' plutocratic system could have organized a real struggle instead of just talked. Now that everyone knows what real struggle looks like, the curtain has been lifted, and these people have been revealed for what they are: complicit.

The attempts at co-optation have already begun. The other night a lackey for Alan Khazei attempted to pass a resolution at an Occupy Boston GA to bring politicians to our camp in order to build "unity" or some such nonsense. But this lackey did not identify himself as a lackey. He pretended to be a protester. And the best part? The resolution was brought to the GA when most of the rest of Occupy Boston was out marching. Alan Khazei, consider yourself outed.

I've Got a List of Demands Written on the Palm of My Hand

2011-10-23T13:57:00.000-04:00

(Updated Below)

Why we are giving into the pressure of outsiders trying to discredit us is beyond me. Our demands aren't clear enough? And that's a problem because...?

It's a problem for the people seeking to co-opt us and/or marginalize the Occupy movement because they want most of all to get into a technocratic discussion of why we can't have what is our right as human beings to have. Of course no technical tweaks will offer any reprieve of our grievances; our collective alienation, oppression, and dehumanization are built into the system itself. And of course the powers that be know that, and as long as we are talking about specific reforms we play into their hands.

This movement is at it's best when it creates an opportunity to practice community and democracy outside the system. Our foremost demand should be to continue to do just that, and for others to do it as well. It is at it's worst when we allow ourselves to be portrayed as a party that people can shop around for. We are NOT the left wing's answer to the Tea Party. We aren't another party--we are a new party that doesn't require parties, because party systems are undemocratic.

So if people must have a list of demands, in order to show other people what we stand for, and to give common cause for others to join us, then perhaps that following list will suffice:

We demand the right to represent ourselves in a democratic fashion.
We demand the right to speak about our non-freedoms however we want, whenever we want, whereever we want.
We demand the right to have a dialogue with each other about how to build a better world for ourselves.
We demand that we and every person on the planet is guaranteed all human rights, including but not limited to:

Education
Healthcare
Nutritious food
Shelter befitting a human being as defined by the person themself
Productive work of a person's choice that is not exploited by others for profit
The right to love who we want, however we want
The right to clean wind, water, soil, and air
The right to associate with others as we see fit and to engage in community in ways we find fulfilling

We demand the right to control our own destiny and the destiny of all fruits of our labor.
We demand an end to alienation and economic exploitation.
We demand an end to all institutionalized forms of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, classism, sizeism, islamophobia, antisemitism, or any other system of oppression which impoverishes some and grants power and privilege to others.
We demand a society where the good of all is placed above the profit of a few.

In short, we demand that we, and every other person on this earth, are treated with the full rights and dignity that is fitting for a human being.

"List of Demands" by Saul Williams

(note: This list is hardly exhaustive, I know. I will gladly add something if you think it belongs here).

UPDATE 10/26/11: Occupy Boston ratified this Statement of Purpose, and in my opinion it's right on track.

This Is What Co-optation Looks Like: Response to George Lakoff

2011-10-21T12:53:00.000-04:00

George Lakoff wrote this truly troubling piece about the Occupy movement.

The only thing I agree with is the sentiment that he begins the column with:

"I think the movement should be framing itself. It’s a general principle: Unless you frame yourself, others will frame you — the media, your enemies, your competitors, your well-meaning friends."

I am willing to give Lakoff the benefit of the doubt, and say that he probably is a well-meaning friend when he tries to frame the movement, though it is a special kind of well-meaning friend the decides to take up the mantel of "framing" the movement for us now that we are "maturing." However, Lakoff throwing in his lot with those who represent one of the most dangerous threats to the Occupy movement: co-opters.

In this piece, Lakoff reinforces the idea that society is divided into the traditional left-right (aka conservative-progressive, aka Republican-Democrat) political dialectic, an idea that has defined the dominant worldview regarding politics for some time. He makes the mistake of assuming that this paradigm accurately reflects the ideological makeup of the country and, by extension, that it accurately reflects reality. He has no way to understand the occupy movement except as a progressive counterweight to the Tea Party in this narrow conception of politics. If that is all we are, the left's answer to the Tea Party, then we may as well stop right now.

In truth the paradigm that Lakoff draws on is actually one that is maintained by the two major political parties--the Democrats and Republicans--in order to bury the truth: that the divide between the two is completely artificial. Both parties have the same agenda, to serve the oligarchy, and blame the other party when this hurts the rest of us. "The party in power is tinkering with the state incorrectly, and this is the source of our problems," they both claim, because they both seek to hide the innate impotence of this particular government, and governments in general, to correct the ills that are inextricably linked to the larger politico-economic system itself. This quote from Marx goes beyond the scope of this point, but clarifies the positions of our two parties in the US:

The state will never discover the source of social evils in the "state and the organization of society", as the Prussian expects of his King. Wherever there are political parties each party will attribute every defect of society to the fact that its rival is at the helm of the state instead of itself. Even the radical and revolutionary politicians look for the causes of evil not in the nature of the state but in a specific form of the state which they would like to replace with another form of the state.

From a political point of view, the state and the organization of society are not two different things. The state is the organization of society. In so far as the state acknowledges the existence of social grievances, it locates their origins either in the laws of nature over which no human agency has control, or in private life, which is independent of the state, or else in malfunctions of the administration which is dependent on it. Thus England finds poverty to be based on the law of nature according to which the population must always outgrow the available means of subsistence. From another point of view, it explains pauperism as the consequence of the bad will of the poor, just as the King of Prussia explains it in terms of the unchristian feelings of the rich and the Convention explains it in terms of the counter-revolutionary and suspect attitudes of the proprietors. Hence England punishes the poor, the Kings of Prussia exhorts the rich and the Convention heheads the proprietors.

Lastly, all states seek the cause in fortuitous or intentional defects in the administration and hence the cure is sought in administrative measures. Why? Because the administration is the organizing agency of the state.

The contradiction between the vocation and the good intentions of the administration on the one hand and the means and powers at its disposal on the other cannot be eliminated by the state, except by abolishing itself; for the state is based on this contradiction. It is based on the contradiction between public and private life, between universal and particular interests. For this reason, the state must confine itself to formal, negative activities, since the scope of its own power comes to an end at the very point where civil life and work begin. Indeed, when we consider the consequences arising from the asocial nature of civil life, of private property, of trade, of industry, of the mutual plundering that goes on between the various groups in civil life, it becomes clear that the law of nature governing the administration is impotence. For, the fragmentation, the depravity, and the slavery of civil society is the natural foundation of the modern state, just as the civil society of slavery was the natural foundation of the state in antiquity. The existence of the state is inseparable from the existence of slavery.

From "Critical Notes on the Article 'The King of Prussia and Social Reform. By a Prussian'" (1844)

I think that most people in our country, particularly the ones that encounter extreme forms of oppression, have come to realize that "democracy" has become a meaningless catchphrase in a country where regardless of the party that wins, the 99% lose. The economic elites that make all the major decisions never seem to come up for election, only their stewards. Low participation in elections reflects the fact that people see complicity for this in Democrats and Republicans alike, though to be fair they wouldn't be able to stop it, on their own, even if they wanted to. What people want is not another party they can "shop" around for--what they want is a new process altogether. To me, this is what the Occupy movement represents.

The Tea Party itself is an excellent case example of what the Occupy movement need most be afraid of at this stage: co-optation by established liberal political institutions, the behemoth of which is the Democratic Party. This open letter was supposedly written by a former tea party member to the occupiers quite early on in the movement. In this letter, the author describes the way that the Tea Party, which began as a movement to call out both parties as being corrupt, pro-corporate, anti-citizen, and pro-big (oppressive) state (though perhaps the Tea Party was also racist, individualistic, and "libertarian" in the right wing sense of the word). He also describes its co-optation by the conservative political machine. This co-optation has made the Tea Party nothing more than another cog in the same machine it hated. In an effect, no new ideas were introduced, and worse yet, nothing at all, fundamentally, changed. Whatever systemic threat they posed has been neutralized. A "Tea Partier" is now just a code term for a dogmatic Republican.

But if we take the author's word for what the Tea Party began as (and I hesitate to do so, but let's do that for the sake of argument), we can see that it wasn't really pro-Republican at all, nor did it express ideas that are allowed to be expressed through sanctioned channels like Republican Party (and still aren't). The true political and "moral" spectrum is vastly wider, and different, then what is legitimized by institutions in society, as well as what Lakoff will acknowledge.

For instance, my own moral/political lens, that of a critical/radical orientation, leads me to the following views that are not presented in Lakoff's piece: that the economic and institutional structures themselves, fundamentally, are what causes these recent problems like joblessness and poverty; that there can be no compromise between the "The Private" and "The Public" in which we, the vast majority of citizens of the country and the world, make out ahead; that working within the system has been encouraged by people in power precisely because it changes nothing; that as bad as money in representative political processes are, the representative political process is itself the problem because it is undemocratic by its very nature; that wages going up has no real consequence on the fact that workers are exploited by a tiny leisure class, and always have been, and always will be under a capitalist system; that ending the destruction of the natural world is not contingent on changes in the administrative orientation of the state, but is contingent instead on ending capitalism itself, which would collapse without the ever increasing consumption of natural resources; and, most importantly, that compromise with a system that causes the poverty and dehumanization of 80% plus of the world's population is complicity with that poverty and dehumanization.

I am not proposing that this alternative political/moral framework to supplant what Lakoff proposed. I am merely pointing out that his article does not encompass a true range of political and moral thought, just as our formal political process has failed to do so. Our only hope now is to replace this formal process with a new one, where people freely exchange ideas in an arena where no one has power over anyone else, where we decide what to do together. That is what the occupation movement is; an alternative process that has taken on the struggle of trying to accomplish true democracy.

Chris Hedges promises that the co-optation I fear is not possible in his newest column. His work on this has been pretty awesome; I hope he's right.

Response to "How to be a Radical Therapist"

2011-10-16T15:22:00.001-04:00

A few weeks ago, April mentioned an article by Rick Kunnes entitled "How to be a Radical Therapist." This is an article that appeared in one of my classes at Simmons. I have written a response for my class (below) which plays up "Liberation Health" as a possible solution to the dilemmas that Kunnes identifies. Liberation Health is a Freirean influenced health care paradigm that is championed by one of my professors. You can find out more about it here. The original article by Kunnes is embedded below my response.

Vacillating towards the Proletariat How to Be a Radical Therapist

Struggling Together at General Assembly

2011-10-09T15:59:00.003-04:00

(Updated Below)

This past Wednesday at Occupy Boston, near the end of the assembly, a group of young men* spoke out (loudly, breaking from process, and with some degree of [male] anger); they said that we had lost sight of why we were here and what we were about and they had felt that their voices had been silenced.

They were reacting directly to the facilitation of that evening’s GA. This GA had been quite tightly facilitated and facilitators were trying a new tool: floor monitors. Floor monitors were to seek out all of the clarifying questions, points of information, friendly amendments, and blocks, and then direct the group’s attention to them when their time came. This first night, the floor monitors had taken on the role of speaking for the person with the point, question, amendment, or issue. This, it seems, had not necessarily been the intentions of the facilitator team but had occurred nonetheless (and has since not been repeated). Also there was some degree of vetting by the floor monitors (i.e. if your point of information was too-off-topic then the floor managers would suggest, or maybe tell you, that you needed to get on individual stack). This vetting process appears to still be happening by floor monitors.

So, Wednesday, this group of men—who I believe were all physical occupiers—was very upset and threatening to leave the movement/encampment. They used their loud male voices and their anger to direct attention towards themselves and effectively disrupt the process. The facilitator, at this time—GA was pretty much over—decided that it was time for her to step aside. The group of 5 4 men moved to the front and onto the “stage” where they stood side-by-side and shouted their dissatisfaction.

I was incredibly impressed and proud with how the assembled community reacted. People moved forward to listen to these men and there was a sense that we must embrace them and be sure that they feel valued, loved, and listened to. People’s Mic immediately went into effect (we had been using a PA system during GA). A few people spoke out to them asking what it is that they were specifically taking issue with. Then @TomJoadsGhost called for People’s Mic and requested that these men join us down in the general area, rather than standing above us on the stage. They obliged—this was a great first step as far as the dynamics of the space and the mood of the discussion. As more people begin speaking out (with People’s Mic) someone stepped up to take stack (so less assertive people would not be passed over). A bit later, a woman spoke out and asked that we create a more deliberate circular space so that more people can see the individual speaking up. Several members of the facilitator working group spoke—largely without defensiveness. The woman who was facilitating that night came into the center of the crowd and spoke up. She had had a stressful night and often frustration is unfairly targeted at the facilitator his/her/hirself; however, she did not back away from this conversation and instead placed herself right in the middle of it.

What had begun as a somewhat anxious and tense conversation sparked by some very upset individuals had been caringly and respectfully deescalated and addressed by the community. I believe that most of the men who originally voiced their complaints did feel responded to, cared about, and respected by the community. (One of these men did storm away before we were able to begin conversing about it; several people did follow him to talk it through and I believe I’ve since seen him at the occupation.)

To wrap up this anecdote for those particularly interested in how this panned out: the thrust of the conversation became understanding what people were having issues with; communicating and re-communicating that facilitators do not have power over others, but rather are there to aid in empowering the process (which is an expression of the entire group and a structure meant to empower the community); it was re-iterated that we are learning about how we like to run GA and that new things are just experiments and need not stay the same; it was repeated that the more people who can participate in the facilitator’s working group the better; the facilitators noted that having the floor monitors paraphrase others’ thoughts is problematic; and we all began to work through the complexity and tension inherit in empowering a process and trusting that a powerful process with an empowered facilitator need not feel like or lead to hierarchies or authority of one individual, but also that it is important to remain vigilant in holding the process accountable to the group. Good stuff all around.

But the main reason that I bring this story up is to discuss the way these men expressed their dissatisfaction, their concerns, and their feelings. They did so with their loud (and empowered) male voices and by allowing their anger to be very visible to the group. I think that their concerns are very valid and I do understand being angry about them. And I don’t bring this up to get into a hierarchy of oppression debate or to make commentary about these men’s experiences. But what I do wish to say is that I believe the community should respond to all concerns of this nature by embracing those who are upset, deeply listening to their issues, and working with them and others to address people’s feelings and concerns. But, I worry: In this case, these men were greeted with precisely that, but were they greeted with it because they used institutionalized and normative means to garner a great deal of attention and alarm? I believe so, at least in part.

They used a set of means that are much more comfortable for them to use than they would be for others to use. And they used a set of means that are much more uncomfortable for me to witness than they are for others with different identities and experiences to witness.

And, while their feelings of upset and frustrations are valid, it makes me very worried that their behavior, in fact, further silences others whose concerns are just as valid.

In some ways, a stricter process makes space for those who are more often and easily silenced and we must bear this in mind. I am thankful that, on Wednesday night, several people stepped up to improvise implementing some type of respectful community process in order to simultaneously address these men’s concerns and to make safe spaces for all. That was a very positive reaction (one we might not have had just a week ago, before we began to experiment with the structure and process of GA).

It’s important to keep in mind what the facilitation process at GA can do that is positive, while we also strive to keep it accountable to the whole community. And I hope that those who can use their booming male voices and their scary anger remember the effects of those tools on others and those tools’ history as a means of oppression. I hope as a group we continue to be vigilant in keeping spaces safe for even the quietest among us. Those people, too, must have space to express their issues (over which they are feeling just as upset as those men were those that night) and get equal time in front of the community. Those are some of the things I hope.

I almost People’s Mic’d myself to say a bit about this last Wednesday night, but I wasn’t sure how to say it in a short enough sound byte and to do so in a way that did not trigger to oppression-hierarchy game amongst the group of men who already felt silenced and misunderstood. Anyone reading this with some fabulous sense of how to cut this down to a few non-triggering sentences that can easily be divvied into 3 or 4 word parcels, PLEASE let me know!

In solidarity, A

*Note: I am assuming that these 5 4 individuals are male-identified. This is not an OK assumption, but—in this case—I am really just using this instance as a case study to talk about larger concerns. Therefore, while I might be misrepresenting the details of this a particular anecdote (please do correct me), I think that the larger point remains valid.

UPDATE 1, 10/9/11, 19:12 PM:
The facilitator's take on what happened at Wednesday night's GA. She also touches upon some of the issues of sexism that the facilitation working group is dealing with.

Guide to Occupying With Love

2011-10-03T14:51:00.000-04:00

This is just what I think, not what I have been successfully able to live up to. Even in ourselves, there is a struggle worth having. I just wanted to put it out there to you.

React to people hating on the movement with love

Most of those people are part of the 99%.
There has been a lot of misleading lies in the press. That is not people’s fault. Most of them will be having their first contact with the movement when they are being hateful towards you. Let them know the truth about us, and surprise them with love.
It may help to remember that change is REALLY scary, even for people who desperately want a change. d. Honey catches more flies then vinegar.
Belligerent, disrespecful people will turn onlookers off. Our reactions of love will turn onlookers on.
Because I want to be a part of a movement that is about love, freedom, and true democracy. And what does a movement like that look like? It responds to hate with love.
Remain mindful that your identity may give you power over other individuals because of institutionalized oppression/s.
Even when they aren’t around, you can be hateful towards people, or you can treat haters with love!
Because it will make Cornell West happy (okay, this isn't a real reason...).

Treat other people at the occupation with love, even when you REALLY, REALLY disagree.

Differences of opinion are sometimes scary because the ideas of others can hurt you. That is only because people have power over you. At the occupation, no one should have power over you, and so you do not need to be afraid of differences of opinion.
What you think and what that person you disagree with thinks can interact in amazing ways now that a truly democratic dialogue is possible. Will their mind change? Will your mind change? Will something new and important be created instead? Embodying love and patience is the only way to find out what that amazing interaction might be!
Passionate, powerful dialogue with one another is an expression of LOVE. But name calling, condescension, or denying the humanity and human rights of others is not.
Be mindful that your identity may give you power over other individuals because of institutionalized oppression/s.
Even when they are not around, you can treat those at the occupation you happen to disagree with hatefully, or you can treat them with love! One way of loving people at the occupation is to not speak on their behalf when you do not have their permission.

Is This What Democracy Looks Like?

2011-10-02T18:40:00.005-04:00

Revolutionary groups have a very different picture of what democracy looks like than what has sprung up in the #occupytogether movement. For example, the Revolutionary Communist Progressive Labor Party (PL) has a very inflexible view of democracy and how organizing decisions should be made. They claim that democratic centralism is the end all and be all of revolutionary democratic organizing:

We communists are bitterly opposed to the democracy practiced in capitalist countries, that is, to "bourgeois democracy" based on periodic elections with secret ballots for presidents and parliamentsor congresses. Bourgeois democracy is an elitist system that guarantees thecapitalists run things while workers have no real say in how society works…

The Party is organized on the basis of democratic centralism. The Party is divided into cells, or clubs, which meet regularly to evaluate members' work and to make suggestions about how to improve it, and to evaluate the Party's positions and make suggestions for change. These suggestions are taken by the club leader to section meetings (made up of the club leaders and other leading comrades in an area, and by section leaders tothe Central Committee. Based on the collective experience of the Party, the leadership decides on new positions (a new line) which all Party members are then bound to put into practice. Only if all of us put the same line into practice can wefind out if the line works; if each of us goes our own way, we will never havethe common strength of a united Party.

Democratic centralism is communist democracy. After the revolution we will run all of society along democratic centralist lines. Let us contrast communistdemocracy with bourgeois democracy, to show how communist democracy serves theinterests of the working class, the great majority of people, while bourgeois democracy serves the interests of the bourgeoisie, the small rich elite.

Democratic centralism forces everyone to speak up. At club meetings, eachperson must express their opinions, including openly voicing theirdisagreements. Bourgeois democracy listens only to the silver-tongued stars,the media-fashioned "opinion makers." Most people are encouraged tobe passive, to go along with the drift. Nothing encourages you to speak out ifyou are shy. This builds the elitist attitude that politics is only for thechosen few, that most of us are too dumb to know what is going on. This isinherent in a system based on large-scale elections, without smalldecision-making groups that meet regularly.

Democratic centralism forces people to evaluate themselves honestly and to listen to the evaluation of others (praise as well as criticism). This lets people grow and improve, and it holds back the liars and braggarts. Bourgeois democracy, on the other hand, encourages the con artist who can hide his failures and his cheating. The system penalizes honesty and thoughtfulness in favor of the best actor. Under bourgeois democracy, politicians are rarely held responsible for their mistakes. This is great for the elite who want to hidehow they swindle and exploit us.

Besides drawing on the strength of the collective, democratic centralism also forces us to act in a collective manner--to do what is best for the group. He who pursues individual self-interest at the expense of the common purpose willcatch hell at the next club meeting, because he makes things harder for his comrades. This way we learn to help each other. Bourgeois democracy is based onthe principle of screwing the other guy so you can get ahead. Telling lies about your opponent is okay as long as you don't get caught. What counts is winning the election, not improving society.

Each Party member accepts the discipline of carrying out the Party line. So once a decision has been reached, we can be sure that there will be a struggle everywhere to put that decision into action. Under bourgeois democracy, there is no discipline except the courts and the jails. There is no system to win people to the common decision. There is nothing to guarantee that the rich and powerful will follow the decision of the legislature, if they can figure out how to avoid it; no one is going to call them to account in front of a mass meeting. Each person may try to undermine the group decision for his own advantage.

Finally, democratic centralism is based on struggling to weed out rotten ideas and anti-social behavior. We want to help each other become better people.Bourgeois democracy is based on "doing your own thing," which is the essence of civil liberties. Each person is said to be "free" to dowhatever they want--that is, to screw everyone else, if they can get away with it." Free speech" protects vile racist crap that advocates massmurder. Communists want nothing to do with such "free speech"--we think that seriously dangerous anti-social ideas should be rooted out, not given freeplay. Bourgeois democracy protects creeps, while only democratic centralism encourages full and open discussion and criticism.

In short, bourgeois democracy helps a small elite that wants to hide its lies; bourgeois democracy encourages dog-eat-dog individualism; it forces most peopleto be passive while superstars take over politics. The problem with secret ballots, legislatures and civil liberties is not that the rich capitalists cheat on the rules for their own benefit. The problem is that the rules of bourgeois democracy guarantee that the great majority of people, the workers, are frozen out. If we were to institute bourgeois democracy after the revolution, that would only encourage the formation of a new capitalist class (On Democratic Centralism 1982).

I doubt they are the only party that feels this way but I’m not personally interested in tracking down opinions from other groups.

Many radical Marxist types I have overheard discussing how conflicted they feel about #occupytogether’s “horizontal democracy.” They have no experience with it, they don’t know if it will be effective, but there seems to be consensus that this is important somehow, if only because giving it a chance to empirically prove itself (or not) will be historically significant. They would prefer to see a clear working class message in the interests of recruitment; they feel that a real working class message will resonate with people, and I agree. On the other hand, a clear working class message would require centralized leadership, which would be contrary to the whole idea of horizontal democracy.

I’m going to throw myself into this curious but ambivalent faction, though I should mention that I have been at times far more ambivalent about democratic centralism (depending on the time of day). I have participated in three #occupyboston general assemblies (GAs)—one in the Common and two at the occupation at Dewey Square. This is how it works, as far as I can tell:

There are working groups to which anyone is invited to attend and talk or help. These groups are:

Tactical/Logistics
Media
Medical/Mental Health
Legal
Recess
Outreach
Messaging
Direct Action
Comm Team
Faith & Spirituality
Food

These groups are free associations of individuals and any individual or group of individuals can decide to form an additional group. Someone at last night's GA, noted that he wished to begin a new group, for instance. I do not believe that Faith & Spirituality was present at the planning GA's, but they formed and have been organizing like crazy since the encampment began. OccupyWallSt just began publishing their own newspaper, I wonder if a small working group (or perhaps a sub-committee of media) might emerge to fill this need for Boston.
These group make some decisions for the group; for instance, Direct Action decided (by their own small group consensus) the first night (9/30) that there would be a march the next day to Collegefest in the afternoon, and that there would be marches each morning and evening during the week. These were not put up to a vote by the whole group, but the times for the weekday marches were disputed and so were changed via consensus to a later time.
During the GAs important information is shared by each working group. In addition, issues that affect the entire group are voted on, such as how the GAs will be run (with “peoples’ mic” or not, what is the percent necessary to pass a motion, etc.) as well as big decisions like when the occupation will begin. Before votes, there is a temperature check, and then short one-minute-ish speeches by anyone who wishes to come forward (this is called “the stack”). Once the stack is exhausted, there is a final vote.
However, people in the minority during a vote can “block,” which means they think that a decision has been made which is so bad for the group that they might consider leaving. This is a way to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority.
Proposals can be submitted by the members of the GA at any time (I think that this process is in-flux; I believe that they are trying to get people to get proposals on the agenda ahead of GA; the process for counter-proposals is still a bit unclear, as well). Facilitators recognize who has the floor at any point in time, but because of people’s mic, the crowd participates in giving someone the floor.

On the second night of the occupation (10/1) there was a very interesting process for allowing a broad discussion of the group’s messages and ideas for demands. It was heavily related to democratic centralism. After announcements, the GA broke down into smaller groups and people were encouraged to share why they chose to come down to the occupation. After about 45 minutes, one person was selected from each group to share what had been discussed in the smaller groups. If anyone felt left out of the process, individuals were encouraged to join the stack so their ideas could be shared to the entire GA. This differs from democratic centralism because the entire process was transparent in the sense that every member got to hear the ideas of every small group as well as any individual that felt their thoughts were being left out. Additionally, those at the top did not form a “party line” from the information that was passed up.

These GAs can take a long time. Determining whether the occupation was going to start 9/30 or 10/7 took several hours on Tuesday night and the issue was not resolved until late Wednesday night. It is also not perfectly “leaderless.” I don’t know exactly who is behind the scenes, but someone is choosing, for instance, when GAs are and who will be facilitating. I think it is important to note that these are process-related decisions. There is, as far as I can tell, no “thought leaders” for the movement. This has been played up by the media and some malcontents, who think that the lack of a central message is a clear weakness and a sign that the movement is sophomoric, incoherent, and impotent. But what it is really a sign of is that no one feels comfortable speaking for the whole. And that might end up creating a whole new kind of movement.

I think it may be appropriate to think of #occupytogether as a community that operates with a certain kind of political process as opposed to being a party that people can shop around and select based upon a platform. In this sense they do not represent an alternative to mainstream "parties." It is not the "left wing equivalent" to the Tea Party. It is not an alternative to leftist Parties like the PL, the ISO, the Socialist Alternative. And, it is not an activist organization like City Life/Vida Urbana or US Uncut. The occupation movement might represent an alternative political process, a counter to the entire corrupted “democratic republic” that our legal system maintains. Which means that the demands that are produced will not be a party platform, they will be democratic decisions, in the same way that presidential elections are supposed to be. Such a movement could change the way the people think about social power and their relationships with each other. And that could end up being an extremely important development for the revolutionary movement.

Or maybe not. The worst case scenario is that the occupation movement will just produce an ineffectual counter-culture that is enjoyed by white out-of-work post-college 20-somethings. I don’t know, yet.

But I do know that I have never felt as much of a sense of community, mutual respect, or selfless devotion to the whole. Neither have I ever had a chance to engage in such satisfying exchanges of ideas face-to-face before. I am hooked, and feel as if I am glimpsing into the future of what humanity is capable of. As Saul Williams says,

"A call to the youth! Your freedom ain't so free, it's just loose, but the power of your voice could redirect every truth. Shift and shape the world you want and keep your fears in a noose--let them dangle from a banner star spangled. I'm willing and able to lift my dreams up out of their cradle. Nurse and nurture my ideals 'til they're much more than a fable. I can be all I can be and do much more than I'm paid to, and I won't be a slave to what authorities say do. My desire is to live within a nation on fire, where creative passions burn and raise the stakes ever higher. Where no person is addicted to some twisted supplier who promotes the sort of freedom sold to the highest buyer." -Act III Scene 2 (Shakespeare)

A SUMMIT REVIEW: Informed Activism

2011-09-27T20:21:00.007-04:00

This past Saturday I attended Informed Activism: Armed Conflict, Scarce Resources, and Congo, an event billed as an international summit intended to convene NGO workers, students, scholars, and policymakers to discuss how to be “informed activists” on the subject of violence and exploitation in Congo. Speeches, panels, and sessions were held in order to expand our thinking about Congo’s mineral resources and their exploitation, the ongoing conflict and the horrendous violence being perpetrated—particularly on the bodies of women—and how our actions as “activists” (or maybe just as consumers) can effectively and intelligently address these urgent needs.

The issues I had with this summit (the topics covered, how they were covered, the lack of critical framework and the stifling ideological assumptions, who spoke and in what capacity) are quite layered and numerous. I feel that the best way to address them is to identify a set of problematic overarching themes to which I was very sensitive and, at times, by which I emotionally riled. Some of these issues are far more important and beefy than others and they are presented in no particular order.

1. Apparently, we’ve finally reached that lovely post-/neo-colonial space where it is mainstream to constantly discuss how (rich, white) outsiders ought to remain humble (or at least constantly verbalize their feelings of humility) in the presence of every insider, native, and/or indigenous participant.

Now, to be clear, I believe strongly in grounding all of our work in the experiences and struggles of the experts--the experts being those who are have lived in the community to which we are addressing. Ideally, all activists would be in solidarity with these indigenous experts in a very real and tangible way. Arguably this, real and tangible solidarity, would begin to deconstruct the categories of the helped and the helpers (the activists and the acted upon/to). Also, it is paramount that these insiders ought not be solely those individuals whom the outsiders have identified as appropriate for their framework and cause.*

What I believe we largely witnessed this weekend—every (white) person re-affirming publicly (to a captive audience) that they are humbled by and so respectful of the (black) insiders—was a theatrical event.

Why do I say this? Because I understand the ideologies, agendas, and positions of those verbalizing their humility. In fact, the few individuals who were most careful to cushion each remark with these “humble” words were those there from the most entrenched and empowered organizations, like the US State Department and USAID. These figureheads are the most explicitly empowered perpetrators of the violence in Congo. And these individuals, as representatives of their organizations, were those that care least to listen to the insiders, engage with them meaningfully, and acquiesce to their requests.

In fact, Chloe Schwenke—Senior Advisor on Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance at the Africa Bureau of USAID—sat next to Congolese journalist and activist Chouchou Namegabe. Chloe expressed her gratitude and humility in sitting on a panel with such an expert as Chouchou from one side of her mouth; she then turned to the audience and said that the US Administration is ultimately doing all it can to support the Congolese (of course neglecting to address the administration’s support of Rwandan Paul Kagame) and that among the most successful programs she felt that USAID had carried out were those meant to change attitudes amongst individual men in DRC. Funny because Chouchou had made it a point in her keynote and initial commentary on the panel that it is vital to consider rape and mass rape as weapons of war, as part of a larger picture, and NOT as a problem of culture or individual behavior and attitudes. But, yes, audience, Chloe was so thrilled to be able to tell us all how much she and the rest of USAID love and respect those insiders.

Another anecdote: One Congolese panel participant, Kambale Musavuli of Friends of the Congo, presented his introductory remarks with incredibly refreshing reality-checking. We were over 2 hours into the event and we were just now hearing—from Kambale—that US foreign policy has in fact impacted Congo and continues to do so (shocker!). Kambale, thankfully, offered us some nice historical context (again, first time we were hearing this): he began with King Leopold and gave us the crash course, including the US-backed ousting of democratically elected leadership and the installation of General Mobutu in 1960 (Mobutu went on to be a very authoritarian and very rich man, but at least he was anti-communist!). Kambale also reminded us that US policy now, such as support of Rwandan strongman Kagame matters.**

Our friend Kambale pled with the audience, his colleagues, scholars, students, NGO workers, and activists to expand our dialogue behind the horrors or rape and the details of conflict minerals (and the ways consumers can lend a helping hand or at least feel better about themselves via purchasing power). He yelled out that this was not the story, that we were burying the lede, that we needed to dig deeper or nothing would ever change and we’d be back here next year having the same conversation.

Now, was this “insider” received with actual respect and support? Was his point of view not only listened to but also upheld as experiential and necessarily central to any narrative that we’d like to concoct about Congo? Did we re-evaluate the direction of the conversation and consider delving deeper, as Kambale eloquently and passionately urged us to do? Well, the audience received him well (likely because many people were just thrilled to hear someone willing to challenge something). But, the moderator predictably delegitimized his position and regained control over her panel by calling him “feisty,” and then later “fiery.” Yes, she did. The others on the panel masterfully acknowledged him (with the greatest respect and humility, of course) without actually acknowledging anything about what he had said. And, largely, once he had ceased speaking, the content of what he had said faded away with his voice.

2. I learned from this summit, that employees and directors of NGOs are henceforth synonymous with activists. Yep. (For great additional reading on this and what this means: The Revolution Will Not Be Funded)

3. The first 4 hours of this event was either speeches or panel discussions. Questions were only received from the audience when 15 minutes remained in each allotted session. They were collected on index cards (which of course take at least 5 minutes to trickle to the moderator) and then they were vetted and paraphrased to be posed by the moderator. At this time, panelists were free to dance around questions and repeat things they had already said or perhaps offer the audience a promotional tidbit for their home NGO. This is not how “activists” (or scholars or any group of engaged participants) ask questions to expand dialogue and understanding. This is not a respectful learning environment; this is a stilted and censored one (and obviously so).

Many people complain about the disruptive nature of many of these tactics…The argument is advanced that disruption violates freedom of speech and press. It’s our feeling that rights such as freedom of the press belong only to those who own one. The same applies to freedom of speech; if you don’t have access to the media, all you can do is speak to yourself.

If you seize control of a convention meeting you can create your own meeting, open up a real dialogue, and have true freedom of speech. Genuine and meaningful discussion cannot occur at a convention in America without first disrupting it. Turn the convention into a political education meeting. The disruption is a protest against the elitism, racism, and sexism which abounds at any professional convention, simply by virtue of its being a “convention of professionals.” (“How to be a Radical Therapist,” Rick Kunnes, p. 173 in The Radical Therapist, 1971).

4. The implicit assumption of (nearly) everyone I heard speak was so blatantly reformist that it was uncomfortably stifling. Apply above quote (again) and see below for a specific element of the conference that lacked the critical framework that more radical efforts and thinking necessitates.

5. The sub-theme of this conference was apparently our roles as “consumer activists,” “informed” ones—by the end of the conference—I suppose. This was the outro tagline that summit director Prof. Deborah Dwork provided in an interview prior to the event, “Our point is consumer activism, we have a role, we have a voice, and through our pocketbooks, we have a vote.” Of course, really questioning the design, paradigm, or concept of “consumer activism” was entirely off the table.

My partner (in life, crime, revolution, and conference-going) pushed this a bit in one session led by a Clark professor and representative from the Enough Project, but his points—I believe—were deemed too off-topic to be acknowledged by the discussion. So much for real debate about activism, let alone informed activism. The confluence of “consumer activism” and activism is disheartening (similar to the confluence of NGO work and activism) and if the confluence must occur, I think it is a reasonable expectation to approach the tactic or strategy (of consumerism) with some critical thinking (if not theoretically, then at least practically).

Without getting into this too much, I will offer some thoughts:

Practically, what more can “consumer activism” accomplish than creating a niche group of consumers who demand niche access to niche products that meet their “consumer activist” standards? At best, this means a change in production only to satisfy a small group of consumers (those who identify strongly as “consumer activists” and those with the capital to “vote with their pocketbooks”). How is this good enough? And interestingly, at this conference many people did speak out about the need for standards and certification (things that are unlikely to occur without government support, which means legislation and regulation, not consumers shifting demand), but no one spoke up to point out that the consumer-point-of-entry that so many were using and advocating for was essentially useless if the desired end result is legislation.
Now, theoretically (and this is over-simplified for the sake of space AND my tired brain), “consumer activism” places all agency onto individuals as consumers, which robs agency from workers (implicitly and explicitly) and civilians. This type of “activism” is privileging of certain groups, entirely neglects root problems, avoids real solutions, and manages to entirely objectify workers. Of course, worker and civilian organizing to improve the standards wherein our products are produced is the only long-term, sustainable, and broad-based solution.
One other side note: our desperate need to say something about ourselves via the consumer goods we purchase, wear, tote should not be surprising. It is a logical result of the corporations spending millions on branding and marketing. As such, it is, in fact, to be expected that “activists” who have incredibly good intentions and wish to identify as “activists,” or compassionate global citizens, or whatever would turn to their consumer options. It is this phenomenon, I believe, that makes people so defensive and emotional when you criticize the theoretical or practical merit of consumer activism (it is their identity under attack after all). So, I ask, A) Do you really want to try to beat corporations at their very own game, in order to improve labor and environmental conditions? Hint: No, they will beat your ass. B) Is this really a phenomenon we want buy into and perpetuate? Hint: No, it’s gonna beat your ass (and further alienate you from your identity as a citizen and your relationship with workers [as if by design…Oh wait! Brilliant!]).

6. Back-patting: Throughout this conference, those with the mic took precious time (the agenda was packed and often discussions were truncated due to unbending time constraints), to express just how amazing it is that we were sitting in the audience and how special this summit really is. Let me just say: a couple quick acknowledgements of the convened groups is fine, but the longwinded and insistent need to constantly let every audience member know that they are saints for sitting there is sickening. And also alarming; what are the conveners and speakers afraid of? That if we don’t hear constant affirmations of how great and passionate and smart we all are as “progressive” “activists” we will get disgruntled and walk? Also, let’s not get ahead of ourselves, eh? The summit cannot be deemed a special success at the beginning of it, let’s save that determination for the end? At 9 am Saturday AM, the only success is that at least some of the registered people managed to get themselves into the building. Next time, send a thank you email and spare me the back-patting ritual. This is, admittedly, probably the pettiest of my complaints, but I cannot let it go. Perhaps because I’m stubborn (which is definitely true) and/or because I believe, deep down, there is something quite significant happening here!

*At this conference, it is important to note that the outsiders—whom I was exposed to as panelists and speakers—were a very particular group who were engaged in various ways with represented NGOs. Please imagine how this might impact the characteristics and positions of this particular population of insiders.

** My historical knowledge on this is, admittedly, limited. Please do correct me:

President Kagame has been interested in the riches in the DRC for years. Rwanda, small and resource-poor, has long-experienced a somewhat porous border with its large, resource-rich neighbor. Rwanda’s army (RPA) invaded in 1996 to pursue Hutu fighters (essentially endorsed by the West) and then really invaded in 1998. While Hutu-Tutsi ethnic relations and major fall-out from the Rwandan genocide is certainly important context here, so is Rwanda’s desire to have access to (or to pillage) Congo’s enormous mineral wealth. The recent UN Mapping Report that was tasked with investigating the crimes and violence in DRC between 1993 and 2003 heavily implicates Kagame, Rwanda’s army (RPA), and the AFDL rebel force (led by Laurent Kabila) in the deaths of thousands of Hutu refugees in DRC.

(This is another example wherein overly simplistic narratives portraying the very good and the very bad guys in a complex political-economic situation have fallen very short. We all know the basic Rwandan genocide narrative and it is grossly lacking. For more on this and other problematic “genocide narratives” see: The Politics of Genocide. For the bottom-line (or the one I’m using today): oversimplifying that crisis as black-and-white ethnic cleansing has done us all a great disservice and has absolutely negatively impacted millions of Congolese. One would hope that US foreign policy operates with a more complex narrative than the one the general public understands about Rwanda, but evidence does not suggest so.)

Although Rwandan and Ugandan forces “left” DRC in the early 2000’s, their presence has remained strong, largely in the form of financial backing and security to rebel Congolese forces (e.g. Nkunda's AFDL rebel force). These forces are among those responsible for exploiting child soldiers, raping hundreds of thousands of women, and uprooting thousands of villages. The FDRL—Congolese Hutu militia—are also counted among the perpetrators. Together, these forces are greatly responsible for the massive destabilization the country has been feeling this past decade.

Kagame has long enjoyed US-backing (the 1996 invasion, Kagame’s membership in the “New African Leaders” club, etc.) and continues to (Obama’s state department requested immunity for Kagame in August 2011). Recently, Congolese president Kabila allowed Rwandan military forces back into the country (officially) to fight off FDLR rebel groups this as part of a deal following Rwanda’s arrest of warlord Nkunda—again head nods from the West. Since then, reports of violence against Congolese civilians have risen.

What does the Hyde Amendment really mean for women?

2011-04-21T22:43:00.006-04:00

First, for a look at the impact of the Hyde Amendment and the policy of excluding abortion funding from Medicaid, check out this paper that I wrote back in Fall 2009 (in the midst Stupak-Pitts Amendment craziness):Denied: Whom the Hyde Amendment Hurts

And then check out this hot-off-the-presses report that I helped compile data for as part of my work for the Jane Fund. This looks specifically at women's experiences with abortion care and state-subsidized insurance in MA (the state with the most comprehensive state-subsidized care):
Experiences of Women Seeking State-Subsidized Insurance for Abortion Care in Massachusetts

US Uncut Protest in Cambridge

2011-02-28T15:09:00.005-05:00

Last Saturday, Forecasting Rain attended a protest in Harvard Square in Cambridge, MA. The target was Bank of America--they, like many of the nations largest and more profitable companies, payed little in taxes last year. In some cases, they paid none. BOA is one of those cases. In fact, the bank netted after taxes the same number of federal dollars it would take to cover the cuts Obama proposed for LIHEAP (heating oil subsidies for the poor).

There were protests staged internationally (US and UK), including one particularly interesting sit-in at a BOA in D.C. The movement began in the UK, where they have been fairly successful in getting onto the political agenda that idea that putting pressure on large corporations to pay their proper share should take the place of steep austerity measures. Here is the UK website, the US website, and the Twitter accounts for the US and Boston (a more comprehensive list of local contacts can be found here).

Here is a fact sheet on BOA's tax dodging (word doc).

And here are some pictures!

If you are interested in finding out more about this movement, please let me know, as I am sure there are plenty more of these protests to come.

UPDATE: Looks like Glenn Beck has sniffed out the conspiracy here!

UPDATE II: There are a bunch of pictures of us on the Nation's website!

The Ghost of Tom Joad

2011-02-08T09:59:00.001-05:00

Since a lot of people on Twitter seem to think that my name is Tom, I thought I would provide a little info on my handle. The reference is to a Bruce Springsteen song which was inspired by a character in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.
It was covered by Rage Against the Machine, which was where I first heard it many years ago and it had an impact on me, not because it changed my politics so much as it suggested to me that there were other people out there who were pissed off like I was and gave me a sense of solidarity for the first time.

Bruce Springsteen Version:

Rage Against the Machine Version:

Lyrics:
Man walks along the railroad tracks
He's goin' someplace, and there's no turnin' back
The highway patrol chopper comin' up over the ridge
Man sleeps by a campfire under the bridge
The shelter line stretchin' around the corner
Welcome to the New World Order
Families sleepin' in their cars out in the Southwest
No job, no home, no peace, no rest
No rest!

The highway is alive tonight
Nobody's foolin' nobody as to where it goes
I'm sitting down here in the campfire light
Searchin' for the ghost of Tom Joad

He pulls his prayer book out of his sleepin' bag
The Preacher lights up a butt and takes a drag
He's waitin' for the time when the last shall be first and the first shall be last
In a cardboard box 'neath the underpass
With a one way ticket to the promised land
With a hole in your belly and a gun in your hand
Searching for a pillow of solid rock
Bathin' in the city's aquaduct

The highway is alive tonight
Nobody's foolin' nobody as to where it goes
I'm sittin' down here in the campfire light
With the Ghost of old Tom Joad

Now Tom said, "Ma, wherever you seen a cop beatin' a guy
Wherever a hungry newborn baby cries
Wherever there's a fight against the blood and hatred in the air
Look for me Ma, I'll be there
Wherever somebody's strugglin' for a place to stand
For a decent job or a helpin' hand
Wherever somebody's strugglin' to be free
Look in their eyes, Ma, you'll see me"
You'll see me (x8)

The highway is alive tonight
Nobody's foolin' nobody as to where it goes
I'm sittin' down here in the campfire light
With the ghost of Tom Joad

Freedom Loving Americans

2011-02-02T12:09:00.001-05:00

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Day: Remembering 'A Time to Break the SIlence'

2011-01-18T10:40:00.002-05:00

Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence

Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam
Delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr
April 1967
At Manhattan's Riverside Church

Full text:
OVER THE PAST TWO YEARS, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace and civil rights don't mix, they say. Aren't you hurting the cause of your people, they ask. And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.

In the light of such tragic misunderstanding, I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorage, leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight.

I come to this platform to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia.

Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Neither is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they can play in a successful resolution of the problem. While they both may have justifiable reasons to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides.

Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the NLF, but rather to my fellow Americans who, with me, bear the greatest responsibility in ending a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents.

Since I am a preacher by trade, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor - both black and white - through the Poverty Program. Then came the build-up in Vietnam, and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political play thing of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.

Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the young black men who had been crippled by our society and sending them 8000 miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in Southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would never live on the same block in Detroit. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.

My third reason grows out of my experience in the ghettos of the North over the last three years - especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through non-violent action. But, they asked, what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, my own government.

For those who ask the question, "Aren't you a Civil Rights leader?" and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: "To save the soul of America." We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself unless the descendants of its slaves were loosed from the shackles they still wear.

Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read "Vietnam." It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over.

As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1964; and I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission, a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for the "brotherhood of man." This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant or all men, for communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the One who loved His enemies so fully that He died for hem? What then can I say to the Viet Cong or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this One? Can I threaten them with death, or must I not share with hem my life?

And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades. I think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and their broken cries.

They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese proclaimed their own independence in 1945 after a combined French and Japanese occupation and before the communist revolution in China. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its re-conquest of her former colony.

Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not "ready" for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. With that tragic decision, we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination, and a government that had been established not by China (for whom the Vietnamese have no great love) but by clearly indigenous forces that included some communists. For the peasants, this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives.

For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to re-colonize Vietnam.

Before the end of the war we were meeting 80 per cent of the French war costs. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of their reckless action, but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will to do so.

After the French were defeated it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva agreements. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators, our chosen man, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly routed out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords and refused even to discuss reunification with the North. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by U.S. influence and then by increasing numbers of U.S. troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem's methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictatorships seemed to offer no real change, especially in terms of their need for land and peace.

The only change came from America as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept and without popular support. All the while, the people read our leaflets and received regular promises of peace and democracy, and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move or be destroyed by our bombs. So they go.

They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers destroy their precious trees. They wander into the hospitals, with at least 20 casualties from American firepower for each Viet Cong-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them, mostly children.

What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test out our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building?

Now there is little left to build on, save bitterness. Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call "fortified hamlets." The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these. Could we blame them for such thoughts'? We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. These too are our brothers.

Perhaps the more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies. What of the NLF, that strangely anonymous group we call VC or communists? What must they think of us in America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the South? How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of "aggression from the North" as if there were nothing more essential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem, and charge them with violence while we pour new weapons of death into their land?

How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than 25 per cent communist and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of Vietnam and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly organized political parallel government will have no part? They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them, the only party in real touch with the peasants. They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. Their questions are frighteningly relevant.

Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and non-violence, when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know of his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.

So, too, with Hanoi. In the North, where our bombs now pummel the land, and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep but understandable mistrust. In Hanoi are the men who led the nation to independence against the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership in the French commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and the willfulness of the colonial armies. It was they who led a second struggle against French domination at tremendous costs, and then were persuaded at Geneva to give up, as a temporary measure, the land they controlled between the 13th and 17th parallels. After 1954 they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which would have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again.

When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered. Also, it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the Geneva Agreements concerning foreign troops, and they remind us that they did not begin to send in any large number of supplies or men until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands.

Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the President claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the North. Perhaps only his sense of humor and irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor, weak nation more than 8000 miles from its shores.

At this point, I should make it clear that while I have tried here to give a voice to the voiceless of Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called enemy, I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for our troops must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy and the secure while we create a hell for the poor.

Somehow this madness must cease. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam and the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop must be ours.

This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently, one of them wrote these words: "Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the hearts of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism."

If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. It' will become clear that our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony, and men will not refrain from thinking that our maximum hope is to goad China into a war so that we may bomb her nuclear installations.

The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of her people.

In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing the war to a halt. I would like to suggest five concrete things that our government should do immediately to begin the long and difficult process of extricating ourselves from this nightmare:

1. End all bombing in North and South Vietnam.

2. Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation.

3. Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military build-up in Thailand and our interference in Laos.

4. Realistically accept the fact that the National Liberation Front has substantial support in South Vietnam and must thereby play a role in any meaningful negotiations and in any future Vietnam government.

5. Set a date on which we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva Agreement.

Part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears for his life under a new regime which included the NLF. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. We must provide the medical aid that is badly needed, in this country if necessary.

Meanwhile, we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative means of protest possible.

As we counsel young men concerning military service we must clarify for them our nation's role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. I am pleased to say that this is the path now being chosen by more than 70 students at my own Alma Mater, Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all who find the American course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. Moreover, I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.

There is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter that struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing. The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy, and laymen-concerned committees for the next generation. We will be marching and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy.

In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which now has justified the presence of U.S. military "advisors" in Venezuela. The need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and why American napalm and green beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. With such activity in mind, the words of John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. When machines and computers, profit and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look easily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: " This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from re-ordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and through their misguided passions urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are the days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not call everyone a communist or an appeaser who advocates the seating of Red China in the United Nations and who recognizes that hate and hysteria are not the final answers to the problem of these turbulent days. We must not engage in a negative anti-communism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take: offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.

These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wombs of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. "The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light." We in the West must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to ad just to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.

We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Now let us begin. Now let us re-dedicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.

Sarah Palin Hates Violence

2011-01-10T21:21:00.002-05:00

Apparently Sarah Palin emailed this to Glenn Beck in response to the Arizona shooting:

I hate violence. I hate war. Our children will not have peace if politicos just capitalize on this to succeed in portraying anyone as inciting terror and violence.

Well, my guess is that it won't be hard to portray a great deal of people as inciting violence, which I guess is why you scrubbed your website and twitter account as soon as news of the shooting broke. You didn't really make it a hard thing to succeed at.

But ignore that for a second. I am most of all appalled by the suggestion that Sarah Palin "hates" violence. It's hard to even think of Sarah Palin without thinking of weapons and hawkish attitude she has consciously and deliberately shrouded herself in. If you hated war, Sarah, then you would be against fighting them.

Black Americans’ Cultural Mistrust of the Mental Health Community

2011-01-03T23:53:00.002-05:00

Literature review I wrote for my Social Work Research Class:

A Literature Review: Black Americans’ Cultural Mistrust of the Mental Health Community

Reform or Revolution?

2010-12-23T21:45:00.006-05:00

I sent what I consider a rhetorical question into the twitter void some time ago:

But as it turns out an old friend of mine thought it not so rhetorical and decided to answer me by drawing on the educated/liberal zeitgeist and constructed in what I feel is a very good attempt to capture the contemporary, thinking-man's defense of capitalism. Here is his response:

The real question isn't what kind of economy we should choose. It's what kind of culture we should cultivate.

There is NO economic system that values people more than money as long as money is a part of that system. It's simply a ...matter of resource allocation. In every economic system, there will always be a certain price nobody would be willing to pay to save a life. For example, nobody would pay a trillion dollars to put a stop light at a busy intersection, even if it was absolutely certain that putting that light there would save a life, because more lives can be saved by allocating that money more efficiently.

Capitalism whether we want to admit it or not is incredibly good at getting people what they want, and is ruthlessly efficient in allocating resources (which hurts sometimes). In capitalism, if there is a desire for something, it'll happen because the desire will spur a monetary incentive. This is screwed up by stuff like politics, which totally destroys and manipulates market signals through policy meant to favor one group over others.

What you NEED is to make it so people WANT to value people more than money. There already exists a seedling of that, and that's where things like the nonprofit industry came from. If you change the way people think and what they want, you can use the ruthless power of capitalism to pursue humane ends, rather than greed. The way it is now, the PEOPLE are the ones who value money more than their fellow people. An economic system, after all, is just that - a system that PEOPLE control and use.

An oil executive's greed is not something that we can really blame on capitalism, it's the executive's problem, even if capitlism is the tool with which he quenches his greed's thurst. Yes he's driven to get profits for his share holders/board of directors, who will hold him accountable if they don't get a return on their investments, but those share holders (and thus the board of directors) won't fire that executive if they share the same values as that executive, and would have made the same choices in his shoes (whether it's a good decision or a bad decision). All this fuss about corporations being favored more than people doesn't have a lot of meaning to me because remember: corporations are made of PEOPLE, and it's their choice how they wield their power. Part #2 of a solution: improve business ethics to conform more to your value of valuing people more than money.

There's also the political side of it, which totally screws up incentives and efficient resource allocation from the ground up, which often DOES favor one group (sometimes poor, but usually rich) over others. Unfortunately the rich have a way bigger say than the poor in politics as a result of their greater ability to get politicians reelected. So part 3 of your solution should be a comprehensive campaign finance reform.

SUMMARY:
STEP 1: Change the way people think so you can harness the power of an already ruthlessly efficient economic system.
STEP 2: Improve business ethics to conform with your value of valuing people more than money (which will be easy if you do step 1).
STEP 3: Achieve comprehensive campaign finance reform so you can get democracy (which is basically political capitalism) to actually work.

I really hope to hear what you think on this.

I drafted a rather lengthy response to this but I felt it was very important to do so, seeing as our disagreement summarized a much larger debate about the goals that progressives should set for themselves--a conversation that is particularly important considering the let down represented by the Obama administration. It's kind of lengthy (and, I admit, in some ways simplistic) but I think it represents a point of view all progressives should consider and one that I think represents the only path forward. I have represented by response below.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Okiedokie.

I want to start by just saying that what I’ve written here is my attempt to make an entertaining and clear response to what you wrote and though it has become larger and scope and more exhaustive than I panned, I think it’s important to hash this out because it is the central argument I have with reasonable people who have no yet crossed over from progressive to radical. Getting these ideas down on paper has been good for me and I hope you find it helpful, too, though please believe that I do not expect to bully you into agreeing with everything I have written here, although I do hope that you take these alternative points of view as a chance to further complicate and add nuance to your own ideas and that you question anything that doesn’t make sense or is unclear. And that you ignore anything that seems unduly harsh—it is said in mirth not spitefulness. In other words, I intend this to be a resource for your consideration and not an “argument” or a “criticism” of you, though I will be critiquing some of your statements (obviously).

Anyway.

I’d like to begin by establishing a very specific definition of capitalism that lends itself to analysis. As you said, your claim that it’s free market economics is more of an ideal than the definition of our economic system—and in fact, there has never been an actual free market in the sense of one that is completely unregulated, nor could there ever really be. I’d even go a step further and say that this “free market ideal” is merely a characteristic of an economic system as opposed to a definition because I don’t think that as an ideal it applies only to capitalism. Additionally, there’s the question of whether the term is simply gibberish, a talking point that is impenetrable to empirical verification or critique, and what it implies—some sort of naturally arising, self-sustaining, internally consistent, mathematically demonstrable system—completely disregards the reality that all economic systems at all times are predicated on the arbitrary or not-so-arbitrary rules that humans have invented and maintain/observe for a variety of reasons, none of which pertains to the fact that it is somehow “free” as in an unbridled horse or someother loosed beast.

But and so my view is that capitalism is a system which is designed for the proliferation of capital. In other words, the point of capitalism is to allow people to use their property in order to generate income, and so owning a building allows you to collect rent; owning a slave allows you to sell the cotton they pick; owning stock allows you to profit from appreciation or dividends; and owning the means of production allow you to profit from surplus labor (I’ll get into this in a second). This is why people who own the most property are the people who are always making the most money in capitalism (and actually making the least stuff for society). Notice that working (and, more specifically, producing goods) is not needed at all for a person to collect income—in fact, it’s by and large seen as a person failure if a person is still in the working class (that is, if a person is still producing with their own hands as opposed to managing others). Most impenetrable economic theories sort of base themselves on the idea that you create something for society in order to receive stuff in return, but this is in actual fact not true about capitalism.

Now the relationship between those who own the means of production and those who produce is, I think, the most essential relationship in capitalism (in fact, the existence of this relationship is in many ways by definition unavoidable in a capitalist system) so I will go into detail here. By those who own the means of production, I am basically talking about those who own factories and/or farms and/or any place/machinery that creates goods for society. Typically these days the people who own the means of production are (major) stockholders via a company or corporation, but not always. These people, the owners, receive all their income because their employees have no choice but to create more goods than the workers themselves need in order to live, and then the owners take the extra goods and sell it for their own profit. The less cut they have to pay to the workers then the more they can keep for themselves.

To make it clear, an example involving cupcakes: I own a machine that makes cupcakes, and I’d like to use my ownership of this machine to generate income for me without having to do any work (because I am a good capitalist). If the universe consisted of me and three other people, then there has to be enough cupcakes created for all of us to survive. It seems like what should happen, then, is that everyone should just work at the machine as much as they need to in order to produce the number of cupcakes they need. But remember, I don’t want to do any work at the machine. Therefore, I need to get each of the other three people to work at the machine enough to make what they need, and then between the three of them they have to work an additional amount the make the cupcakes I need. This labor they do in addition to the work they need to do for them to survive is what is meant by surplus labor.

How can I get away with what is essentially stealing from the three other people in the universe in order to sit there and eat cupcakes, you ask? Well, it’s all because, for whatever reason, I own the cupcake machine—I own the means of production. Unless I allow these people use MY machine, then we’ll all starve, and so I can pretend that they owe me enough to give me some of what they make. It gets even better if there happens to be ten other people who want cupcakes too and are currently starving to death and are therefore willing to work at the machine for even longer and receive even less, and I can tell me current workers that they have to give me more and work more or I’ll pick new people to work at the machine who will (which means it’s in my interest for people to make sure there are as many people who are—literally—dying to work for me as possible). Expand this to the entire world (or at least those parts of the world the globalization is “helping out”), and you can see why all those who do the most producing of goods for society are the poorest ones, and those who do the least producing for society are collecting the largest incomes (of course, in our cultural we think of the very wealthy CEOs and managers as doing a lot of “work,” which is conveniently defined for them but not really what we think of when we use work to mean “creating something of value for society”).

This is what capitalism is at essence. The immoral, unjust, and just plain bad implications of this system are self-evident, but I will go into it anyway. I would like to do so by considering some of the claims you made that I disagree with.

Claim 1: Capitalism is incredibly good at getting people what they want.

Well, it depends on who you define as people. There are three groups of people in a capitalist system: workers, capitalists, and consumers (typically consumers are also workers but this is changing some). I think that your claim makes sense only if you consider the point of view of consumers. And, we cannot consider a system unless we consider all those who are intrinsically linked to that system, and so for capitalism we must consider not only consumers and owners of production, but also laborers (mostly represented by slaves, children, and sweatshop laborers overseas) as well as those who are deliberately kept unemployed for the purposes of negotiating down the wages of those laborers (see urban ghettos across this country and the world). If we consider everyone involved, and not just the consumers in the United States, then we know that the vast majority of people who are intrinsically linked to this system live in abject poverty. So no, I wouldn’t say that capitalism is good at getting most people anything.

Additionally, the number of created needs that capitalism generates in recent years is odd indeed. It’s hard to tell how many things are being sold now because we actually need/want them (needs being filled), how many things are being sold because we can’t avoid paying for them (health insurance, credit cards, banks), and how many we’ve been convinced we need in order to not be disrespected/shunned (thus the stereotype of women having so many shoes).

Claim 2: Capital is ruthlessly efficient in allocating resources. This is witnessed by the fact that if there is demand for something, the demand will be filled in the way that consumes the fewest resources possible.

This I think is perhaps the most dangerous justification for capitalism out there, both in that it is extremely commonly believed and very, very false. I’ll start with the theoretical reasons why and then provide some empirical evidence.

First of all, it is theoretically impossible that a system based on competition can be more efficient at using resources than one based on cooperation. You constantly live this fact out in your daily life; for instance, if we were assigned to do a presentation for class, we could either agree to work together to create the presentation, or we could agree to make our own presentations and then compete to see who made the better one, and that one we could give to the class. It would be completely irrational for us to pick the latter. Similarly, expertise and labor being pooled into one production, instead of competing productions, consumes less resources. The fact that toothbrush companies are wasting resources and creating an inferior product by competing instead of cooperating does not concern those who control the production because, unlike the dominate myth, capitalism is completely unconcerned with the efficient allocation of resources unless efficiency in a particular situation is correlated with the proliferation of capital.

I’ll explain what I mean: every system has ends and means. Unless a system has its ends as efficiency, or its means as efficiency, then that system will be inefficient in cases where the ends or the means are in conflict with efficiency. The purpose, or ends, of capitalism, like I said, is the proliferation of capital. Because the ends of capitalism are this proliferation, then efficiency cannot be its ends. Efficiency is also not its means either, because we can conceive of situations where efficiency undermines the proliferation of capital. Or something like that…this may be too theoretical, so I will demonstrate how this fact is empirically showed.

In fact, the example you yourself gave (“This means jobs can be outsourced to other countries where workers are paid less”) is a great example of how capitalism is inefficient at allocating resources. Think about it; in order to ship jobs overseas, companies need to a) build new factories, b) train new laborers, c) hire new managers, and d) extend their supply lines further from where they make their product to where they sell it. Meanwhile the old factories decay in cities with huge unemployment because the people there who have been trained to work cannot find a job that needs those skills anymore. All of these things waste available resources in ways that do not produce any goods for society whatsoever. But since the company is now able to hire laborers at cheaper cost for doing more work, which is to say they can take more of what is produced by their laborers for themselves and give less to the laborers, which is to say they can create more capital, than this is somehow justified as “efficient.” Mostly what this means is the consumer pays less, but only because the entire cost of the product is not being paid by the consumer, because some of it is being paid by the laborer. In fact, this new product, which is identical to the old one, has cost quite a lot more resources to produce than it used to, but there is just much more egregious stealing going on.

You may have heard that the earth is capable of producing enough food to support a much larger population than it currently has. And yet people everywhere are starving. Why is this? They are not starving because their governments are not capitalist—in fact, the countries that have embraced the sweatshop (and thus capitalistic exploitation of their people) are the countries that are the poorest (see Haiti before the earthquake). The reason they are starving is because capitalism is wasteful of the resources that could be used to feed everyone, and because there is no incentive to feed those people because it would waste capital, which is something capitalism is very concerned with not doing. And so the food industry daily wastes enough food that could feed large portions of Africa and yet it is too much of a waste of capital to collect it and distribute it, because it is impossible for the owners of production to create capital from this endeavor.

Another thing to keep in mind is that capitalism is a linear system, as opposed to a cyclical system. Most societies in the past relied on a cyclical system where things that were planted or hunted (resources) could be planted or hunted indefinitely because the resources were cycled back into the system. Capitalism, on the other hand, requires that resourced be used up and discarded in order to ensure that capital is being produced. Unless we as consumers need the owners of production to continually produce more, instead of reusing what we already have, then there would be no way to produce capital and the system would collapse. This is why companies create products that break after a certain time (ever had an MP3 player die for no reason?). This is a phenomenon called planned obsolescence (the following is a great movie about this which you may have seen already: http://www.storyofstuff.com/. )

Another empirical example of capitalism’s waste of resources is exemplified by Naomi Klein’s thesis of disaster capitalism (very extensively demonstrated in the book The Shock Doctrine). The use of disaster capitalism is based upon the reality that building new things is more profitable than using what is already there (previously discussed). Therefore, when disasters occur and destroy what has already been built, an opportunity for creating a lot of capital presents itself. The incentive for creating capital, coupled with the limits of expansion (and thus opportunities for creating capital) means that where and when destruction happens, capitalists flock. This includes both natural disasters (like the earthquake in Haiti, though I hate to classify it as natural because the a great deal of the suffering there is because of how badly exploited the people there were for such a long time—there’s a really great Harper’s article about this if you can get your hands on it, unfortunately it’s for subscribers only of which I am not one) as well as man-made disasters, such as urban decay or the Iraq War—thus the military-industrial complex (that the Iraq War was a war for profit is barely worth going into but I will if you wish). Ultimately the principle behind disaster capitalism is that using existing resources does not create as much capital as destroying existing resources and starting over, which is of course wasteful in that a) it negates what was already there and b) wastes resources to recreate, both of which could be used to create goods for society and end up producing none.

Okay, enough of that.

Claim 3: Change the culture, and the economics will follow.

This is awfully familiar to another dangerous notion I’ve encountered many time: that the problem with capitalism is just human nature, that is, just like you can’t blame the wand for Voldemorte’s evilness, you can’t blame capitalism for the abuses of capitalists.

Phewy.

Basically we are engaging in a chicken-or-the-egg debate turned culture-or-the-greed debate but I think that a closer look will have you on the egg team. I’ll try to answer your question specifically, though. To do so we’re going to have to separate out two different kinds of “culture” (this is not an academic distinction as far as I know but I think it will help introduce two very important concepts: power and privilege). There are facts about culture that perhaps exist independently from power and privilege (though some would argue that this is impossible). For example, you might say some facts about music are neutral.

Then there are facts about culture that exists because the serve the dominant interests of society, that is those who own the means of production, that is capitalists.

I can go on and on about this. One idea posited by some Feminist theorists is that all –isms (racism, sexism, agism, etc, etc) are not about personal prejudice—which is what all conservatives want us to believe –isms are—but about the existence of power and privilege which are manifested institutionally and are displayed by cultural norms. This is a lot to go into (considering how much I’ve already opted to go into in a fashion that I can only imagine is against your will) but suffice it to say that some cultural norms exist because they benefit the people with the most privilege and power in that culture. For instance, blacks are more likely to be in prison for illegal drug possession—even though drug use between whites and blacks is the same—and men on average receive higher salaries than women regardless of education and/or talent. These are oppressive practices, but they are informed by cultural ideas and stereotypes that allow them to continue. The point here is that some cultural practices have persisted simply because they are good for the people who have the most power to, in large and small ways, prod the characteristics of our institutions and the tone of our culture. And who has this power?

That’s right. The owners of the means of production.

Capitalists.

Examine: individualism; commercialism; professionalism; neocolonialism; patriarchy; the proliferation of drug use; the emphasis on the family; the over concern with dress, appearance, possessions—these are all cultural norms that have taken root in this country and indeed in most of western civilization that have been encouraged by the desires of capitalists. This is not to say there is some conspiracy by a group of cigar-totting, top-hat-donning, mustache-curling rich white guys in a backroom somewhere. Not necessary. It’s simply that capitalism by its very nature gives power and privilege to certain members of society, so that when everyone pursues their own interests, the interests of some are more important than the interests of others, as opposed to an egalitarian system where everyone’s interest is equal.

And therefore you can’t change the culture until you change the economics.

And, anyway, even if it is greed before culture and not the other way around, why should we stick with a system that allows a few greedy people to have some much power over society? It’s like, just take the wand out of Voldemorte’s hand already, cause let’s face it, it’s doing a lot more harm than good to let him keep it.

Claim 4: What you NEED is to make it so people WANT to value people more than money.

People value money more than people because in capitalism your survival is in jeopardy if you take the actions required to value people than money. See: Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Che Guevara, John Brown, Angela Davis, Emma Goldman, on and on and on and on (these people were punished for taking the actions required of valuing more important than money, just like you and I would be today).

Claim 5: Business ethics can help.

The field of business ethics is the art of using rhetoric to justify whatever is in the interests of a company. I’m not making this up—it’s literally modern day sophism.

And, a small correction: it is not simply the responsibility of the CEO of a corporation to bring in the highest possible returns for stockholders, it is actually illegal for a CEO to take any action that undermined the cooperation’s bottom-line in any way for the sake of anything you and I might call ethical. That’s right—being in any way good to people at the expense of profit is an illegal action for a CEO to take.

Claim 6: Campaign finance reform will make our system more democratic

…but will never happen unless the very rich and powerful, who would have to allow this to happen against their own interests, either a) find another way of rigging the system or b) are stripped of their power vis-à-vis the end of capitalism. Why?

Because capitalism and democracy are incompatible. Which leads us to our last claim…

Claim 7: Democracy is basically political capitalism

Democracy is defined by Merriam-Webster’s as “a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections.” Alternatively, the supreme power in a capitalist system is vested in those who control the means of production, which is certainly not the people, the majority of which must necessarily be laborers. Now, remember, we must consider all the people intrinsically linked to our economic system, and so we have to include not only the great deal of disempowerment and inequality capitalism has created in our own country but all those people who labor to make the goods we use. Just because the slaves we live on (and don’t for a second pretend that it’s not in all practical ways slavery that we live on) no longer reside within our political boarders doesn’t mean that we don’t need to consider the fact that they have absolutely no power at all much less the supreme power, and never will as long as there is capitalists.

And as equal as things can (theoretically) get, which they have never, ever been that close, but even if they were in some ways closer than they are now, it still is impossible by definition for everyone to have the same say in how the government is run in capitalism because there has to be difference in who own property and thus who has power. And therefore, I think it is clear that the only way to actually achieve democracy, which I am fully in favor of, is eliminating capitalism from this earth.

Who’s with me?

Why Obama's Numbers are Dropping

2010-10-16T10:37:00.001-04:00

Enthusiastically Unenthusiatic

2010-10-06T14:25:00.000-04:00

I have been relatively quiet recently. That is because I have been disgusted.

I am one of those people who is furious at Obama. No, not a teapartier (God help us all).

The other kind. The ones that Robert Gibbs calls the “professional left.” I’m what Obama calls “just irresponsible.” I'm part of the "enthusiasm gap."

That’s right. I am a disillusioned former supporter.

And so my heart went out to Velma Hart when she told the president point blank, “I’m tired of defending you.” I agree with her. This point of view has been demonized by other progressives who fear (and with their ears to the ground, rightly so) a GOP resurgence—though I would say that the GOP can't resurge, having died and been reanimated like a zombie as some new, more terrifying, and far less thoughtful incarnation. And I understand that, I really do. Nothing scares me more than the idea of whom a republican or teaparty president might pick for the supreme court; what bills they might pass, restricting the rights of LGBTQ people, destroying social security, discriminating against religious minorities, unraveling our already threadbare safety net, etc.

Nothing scarier, that is, except the suggestion that we on the left have to surrender our voices lest we are responsible for a right-wing resurgence.

Given the way our system works, we are left with very little recourse when, say, our choice for office breaks his promises, endorses a neo-liberal ideology which has never concerned itself with change beneficial to the average citizen, and bargains away the stances he was elected to advocate on behalf of. All we have is our votes, for better or worse.

Right now, progressives are being blackmailed and even bullied (see Bill Maher’s appalingly sexist dismissal of Velma Hart, who, dispite what he claims, is employed, not that it matters) into closing this "enthusiam gap", as if its the fault of voters and not leaders. The intention here is to force us to support our far-less-than-adequate politicians, lest we be blamed for the consequences of a republican congress. In other words, we are being told we owe it to society to guarantee our support to democrats.

You know what? I like Obama, and I like that he was elected. But I refuse to be responsible for what republican fanatics do if they make it into office. And I refuse to be forced to vote for the lesser of two evils because that’s all I’ve been afforded in this country that pretends to be a democracy.

If Obama, or any democratic candidate, wants my vote, they’d better try harder to earn it. Otherwise NOTHING WILL EVER CHANGE. That’s right, Obama’s “failures” will be the norm forever. Am I supposed to believe that this time, when I give him my support, that he do as he said he did, and create change? Just hope that with Rahm Emanuel gone, the American people will suddenly be at the top of the agenda and not investment bankers? Think about it: if we are currently locked in a constant tug-of-war between us progressives and an elite that serves corporate interests at citizens' expense, and our candidates are the rope, we cannot surrender our only recourse to pull back or its game over. If every elected official that’s at all to the left of the GOP will be able to count on our votes every time, they won’t even have to try to be responsible to the people they represent.

And that’s what you are doing to Velma Hart. You are taking away her voice so that Obama doesn’t have to be responsible to her, or to me, or to yourself either. And whose he going to be responsible to when you’re finished?

Rush Has a Direct Link to Obama's Thoughts Apparently

2010-08-06T16:07:00.000-04:00

Rush, how is it that you have a telepathic connection with the Obama family? Or is it just your ability to homogenize the experiences of people different from yourself due to racial stereotypes which, while false and lacking evidence, play very nicely into your self-serving ideology?

And when the Bushes went on vacation, well, I guess you didn't complain because in your mind they really were OWED this--you know, all that money that Bush got from his daddy, opposed to Obama who would play very nicely into your elevated ideal of the self-made-man if only for the fact that he wasn't black.

This is what racism looks like, plain, simple, and unadulterated.

Via Media Matters for America

Reversing "Racism!"

2010-08-03T17:28:00.000-04:00

I really must apologize for writing a blog post about Shirley Sherrod. It seems tragic that this story has become such a distraction when you consider the gravity of the real things that are currently at stake. However, I have sadly found myself to be less than impervious to the clusterfuck that has developed around this ex-state director for rural development.

I have been pondering this story as it has slipped from the limelight into the background of the American political consciousness, trying to decide what the real importance of it is. I feel convinced that it’s not really about one woman no one has ever heard of making a speech twenty years ago that seems (at most) questionable when taken out of context. So what is it? The sensationalism and hysteria that has become to describe the American right and thus has seeped its way into the mainstream news media? The willingness of right wing pundits and thugs to sabotage and defame because of their limited and childish political ideology? The ease at which the Obama administration and the NAACP crumbled under the threat of “showing up on Glenn Beck that night,” thus both legitimizing insane hypocrites and proving that the pretext of political savvy has blinded the democrats and the Obama administration in particular from the principles their base has expected them to deliver on?

I think all these things are important to note, but in the hope that there is something much grander to explore here, and thus justify throwing another blog post about Shirley Sherrod into the void, I think that perhaps we have an opportunity to reflect on the greater issue of race relations in this country. A very powerful theoretical distinction about the term “racism” has failed to work its way into the mainstream and because of that, many white people, particularly conservatives, are constantly on the lookout for proof of the myth that people of color are more “racist” than whites are in contemporary America. I say myth not because I don’t believe that all people are capable of holding numerous and negative preconceived notions about different group due to the color of their skin or any other number of things. It is just that I agree with the aforementioned theoretical distinction; I think that racism is only expressed in the privilege and power of whites, meaning that people of color cannot be racist. In other words, when we talk of America’s racist past, we don’t mean bigoted white businessmen. We mean the ability of those white businessmen to use their power as white men to subjugate people of color via institutionally granted privilege, and thus the difference that this power suggests about the manifestation of their bigotry.

In this sense of the word, every white person in the history of the United States is racist, including myself, because in some way we as whites have all benefited from the color of our skin. In big ways and small, we have gained something because of a society that is, for whatever reason (for another blog post), designed to give whites a leg up over people of color. That doesn’t mean there are no happy and successful people of color, and it doesn’t mean that all white people are wealthy. Yes, I realize that there are poor whites and rich blacks. But as a group, generally, it is clear that being a random white person on the street means less things holding you back. It’s not meant to be blaming or to be a big blanket statement, it is meant to create a more nuanced understanding of what racism really is in America.

Nevertheless, this is a nuance that is very difficult for many white people to swallow. Harmless as it is to admit that blacks still meet with discrimination that takes a very real toll on their “pursuit of happiness,” the mainstream seems to struggle with this fact, and many agents of the right have decided that continued mistrust of blacks by whites can be justified because of the least inspired political-maneuvering-for-the-purpose-of-protecting-entrenched-power to date: Reverse racism (cue satirical spooky announcer voice).

Ah yes, reverse racism is the perfect thing to slam people of color with who dare criticize the powers that be, which happen to have been unfairly treating them since whites first figured out that having other people produce the stuff you sell for a profit is way easier then producing it yourself. Thus Henry Louis Gates Jr. can’t possibly be justified in being pissed off when white police officers demand he show papers proving he’s allowed to be in his own house, particularly in light of the very well documented bias against blacks by law enforcement. No, he’s a “reverse racist”. This kind of insanity is what allows Glenn Beck to think he can get away with calling Obama a racist; this picture of the bitter and presumptuous black man is so pervasive in society that mere suggestion, in the total absence of facts, might be enough to convince people that their new black president hates them because of their skin color.

Shirley Sherrod was meant to be the new proof of the racist black person. She was supposed to be exactly what purveyors of this narrative have always wanted; a person of color in a position of some degree of power, representing the government, and proudly bragging about the biases with which she conducts her duties at a secretive NAACP meeting. She was to be the proof that Pat Buchanan has never offered for his commonly repeated but fatally indefensible proclamation, “White men are more discriminated against then anyone else!” She was supposed to solidify that murky image that’s in the minds of many Tea Partiers when they shout, “We’ve got to take our country back!”

But alas, in reality she is none of these things, because in reality these things simply do not exist. She is, in fact, what most people on the right continuously fail to be, someone who is open and honest about the real process of racial reconciliation, someone who is self-reflective and self-critical. She is a person who has overcome tragic loss due to race relations and has yet managed to dedicate herself to helping poor white farmers far more than petty political conmen like Andrew Breitbart ever cared to. Foremost of all, what she was expressing to that crowd was the process she went through of understanding that buying into the “it’s us versus them” paradigm causes us all to suffer. Instead, she was suggesting that we aim to create trust and cooperation between all people who are in a position to benefit from a more democratic society. This call to trust is one that no one with deeply engrained prejudices, like those implicit in the “reverse racist” myth, can yet raise to.

What About the Second Ammendment Rights of Flotilla Sailers, Huh?

2010-06-10T19:55:00.000-04:00

A group of soldiers speed rope onto a boat in international waters. The boat is carrying food, supplies, and civilians who wish to land and give these items away to those in need. Some of the civilians are shot and killed; and yes, some the soldiers are attacked with pipes and other objects and injured (it is unclear, to me, which happened first).

An American citizen is shot four times in the head.

The question being very slowly digested by the American public is, whose fault is this? First of all, that there could exist some equivocation on the culpability of a military which has killed nine unarmed civilians in international water who were risking their lives to deliver aid to a destitute population enduring an illegal blockade seems shocking to me. But alas, here’s how it breaks down: Did Israel murder these civilians in cold blood, or did these terrorists-in-sheep’s-clothing have it coming? (For its part, the media seems to have decided already that it is the latter, regardless of how much Glenn Beck lies about that.)

While we slowly find out what the other side of the story is—you know, the one belonging to the civilians that were there and got shot at—and as we wait for an investigation that might determine an order of events and how those events will determine who is legally culpable or not, I have been pondering the content of the arguments thus far. For instance, I find the logic being used by the Pro-Israeli military crowd very interesting. It goes something like this: the Israeli government made it clear that they were not going to allow the flotilla into Gaza; the people on the Flotilla knew that and disregarded it; therefore Israel had the right to storm the boats (seemingly regardless of who owned the water that the flotilla was in); and since there were met with metal pipes and folding chairs when they zipped down their little wires into the middle of a scared and angry crowd, they had the right to open fire with lethal weapons (as opposed to tasers or what have you).

This picture, which was published by Mother Jones in a critique of the whole episode, seems to sum up the more reasonable objection to this argument.

But, unsurprisingly, I also smell hypocrisy. Remember that these are the same people (Fox and Co., Sarah Palin, etc) that are also the newest, biggest advocates of freedom as can only be delivered by castrating government. That is to say, they are usually the ones that preach about the coming war on the people, how the government is not to be trusted, and that no one should be able to tell you what to do with your money (I assume this includes sending it to starving Gaza citizens).

And yet, they are the first to defend a central government that attacks foreign vessels, in international waters, and American citizens no less. Why? They attack sailors on the Mavi Marmara for taking up weapons and yet they continually shriek about encroachments on the second amendment. Why? Would they be happier if the 19-year-old American citizen had gone down clutching an automatic weapon?

This is the question I have: would they have been this supportive if it had been American military boarding that boat? If it was for exactly the same reasons, i.e. turning back an aid flotilla headed for Gaza.

Or maybe it was just that the right has no love for mostly foreign, progressive activist. So what if that aid boat had been trying to break a blockade that Obama had, suppose, erected around Arizona? And I guess you’ll also have to imagine that everyone in Arizona was white, because ir seems these days they wouldn’t mind that much if it was Latinos.

Or maybe this whole small government thing really just isn’t what they want after all.

Giving police more powers, over-funding the military, torture, illegal espionage, spending into the red; the GOP and it’s supporters don’t really mind these sides of big government. This just falls into a long refrain of double standards on this topic. Because the truth is what they don’t like is democratic policies, not big government. But since they can’t argue the details of progressive legislation, instead they try to engage the country in a macro debate on government empowerment which conveniently falls by the wayside when they are in power.

So just to be clear:
Total governmental control over everything having to do with Gaza: Good.
Making it illegal for health insurance companies to drop you for getting sick: Bad.

Okay, got it.

Also! Smuggled video via Democracy Now!: