Beverly Baker Moore : May Day Memories, or Consciousness-Raising Through Vegetables

Posted on August 1, 2013 by Thorne Dreyer
Rally during May Day demonstrations, Washington, D.C., 1971. Image from Waging Nonviolence.

May Day memories, or
Consciousness-raising through vegetables

The cop riding shotgun stayed behind the wheel while his out-of-control buddy leapt out screaming. He was all blown up, beet-red in the face and (literally) spitting mad.

By Beverly Baker Moore | The Rag Blog | August 1, 2013

Not counting the people who’ve died too young since 1971, there should be at least one good story out there from each of the 7,000 or so people who went to Washington on May Day that year. This is one.

Our four-person Sattva staff cell was one part of the larger Austin Armadillo contingent that year. Turned out disrupting DC traffic was the main, but not the only, thing we did. There were a couple of Washington evenings spent in heart-to-hearts with plaintive bureaucrats. There was a wild incident with cops and irate neighbors. And on the way home we adopted a Japanese hitchhiker.

Ahem. Before I came to the movement I spent some time trying to change the system from within. I gave that up for good in 1970 after working as a field rep for the poverty program’s Austin office. There were some real good people there and they had me out in rural communities where I would sit down with local folks and hear about the projects they believed would help them. My job was to capture their visions on federal forms and submit them for approval. The bureaucracy was a drag but taking the money back to the people was great.

Alas, Nixon got elected in ‘68. He closed the Austin office and cut the national program way back. Some staffers relocated to Dallas to do what they could within the more restrictive guidelines. Some tried other government jobs in the better karma agencies like AID, VISTA, or the Peace Corps. Some, like me, stayed in Austin and got involved in other kinds of community effort.

The first people in Austin’s underground community I fell in with were staff writers and cartoonists for the the Texas Ranger humor magazine. Through them I met a larger local group of “creative anarchists” big into street theatre. One of the most creative of these particular anarchists was Curtis Carnes and he had a plan for a community restaurant. One night he told us all about his vision for Sattva and asked if we’d join him. A week later, Jay, Jane and I were sharing a house with him and spending our mornings chopping vegetables.

The Sattva concept was simple. Good tasting, healthy, affordable meals. Anything not sold was given away. We were given space first in the Jewish, then the Methodist, student centers. The food was vegetarian. Macrobiotic was always on the menu for those who believed in it but we believed in spices! We served soups, beans, rice, casseroles, salads, and desserts to 600 people a day. We used no processed foods…ever.

As commune members we were paid minimal amounts of money for subsistence and a share of the food. In return we chopped hundreds of pounds of vegetables and fruit five mornings a week but not by ourselves. Friends came by to help. When your recipe starts with “25 pounds of potatoes, 10 pounds of onions…” and has to be ready by noon more hands are a blessing.

In what became a distinctive morning routine, a loose affiliation of friends from the community wielded butcher knives and talked politics beside us. Together we diced and mixed and stirred and poured for hours so people could have a three- or four-course meal that day for about a dollar.

Anyone who had trouble with the dollar was welcome to show up at the end of the meal and help us clean up in return for eating as much as they could hold for free. Seriously unique and celebratory after-work kitchen events arose as those folks worked and played and cleaned. For these celebrations we got to be the audience.

In Spring 1971 Sattva was coming to the end of a successful first year. We talked it over and decided to celebrate by going to Washington with our friends.

Meanwhile, my former boss at the poverty program office had become national head of VISTA and lived in a fine Georgetown house provided by that agency. He and his wife invited us to stay with them on one condition: their friends and co-workers in Washington wanted to sit and talk with us. So we swapped conversation for lodging.

The discussions were deep and heartfelt but, in the end, positions remained unchanged. The bureaucrats were kindly souls who cared about the same things we did and really wished they could join us but, but, but…

Eventually they decided to show their solidarity by taking vacation days during the demonstration so as not to actually contribute to the government during the time we were there. After that, I suppose, they opted to return to work to wait for the country to evolve into a meritocracy. We, of course, opted to hit the streets.

After earning our lodging, we bedded down on sleeping bags amid the family washer, dryer, and ping pong table that night, then set out for our selected destination the next morning. During our walk we witnessed firsthand the steady progression from Georgetown’s brick streets and sculpted shrubbery to the more distressed real estate that makes up most of the neighborhoods in DC. We passed blocks and blocks where mostly African-American folks gathered on porches and street corners, calling out greetings and encouragement.

New York Times coverage of 1971 May Day actions. Image from The Exiled.

We felt good about the street action that first day. We had huge numbers and did what we came to do…the streets were a mess around the traffic circles. I remember some angry-faced motorists but just as many, it seemed, looked faintly pleased. By afternoon we had escaped the cops and were crossing back through the African-American neighborhood from that morning, when two cops ran their patrol car up onto the sidewalk, nearly taking out the fire hydrant right next to us.

The cop riding shotgun stayed behind the wheel while his out-of-control buddy leapt out screaming. He was all blown up, beet-red in the face and (literally) spitting mad. Apparently, he’d not had a good morning.

He screamed at us. Caught by surprise, we just stared at first. Then he lunged at me. He grabbed my coat collar and jerked me off my feet. Scared the crap out of me at first.

We were in front of the picture windows of a corner café as the cop threw open the back door of the patrol car and tossed me in. We were prepared to be arrested so we didn’t argue with him for long. Instead, a young pregnant Black woman pushing a baby stroller on the block inserted herself into the confrontation.

She stepped up to the cop told him we were doing nothing, just walking down the street. He responded by jabbing her in the stomach with his club. That’s when the young Black men started coming out of the café, hot at the cop for threatening the woman. People on doorsteps across the street got up and began yelling too.

Back in the patrol car, the cop in the driver’s seat gave up and got out, obviously pissed at his partner for getting him into all of that trouble. I was inside the patrol car watching the surreal scene. My friends had backed off and I could no longer see the cops for all the angry neighbors.

That’s when I found the patrol car doors were not locked. It occurred to me that staying in an unlocked police car waiting to be taken away by two cops who didn’t look like they would live through the day was idiocy. I mean, they hadn’t even checked my ID. I flung open the car door on the street side, leapt out, and ran to the folks beckoning me from their stoops on the far side.

I made it across the street unnoticed by anyone else (even my friends, as it turned out). A beautiful white-haired Black man motioned me onto his porch and through his front door. Inside a grinning old woman waved me through their house and out their back door. I sprinted across two small yards and into another shotgun house as more people showed me the way through. I cleared several blocks this way and have this tale to tell about it all.

Back in the Georgetown living room that night the TV news showed the arrival of a couple of our leaders. We heard them say that on day two the demonstrations would be concentrated on fewer areas, then they announced which ones.

We disagreed with the strategy and the Sattva staff decided to spend the next day helping first aid workers and rescuing arrested people (some 1,400 of them) from RFK stadium. (Helpful hint for next time: LOTS of people will say their name is Karl Marx — some 144 on that first day alone.)

The wild-eyed cop who attacked me was a preview of what people encountered that second day. It was so bad the national news media blazed headlines calling it a “Police Riot.” If we stirred up that much trouble we must have done something right.

A couple of days later we were on IH-35 in downtown Waco, almost home. Stranded on the median was a young Japanese hitchhiker. He was so thrilled we stopped to pick him up he wouldn’t quit bowing and we all nearly got blown away by semis before we got him into the car.

Back on the road he told us he was a Japanese graduate student on the last leg of an around the world adventure. He’d saved America for last, he said, before he returned to Tokyo to finish his degree and go into the family business.

He had been involved in Japanese student movements and was excited to hook up with us. He about cried when we served him the home-made Miso soup. He left us a couple of weeks later in the middle of another anti-war demonstration, freaked out about the Texas Rangers who showed up and ringed the park where we’d gathered for that one.

Before he left he explained that Japanese police did not carry weapons so he had no trouble joining street events there. He was scared to death by the well-armed Rangers, though. He said we were very, very brave and that he worried about us because we were protesting in the face of such violent authorities in such a violent country. He wished us good luck in Japanese.

[Beverly Baker Moore is an Austin-based writer, teacher, and activist.]

The Rag Blog

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Robert Jensen : Peace Talks Are New Chapter in an Old Book

Posted on August 1, 2013 by Thorne Dreyer
Peace talks: the players. Image from AP Graphics Bank.

Peace talks:
A new chapter in an old book

Discussions about the issue, whether among citizens or by officials at the negotiating table, must begin with an acknowledgement of the power wielded by Israel, backed by the United States.

By Robert Jensen | The Rag Blog | August 1, 2013

New negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians may begin next week, with much talk of a “new chapter” in the seemingly intractable conflict. A new chapter, perhaps, but who is writing the book?

Any public discussion about the “peace process” is tense, in part because there is no widely shared understanding of the history and politics of — even an appropriate terminology for — the conflict. That’s as true in the United States as in Palestine and Israel.

I never gave much thought to the question until I was 30 years old, in the late 1980s. Before that, I had a typical view of the conflict for an apolitical American: It was confusing, and everyone involved seemed a bit crazy.

With no understanding of the history of the region and no framework for analyzing U.S. policy in the Middle East, it was all a muddle, and so I ignored it. That’s one of the privileges of being in the comfortable classes in the United States — you can remain comfortably ignorant.

But as a frustrated journalist with a newfound freedom to examine the politics of news media in graduate school, I began studying law and human rights, in the domestic and international arenas. I also started digging into the issues I had been avoiding. In the case of Palestine/Israel, I began reading about the roots of the conflict, how the United States was involved, and how U.S. journalists were presenting the issues.

I came to this inquiry with no firm allegiance to either side. As a white U.S. citizen from a centrist Protestant background but with no religious commitments, I felt no cultural or spiritual connection to either national group. I don’t speak Hebrew or Arabic, and I had never traveled to the Middle East. I had no personal relationships that predisposed me to favor one group over the other.

Like any human, I was not free of bias, of course. As a relatively unreflective white man rooted in a predominantly Christian culture, I was raised with some level of anti-Semitism and anti-Arab racism, for example, and no doubt that affected my perceptions. But based solely on my personal profile, I didn’t have a dog in that fight, or so I thought.

After a couple of years of studying the issues, I realized that the categories of “pro-Israeli” and “pro-Palestinian” didn’t fit me. When people asked me where I stood on the issue, I would say that I supported international law and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As a U.S. citizen, I asserted that my primary obligation was to evaluate the legality and morality of my own country’s involvement in the conflict and the region.

The more I learned about all those things, the more I became opposed to my government’s policy on this issue, in the Middle East, and around the world. The more I learned, the more I realized I lived in the imperial power of the day, and it became clear to me that imperial policies are designed to enrich the few while ignoring the needs of the many, at home and abroad.

I became a critic of U.S. policy based on careful study that included, but was not limited to, mainstream sources. I could no longer accept the conventional story and the policies that flowed from that story.

Today, the situation in Palestine and Israel is as grim as ever. Decades of Israeli expansion and the Palestinian leadership’s failure to build a vibrant movement to challenge that expansion (or, perhaps, to let such a movement emerge on its own) have narrowed the prospects for a just peace. And in the background lurks the United States, still the major impediment to progress as long as it offers Israel nearly unconditional support for the occupation.

More than ever, the case for international law and human rights needs to be made clearly, but the conditions for that dialogue deteriorate. Despite recent efforts by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, there seems little basis for optimism, short or long term. As U.S. officials scramble to save an empire in decline, with its whole Middle East policy in disarray, it’s difficult to imagine a breakthrough.

I have no great insights into how to solve the conflict or deepen the dialogue. But as I think about the conflict, I’m drawn back to my roots in feminist intellectual and political life for some basic observations.

My return to graduate school has led me to inquire about many aspects of the world over the past two decades, but the first of those inquiries was into gender, with a focus on men’s violence against women. That led me to radical feminist theory, which has helped me understand not only the question of gender but offered a framework for understanding hierarchy.

Feminism taught me how to think not only about gender but also about power, and a central lesson of feminism that applies here is the problem of assuming false equivalency in analyzing conflict.

Take a classic example of a husband who physically assaults his wife. The problem is rooted in patriarchy, a system that gives men control over women in a hierarchy that is naturalized and normalized: Men rule, women submit. The man’s violence in this case is used to ensure the submission, but the physical violence typically is only one method of control; such relationships often include emotional abuse and sexual violence.

Within that dynamic, the woman may engage in all kinds of dysfunctional behavior herself, and she may strike out violently against the man at times. But feminist analyses of male power and men’s violence have made two things clear.

First, any specific incident can’t be understood outside the larger context, not only of that relationship but of the power dynamics of the culture. So, if we were drawn into a chaotic incident in the couple’s home, we might be tempted to assess the situation on the basis of what had just happened, but focusing only on the immediate occurrence would leave us ill-equipped to understand it. We need to know the couple’s history and understand the patriarchal context in which that history plays out.

Second, if we wanted to help resolve the conflict, it would be folly to assume that the man and woman were equally responsible and that a productive dialogue could go forward on that basis. Any claim that the man and woman should sit down as equals and talk would favor the man; without an acknowledgement of his greater power and a history of using that power to dominate, any “dialogue” would be a farce.

While some men react to any call for such conversation with force, other men pursue a more sophisticated strategy that continues the dialogue so long as his fundamental power, in the relationship or in society, is not challenged. Some men pursue both strategies, depending on the moment. Real dialogue is possible only when the discrepancy in power is addressed.

If there is to be progress toward a just and peaceful solution in Palestine/Israel, those two lessons are crucial. We must recognize the larger political context in which the conflict is set and not assume there’s a level playing field for dialogue.

That means acknowledging that since the end of World War II, the United States has pursued a policy of domination — through diplomacy and force — in the Middle East, and that for more than four decades a central component of that policy has been U.S. support for Israel’s expansionist policies in exchange for Israeli support of the U.S. project in the region (though not without disagreements and tension between the two countries).

It also means that discussions about the issue, whether among citizens or by officials at the negotiating table, must begin with an acknowledgement of the power wielded by Israel, backed by the United States.

For more than 20 years I have tried to recognize the many ways in which I live with unearned privilege and tried to support the struggles of marginalized and oppressed people to justice. That has led me to support the basic aims of Palestinian nationalism, even if I do not always support specific strategies or tactics of various Palestinian groups.

I also have criticized Israeli policy in public, in writing, and on film. But as a citizen of the United States, I have tried always to bring discussions on my home turf back to the responsibility of citizens to hold their own government accountable.

That is my dog in the fight. I live in a nation in which there is a tremendous gap between leaders’ rhetoric of freedom and justice, and the reality of imperial policies that perpetuate injustice. To close that gap, our public discussions must take account of the context and be honest about power. Nowhere is that more crucial that the intellectual and political engagements on the Palestine/Israel conflict.

[Robert Jensen is a professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center in Austin. His latest books are Arguing for Our Lives: A User’s Guide to Constructive Dialogue and We Are All Apocalyptic Now: On the Responsibilities of Teaching, Preaching, Reporting, Writing, and Speaking Out. His writing is published extensively in mainstream and alternative media. Robert Jensen can be reached at rjensen@austin.utexas.edu. Read more articles by Robert Jensen on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Lamar W. Hankins : Alcoholics Anonymous, Nonbelievers, and the Constitution

Posted on August 1, 2013 by Thorne Dreyer
Alcoholics Anonymous “praying hands” medallion. Image from Alternatives in Treatment.

Alcoholics Anonymous, nonbelievers, 
and the Constitution

AA proponents argue that the ‘higher power’ found in its steps can be whatever one wants it to be. Yet plainly religious practices go on at AA meetings, such as prayer, scripture-quoting, and the crediting of a supernatural ‘higher power.’

By Lamar W. Hankins | The Rag Blog | August 1, 2013

Every day, courts throughout the country require people placed on probation for alcohol-related offenses to attend 12-step treatment programs. Often, Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is specifically named as the program they must attend, and a probationer may be required to attend one AA meeting each day for 30 days or more.

This raises two important questions: 1) Is AA a religion-based program? 2) If so, does it violate the First Amendment rights of probationers to require attendance at AA meetings?

Since 1996, at least 12 federal district and appellate courts have found that AA is religion-based. Thus, mandatory attendance at AA meetings as a condition of probation (or parole) violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

Of course, if there is a secular program that serves the same purpose as AA, attendance at that program can be made mandatory because no Establishment Clause problem affects secular programs. But no other alcohol recovery program of which I am aware provides as many meetings as does AA. With over 100,000 meetings worldwide and nearly 2 million members, all other programs are dwarfed by AA.

I do not oppose AA. Many of my friends, relatives, acquaintances, and clients benefit from AA. But I have also known people who find AA meetings that emphasize religion or religious practices unacceptable, preventing them from benefiting from the program.

Not all AA meetings are the same, though it is probably fair to say that most AA groups include religion in their meetings. Some people who reject religion are able occasionally to find a group that has a more secular approach that is not offensive to their core beliefs.

But every one of the 12 federal courts and one state court that I have found that has ruled for the record on this issue has held that AA is religious-based and that offenders cannot be constitutionally compelled to attend AA meetings.

There is irony in this situation. AA is widely acknowledged as founded by Bill Wilson (Bill W. in AA parlance) and Bob Smith, but others joined them in creating what is arguably the most successful self-help program to help alcoholics overcome (or at least manage) their problems with alcohol.

Bill W. wrote the first version of the 12 Steps that at least 10 people began using in 1938 to get and stay sober. But two members of the group, Jim Burwell and Hank Parkhurst, objected to the emphasis on faith, religion, and religious practice they encountered when they began to attend meetings.

Wilson reported in “The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions” that Burwell said in their first encounter, “I can’t stand this God stuff! It’s a lot of malarkey for weak folks. The group doesn’t need it and I won’t have it. To hell with it.”

Burwell could not accept the idea of Christian redemption that most of the group was preaching. When Burwell started to drink again a few months later, the members of the group turned against him and refused to help him again. After Burwell regained his sobriety and would not stop attending the meetings, the group once again accepted him in spite of his anti-religion attitude.

Wilson initially refused to change any of the ideas he had enunciated in “The 12 Steps,” which he wrote on a scratch pad in pencil in May 1938. But Burwell and Parkhurst would not go along with the use of the word God in the original draft. They represented 20% of the original group and Wilson did not want to lose them, so he relented.

As Susan Cheever, a columnist for The Fix recently explained:

Finally a compromise was reached, and four key changes in the document were agreed to. In Step Two, “a Power greater than ourselves” replaced “God.” In Steps Three and Eleven, the single word “God” was qualified by the addition of “as we understood Him.” “On our knees” was cut from Step Seven. And the sentence “Here are the steps we took which are suggested as a Program of Recovery” was added to introduce all the Steps; they were being offered as “suggestions” rather than imposed as “rules.”

It was Jimmy Burwell’s uncompromising stance against religion that initially forced Alcoholics Anonymous into the tolerant, open and welcoming group that has helped more than two million believers, agnostics and atheists. It was Burwell and Parkhurst who bridled at Bill’s original “God”-centered Step Three and pestered the group into the all inclusive revision, “God as we understood Him.” And it was Burwell whose “bad behavior” was the foundation of the Third Tradition in which the only requirement listed for AA membership is a desire to stop drinking.

After at least 100 men were participating in AA, Wilson began dictating what became known as “The Big Book,” which was edited and revised by all who were then participating in the program. Burwell later became the unofficial archivist for AA, though his secular views never changed. Burwell retained his sobriety until his death at age 76 in 1974.

In 1941, Jack Alexander wrote an article about AA for the Saturday Evening Post, which established the program as what Cheever calls “a serious and effective option for alcoholic treatment.” Cheever summed up Wilson’s attitude toward Burwell and Parkhurst:

In “Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age,” Bill Wilson paid tribute to Burwell, Parkhurst and the changes they forced in AA’s principles: “This was the great contribution of our atheists and agnostics. They had widened our gateway so that all who suffer might pass through, regardless of their belief or lack of belief.”

Any AA group that is intolerant of atheists, agnostics, and religious nonbelievers fails to appreciate the history of AA and has too narrow a view of what makes AA successful. From my observations over the years, I have concluded that it is the assistance that members provide to one another that makes AA work. Each member helps others stay sober and, in turn, is helped.

The best AA programs provide a form of cognitive behavior therapy in which participants look at themselves honestly and openly, identifying the feelings, thoughts, and behaviors that cause them problems. With the help of one another, members find ways to avoid their dysfunctional feelings, thoughts, and behaviors.

Psychologists and psychotherapists might suggest journaling, role-playing, relaxation techniques, and mental distractions as coping strategies. In the best AA programs, members practice these or similar strategies, including having someone available day or night to provide support.

The “Serenity Prayer” that is a part of AA (“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference”) recognizes what writer and psychology educator Kendra Cherry says is the purpose of cognitive therapy: “The goal of cognitive behavior therapy is to teach patients that while they cannot control every aspect of the world around them, they can take control of how they interpret and deal with things in their environment.”

AA would appeal more to atheists, agnostics, and other nonbelievers if AA would make a conscious effort to be more inclusive. When that doesn’t happen, secular alternatives in some communities can serve the non-religious population, but their meetings are not as available to most people as are AA’s meetings.

Among secular alternatives to AA are Life Ring, which has one meeting in Texas, in Austin; Secular Organizations for Sobriety (SOS) has meetings in about 30 towns and cities in Texas, including Austin and Lockhart in Central Texas; Smart Recovery has no meetings in Texas; Women for Sobriety has an office in Pennsylvania, but no meeting information on its website; Rational Recovery has one meeting location in California and one in Iowa.

In contrast, even in most small towns, one can find several AA meetings to attend every week.

Many AA proponents argue that the “higher power” found in its steps can be whatever one wants it to be. Yet plainly religious practices go on at AA meetings, such as prayer, scripture-quoting, and the crediting of a supernatural “higher power” for what is obviously a result of intensive support by the AA community.

I’m glad AA exists for those who need, want, and benefit from it. But we need other alternatives for those whose beliefs don’t harmonize with AA practices.

[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos, Texas, city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins. Read more articles by Lamar W. Hankins on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

EXTRA : Rag Blog Editor Dreyer Does it in Public this Friday!

Posted on July 31, 2013 by Thorne Dreyer
Poster art by James Retherford / The Rag Blog. The banner, designed by famed comix artist Gilbert Shelton, is from the original Rag, Austin’s legendary underground newspaper published from 1966-1977.
Rag Blog editor Thorne Dreyer 
just keeps getting older!

“Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional.” — Chili Davis, hitting coach, Oakland Athletics

From the Rag Blog Society Desk / July 31, 2013

AUSTIN, Texas — In Austin? Or can you get here fast?

Rag Blog editor/Rag Radio host Thorne Dreyer is having another birthday, and he’s doing it in public!

Please join us for Dreyer’s 68th birthday party this Friday, August 2, 6-9 p.m., at Maria’s Taco Xpress, 2529 South Lamar Blvd, Austin, Texas. Maria’s has a full bar and Tex-Mex menu, and Leeann Atherton performs on the patio at 7. (Find the party on Facebook.)

(Dreyer’s birthday is really August 1st, but cut the old guy some slack: he gets confused!)

No gifts, but a small donation to the New Journalism Project — the Texas 501(c)3 nonprofit that publishes The Rag Blog — would be welcome. If you can’t come, here’s the link to donate.

Baseball’s Chili Davis famously said: “Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional.”

Don’t grow up! Come party with us Friday.

The Rag Blog

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

RAG RADIO / Thorne Dreyer : Prof Jay D. Jurie & Texas NAACP Pres Gary Bledsoe on Trayvon Martin

Posted on July 31, 2013 by Thorne Dreyer
Central Florida Prof. Jay D. Jurie, left, and Gary Bledsoe, president, Texas NAACP.

Rag Radio podcast:
The Rag Blog‘s Jay D. Jurie and
Austin attorney Gary Bledsoe
on the legacy of Trayvon Martin

They discuss the trial, racial profiling, the ‘stand your ground’ laws and gun violence in America, the movement that has grown up in response to the Zimmerman verdict, and President Obama’s call for a ‘conversation’ about race in America.

By Rag Radio | The Rag Blog | July 31, 2013

Jay D. Jurie, who teaches at the University of Central Florida in Sanford, and Austin attorney Gary Bledsoe, president of the Texas NAACP, discuss issues related to the killing of Trayvon Martin and the trial of George Zimmerman on Rag Radio, Friday, July 26, 2013.

Rag Radio is a syndicated radio program produced at the studios of KOOP 91.7-FM, a cooperatively-run all-volunteer community radio station in Austin, Texas.

Listen to or download this episode of Rag Radio here:


On the show, Jurie and Bledsoe discuss the killing of Trayvon Martin and the trial of George Zimmerman with host Thorne Dreyer. They also address related issues including racial profiling, the “stand your ground” laws and gun violence in America, the movement that has grown up in response to the Zimmerman verdict, and President Obama’s call for a “conversation” about race in America.

The NAACP’s Gary Bledsoe in the studios of KOOP-FM, Austin, Texas, Friday, July 26, 2013. Photo by Roger Baker / The Rag Blog.

Jurie, who lives and teaches in Sanford, Florida, site of the killing and the trial, talks about the nature of the community and the history of racism in the area, and Bledsoe also discusses the role played by the NAACP in Florida, Texas, and nationally.

Jay D. Jurie, Ph.D. is an associate professor of public administration and urban and regional planning at the University of Central Florida. Jay, a regular contributor to The Rag Blog, is a veteran of SDS at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He has long advocated public policies that promote social and environmental justice and economic democracy.

His Rag Blog article, “Trayvon Martin’s Fatal Shortcut,” has been chosen to appear in a special edition of ProudFlesh: New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics and Consciousness. His more recent article, “‘Approved Killing’ in Florida,” addresses parallels between the Trayvon Martin killing and the murder of Emmett Till in Money, Mississippi, in 1955.

Jay Jurie, third row, at race relations meeting in Sanford, Florida, Oct. 2, 2012

Gary Bledsoe is president of the Texas NAACP, a position he has held since 1991. An Austin attorney who specializes in public interest, employment, and civil rights law, Bledsoe has been a member of the National Board of the NAACP since 2003, and currently chairs the organization’s National Criminal Justice Committee.

Bledsoe earned a Doctorate of Jurisprudence from the University of Texas School of Law, where he was class president in 1976. Gary Bledsoe has received “lawyer of the year” awards from the Texas Attorney General, the Travis County Bar Association, the Austin and national NAACP, and the Austin Area Urban League.

Rag Radio is hosted and produced by Rag Blog editor and long-time alternative journalist Thorne Dreyer, a pioneer of the Sixties underground press movement.

The show has aired since September 2009 on KOOP 91.7-FM, an all-volunteer cooperatively-run community radio station in Austin, Texas. Rag Radio is broadcast live every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CDT) on KOOP and is rebroadcast on Sundays at 10 a.m. (EDT) on WFTE, 90.3-FM in Mt. Cobb, PA, and 105.7-FM in Scranton, PA.

The show is streamed live on the web by both stations and, after broadcast, all Rag Radio shows are posted as podcasts at the Internet Archive.

Rag Radio is produced in association with The Rag Blog, a progressive Internet newsmagazine, and the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation. Tracey Schulz is the show’s engineer and co-producer.

Rag Radio can be contacted at ragradio@koop.org.

Coming up on Rag Radio:
THIS FRIDAY, August 2, 2013: Linda Litowsky and Stefan Wray of ChannelAustin on the historic significance of public access television.
Friday, August 9, 2013: We continue our discussion with sociologist, author, and New Left pioneer Todd Gitlin.

The Rag Blog

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

BOOKS / Ron Jacobs : Crary’s ’24/7′: Wake Up Little Susie!

Posted on July 30, 2013 by Thorne Dreyer

Wake up little Susie:
We’re in trouble deep

Crary’s book provides a historical survey of capitalism’s growing encroachment on individual human life.

By Ron Jacobs | The Rag Blog | July 30, 2013

[24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep by Jonathan Crary (2013: Verso); 144 pp; $16.95.]

Most of us are familiar with the fact that the global financial markets run 24 hours a day and seven days a week with just a few exceptions. This is due in part to the incredible improvements in technology which have enabled trading to occur at rocket speed and across national borders. Also important in this scenario is the loosening of laws restricting financial trading to domestic markets.

The combination of these phenomena has helped create a world where the machinations of capital never stop, with the consequence that the insecurity natural to capitalism is enhanced exponentially. Economies are more fragile, jobs more temporary, and working people’s lives even less meaningful.

The only members of the capitalist economy and society that benefits in both the short and long term are those at the top: the executives at financial houses, corporations, and media outlets and those entities’ owners.

A new book simply titled 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep, addresses this latest modification of the capitalist world. The author, Jonathan Crary, begins his essay with a description of some ongoing attempts by scientists and military services to create a medication that eliminates the need for sleep from the human body.

Unlike amphetamine-type drugs, which wear one’s body out by keeping it going beyond its natural ability, these drugs would just eliminate the need for the body to rest. Not only would this create an ideal soldier (hence the military’s participation in the research) it would also create the ideal worker, whether that worker is a well-paid trader at the NYSE or an assembler on a factory floor in China.

Crary moves past his anecdote to examine the relationship between regulated time and capitalism. He explains how once time was mechanized capitalism was also bound to come along. Or was it the other way around?

Chicken and egg questions aside, it can be safely stated that capitalism has certainly decided how we spend our time since it began to dominate our lives and how we perceive them. Given this fact, Crary continues his discussion of sleep, stating that it may be the only bodily function that modern capital cannot colonize. Indeed, it may be the only aspect left in modern society’s daily routine that can truly be considered part of what philosopher Hannah Arendt called the private sphere.

Arendt is but one of the twentieth century philosophers Crary refers to in this intelligent and intriguing discussion of how modern monopoly capitalism insinuates itself into the most intimate aspects of our lives. Another is the Frankfurt School essayist and New Left thinker Herbert Marcuse, who wrote extensively on the nature of freedom in modern society and was among the first to conclude that the modern capitalist economy had taken away our freedom and replaced it with a freedom of choice between different consumer goods that were in reality essentially the same product.

 Besides philosophers, Crary introduces the reader to filmmakers and artists and his particular perception of their works in relation to the ever-increasing commodification of our time and the subsequent loss of independence the modern citizen has experienced. He also examines the increasing use of medicinal sleeping aids and their relation to the 24/7 capitalist express.

Tangentially, he discusses the current pharmaceutical determination to designate every human psychology that differs from what is good for that express as outside the norm and therefore requiring some kind of pharmaceutical solution.

24/7 is a masterful exploration of the place of human individuals and their dreams, and the future of the species in today’s age of nonstop neoliberal capitalism and its multitude of manifestations. The text provides a historical survey of capitalism’s growing encroachment on individual human life and the reasons this occurs, yet emphasizes the current scenario where that encroachment has increased in a manner previously impossible, but now matter of course thanks to today’s technological advances.

While a philosophical treatise, it rarely wanders into a verbal density that would render it unreadable. In other words, it definitely will not put the reader to sleep.

[Rag Blog contributor Ron Jacobs is the author of The Way The Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground. He recently released a collection of essays and musings titled Tripping Through the American Night. His novels, The Co-Conspirator’s Tale, and Short Order Frame Up will be republished by Fomite in April 2013 along with the third novel in the series All the Sinners Saints. Ron Jacobs can be reached at ronj1955@gmail.com. Find more articles by Ron Jacobs on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Alan Waldman: ‘Not Going Out’ is an Extremely Funny British TV Sitcom

Posted on July 30, 2013 by Thorne Dreyer

Waldman’s film and TV
treasures you may have missed:

Brilliant Lee Mack writes and stars in this truly wacky, unpredictable series.

By Alan Waldman | The Rag Blog | July 30, 2013

[In his weekly column, Alan Waldman reviews some of his favorite films and TV series that readers may have missed, including TV dramas, mysteries, and comedies from Canada, England, Ireland, and Scotland. Most are available on DVD and/or Netflix, and some episodes are on YouTube.]

Not Going Out, starring and written or co-written by standup comic Lee Mack, is a side-splitting Britcom series which has aired 44 episodes since 2006. A seventh season and two Christmas specials are coming, and Mack is talking about a film version and a live show.

It won “Best Sitcom” at the 2007 Swiss Rose d’Or Light Entertainment Festival, a 2007 Royal Television Society Award for Mack, and 2007 British Comedy Award nominations for “Best New Comedy” and “Best TV Comedy Actor” (Mack). More than 91.5% of viewers who rated it at imdb.com gave it “thumbs up,” and 28.9% gave it 10 out of 10.

The highest-rated episode (at imdb.com) is this very funny one. The series has been sold to 120 countries.

Lee plays a thirtysomething slacker who lives in a flat in London’s Docklands neighborhood and spends most of his time on his couch or hanging out in the local pub with his best friend Tim (Tim Vine). What gets him off his couch are his attempts to impress his attractive female roommate/landlady (Megan Dodds in Season 1 and Sally Bretton thereafter). Two hilariously dim characters are his cleaning lady (Miranda Hart, who now stars in the spinoff series Miranda) and Tim’s girlfriend Daisy (Katy Wix).

A lot of Not Going Out’s humor is based on word play and double entendres, delivered in a deadpan manner, which is the comedy style Mack and Vine have both used in stand-up acts.

Season 1 is on Netflix now, Season 2 is coming, and all episodes are on YouTube. I enthusiastically urge you to sample the episode linked to above. My wife and I saw it last week — and howled with mirth.

[Oregon writer and Houston native Alan Waldman holds a B.A. in theater arts from Brandeis University and has worked as an editor at The Hollywood Reporter and Honolulu magazine. Read more of Alan Waldman’s articles on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Tom Hayden : Secrecy Protests Split American Elites

Posted on July 30, 2013 by Thorne Dreyer
Image from ElectronicFrontierFoundation / Flickr.

Protests against secrecy
drive elites into debate

A virtual empire composed of distant and interconnected private and public elites contradicts representative democracy as virtually all Americans understand it.

By Tom Hayden | The Rag Blog | July 29, 2013

Concerned citizens need to crack open the covers of C. Wright Mills’ The Power Elite [1956] as the curtains are being ripped back from the new Surveillance State by whistleblowers, investigative reporters, and civil liberties lawyers.

Mills’ classic book needs revision in light of the expanded use of technology but his survey of power is unrivaled to this day.

According to Mills’ detailed research, the power elite was composed of the military and corporate hierarchies in combination with the executive branch of the state. Congress, he concluded, was relegated to the “middle levels” of power, except for the cooptation of the top leadership of both parties when needed to ratify executive decisions.

We saw this revealed in the extraordinary approval of the Wall Street bailout in 2008. We have seen the role of the elite on the Libya war, the cyber-attacks on Iran, the Long War’s counterterrorism policy, and the implementation of the 2001 Authorization of the Use of Military Force [AUMF].

It has been revealed that a secret and virtually parallel constitution has been written by the FISA Court in order to “legalize” this expanding power of the elite to obtain Big Data on the lives of ordinary citizens. The result, according to the New York Times’ Eric Lichtblau is “almost a parallel supreme court.” [NYT, July 6].

It is further revealed that the secret surveillance court known as FISA has been shaped by right-wing U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts. The FISA appointees therefore are “more likely to defer to government arguments that domestic spying programs are necessary.” [Charles Savage, NYT, July 26]

In terms of the global economy, the secret negotiations of pro-corporate “trade” agreements with Europe and the Pacific Rim would complete the design of “the new world order” established largely beyond the reach of local, state, and congressional officials, not to mention unions and human rights groups [except for official “democracy promotion” programs aimed at Cuba, Venezuela, etc.].

A virtual empire composed of distant and interconnected private and public elites contradicts representative democracy as virtually all Americans understand it. Participatory democracy, as envisioned by John Dewey, Mills and the 1962 Port Huron Statement of SDS is contained, suppressed or, as during the 60s movements and today’s Occupy struggle, appears occasionally as an oppositional uprising on the streets, the Internet, or the defiant actions of whistleblowers.

Thankfully, participatory democracy, even while sidelined, prevents total control by the power elite and at times causes contagious chain reactions. The state is the Titanic, public opposition the iceberg.

Opposition has been rising from the margins. Only 28 percent of Americans think Afghanistan is a war worth fighting, a percentage that likely will continue to drop, in nothing less than a public withdrawal from the official agenda. Nor is there popular support for U.S. intervention in Egypt or going to war with Iran. Popular opposition to the drone war is on the rise too.

The more the public learns about Big Brother obtaining Big Data, the more the public is troubled. What Mills called civil society, and which he hoped would become a live “democracy of publics,” continues to boil up like a populist geyser.

But this opposition can only rise and flame out, unless the big institutions — the Congress, courts, mainstream journalism — are moved and divided in response to the simmerings. One of Mills’ blind spots, since he wrote in the mid-50s, was the role that a “new Left” might play in challenging those institutions, since the Left in the 50s had been crushed by McCarthyism at home and Khrushev’s revelations about the Soviet Union’s internal repression.

At the first stirrings of protest by what Mills called “the young intelligencia” — the Cuban revolution, the Aldermaston anti-nuclear marches, the black student sit-in movement — Mills dashed off an enthusiastic “Letter to the New Left”… Then he died of a heart attack in 1962, one month before the Port Huron conference.

What we discovered in the Sixties, and what remains true today, is that effective grassroots protest can influence the institutions of power where those institutions depend on public support or consent. Differences between the “inside” and “outside” tend to blur when the outsiders become strong enough and enough insiders accept the need for reform.

This is what accounts for the remarkable 205-217 protest vote in the Republican-controlled House this week against the National Security Agency’s secret collection of private phone call data. The battle was between the bipartisan Congressional establishment, backing the Obama/NSA program, and dissident House members from the libertarian Right and the civil liberties Liberals. The same fight may continue on the Senate floor if Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden teams up with Tea Party Sen. Rand Paul.

In part the drama was simply staged. Republican leader John Boehner surely could have rounded up the few votes needed to spike the NSA program. An identical scenario played out during the House debate on the Libyan war in 2011, when a near-majority voted to impose the War Powers Act against the will of the national security elite.

In both cases, the House establishment led by Boehner had no choice but to let their dissident members vent, in response to their district’s public opinion, before blowing the whistle and herding most of them them back to business as usual.

While the drama last week illustrated Mills’ thesis that the Congress has declined to a “middle level” of power, it also was a sign of how suspicion and critical public opinion can make it difficult for the power elite to secure its position.

When a constitutional crisis in the Sixties divided the executive and legislative branches, conservative intellectuals like Harvard’s Samuel Huntington were condemning the “excess of democracy.” Not long after, Lewis Powell wrote his famous memo outlining a secret strategy to reestablish corporate power over the state in the face of popular movement.

Here is a brief list of what had happened as a result of those “democratic excesses” (read: social movements taking matters into our own hands):

  • The U.S. was defeated embarrassingly in the Indochina wars;
  • Richard Nixon was driven from office for unconstitutional schemes to shut down whistleblowers [Ellsberg-Russo], jail anti-war and anti-racism “conspirators” (Chicago Eight, Harrisburg and Gainesville anti-war trials, Black Panther trials in New York and New Haven, etc.).
  • Most important for today’s crisis, the Congress passed the War Powers Resolution to rein in the imperial presidency, and held extensive hearings on domestic spying and counterintelligence operations by the CIA and FBI.

As a result of those protests and hearings led by Sen. Frank Church, in which the NSA’s spying on 75,000 Americans was revealed, the present Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act [FISA] was written and the Congressional intelligence committees were created. As “reforms.”

After a significant run of some 40 years, in which vast conservative countermovements arose to block the progress of the Sixties (leading to the Reagan, Nixon, and Bush-Cheney eras), those 1975 reforms have run their course and need to be sent back to Congress for repairs.

Already the Congressional leadership is scheming quietly to placate the current opposition with reformist tinkering. Superficial reform, however, is unlikely to placate an opposition which now stretches from Congress to The New York Times and FOX News to the passionate supporters of Pfc. Bradley Manning.

While most of the public holds a Washington-centric picture of the unfolding conflict, it is important to realize that the underlying cause of the rift has been the skeptical resistance of many Americans, whether expressed in public opinion surveys or persistent grassroots protest.

If one looks at the electoral map, the chief Congressional opponents of the new surveillance state are from either progressive constituencies (Senators Wyden and Merkley from Oregon, Udall from Colorado, Conyers from Michigan, Nadler from Brooklyn, Sanders and Welch from Vermont, or from libertarian Tea Party enclaves where the John Birch Society once considered Dwight Eisenhower a communist and today believe that Obama is far worse).

Mills was prescient on one further point: that the power elite would attempt to globalize. Even at the height of the Cold War, Mills predicted a bureaucratic “convergence” between the two superpowers resulting in a bipolar dominance over other nations or blocs. The policy result of this convergence would become known as “detente,” and was opposedby the Non-Aligned bloc of the Third World.

Detente eventually collapsed under pressure from those on the Right who demanded “rollback.” But the “convergence” agenda may be reappearing between Obama’s America and Putin’s Russia, as illustrated in the quandary over the status of Edward Snowden.

Obama is threatening to derail the planned September summit with the Russians if Snowden is given protection in Moscow. Putin, angered by the U.S. role in Syria and Iran, is moving towards rapprochement with China but is clearly uncomfortable with giving protection to Snowden if it means a crisis with the US.

By contrast, at least three countries in the Third World — Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia — are offering refuge to Snowden despite threats from the State Department, and Ecuador already is protecting Julian Assange in its London consulate.

Since Obama is unlikely to back down, the question is whether Putin will embrace Snowden instead of additional “convergence” with the U.S. To Putin’s left are Russians who want him to stand up for Russian sovereignty. And to Obama’s right, of course, the entire Republican Party opposes “convergence”with Moscow and is hoping to undermine Obama’s proposed nuclear arms agreement.

It’s complicated. But the best map of power relations remains the one charted by Mills in 1956. The power elite can be divided in its quest for a new world order. Social and revolutionary movements contribute to causing those divisions. Unity between the outside movements and the more moderate elements of the elite can lead to significant shifts of power and policy, at least for a time.

One presidential election or one Supreme Court appointment can make a critical difference. So can contradictory populist movements of the Right and Left, when and if they unite. The revolts initiated by either anarchists and libertarians, or both, lead to crisis and reform, sometimes to the disappointment of the original catalysts. We are in such a time.

[Tom Hayden is a former California state senator and leader of Sixties peace, justice, and environmental movements. He currently teaches at Pitzer College in Los Angeles. His latest book is The Long Sixties. Hayden is director of the Peace and Justice Resource center and editor of The Peace Exchange Bulletin. Read more of Tom Hayden’s writing on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

HISTORY / Bob Feldman : A People’s History of Egypt, Part 4, 1849-1879

Posted on July 30, 2013 by Thorne Dreyer
Building the Suez Canal. Image from Modern School.

A people’s history:
The movement to democratize Egypt

Part 4: 1849-1879 period — From free trade and the Suez Canal to bankruptcy and austerity

By Bob Feldman | The Rag Blog | July 29, 2013

[With all the dramatic activity in Egypt, Bob Feldman’s Rag Blog “people’s history” series, “The Movement to Democratize Egypt,” could not be more timely. Also see Feldman’s series on The Rag Blog.]

In 1841 the sultan of Turkey’s Ottoman Empire had “bestowed the hereditary rule of Egypt on Muhammad Ali and his family,” according to Jason Thompson’s History of Egypt. A grandson of Muhammad Ali, Pasha Abbas Hilmy I, succeeded Muhammad Ali as Egypt’s ruler between 1848 and July 1854 — at which time Abbas Hilmy I was murdered by two of his slaves.

But during his six years as pasha, Abbas Hilmy I “closed the country’s factories and secular schools and opened Egypt to free trade, thus retarding industrialization” of the Egyptian economy, according to The Rough Guide to Egypt.

Following the murder of Abbas Hilmy I, a son of Muhammad Ali — Pasha Muhammad Said — ruled Egypt between 1854 and 1863. After coming to power, Muhammad Said gave a concession to build the Suez Canal that connects the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea to a childhood friend: a French consul and engineer named Ferdinand de Lesseps.

In exchange for granting the concession to Lesseps and agreeing to provide the Egyptian workers whose labor was required to dig the Suez Canal, Muhammad Said was awarded “personal ownership of 15 percent of the shares of the Suez Canal Company, with another 15 percent going to Egypt” and “through purchase of additional shares, Said’s stake in the company eventually rose to 44 percent,” according to A History of Egypt.

But many of the Egyptian peasants who were conscripted to dig the Suez Canal between 1859 and its completion in 1869 lost their lives while the canal was being built. As the same book recalled:

Some 20,000 peasants were conscripted every month, herded to the canal zone, and put to work. That meant that every month, 20,000 conscript laborers were on their way to the canal zone, 20,000 were actually at work there, and another 20,000 were returning to their homes, so that during the course of a year, more than 500,000 laborers were involved with the canal in one way or another, and this process continued for 10 years.

Working conditions were often horrific; sometimes men had to dig with their bare hands, paid only a pitiful allowance, with barely enough food to sustain them. Dredging machines (paid for by Egypt) were not used extensively until the final phase of work on the canal.

Estimates of how many Egyptian workers died during construction of the Suez Canal vary. According to A History of Egypt:

The number of lives lost from neglect, overwork, malnutrition, or accident has been estimated at the same number as the basic quota of workers: 20,000. Such a large continuing drain on Egyptian manpower at a time when the total population of the country was perhaps 5 million created general economic difficulties… Antislavery societies…strongly objected to what could be considered slave labor…

But according to The Palestine Book Project’s 1977 book, Our Roots Are Still Alive: The Story of the Palestinian People, “over 125,000 Egyptians…died building the canal for the British Empire,” including those Egyptian workers who died of cholera during the 10 years of construction.

After Muhammad Said’s death in 1863, another son of Muhammad Ali named Ismail — whose status was changed from “pasha” to “khedive” by the Turkish sultan in 1866 after Ismail agreed to pay more money in tribute to the Istanbul government — became Egypt’s ruler until 1879.

By 1865, “the value of Egyptian cotton exports had risen to a level more than ten times higher” than in 1860, after Europe’s supply of cotton from the South was cut off by the U.S. Civil war, according to A History of Egypt.

But when the value of Egyptian cotton exports decreased by 50 percent in the late 1860s, Khedive Ismail’s government borrowed heavily from mostly UK and French banks and investors to finance Khedive Ismail’s lavish palace lifestyle, his road, bridge, and railroad construction projects, the expansion of his Egyptian army from 25,000 to 120,000 troops, and his attempts to establish more Egyptian control over parts of Sudanese territory to the south of Egypt.

As a result, as the same book observed:

By the mid-1870s, Ismail was desperate. One-third of Egypt’s revenue was going to service the debt. In 1875 he sold his shares in the Suez Canal Company to Britain…..but that exhausted his assets, and his credit had reached its limit. The following year, Egypt stopped making payments on its loans. The country was bankrupt…Ismail had to agree to the formation of a European commission to manage the debt…. Two Controllers, one British and one French, oversaw collection of revenues to make debt payments… They instituted an austerity program of cuts and expenditures that caused widespread hardships…

[Egyptian] Army officers whose pay had been severely cut rioted, probably at the instigation of Ismail… He dismissed the Dual Control… But these initiatives merely convinced France and Britain that Ismail had to go… On June 25, 1879…two telegrams arrived from Istanbul… Ismail learned that he had been deposed and replaced by his 27-year-old son. It had been a fairly simple matter for Britain and France to pressure the sultan to act in the interests of those countries’ bondholders…

[Bob Feldman is an East Coast-based writer-activist and a former member of the Columbia SDS Steering Committee of the late 1960s. Read more articles by Bob Feldman on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Posted on July 29, 2013 by Thorne Dreyer

Type your summary here

Type rest of the post here

Source /

The Rag Blog

Posted in RagBlog | Leave a comment

Lamar W. Hankins : Callous Republicans Emulate Scrooge Regarding Helping the Needy

Posted on July 26, 2013 by Thorne Dreyer
Art from Sodahead.

Republicans want a country
Scrooge would have loved

Republicans are unwilling to accept that our founders viewed the collective efforts of the people, through the government, to include providing for “the general welfare.”

By Lamar W. Hankins | The Rag Blog | July 26, 2013

It seems self-evident. A person who does not have enough to eat will experience hunger. Since the Great Depression, the U.S. government has provided food assistance to people who were hungry. Although responding to hunger was not the reason the direct assistance began, the ethical underpinnings soon developed, and for three-quarters of a century Americans have recognized the societal obligation to help those who need food.

Now, however, Republicans in Congress deny a moral obligation to help those in need. Their callousness is historic: On July 11, Republicans in the House deleted the nation’s general food assistance program from the existing law that is usually called the Farm Bill.

While it is true that charitable organizations and churches have provided, and continue to provide, some food relief for those in need, their efforts fall far short of satisfying that need. Without the general food assistance program, lately known as SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), some 50 million Americans would be what is now called food insecure; that is, they would be hungry some of the time because they do not have adequate meals three times a day.

The history of public food assistance in the U.S. makes clear how we got to this place. Public food assistance began in the 1930s as crop support for farmers. Farm commodity prices were depressed because many people could not buy food during the Great Depression. Efforts by farmers to grow more crops to make up for the low prices pushed the prices still lower, leading to surpluses, much of which were wasted. The Congressional response to these surpluses was to make loans to farmers to allow them to store their surplus non-perishable crops until prices were better.

When farmers began defaulting on the loans, Congress allowed them to give their crops to the government, which sold them in international commerce and also made them available for distribution to those in need of food in a way that did not disrupt domestic commerce. In 1935, the first commodity distributions were authorized. The motivation for these distributions came mostly from concern about widespread malnutrition among children.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) made surplus commodities available for school lunch programs, nonprofit summer camps for children, charitable institutions, and families in need of food assistance. Later, child care centers were given commodities, the Bureau of Indian Affairs distributed food to Native Americans who were in need, and private welfare organizations provided the same assistance to the needy both within and outside the United States.

In the 1950s, all schoolchildren, without regard to their need, could buy reduced-price milk. I remember paying 4 cents for a half-pint at the school cafeteria. Those in need could get the milk at no cost.

In the 1960s, the nation began to focus more on the need, especially among children, for food assistance and less on the distribution of foodstuffs bought through the price support programs of the USDA. School breakfast programs, summer feeding programs, adult food programs, and programs to meet the food needs of the elderly were developed, mostly administered through the states. New programs aimed at helping meet the nutrition needs of pregnant women and those with infants were developed.

In more recent decades, food assistance has been directed through food banks and general feeding programs that were once known as soup kitchens. Assistance to families in the form of food stamps that could be used like money at stores to purchase groceries have been supplanted by credit cards for the same purpose.

 While concern for the nutrition of all of our citizens has become a prime factor in the increase of nutrition assistance programs, many food assistance programs continue to be related to the government’s price supports for farmers and the surplus food that farmers produce.

Since the late 1700s, soup kitchens have been generally well regarded by most people, who see them as a vital need in a civilized society, but there have always been critics who think they encourage dependency and attract undesirable people to the part of town where the services are provided.

Those criticisms continue to be heard and are part of the mean-spiritedness of today’s Republicans who feel no moral obligation to help those whose economic fortunes wax and wane with the capitalist economy. But these same Republicans now talk about waste, fraud, and abuse in these food assistance programs without much evidence to support their position.

The expanded food assistance programs of the 1960s and 1970s were severely curtailed in the early 1980s after Ronald Reagan became president. A 2002 government survey found that 90% of the then-existing food banks, 80% of the food kitchens, and all “known food rescue organizations” were created after 1981. Even Reagan’s mild Republicanism had a devastating effect on our collective responsibility to help those who were hungry.

While the private charitable efforts of the nation have taken up some of the slack created by Reagan’s cutbacks in food assistance, they have not been enough to meet the needs of people during economic downturns.

Currently, the government allocates about $105 billion for food assistance. Indiana University’s Center for Philanthropy reported that in 2005, total charitable giving in the U.S. was about $252 billion. Of that amount, less than $60 billion went to programs that included some food assistance. These figures suggest that private sector giving cannot possibly make up for the loss of federal government expenditures for food assistance.

Republicans seem to have distorted views about the amount of food assistance that is actually provided to those who need it. The SNAP program currently provides about $4.45 per day per person — less than what most people spend on a hamburger and soft drink. As for fraud, it amounts to no more than 1% of the total, far less than Republicans would have us believe. And the fraud is not committed only by recipients. Some of that 1% in fraud is committed by food retailers who lie on their applications to be approved to participate in the program.

Most Americans support the federal government’s food assistance efforts, but the House Republicans do not reflect this broad national compassion toward people who have inadequate food resources. They are unwilling to accept that our founders viewed the collective efforts of the people, through the government, to include providing for “the general welfare.”

This point was so important to the founders’ understanding of the social contract they were creating that they provided for efforts to promote the general welfare in both the Preamble to the Constitution and in Section 8, which created the power to tax, provide for the common defense, and provide for the general welfare.

Virtually all of the Republicans voting against food assistance on July 11 support the right to life of the unborn. It is apparent that their concern for life does not extend beyond nine months of gestation.

Today’s Republicans can be fairly described much like the main character in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol before he has an epiphany. Ebenezer Scrooge has only disgust for the poor, that group that he believes the world would be better off without, thus, “decreasing the surplus population.” Scrooge thinks the poor are most adequately cared for by being in prisons and workhouses, which were dismal institutions of indentured servitude and impoverishment for the destitute during his time.

Unlike Republicans, 69 percent of Americans believe the federal government should have a major role in providing food to low-income families, according to a 2012 poll by Hart Research Associates, which measures attitudes toward the poor.

But as a result of gerrymandering of congressional districts, most Americans are not fairly represented by people who share their values. In the last election, more voters chose Democrat candidates, but the House has about a 55 percent majority of Republicans. Gerrymandering is one way that the minority diminishes the voice of the majority.

Anyone who still believes that the SNAP program is too generous should live for a week spending less than $1.50 per meal. That might make a prison or workhouse look pretty good. To learn more about hunger in America, food insecurity, and the way our economy exacerbates these problems, see the new documentary A Place At the Table and view the Frontline program “Two American Families.”

Knowledge about our country and its economic system is essential to being a good citizen.

[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos, Texas, city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins. Read more articles by Lamar W. Hankins on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Posted on July 26, 2013 by Thorne Dreyer

Detroit

By Norman Pagett / The Rag Blog / July 26, 2013

While numerous explanations and opinions are being bandied around concerning the demise of Detroit, few are prepared to accept the brutal truth that it represents the reality that faces the rest of us. Detroit is not a local difficulty that can be remedied with local measures. Detroit represents the future of the industrialized world.

To define the reasons for Detroit’s collapse, we must come to terms with what built it.

Detroit is, or was, built on the need for universal transportation and the endless consumption of “stuff.”

That’s the “why.” We must not confuse “why” with “how.”

The “how” was oil.

Ford and others created vast assembly plants; the faster cars were built, the more the city prospered. Growth was supposed to go on forever. An endless stream of shiny things seemed to represent endless prosperity.

The business of buying and selling cars gave everyone the means to buy and sell everything else and suddenly everyone was convinced that passing money hand to hand made us all rich. Cities represented the illusion of wealth. They still do.

Detroit was a city that seemed to deliver endless prosperity to all who were drawn into its shiny metropolis. Sure, some made more than others — a lot more — but most did well by making things.

The whole illusion of Detroit and the rest of the global industrial economy was created and sustained by a century’s worth of cheap and seemingly limitless oil. What has happened to that once great city is just a foretaste of what is to come, the city-structure is no different to a car, washing machine or aircraft. It represents a block of embodied energy that can only function if it is driven forward. If its energy input stops, then just like any other manufactured object, it will cease to be.

The disintegrating structure of Detroit is our lesson that the second law of thermodynamics cannot be altered by political dogma or the wishful thinking of economists.

For 200 years we have been finding and using ever greater energy sources, able to use a surplus as collateral for next year’s debts. We gave that energy a monetary value; the more we found and burned, the more “wealth” we had. Our prosperity was linked to burning it faster, so we devised means of doing just that.

Producing ‘stuff’ in an endless stream became the focus of our prosperity, and we came to believe that we could ignore the unpleasant excesses of heat, light, hunger, cold, and gravity forever. Cheap oil gave us 99% of our food and fooled us into overbreeding; now we have a billion starving while we frantically try to convert their food into more cheap oil.

We were told it was a money-economy, while the truth of it was an energy-economy. Without energy, money is worth nothing. If you can’t quite grasp that, take a look at the magnificent Detroit houses now collapsing:as their energy input has stopped. Any “value” they once had has vanished.

But aren’t we always finding new sources of oil? Detroit may have run out of gas, but the rest of the world hasn’t. True enough, but at our present rate of consumption a billion barrels of oil is enough to drive the engine of our world for just 12 days. At its present rate of expansion in 15 years China will need to consume all the world’s oil output or it follows Detroit into oblivion.

As a final twist of the knife into humanity, 15 years from now Saudi Arabia will need to start importing oil to survive.

Happy motoring everyone.

This article was published at The End of More and was cross-posted to The Rag Blog.

[Norman Pagett is a UK-based professional technical writer and communicator, working in the engineering, building, transport, environmental, health, and food industries. With Josephine Smit, he edits and writes The End of More.]


Type rest of the post here

Source /

The Rag Blog

Posted in RagBlog | Leave a comment