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Lamar W. Hankins : Callous Republicans Emulate Scrooge Regarding Helping the Needy
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| 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.]
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Tagged Ebenezer Scrooge, Farm Bill, General Welfare, Great Depression, Lamar W. Hankins, Public Food Assistance, SNAP
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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.]
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Norman Pagett : Cheap Food, Our Grand Illusion
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| It takes oil, and lots of it, to move our food. Image from Center for a Liveable Future. |
Cheap food, our grand illusion
We built an industrial civilization on cheap oil, but now we’ve burned it all. We only have the expensive stuff left but we continue to burn that, believing our system of cheap living can go on forever.
By Norman Pagett | The Rag Blog | July 26, 2013
We are faced with a barrage of bad news about the imminent, and inevitable, rises in the cost of basic foodstuffs. Professor Tim Benton, head of Global Food Security working group, has warned that “meat could become a luxury by 2040, because emerging middle classes in South Asia and going to affect food flows”.
In everyday language, “food flow” is the nice way of saying those who can afford meat and luxury foods will buy them, while those who can’t will go without.
As Professor Benton makes brutally clear, “food is going to be competed for on a global scale and there is going to be a doubling and trebling in price of everything we need to survive.”
Tesco boss Philip Clarke backed up his statements: “The end of cheap food is over because of the surge in demand. Over the long run I think food prices and the proportion of income spent on food will be going up”.
Remember that bit — the proportion of income. It’s going to be critical to your way of life.
Two years ago Oxfam issued the same clear warning: Food prices are set to double by 2030 as the population grows from its current 7 billion to eight then 9 billion. There will be a perfect storm of ecological and sociological factors.
Again, we need clarification of polite-speak: what that really means is that people will not starve to death quietly, they will fight to survive. And that is going to get nasty.
Right now, we can feed ourselves (as an average) by spending only about 10% of our income. Until the 1950s that proportion was nearer 50%
That represents our current unreality of cheap food. We have become used to spending the other 90% on housing, heat, light, clothes, and luxuries. Not only that, but our entire economic system exists on the assumption that we will be able to go on spending it, forever.
We have created an illusion of “employment.”
Stop and consider that: we are all spending (spare) money to keep ourselves employed. As we come to spend more on food, there will be less to spend on other “stuff.”
More clarification here: we will have to use what money we have to buy the food energy necessary to stay alive. Because our economy depends on constant spending, that shortfall is going to increase unemployment. This will be a major consequence of food price rises that must never be mentioned.
Our cheap food has been a direct product of cheap energy. At every point in our food chain we feed oil into the system: diesel in tractors, nitrate fertilizers (natural gas) on the fields to increase yields, processing and packaging, transport, the fuel in your car to go and collect it. We burn 10 calories of energy for every food calorie put on your plate.
That is why cheap food is unsustainable and why promises of “growth” by governments and economists are nonsense. The gentle warnings offered by Oxfam don’t even touch on the reality of our future because doubling and trebling of food prices won’t be matched by doubling and trebling of income.
Our book, The End of More, shows how cheap oil gave money its illusion of value. That value holds only so long as we keep finding more {cheap} oil to top up our economic system.
We built an industrial civilization on cheap oil, but now we’ve burned it all. We only have the expensive stuff left but we continue to burn that, believing our system of cheap living can go on forever.
The forecasts of those at the sharp end of food delivery may yet turn out to be optimistic.
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. He blogs at The End of More. Find more articles by Norman Pagett on The Rag Blog.]
Posted in Rag Bloggers
Tagged End of More, Food Production, Fossil Fuels, Norman Pagett, Peak Oil, Scarcity, Sustainable Food
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Gary Bledsoe is president of the Texas NAACP, a position he has held since 1991. An Austin attorney who specializes in public interest law, employment and civil rights law, has been a member of the National Board of the NAACP since 2003, and is 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. 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 Jay D. Jurie, Ph.D., is a resident of Sanford, Florida, where he 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,” which has been will appear in a special edition of ProudFlesh: New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics and Consciousness.
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Harvey Wasserman : Fukushima Continues to Spew its Darkness
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| House in Fukushima. Image from ABC News. |
Still on the brink:
Fukushima continues to spew its darkness
A pool containing many tons of highly radioactive used fuel is suspended 100 feet in the air… Should an earthquake or other trauma knock the pool to the ground, there’s a high likelihood the fuel rods could catch fire.
By Harvey Wasserman | The Rag Blog | July 25, 2013
Radiation leaks, steam releases, disease and death continue to spew from Fukushima and a disaster which is far from over. Its most profound threat to the global ecology — a spent fuel fire — is still very much with us.
The latest steam leak has raised fears around the planet. A worst-case scenario of an on-going out-of-control fission reaction was dismissed by the owners, Tokyo Electric, because they didn’t find xenon in the plume. The company says the steam likely came from rain water being vaporized by residual heat in one of the plant’s stricken reactors.
But independent experts tend to disbelieve anything Tepco says, for good reason. Reactor Units One, Two and Three have exploded at Fukushima despite decades of official assurances that commercial atomic power plants could not explode at all. The company has been unable to clear out enough radioactive debris to allow it to put a cover over the site that might contain further airborne emissions.
Tepco has also been forced to admit that it has been leaking radioactive water into the ocean ever since the disaster began on March 11, 2011. In one instance it admitted to a 90-fold increase of Cesium in a nearby test well over a period of just three days.
Earlier this year a rat ate through electrical cables, shorting out a critical cooling system. When Tepco workers were dispatched to install metal guards to protect the cabling, they managed to short out the system yet again.
Early this month Fukushima’s former chief operator, Masao Yoshida, died of esophogeal cancer at the age of 58. Masao became a hero during the worst of the disaster by standing firm at his on-site command post as multiple explosions rocked the reactor complex. Tepco claimed his ensuing cancer and death were “unlikely” to have been caused by Fukushima’s radiation.
The impact of work in and near the reactors has become a rising concern. Critics have warned that there are not enough skilled technicians willing to sacrifice themselves at the plant. Tepco has worsened the situation by applying to open a number of its shut reactors elsewhere in Japan, straining its already depleted skilled workforce even further.
Meanwhile, a staggering 40 percent rise in thyroid irregularities among young children in the area has caused a deepening concern about widespread health impacts from Fukushima’s fallout within the general public. Because these numbers have come in just two years after the disaster, the percentage of affected children is expected to continue to rise.
And the worst fear of all remains unabated. At Unit Four, which apparently did not actually explode, the building’s structural integrity has been seriously undermined. Debate continues to rage over exactly how this happened.
But there’s no doubt that a pool containing many tons of highly radioactive used fuel is suspended 100 feet in the air, with little left to support the structure. Should an earthquake or other trauma knock the pool to the ground, there’s a high likelihood the fuel rods could catch fire.
In such an event, the radioactive emissions could be catastrophic. Intensely lethal emissions could spew for a very long time, eventually circling the globe many times, wrecking untold havoc.
The Japanese have removed two apparently unused rods from the fuel pool so far. But intense international pressure to clear out the rest of them has thus far been unsuccessful.
So while a depleted, discredited, and disorganized nuclear utility moves to restart its other reactors, its stricken units at Fukushima continue to hold the rest of us at the brink of apocalyptic terror.
This article, first published at www.progressivemagazine.com, was cross-posted to The Rag Blog.
[Harvey Wasserman edits www.nukefree.org. His Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth is at www.solartopia.org, along with Harvey Wasserman’s History of the United States. His Solartopia Green Power and Wellness Show is at www.prn.fm. Read more of Harvey Wasserman’s writing on The Rag Blog.]
Posted in Rag Bloggers
Tagged Environment, Fukushima, Harvey Wasserman, Japan, Nuclear Accidents, Nuclear Power
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>> Fukushima Continues to Spew Its Darkness >>>> By Harvey Wasserman >>>>>> Radiation leaks, steam releases, disease and death continue to spew from Fukushima and a disaster which is far from over. Its most profound threat to the global ecology—a spent fuel fire—is still very much with us. >>>> The latest steam leak has raised fears around the planet. A worst-case scenario of an on-going out-of-control fission reaction was dismissed by the owners, Tokyo Electric, because they didn’t find xenon in the plume. The company says the steam likely came from rain water being vaporized by residual heat in one of plant’s stricken reactors. >>>> But independent experts tend to disbelieve anything Tepco says, for good reason. Reactor Units One, Two and Three have exploded at Fukushima despite decades of official assurances that commercial atomic power plants could not explode at all. The company has been unable to clear out enough radioactive debris to allow it to put a cover over the site that might contain further airborne emissions. >>>> Tepco has also been forced to admit that it has been leaking radioactive water into the ocean ever since the disaster began on March 11, 2011. In one instance it admitted to a 90-fold increase of Cesium in a nearby test well over a period of just 3 days. >>>> Earlier this year a rat ate through critical electrical cables, shorting out a critical cooling system. When Tepco workers were dispatched to install metal guards to protect the cabling, they managed to short out the system yet again. >>>> Early this month Fukushima’s former chief operator, Masao Yoshida, died of esophogeal cancer at the age of 58. Masao became a hero during the worst of the disaster by standing firm at his on-site command post as multiple explosions rocked the reactor complex. Tepco claimed his ensuing cancer and death were “unlikely” to have been caused by Fukushima’s radiation. >>>> The impact of work in and near the reactors has become a rising concern. Critics have warned that there are not enough skilled technicians willing to sacrifice themselves at the plant. Tepco has worsened the situation by applying to open a number of its shut reactors elsewhere in Japan, straining its already depleted skilled workforce even further. >>>> Meanwhile, a staggering 40% rise in thyroid irregularities among young children in the area has caused a deepening concern about widespread health impacts from Fukushima’s fallout within the general public. Because these numbers have come in just two years after the disaster, the percentage of affected children is expected to continue to rise. >>>> And the worst fear of all remains unabated. At Unit Four, which apparently did not actually explode, the building’s structural integrity has been seriously undermined. Debate continues to rage over exactly how this happened. >>>> But there’s no doubt that a pool containing many tons of highly radioactive used fuel is suspended 100 feet in the air, with little left to support the structure. Should an earthquake or other trauma knock the pool to the ground, there’s a high likelihood the fuel rods could catch fire. >>>> In such an event, the radioactive emissions could be catastrophic. Intensely lethal emissions could spew for a very long time, eventually circling the globe many times, wrecking untold havoc. >>>> The Japanese have removed two apparently unused rods from the fuel pool so far. But intense international pressure to clear out the rest of them has thus far been unsuccessful. >>>> So while a depleted, discredited and disorganized nuclear utility moves to restart its other reactors, its stricken units at Fukushima continue to hold the rest of us at the brink of apocalyptic terror. >>>>>> Harvey Wasserman edits www.nukefree.org and is author of SOLARTOPIA! Our Green-Powered Earth. His SOLARTOPIA GREEN POWER & WELLNESS SHOW is at www.prn.fm. This article was first published at www.progressivemagazine.com
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RAG RADIO / Thorne Dreyer : Sociologist, Author, and New Left Pioneer and Critic, Todd Gitlin
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| Todd Gitlin. Photo by David Shankbone / Wikimedia Commons. |
Rag Radio podcast:
Sociologist, media critic, author,
and SDS pioneer Todd Gitlin
Our discussion with the renowned scholar and author ranges from the legacy of the Port Huron Statement and Gitlin’s critical take on the later days of the movement, to the role of mass media in shaping social events.
By Rag Radio | The Rag Blog | July 24, 2013
Todd Gitlin, an American writer, sociologist, and media scholar — and a pioneer of the ’60s New Left and underground press movements — was Thorne Dreyer’s guest on Rag Radio, Friday, July 19, 2013, in the first of two interviews.
Our second on-air visit with Gitlin will take place on Friday, August 9. It will be broadcast live from 2-3 p.m. (CDT) on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin, Texas, and streamed live on the Internet.
Rag Radio is a syndicated radio program produced at the studios of KOOP, a cooperatively-run all-volunteer community radio station in Austin, Texas.
Listen to or download this episode of Rag Radio here:
Todd Gitlin, an American writer, sociologist, communications scholar, novelist, poet, and public intellectual — and an early president of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) — is the author of 15 books, including Occupy Nation: The Roots, the Spirit, and the Promise of Occupy Wall Street.
He is a professor of journalism and sociology and chair of the Ph. D. program in Communications at Columbia University. He holds degrees from Harvard University (mathematics), the University of Michigan (political science), and the University of California, Berkeley (sociology). He lectures frequently on culture and politics in the United States and abroad
Gitlin is on the editorial board of Dissent and is a contributing writer to Mother Jones. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, and many more.
His other books, several of which have won major awards, include The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage, The Whole World Is Watching, Media Unlimited: How the Torrent of Images and Sounds Overwhelms Our Lives, and The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America Is Wracked by Culture Wars.
Todd Gitlin was the third president of SDS, in 1963-64, and was coordinator of the SDS Peace Research and Education Project in 1964-65, during which time he helped organize the first national demonstration against the Vietnam War and the first American demonstrations against corporate aid to the apartheid regime in South Africa.
During 1968-69, he was an editor and writer for the San Francisco Express Times, and through 1970 wrote widely for the underground press. In 2003-06, he was a member of the Board of Directors of Greenpeace USA.
On the show we discuss the lasting legacy of SDS and the Port Huron Statement; Gitlin’s critiques of the ’60s movement and the Left involving issues like violence — especially in the case of the Weather Underground and later Black Panther Party — and “identity politics”; the role of the mass media in shaping our understanding of events, including social movements; and some reflections on the Occupy Wall Street movement.
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, July 26, 2013: Sanford, FL-based political science prof Jay D. Jurie and Austin lawyer Gary Bledsoe, President of the Texas NAACP, on the consequences of the Trayvon Martin verdict.
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.
Posted in RagBlog
Tagged Authors, Interview, Mass Media, New Left, Occupy Wall Street, Podcast, Port Huron Statement, Rag Radio, SDS, Sixties, Sociology, Thorne Dreyer, Todd Gitlin, Underground Press
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Kate Braun : Lammas is the Fire Festival
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| Honoring the First Harvest. Image from Asiya. |
Honor the harvest:
Lammas is the Fire Festival
By Kate Braun | The Rag Blog | July 24, 2013
“Lord of the Harvest place your fire in me…”
Lammas, a Fire Festival also called First Harvest, Harvest Home, and Lughnasadh, may be celebrated on Wednesday, July 31, 2013, Thursday, August 1, 2013, or Friday, August 2, 2013. If at all possible, celebrate outdoors and have a fire burning.
You may use candles, or a cauldron, chiminea, barbeque pit, or grill. As long as it’s an open flame it will serve the purpose nicely. If you celebrate indoors, I recommend you include a cauldron in your table decorations and have charcoal tablets handy to ignite when your meal is concluded.
Decorations may include sickles, scythes, corn dollies, sun-wheels, bread, and fresh fruits and veggies. Use small brightly-colored notebooks and pens as placecards on your table. Your choice of colors may include red, gold, orange,yellow, bronze, citrine, gray, and green.
A pot-luck feast is most appropriate for this festival, as sharing food with others is a way to manifest prosperity in all its forms. Encourage your guests to bring whole-grain breads, locally-grown produce, summer squash, berry pies and cobblers, cornbread shaped like little ears of corn, ale, and fruit wine, and all you will need to prepare is roast lamb.
This celebration honors the harvest, honors Lord Sun, honors all grain goddesses such as Demeter and Freya. Begin your meal by asking each guest to break off a bit of bread and present it to his neighbor while saying “May you never go hungry” or “May food be always on your table” or a similar sentiment.
As your meal progresses, encourage your guests to tell or retell myths of grain goddesses, family stories about past harvest celebrations, memories of celebrating harvests. Keep the focus on the bounty of Mother Earth, the enjoyment of eating locally-grown foods, the delight in sharing food and companionship with friends. Make any toasts that seem appropriate, too.
At the conclusion of your feast ask your guests to use their notebooks and pens to write or draw symbols of whatever it is they regret from the previous 12 months. Burn these regrets in the ceremonial fire or on the charcoal tablets you ignite in your cauldron; as the smoke rises, the regrets are dissipated into the air, leaving only wisdom behind and a clear path ahead.
Any leftovers should be shared among your guests, making sure that no one takes home any of the food that person brought. If there are more leftovers than guests to take them home, it is strongly recommended to give those leftovers to the needy or the homeless.
It is considered taboo to keep your own uneaten contribution to the festivities. By sharing we generate energies that promote continuing prosperity.
[Kate Braun wrote for the original Rag Her website is www.tarotbykatebraun.com and she can be reached at kate_braun2000@yahoo.com. Read more of Kate Braun’s writing on The Rag Blog.]
Posted in Rag Bloggers
Tagged Astrology, Ceremony, Fire Festival, First Harvest, Kate Braun, Lammas, Metaphysics, Ritual, Spirituality
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Michael James : Pledging Allegiance in 1961
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| Pledging allegiance, Westport, Connecticut, 1961. Photo by Michael James from his forthcoming book, Michael Gaylord James‘ Pictures from the Long Haul. |
Pictures from the Long Haul:
Pledging allegiance in
Westport, Connecticut in 1961
Westport is where I learned to love America, where we played in fields, in woods, and on the shores of the Saugatuck River and Long Island Sound.
By Michael James | The Rag Blog | July 24, 2013
[In this series, Michael James is sharing images from his rich past, accompanied by reflections about — and inspired by — those images. This photo will be included in his forthcoming book, Michael Gaylord James’ Pictures from the Long Haul.]
I’m back home in Connecticut, an original colony, the “Nutmeg State” turned “Constitution State.”
I grew up with constant reminders of the Revolutionary War. On Red Coat Road we played “fight the British” near where real Red Coats marched to burn hat factories in Danbury.
Westport is where I learned to love America, where we played in fields, in woods, and on the shores of the Saugatuck River and Long Island Sound. Its where in the late 1940s we hiked along the Wilton Road singing “John Brown’s body lies a-moldering in the grave, but his soul goes marching on; glory, glory hallelujah.” And my town really supported the new United Nations.
My teen-dream romance comes rapidly undone one night at the beginning of the summer. That is it; young love, over and done. I spend the summer in pain, a shredded heart — one mizzable bastard to use one of my Dad’s favorite expressions.
Life goes on. I have a job at the YMCA’s Camp Mahackeno. It’s where artist Eric Von Schmidt (in full Indian dress) taught us about the Sioux. The Camp’s Rotary Pavilion became the Downshifters Hot Rod Club garage during off-camp months, and we were there — and upset — when the Russians and their Sputnik machine beat us into space.
A young trumpeter, I was a Mahackeno bugle boy, blowing reveille in the morning before the Pledge of Allegiance. In the afternoon I blew taps while our beloved flag was lowered. At Camp Mahackeno I suffered major yellow-jacket abuse while trying to save the bees from a clean-up brigade with a forceful hose.
There I earned my Minnow, Fish, Flying Fish, Shark, and Porpoise badges, and grew up through the ranks: a Papoose, Hiawatha, Brave, Sachem, and CIT (counselor in training). Now I was a counselor and unit leader.
We marched our tribe through the woods to my family home on the Wilton Road. My mom Florence fixed lemonade and sandwiches. Mom (Dad didn’t allow me to call her Ma) also gave me an illustrated kid’s book with stories of Bre’r Rabbit, et. al. I read them to campers during rest periods.
I loved Uncle Remus, the storyteller. He took a lot of hits for being an “Uncle Tom” during the Black Power years. It’s hard today to find a copy the Disney film Song of the South. In my mind he was kind and wise, and a cool old dude. I am glad I saw that flick. Bre’r Rabbit was definitely cool!
I head to Rhode Island. Not to Charlestown and the drag races of my high school years, but the Newport Jazz Festival. I’m with high school chum Don Law, his dad a C&W producer with Columbia Records. We party late into the night with Nigerian drums-of-fire-guy Babatunde Olatunji and jazz great Horace Silver.
In 1963 the cultural activities committee will bring Olatunji, his drummers, and wild Haitian (and gay) dancers to campus during Africa Week. Silver’s Sunday school teacher in Norwalk turns out to be the mother of my adopted brother, body builder Jim Arden.
I look forward to heading west and back to school. I do it via a run south to Birmingham with fellow Downshifter John Willoughby. On a late summer night we hit Bristol, Virginia, and Bristol, Tennessee, and I swear the Bristol Stomp was on the radio. The tune is about a dance in another Bristol — Pennsylvania — and was being played nationwide.
Willoughby’s mom nourishes me for a day, and then I don my sport jacket and hitchhike, mostly up US 41, back to college. Near Pulaski, Kentucky, I get a short ride in a beat up car with a group of juiced up folks, both white and black. They’re having a fun time.
I am crammed into the back seat, surrounded by heat, wind, and people drinking — a scary-reckless-ride. I do accept a hit of whiskey from their pint. A feeling of relief engulfs me when the ride is over and I get to stick out my thumb again.
Back at college I embrace it all. I enjoy debating the issues of the day: birth control, abortion, the death penalty, and the Greek fraternity-sorority system. I pledge the Phipes, a local house, home to football linemen; I resign shortly thereafter over pledging rituals, beliefs, and attitudes.
The new “beatniks” and independents take over the school paper, The Stentor, as well as control of the student government. The administration had been supportive of the Greek decline until they realized they had greater control of students through the Greek system. Civil rights, race, and the teachings of Malcolm X are now real hot topics on campus.
It’s been 53 years since I headed to LFC and I only recently and happily learned that it was started by pro-abolitionist Presbyterians, and that the town was involved in the Underground Railroad.
There was a small black community in town, but very, very few blacks on campus. However, over the next few years the College seemed to make efforts to change that. Black students arrived from the East Coast, the Chicago area, and Africa. Marcia Gillespie, who went on to edit Ms. Magazine, was among them. Randy Holman, Charlie Williams, and others began to stir things up. The son of a left-leaning probation officer in Chicago, Randy was an early-on militant sparking discussion and organizing people to go hear Malcolm X in Chicago.
Joe Obuto from Kenya couldn’t get a haircut; the local barber claimed not to “know how to cut a Negro’s hair.” That led to student action and the intervention of the Illinois Commission on Human Relations. President William Cole would end up being appointed to that Commission, and active students initiated tutorial programs in both North Chicago and Chicago during 1963 and 1964.
Early in the football season I’m in the Lake Forest Hospital with a horrible sore throat. The doc isn’t going to let me out to play on Saturday, but teammate Paul Gilroy helps me climb out of the first floor window, through the pouring rain to his car, and on to the field house. Coach Hanke says I can’t play without the doctor’s permission; I say, “I’m playing today or not anymore.”
I play a strong game in the pouring rain. We lose the game and I have terrible tonsillitis for years until Dr. Quentin Young and the Medical Committee for Human Rights arrange to sneak me into Chicago’s Masonic Hospital to remove those tonsils.
After my stint at Arden Shore I have babysitting and cooking jobs that include a place to live, first for a family named Garfield (descendents of President Garfield), and then a Christian Science and banker family named Thomas where I live in the servant’s quarters.
And for a time I live with one of the Herbert brothers who is a counselor in a makeshift dorm on top of the Administration building. My dad is between his producing jobs for advertising agencies and producing the Broadway hit Man of La Mancha, so these jobs are necessary to supplement my government loans.
I hitchhike back and forth between Connecticut and Lake Forest. I have a lifelong friend whom I met at college, Patrick Sturgis from Massachusetts. Later we would call him Patrix or just Trix. During our senior year we live together in an off-campus crib.
We are together in the frigid weather at Brady’s Leap, the most eastern rest stop on the Ohio Turnpike, hitching home in December of 1961. Some college kids stop to pick us up on the entry ramp and are promptly busted by Ohio State Troopers for “stopping on the ramp.” Taken to a nearby town, a nighttime Justice of the Peace hits us with a fine.
A few years after our time at LFC Patrix and I would run together in Chicago during our active revolutionary years, in Students for A Democratic Society (SDS), JOIN Community Union, and Rising Up Angry. We were photographed together rocking a police paddy wagon that nearly ran people over during the 1968 Democratic Convention battle at Michigan and Balbo. Later we would both have natural food joints: mine the Heartland Café in Chicago, and Patrix’s, Beans and Barley in Milwaukee.
We took the same pledge of allegiance: to social justice and wholesome food.
[Michael James is a former SDS national officer, the founder of Rising Up Angry, co-founder of Chicago’s Heartland Café (1976 and still going), and co-host of the Saturday morning (9-10 a.m. CDT) Live from the Heartland radio show, here and on YouTube. He is reachable by one and all at michael@heartlandcafe.com. Find more articles by Michael James on The Rag Blog.]
Posted in Rag Bloggers
Tagged Memoir, Michael James, nostalgia, Pictures from the Long Haul, Sixties
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Jean Trounstine : The Plight of California’s Prisons
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| Cruel and unusual: Overcrowded California prisons. Image from TheBusySignal.com. |
The plight of California’s prisons:
Hunger strike, sterilization, and valley fever
While we complain of 100 degree heat and take solace in our air-conditioned homes, prisoners across the country are suffering — and not just for their crimes.
By Jean Trounstine | The Rag Blog | July 24, 2013
It’s been two years since Governor Jerry Brown was court ordered to fix California’s ailing prisons and the situation is still life-threatening and possibly illegal.
It’s been all over the papers and many bloggers are tackling the horrendous conditions in California. A prison system that in 2011 was ordered by the Supreme Court to figure out what to do with 30,000 people who because of the system’s overcrowding were suffering “cruel and unusual punishment.”
As Laura Gottesdiener wrote in The Huffington Post, “The state’s 140,000 inmates, jam-packed into 33 prisons only built to hold 80,000 individuals…commit suicide at double the national inmate average, experience unprecedented rates of lock-downs, receive inadequate medical treatment and sometimes live in continuous fear of violence.”
In early July, the infuriating news broke that between 2006-2010, doctors who were under contract with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation sterilized nearly 150 female inmates without anyone’s approval. Corey G. Johnson, writing for the Center for Investigative Reporting wrote that these doctors were paid $147,460 to perform the procedure and that “at least 148 women received tubal ligations…during those five years — and there are perhaps 100 more dating back to the late 1990s, according to state documents and interviews.”
And it doesn’t get better for prisoners, or for that matter, for any of us who care about how we treat those behind bars. California holds nearly 12,000 people in solitary confinement at a cost of over $60 million per year. The prisoners recognize that they have committed crimes but they are suffering under extreme isolation. U.S. News and World Report called these cells “living tombs.”
I wrote about Massachusetts’ current attempts and need to get rid of these dangerous solitary conditions recently online at Boston Magazine. And Texas prisoners have been known to die in 130 degree heat, reported The Coalition for Prisoners’ Rights, a prisoner-run newsletter.
One of the best websites about the plight of California, Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity, says about the state’s Secure Housing Unit (SHU), “The cells have no windows, and no access to fresh air or sunlight. The United Nations condemns the use of solitary confinement for more than 15 days as torture, yet many people in California state prisons have been encaged in solitary for 10 to 40 years.”
The hunger strike began on July 8, when more than 30,000 prisoners in 15 prisons refused meals. They are about to enter their third week. As reported on Democracy Now!, about 2,500 prisoners from across the state are still on “indefinite hunger strike,” calling for Governor Jerry Brown and the CDCR to meet their demands about the inhumane conditions they are suffering.
But as Lois Ahrens of the Real Cost of Prisons Project said in an email, California officials are trying in any way they can to discredit the strike. Brown has not been moved to act. Strikers’ lawyers are not being allowed into the prisons.
Jules Lobel, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights and lead attorney representing Pelican Bay prisoners in a lawsuit challenging long-term solitary, appeared on Democracy Now!. He said
If you’re found guilty of murdering somebody in prison, you’re given a definite term, which can be no more than five years in solitary. If you, on the other hand, are simply labeled by some gang investigator as a member of some gang — and that could be done simply because you have artwork or because you have a tattoo or because you have a birthday card from somebody who’s in a gang… — you then are given an indefinite sentence, which can go on for years and years and years and decades.
This is not the first hunger strike for California. In 2011, over 12,000 prisoners and their family and community members participated in statewide hunger strikes protesting the inhumane conditions in solitary. The core demands for the current strike, one of the largest ever, are below, in their own words, reprinted from the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity website.
- End Group Punishment & Administrative Abuse
- Abolish the Debriefing Policy, and Modify Active/Inactive Gang Status Criteria -Perceived gang membership is one of the leading reasons for placement in solitary confinement. The practice of “debriefing,” or offering up information about fellow prisoners particularly regarding gang status, is often demanded in return for better food or release from the SHU. Debriefing puts the safety of prisoners and their families at risk, because they are then viewed as “snitches.”
- Comply with the US Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons 2006 Recommendations Regarding an End to Long-Term Solitary Confinement – [my note — Why is this not so???]
- Provide Adequate and Nutritious Food –
- Expand and Provide Constructive Programming and Privileges for Indefinite Secure Housing Unit (SHU) Status Inmates.
While this strike rages on, another horrible plague has struck California’s prisoners. Governor Brown has said that California has the greatest health care for prisoners “in the world,” but San Francisco Bay View reported that over 3,300 prisoners in such facilities as Avenal and Pleasant Valley State Prison are at high risk of infection or death from a fungal infection called “valley fever.”
Since 2006, 62 behind bars in California have died from this disease which undoubtedly is related to overcrowding and other unhealthful conditions. And 80% of those contracting the illness have been African-American, reported the Bay View.
Many have joined rallies and protests and signed petitions — all found at the websites I’ve mentioned above. However, while we complain of 100 degree heat and take solace in our air-conditioned homes, prisoners across the country are suffering — and not just for their crimes.
[Jean Trounstine is an author/editor of five published books and many articles, professor at Middlesex Community College in Massachusetts, and a prison activist. For 10 years, she worked at Framingham Women’s Prison and directed eight plays, publishing Shakespeare Behind Bars: The Power of Drama in a Women’s Prison about that work. She blogs for Boston Magazine and takes apart the criminal justice system brick by brick at jeantrounstine.com where she blogs weekly at “Justice with Jean.” Find her contributions to The Rag Blog here.]
