RAG RADIO / Thorne Dreyer : Maria Elena Martinez and Luz Bazan Gutierrez on ‘La Raza Unida’ and Beyond

Posted on July 14, 2012 by Thorne Dreyer

Maria Elena Martinez, left, and Luz Bazan Gutierrez in studios of KOOP-FM in Austin, Texas, Friday, July 6, 2012. Photo by Allan Campbell / The Rag Blog.

Rag Radio:
Maria Elena Martinez and Luz Bazan Gutierrez
on the historic legacy of La Raza Unida

By Rag Radio | The Rag Blog | July 14, 2012

Maria Elena Martinez and and Luz Bazan Gutierrez discussed the colorful legacy of the historic La Raza Unida Party with Thorne Dreyer on Rag Radio, Friday, July 6, 2012. Both women played instrumental roles with La Raza Unida from its founding in 1970.

They discussed the history of the party, which grew out of the Chicano activist group, the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO), its role in empowering Mexican-Americans in Texas and elsewhere, and its lasting political and cultural impact.

Former La Raza Unida activists joined together for a lively reunion in Austin, July 6-7, 2012.

Listen to the Rag Radio interview with Maria Elena Martinez and Luz Bazan Gutierrez here:


Rag Radio features hour-long in-depth interviews and discussion about issues of progressive politics, culture, and history. The syndicated show is produced in the studios of KOOP-FM, Austin’s cooperatively-run all-volunteer community radio station. It is broadcast live on KOOP and streamed live on the Internet, and is rebroadcast on Sunday mornings on WFTE-FM in Mt. Cobb and Scranton, PA.

Juan Castillo wrote in the Austin American-Statesman :

In 1970 young Mexican American firebrands in South Texas rose up to demand change, speaking out against discrimination and creating their own political party, which they called La Raza Unida. In the span of about eight years, La Raza Unida energized a youthful following, spread to other states and elected candidates in Texas’ predominantly rural Mexican American communities where Anglos historically dominated…

Now graying and with a few in their 70s and beyond, some party activists [gathered in Austin, Texas, July 6-7, 2012] for a rare La Raza Unida reunion and conference.

Maria Elena Martinez was the last chair of the Raza Unida Party in Texas, serving from 1976–78. Maria Elena, who has a Masters in Education from the University of Texas at Austin, worked in private and public education for 34 years, specializing in bilingual education.

A volunteer at Alma de Mujer Center for Social Change, a project of the Indigenous Women’s Network, Martinez now dedicates her time to spiritual work and healing. Since 1992 she has studied Shamanism through the Foundation for Shamanic Studies and is a Minister of the Circle of the Sacred Earth.

Luz Bazan Gutierrez was in Crystal City at the formation of the Raza Unida Party and was the first Raza Unida Party county chair for the state of Texas. Then married to Raza Unida founder Jose Angel Guitterez, she was instrumental in a move to empower women in the male-dominated movement.

Luz Bazan was named one of “100 People of Influence” by Pacific Magazine, and has received a national Lifetime Achievement Award for her work with the Latino community and a Peace and Justice award for her work related to empowering low income persons. She is president and CEO of Rural Community Development Resources in Yakima, Washington.

Watch Jeff Zavala’s video of the Rag Radio show:

Maria Elena Martinez and Luz Bazan Gutierrez discussed the legacy of La Raza Unida on Rag Radio, Friday, July 6, 2012. Video by Jeff Zavala of ZGraphics who filmed the show live in the KOOP studios in Austin.

Rag Radio has aired since September 2009 on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin. Hosted and produced by Rag Blog editor and long-time alternative journalist Thorne Dreyer, a pioneer of the Sixties underground press movement, Rag Radio is broadcast every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CST) on KOOP, 91.7-fM in Austin, and is rebroadcast on Sundays at 10 a.m. (EST) 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: FRIDAY, July 27, 2012, Actor, Musician & former Movement Lawyer Brady Coleman, with live performance by The Melancholy Ramblers.

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Tony Platt : California Dreamin’

Posted on July 12, 2012 by Thorne Dreyer

The Bloody Island Massacre of 1850 at the north end of Clear Lake, Lake County, California. Art from Manataka American Indian Council.
 
California Dreamin’

California’s public history mostly erases its tragic past, turning profound injustices, such as the genocide of native peoples, into a narrative of Progress.

By Tony Platt | The Rag Blog | July 12, 2012

“The future always looks good in the golden land, because no one remembers the past.” — Joan Didion

BERKELEY, California — A couple of weeks ago I attended the 3rd Global Conference on Genocide in San Francisco. The conference, organized by the International Network of Genocide Scholars, covered genocides, past and present, in many parts of the world. Just about everywhere, except here. In three days of panels and presentations, I could find only one discussion of California as a site of genocide, and it was in my paper.

California can hold its own with other regions of the world regarding human-made tragedies — genocide, pogroms, ethnic cleansing, lynching, racial segregation, eugenics, imprisonment without trial, and torture. We know this from the accounts of witnesses and survivors, and from richly descriptive social histories written during the last 30 years.

Yet, California’s public history mostly erases its tragic past, turning profound injustices, such as the genocide of native peoples, into a narrative of Progress. The upbeat version of The California Story as a place of entrepreneurial ingenuity and cutting-edge modernity has served as a cultural firewall, numbing and cutting us off from the state’s bloody history.

It is rare to find in our textbooks, classrooms, and public places a reckoning with our nineteenth century catastrophe: dispossession and massacres of native communities; break up of native families, including a commercial trade in women and children; organized efforts to erase thousands of years of cultural experience; and systematic looting of native graves and artifacts to the benefit of collectors, museums, and universities.

It is even more rare to find accounts of local native resistance, from guerilla warfare during the Gold Rush to battles over land and repatriation in the twentieth century. Crude and racist representations of acquiescent native peoples dominated public space in California for over a century, making it easier to frame their near extermination in the imagery of natural history, subject to inevitable processes of erosion and decline, rather than as a result of human intervention — a genocide.

Eugenic legacies persist today in the state’s 4th grade curriculum that transforms the colonial, racist imperatives of the Spanish mission system into a romantic origins story of uplift and civilization. And in the 7th grade, when The Diary of Anne Frank is typically taught, it is the rare teacher who makes a connection to California’s catastrophe.

There are so few public acknowledgements of California’s history of atrocities against native peoples that I can list them here:

  • In 2005, the state erected a historical marker on Highway 20 in recognition of a massacre by soldiers of Pomo women and children on Bloody Island in 1850.
  • In 2006, Eureka City Council returned 60 acres of Indian Island (the site of another massacre) to the Wiyot Tribe as a gesture of reparations.
  • In 2007, Bishop Francis A. Quinn in a public speech acknowledged the “past mistakes and serious misdeeds” of the Catholic Church during the Mission period. “The Church apologizes for trying to take Indian out of the Indian. Let the Miwok be Miwok.”

California does not have any monumental, officially endorsed, civic memorials to victims of mass injustice, such as the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, the Shoah Memorial in Paris, Memory Park in Buenos Aires, or the African Burial Ground National Monument in New York. Nor do we have any educational and cultural institutions devoted to learning about the motivation, psychology, and organization of perpetrators, such as the Topography of Terror in Berlin or Nazi Documentation Center in Nuremberg.

There is nothing in California comparable to the federal memorial on Bainbridge Island, Washington, that commemorates how the first town under Roosevelt’s 1942 order removed all citizens of Japanese origins; or to Reconciliation Park in Tacoma, an ongoing private-public initiative to remember how the port city ethnically cleansed hundreds of Chinese in 1885.

Due to lack of public funding, California also has a weak public arts presence in memorial culture. By contrast, Berlin’s artistic projects are so embedded in daily life that you literally bump into reminders of Nazism at the top of subway exits, or walk past them on the way to work, or see them next to ads in neighborhoods, or stumble over them on the way into a café. For example, hovering in the shadows of the gigantic Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in a nearby park is a kiosk that seductively invites you to look through a peephole at two men or two women kissing, and to imagine their fate under the Nazis.

I understand the political importance of creating large-scale monuments in publicly visible sites, but personally I appreciate memorials that catch you off guard, make you figure out something for yourself, and are part of the everyday landscape. Smaller is not necessarily better than bigger, but often has a wider impact and may last longer.

Coming to terms with this region’s long record of social injustices is necessary in order to chip away at chauvinist notions of the United States as destined by providence and militarism to lead the world, and of the mythic Golden State as a model of multiculturalism. Addressing our history in all its contradictions helps us to guard against hubris and to recognize our modest place in an interdependent world.

We’ll know we’re making progress when we teach the Mission system as part of colonial history, when the genocide of native peoples in the northwest is taught alongside The Diary of Anne Frank, and when a genocide conference held in San Francisco pays serious attention to the region’s sorrowful past.

[Tony Platt is the author of 10 books and 150 essays and articles dealing with issues of race, inequality, and social justice in American history. Platt taught at the University of Chicago, University of California (Berkeley), and California State University (Sacramento). He is a Visiting Professor in Department of Justice Studies, San José State University. His publications have been translated into German, Spanish, Italian, and Japanese. His latest book — Grave Matters: Excavating California’s Buried Past — was recently published by Heyday. He lives in Berkeley and Big Lagoon, California, and serves as secretary of the Coalition to Protect Yurok Cultural Legacies at O-pyuweg (Big Lagoon). He blogs on history and memory at GoodToGo. Find more articles by Tony Platt on The Rag Blog]

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Lamar W. Hankins : The Courts and the Mount Soledad Cross

Posted on July 12, 2012 by Thorne Dreyer

Church and State: Mount Soledad cross with American flag. Photo from Getty Images / ABC News.

Why Christian crosses don’t belong
on war and veterans’ memorials

Their complaint was that the Christian cross made this a sectarian war memorial with an inherently religious message that created the appearance of honoring only those of a particular religion who served in the country’s military.

By Lamar W. Hankins | The Rag Blog | July 12, 2012

No issue, including abortion, engenders as much emotion as those involving Christian symbols — especially Christian crosses. Such is the case involving the Christian cross erected in San Diego’s Mount Soledad Public Park in 1954 as part of a veterans’ memorial and ordered removed in 2011 by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Those who understand the problem of state sponsorship of religion will instantly recognize that placing a Christian symbol — perhaps the symbol most evocative of that religion — in a public park is a religious entanglement that should be avoided. When honoring veterans is thrown into that mix, emotions make resolving the Constitutional issues even more difficult.

The facts about the Mount Soledad cross reveal how this matter could have been litigated for 23 years before a legal resolution. No small part of the blame for prolonging the litigation goes to four right-wing Republican congressmen.

Mount Soledad is one of the highest points in the San Diego area (in the La Jolla community) at 822 feet above sea level. The current cross, set atop the mount, is 43 feet high, cast of concrete, and can be seen 12 miles away in downtown San Diego. The cross stands 29 feet high and 12 feet across, on a 14-foot high base, and weighs about 24 tons. It can be seen from two interstate highways. Maintenance has been paid for by the private Mount Soledad Memorial Association, along with some public funds.

A Vietnam veteran and atheist, Philip Paulson, first sued the City of San Diego over the cross in 1989. Paulson has since died. Before his death, he was joined by Steve Trunk, also a Vietnam veteran and atheist, as a plaintiff, along with Jewish War Veterans of the USA, who filed a separate suit.

Their complaint was that the Christian cross made this a sectarian war memorial with an inherently religious message that created the appearance of honoring only those of a particular religion who served in the country’s military. As such, said the plaintiffs, it violated the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution as that clause is understood by the Supreme Court.

The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit found in favor of the plaintiffs on January 4, 2011. On June 25, 2012, the Supreme Court announced that it would not hear the case, which leaves the Ninth Circuit’s decision intact, to be implemented by the district court. In its opinion, the Ninth Circuit recognized that a case like this one “represents the difficult and intractable intersection of religion, patriotism, and the Constitution.” Such cases, said the court, “are not painless for good people and their concerns.”

Those people who oppose Jefferson’s “wall of separation” between church and state will need patience to understand completely the reasoning of the Ninth Circuit’s holding in favor of the Jewish War Veterans and the other plaintiffs because it is extensive and legally complex.

The facts involving the Mount Soledad cross and the efforts to avoid an Establishment Clause problem are convoluted. In 1913, a Christian or Latin cross was first erected on Mount Soledad. When that cross was destroyed by vandals 10 years later (the Ku Klux Klan burned it to intimidate a black family that had recently moved into the area), a new cross was erected. That cross blew down in 1952. In 1954, the current cross was erected. It was dedicated as a memorial to members of the armed services and a tribute to God’s “promise of everlasting life,” a clear reference to Christian belief.

In 1989, the Soledad cross was first challenged as a violation of the California Constitution. The Federal District Court found that the cross violated the California Constitution’s “No Preference Clause,” and it issued an injunction against the cross. That injunction was upheld by the Ninth Circuit: “the Cross, to the extent that it could be characterized as a memorial, was ‘[a] sectarian war memorial carr[ying] an inherently religious message and creat[ing] an appearance of honoring only servicemen of [a] particular religion.’”

The City of San Diego then asked the voters to consider selling the land beneath the cross to the Mount Soledad Memorial Association. That ballot proposition was approved and the land was sold to the Association without soliciting offers or proposals from other buyers, but the District Court invalidated the sale, holding that the City’s action “created the appearance that the City preferred the Christian religion and that the primary purpose of the sale was to preserve the Cross.”

A second sale to the Association was made by the City after soliciting bids. That sale was invalidated by the court because it “violated California’s No Preference Clause because it was structured to give ‘a direct, immediate, and substantial financial advantage to bidders who had the sectarian purpose of preserving the cross.’”

An agreement was then reached to move the Cross to a nearby church. Before that could happen, two members of Congress, Reps. Randall Cunningham and Duncan Hunter, inserted language in the 2005 omnibus budget bill to designate “the Mount Soledad property as a national veterans’ memorial and authorizing the federal government to accept its donation,” but the City declined to donate the property. The matter was then submitted to the voters in a referendum, which passed, but its implementation was enjoined by a state trial court.

Reps. Hunter, Darrell Issa, and Brian Bilbray introduced a bill authorizing the federal government to seize the Memorial by eminent domain. The bill passed and the federal government took possession of the Memorial in 2006. Paulson and Trunk filed suit against the City in federal court alleging violations of both the California Constitution and the U.S. Constitution. Jewish War Veterans filed a separate suit. The two suits were consolidated by the district court, which denied the claims for relief. After a thorough analysis, the Ninth Circuit reversed the decision of the district court.

The basis for the Ninth Circuit’s decision was the Constitution’s Establishment Clause, which requires “governmental neutrality between religion and religion, and between religion and nonreligion.” The Circuit explained that the Constitution does not require absolute neutrality because that would evince a hostility toward religion in favor of the secular, which should not exist.

It applied the Lemon Test, which is derived from a case known as Lemon v. Kurtzman: “The Lemon test asks whether the action or policy at issue (1) has a secular purpose, (2) has the principal effect of advancing religion, or (3) causes excessive entanglement with religion.”

In addition, the Circuit applied the Supreme Court’s more nuanced analysis found in another case, Van Orden v. Perry (a case that upheld a Ten Commandments monument at the Texas State Capitol) which requires a “fact-intensive assessment of whether [such monuments or displays] are faithful to the underlying purposes of the Establishment Clause.”

The Circuit Court explained that its first task under both of the cases referenced is to “first inquire as to the purpose of the government action to determine whether it is predominantly secular in nature.” The Circuit found that Congress’s action “was primarily secular in its goals” because it sought to preserve a historically significant war memorial that honored veterans. Over the years since its dedication in 1954, many plaques honoring veterans had been added to the base of the monument, enhancing its purpose as a war memorial.

Next, the Circuit Court focused on the heart of the controversy: whether the primary effect of the Memorial “would be objectively reasonable for the government action to be construed as sending primarily a message of either endorsement or disapproval of religion.” It looked at “whether the Memorial is at odds with the underlying purposes of the First Amendment’s Religion Clauses… Those clauses seek to assure the fullest possible scope of religious liberty and tolerance for all. They seek to avoid that divisiveness based upon religion that promotes social conflict․ They seek to maintain that separation of church and state that has long been critical to the peaceful dominion that religion exercises in this country․”

The Circuit Court examined all of the features of the Memorial, the significance of the Christian cross at the Memorial’s center, the history of the Memorial, the secularizing elements of it, the physical setting, and the way it is used. After considering all of these factors, the Circuit held: “Taking these factors into account and considering the entire context of the Memorial, the Memorial today remains a predominantly religious symbol. The history and absolute dominance of the Cross are not mitigated by the belated efforts to add less significant secular elements to the Memorial.”

The Circuit Court found that the “Latin cross is the preeminent symbol of Christianity.” It is “not a symbol of any other religion.” Citing other authority, the court found that the cross has the effect of placing the weight of the government behind an effort to proselytize for the Christian religion to the exclusion of all others, and of no religion. The Christian cross is not a symbol of death of any other religion — “it memorializes the death of a Christian.” It carries an inherently Christian religious message and appears to honor only Christians who have served in our military.

The Circuit Court opinion relied on the evidence presented by an expert on war memorials offered by Jewish War Veterans, G. Kurt Piehler, a professor of history and Director of the Study of War and Society, University of Tennessee. Piehler provided unrebutted and extensive evidence “that the cross is not commonly used as a symbol to commemorate veterans and fallen soldiers in the United States,” that is, “the vast majority of war memorials in the United States do not include crosses.”

According to Piehler, while crosses among poppies are used extensively in fields in Europe to commemorate the war dead, Jewish soldiers are honored with Stars of David in those same fields. In addition, such crosses are used to memorialize the graves of individual soldiers, not as universal monuments. But it was the poppy, said Piehler, not the cross, that has become “the universal symbol emanating from those foreign wars…”

The Circuit Court’s opinion explained the use of religious symbols in cemeteries honoring veterans of military service further:

Significantly, the cross never became a default headstone in military cemeteries in the United States. A visitor to Arlington or another national cemetery does not encounter a multitude of crosses but rather the “flat upright stone monument[s]” that mark the graves of individual soldiers. Symbols of faith are carved into the headstones, but those symbols are not restricted to crosses and now include everything from a Bahai nine-pointed star to a Wiccan pentacle…

The cross, in other words, has never been used to honor all American soldiers in any military cemetery, and it has never been used as a default gravestone in any national cemetery in the United States. Whatever memory some may have of rows of crosses as the predominant symbol for honoring veterans is not reflected in this record.

War-related monuments rarely incorporate a cross. When they do so, it is normally associated with a non-religious symbol, such as an eagle or shield, sometimes seen together, or other non-religious images. An obelisk is the most common symbol used alone in such memorials. Most modern memorials are secular in design, and take the form of buildings or other edifices dedicated as war memorials, or stone monuments that bear secular imagery.

The court noted, “Overwhelming evidence shows that the cross remains a Christian symbol, not a military symbol,” and that none of Piehler’s history of war or veteran memorialization was contested by the government. The government’s own expert conceded that “[o]ver the course of time, Mount Soledad and its cross became a generic Christian site.” The court found that “The record contains not a single clear example of a memorial cross akin to the Mount Soledad Cross.”

In addition, evidence was presented that Easter services have been conducted frequently at the site, that the site was dedicated to Jesus Christ as well as fallen soldiers, that the cross is frequently identified as the “Easter Cross,” that the Association that erected it did so in part because it would be a worthy setting for this “symbol of Christianity,” and that during most of its existence, the memorial consisted only of the cross.

The decision of the court was supported, in part, by the uncontroverted evidence that the community of La Jolla had a long anti-semitic past lasting from the 1920s to 1970. Jews were not permitted to buy houses there under the authority of anti-semitic deed restrictions, as well as informal practices. The court reasoned that this factor alone could explain why complaints about the cross took so long to materialize.

The Circuit Court made clear its conclusion:

Our holding that the presence of the Mount Soledad Cross on federal land contravenes the Establishment Clause is driven by the history, setting, and appearance of that Cross — features that… sharply distinguish the Cross from other war memorials containing religious symbols… The use of such a distinctively Christian symbol to honor all veterans sends a strong message of endorsement and exclusion. It suggests that the government is so connected to a particular religion that it treats that religion’s symbolism as its own, as universal. To many non-Christian veterans, this claim of universality is alienating…

[A]fter examining the entirety of the Mount Soledad Memorial in context — having considered its history, its religious and non-religious uses, its sectarian and secular features, the history of war memorials and the dominance of the Cross — we conclude that the Memorial, presently configured and as a whole, primarily conveys a message of government endorsement of religion that violates the Establishment Clause.

While many people, including the right-wing Republican congressmen who attempted to nullify this case, will be unable to accept the court’s conclusion, a reading of the entire opinion makes clear that the court was thorough in its analysis and carefully adhered to Supreme Court precedent in its decision. Exactly when the cross will be removed is not known, but a 99-year Constitutional violation is a stain on our Constitutional principles and should be remedied quickly.

[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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Don Swift : Cultural Cognition, Collective Memory, and Tea Party Republicanism

Posted on July 11, 2012 by Thorne Dreyer

Image from Religion Nerd.

Cultural cognition, collective memory,
and Tea Party Republicanism

The right-wing information machine is very adept at wiring for its followers a collective memory that filters out contradictory information.

By Don Swift | The Rag Blog | July 11, 2012

The first entry in this series sought to move toward an explanation of how so many Americans readily believe false, and often preposterous, claims.

Mary Matalin and others easily get by with claiming that the Great Recession and high unemployment were due to Democratic efforts to regulate the economy. This is believed by millions who needed no factual information to support the claim. People believe these things because their thought processes have been influenced by various forms of collective meaning assignment. They watch Fox News, listen to Glenn Beck, go to a Sarah Palin rally, or talk to co-religionists after their church service.

Scholars associated with the Cultural Cognition Project showed how people adopted positions on matters such as global warming as a function of their group identity and political affiliation. This probably also explains how four highly educated U.S. Supreme Court justices found it possible to scuttle decades of precedents in declaring that the Affordable Health Care Act was not justified by the commerce clause of the Constitution. One, Antonin Scalia, was so politically agitated that he used the occasion to rant against Barack Obama’s recent executive order on immigration law enforcement policy.

It is possible to understand even more why so many people adopt strange positions and policies that work against their best interest when we consider what is known about collective memory or selective memory.

Collective memory works like “mythic history,” according to Pierre Nora, a French expert on history and memory. It replaces real history and is fervently believed. Collective memories are about our identities, so strong emotions reinforce them. That is why they are considered sacred.

The term “collective memory” is useful and evolved out of Emile Durkheim’s concept of collective consciousness. Yet, we know that there is no particular place in a collectivity where a memory is stored. It is a common memory existing in the minds of members of an identity group and also in symbols, texts, and other parts of a culture. It is a product of culture and identity and is not genetic in any way.

Some members have a stronger emotional attachment to it than others. The concept is an effort to get at how people’s thinking is shaped by a culture or subculture and by membership in a group.

According to Peter Novick, “Collective memory simplifies, sees events from a single, committed perspective; is impatient with ambiguities of any kind…” It overlooks historicity all the complexities involved with examining events in different contexts and in another time. It provides “imaginary representations and historical realities” that are deeply rooted in cultural identity and the values of an imaginary community.

Collective memory emerges from social arrangements and the “ways minds work together in society,” and “totemic meanings” emerge that are part of a community’s super-ego. It is an imaginative form of historical consciousness based “more on myths than facts.”

In brief, collective memory refers to how people recall in the context of a group. It is never objective or value-free, and it reflects simulations of the past shaped by present needs. It can be politicized memory.

Its formation is, according to Nora, “largely unconscious” and it “accommodates only those facts that suit it.” Collective or social memory, when it appears in a political context, can be very malleable. For example, the Tea Party people initially were angry about Wall Street abuses, but they were soon convinced that it would be un-American to punish or regulate the irresponsible bankers.

The right-wing information machine is very adept at wiring for its followers a collective memory that filters out contradictory information. This is why very few conservatives can bring themselves to believe that only months ago, Willard Mitt Romney said he opposed efforts to prevent health insurance companies from denying coverages due to preexisting conditions.

People who identify with the Tea Party derive emotional satisfaction from clinging to the collective memory created by right-wing spokesmen because they fervently believe it is the purest form of the conventional wisdom. The causes for its emergence remain and what is occurring now is the emergence of a Tea Party collective memory, which will help perpetuate it.

Absurdities can be passionately believed because they become inextricable from identity. Longtime conservative mastery of cognitive science and communications techniques has made it possible to persuade many people of all sorts of propositions that simply defy logic and reality.

Decades of work by corporate America and the Republican information machine have created a conventional wisdom that is difficult to dispute with solid facts.  The existence of this ersatz conventional wisdom made possible the rise of Tea Party hysteria; it will become the framework for the movement’s collective memory.

In the past, collective memory emerged slowly through word of mouth. In the print era, it could develop more rapidly. Today, with the help of electronic media and round the clock cable news, it can emerge almost overnight, especially when people face multiple crises and are in a state of near panic.

The creation of a Tea Party collective memory is simply an extension of several decades of Republican mastery of linguistic and cognitive theory. The beauty of collective memory is that it creates memories that can have nothing to do with reality. They can be passionately believed because they become inextricable from identity.

A great danger is that the emergence of a Tea Bagger collective memory will serve to keep many former independents — some political neophytes — in the conservative movement after the economy improves. The Tea Party claims of victimhood give them a collective identity and invite them to buy into a collective memory that could make them committed rightists for decades to come. Some may also be persuaded to become gun show/gun shop patrons and join one militia or another.

As the Anglo Caucasian element in the population becomes smaller, it is likely that the Tea Party collective memory will attract even more followers. If the economy remains sluggish at the same time, a Tea Party majority is not out of the question.

Conservatives have many advantages in shaping collective memory, and it is sometimes forgotten that presidents of the United States also have the ability to mold it in ways that are favorable to their policies. Barack Obama has an opportunity to link his battle against Romney and the apologists for privilege to the narratives of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, and other Democratic presidents.

Perhaps he cannot use some of Roosevelt’s blunt language because generations have been conditioned against “class conflict.” But he needs to remind voters that there have always been forces that sought to block the ordinary family’s quest for the American Dream.

[Don Swift, a retired history professor, also writes under the name Sherman DeBrosse. Read more articles by Don Swift on The Rag Blog.]

Also see “The Republican Brain on ‘The Republican Brain’” by Chris Mooney on The Rag Blog, and “Chris Mooney Dissects the Republican Brain’” by Thorne Dreyer, with the podcast of Dreyer’s Rag Radio interview with Mooney.

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Kate Braun: New Moon in Leo

Posted on July 11, 2012 by Thorne Dreyer

New Moon in Leo, 2010. Image from Letting Go.

Moon Musings:
New Moon in Leo
(July 19, 2012)

By Kate Braun | The Rag Blog | July 11, 2012

There is only one day on which to celebrate the New Moon in July 2012: Thursday, July 19.

Thursday is Thor’s day, and this New Moon is in Leo; please take into account all the active masculine energy that surrounds this New Moon as you plan your celebrations. Using the colors white (for pure intent), orange (to attract success), blue (for strength and confidence) and purple (for spiritual inspiration) may assist you in maintaining a proper balance.

Thursday is under the governance of Jupiter, so rituals for success involving money, legal matters, and religious or spiritual matters will be more effective. Involving water in your activities, and repeating any chants or incantations four times is highly recommended.

New Moons are times to start new projects, times to honor all Goddess-as-virgin deities such as Kali, Banshee, Diana, and Hecate. This moon phase is ideal for beginning a weight-loss program, setting and stating new goals, clearing your mind and personal space, releasing the Old to make room for the New.

Focusing on health and self-improvement, job-hunting, goal-setting, and beginnings of all kinds should bring positive results. Perhaps this is why it is considered lucky to move into a new abode during the New Moon: success tends to increase as the moon waxes.

One way to organize your new beginnings is to write down in a notebook one major and two minor goals you would like to see accomplished by the next New Moon. Keep this notebook near your bed and each night, before going to sleep, hold the notebook while visualizing the completion of these goals. Any dreams that come that seem relevant to the goals as you have stated them should be recorded in this notebook, as should any progress or lack of progress as you pursue these goals.

Moon lore says that to dream of a clear moon is an indicator of success and that a New Moon in your dreams is an indicator of increased wealth and/or a happy marriage; if you dream of a moon, be sure to write down the dream in your notebook for future pondering.

Another piece of New Moon lore informs us that it is considered unlucky to point at the New Moon or to view it over your shoulder. Face the New Moon. Open wide your arms and heart and head to her energy. Let that energy fill you to the brim and even spill over to splash about your feet. Pouring some water over your bare feet onto Mother Earth as you honor Lady Moon will not only cool your feet but also bring additional feminine energies into your activities.

[Kate Braun‘s website is www.tarotbykatebraun.com. She can be reached at kate_braun2000@yahoo.com. Read more of Kate Braun’s writing on The Rag Blog.]

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Harry Targ : Universities and Political Conflict

Posted on July 11, 2012 by Thorne Dreyer

“The Corporate University.” Graphic from Occasional Links & Commentary.
 
Whose interests do they serve?
Universities and political conflict

Now, in the midst of a deep economic crisis, political and economic elites are lobbying to create new structures of power in higher education…

By Harry Targ | The Rag Blog | July 11, 2012

Since Arab Spring and the Occupy Movement almost every institution in American life — financial, corporate, political party, media, military, and religious — has appropriately become subject to scrutiny and evaluation. In each case analysts and activists have begun to raise questions about what these institutions look like, whose interests they serve, and how they contribute to the well-being of society.

Until recently colleges and universities have been largely above reproach. Research and education have been seen as the cornerstone of American democracy and economic development. The appointment of Governor Mitch Daniels as the new president of Purdue University and the firing and rehiring of the University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan provide the occasion for a reexamination of higher education.

Institutions of higher education have traditionally performed four tasks in the service of maintaining and enhancing the development of the other institutions referred to above. First, universities, particularly since World War II, have provided research resources to produce the products and technologies that have stimulated the capitalist system.

Often basic research has fed into major enterprises in society, from promoting a global food system, to building sophisticated armies, to developing new high speed systems of communication that maximize control of economies and peoples. Major universities bring together talented research scholars and public and private research dollars to create inventions that promote greater control of nature and people and to expand profit.

Second, universities train work forces. Some graduates will become the research scholars who will continue the tradition of study and economic development to advance the economy and the polity further. Others will be provided the skills to work in the private and public sectors to carry out the work of institutional perpetuation.

Corporate managers, computer specialists, tourism experts, and employees in the public sphere are trained at the modern university. And, increasingly universities train the soldiers who will fight the wars that the United States continues to fight.

Third, universities provide an education that in the main facilitates the transfer of legitimated knowledge to consumers of that knowledge. Particular attention is given to the promotion of a scientific worldview that reduces physical and social reality to a multiplicity of “variables” that can be studied with statistical rigor. Knowledge is primarily scientific knowledge.

Legitimated knowledge that is passed along to college students also includes highly selective portraits of how economies work, what constitutes democratic political institutions, and what constitutes standards of quality in the arts. In subtle forms, universities pass along celebratory, often uncritical, images of the society in which students live.

Finally, universities are credentialing institutions. They reward students with degrees, recommendations, and honors, which can be used as licenses to participate in the other institutions in society. Even when political and economic elites receive prestigious degrees through family connections, it is the degree that helps the accumulation of power.

The four functions — research, training, legitimizing, and credentialing — have changed concretely over time. For example, in the United States, the development of the modern university paralleled the industrial revolution. Prestigious universities, such as Harvard, initiated modern departments at the dawn of the twentieth century replacing the primacy of theology and law with economics, business administration, and industrial engineering.

Training in fields such as education was designed to create a literate work force that could staff the factories of modern society. And social sciences were created to develop theories that comported with industrial development, such as Social Darwinism. These theories largely justified the distribution of wealth and power within societies and in the international system.

After World War II higher education took on vital functions in new ways. The GI Bill funded college education for veterans to train the scientists and managers of the new age. Also, higher education would credential students to be placed in higher paying jobs so that they could earn enough to buy the goods that a booming American economy was producing.

By the 1960s, higher education experienced enormous growth. For University of California President Clark Kerr, the “multiversity”was the institution critical for the development of a new global economy, scientific and technological advances, and the invention of new tools to fight the Cold War. In addition, social scientists and economists, studying development, would generate theories to guide public policy, particularly in poorer countries experiencing revolutionary ferment.

The massive growth in higher education from the 1960s to the new century led to increased university budgets, higher tuition costs, overtrained and underemployed college graduates, and a layer of overpaid administrators who had taken over the operations of most universities from the professor ranks. In addition, many non-professional workers at the university kept universities operational and were paid a living wage with justifiably secure benefits.

Now, in the midst of a deep economic crisis, political and economic elites are lobbying to create new structures of power in higher education while still supporting research, training, legitimating, and credentialing. The approach that is increasingly promoted by political leaders, educational foundations, and most important, boards of trustees of universities, is what Kevin Phillips labeled “market fundamentalism.”

The market fundamentalist approach emphasizes cutting public support for higher education and reducing financial support for students, particularly underrepresented students. In other words, as opposed to the era of the GI Bill, the operant vision is ultimately to reduce access to higher education which will contribute to the increasing inequality in wealth and income in the United States.

Also, market fundamentalism relies on the market to induce “competition” to reduce costs among universities. It encourages new profit-based universities that can sell college degrees cheaply, primarily by substituting on-line courses for campus experienced-based education. In addition, market fundamentalists call for forcing universities to make every academic unit in the university pay for itself.

What is new about the crisis in higher education today, what appointment of new presidents such as Tea Party friend Mitch Daniels represents, is that economic and political elites wish to continue the traditional functions of the university while reducing costs in higher education.

They want to transfer continuing costs to students and workers at the university. They are working to streamline university education to research on corporate agriculture, medicine, computer technology, military developments, and allied fields.

And they want to cut educational programs that link research, education, and community service. This may entail eliminating programs that cannot be linked to the making of profit, such as in literature, the arts, and various social sciences and cultural studies. This is probably what the U.S. Chamber of Commerce meant when it warned of “growing skepticism about whether those lucky enough to graduate have acquired the skills and knowledge necessary for success in the 21st century economy.”

And finally, since politics has never been absent from debates about higher education, in today’s context corporate elites including those in the media, wish to eliminate the enduring tradition of “academic freedom” which has celebrated the view that the university must be a venue for the pursuit of “the marketplace of ideas.”

Expect the university to be another emerging site for contestation and political struggle.

[Harry Targ is a professor of political science at Purdue University who lives in West Lafayette, Indiana. He blogs at Diary of a Heartland Radical — and that’s also the name of his new book which can be found at Lulu.com. Read more of Harry Targ’s articles on The Rag Blog.]

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RAG BLOG DEBATE / David P. Hamilton and Jay D. Jurie : Electoral Politics and the Left

Posted on July 11, 2012 by Thorne Dreyer

“Citizens United Carpet Bombing Democracy.” Cartoon by DonkeyHotey / Flickr Commons.

A Rag Blog debate:
Electoral politics and the left

David Hamilton argues that the U.S. federal elections in 2012 don’t merit being the focus of our attention, while Jay Jurie contends that they still offer worthwhile opportunities for progressives and that the electoral arena should not be abandoned to the Right.

By David P. Hamilton and Jay D. Jurie | The Rag Blog | July 10, 2012

The following exchange between David Hamilton and Jay Jurie began on The Rag Blog‘s email discussion group, a lively forum in which Rag Blog contributors and followers debate issues of the day with, shall we say, great vigor!

Being a presidential election year, the left in the U.S. is locked into its recurring debate on how to relate to the federal elections. There are always those who decide that the Democratic Party candidate is good enough or the Republican candidate is bad enough that it is essential to support the former — with one’s vote, if not with one’s enthusiasm.

Then there are always those who declare that the Democratic Party candidate is essentially subservient to the same corporate interests as the Republican and that we shouldn’t be associated with either. When this position involves a third party candidate such as Ralph Nader, the discussion can become bitter.

Here David Hamilton argues that the U.S. federal elections in 2012 don’t merit being the focus of our attention, while Jay Jurie contends that they still offer worthwhile opportunities for progressives and that the electoral arena should not be abandoned to the Right.

David P. Hamilton:
The corruption of U.S. electoral politics.

U.S. federal elections are corrupted by capitalist class money to the point that further participation by the Left primarily lends credence to a charade hiding the continuing evisceration of American democracy.

  • In 93% of races for the House of Representatives and 94% of races for the Senate, the candidate with the most money wins. In 98% of the races where the incumbent has the most money, the incumbent wins. The obvious strategy for a candidate is to have the most money; to have your own and/or cater to moneyed interests. For the moneyed interests, the obvious strategy is the way Reagan defeated the Soviet Union in the arms race, by making continued participation financially crippling if not impossible.

  • Presidential election spending is increasing geometrically.
    Total spending on U.S. presidential elections:
    1992 – $ 192.2 million.
    1996 – $ 239.9 million, up 25%.
    2000 – $ 343.1 million, up 43%.
    2004 – $ 717.9 million, up 109%
    2008 – $ 1,324.7 million, up 85%
    2012 – Estimates of total expenditures by all candidates in federal elections go over $5 billion. A conservative estimate is for a 100% increase in expenditures of all candidates in the presidential race over 2008, reaching a total of roughly 13 times more than 20 years ago. It is logical to expect this process of expenditure growth to accelerate markedly in the wake of the “Citizens United” decision.

  • In 2008, small contributions ($200 or less) provided 9% of the funding for House Democrats and 14% for House Republicans. Those percentages are historically declining. The rest comes from the 1% in the form of large contributions, PAC money and self-financing.

  • Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin won his recall election 53 to 47 while spending a record amount of money (over $50 million), outspending his opponent over 7 to 1 and receiving over two-thirds of his money from big out-of-state capitalist donors, specifically the Koch brothers.

In a capitalist hegemony such as in the U.S., all things of social value become commodified, especially political power. The strategy of the capitalist class, that richest less than 1% who own and control the major corporations, is to own the federal government by commodifying elections, largely because the federal government funnels hundreds of billions to them annually and protects their economic privileges.

A crucial part of their strategy is to increase the price of elections as much as possible so that elections must be bought at a price only they can afford. As their money increasingly dominates elections, democracy increasingly diminishes, the principle political objective of the capitalist class.

For the Left to participate in this electoral charade is to give it credibility it does not disserve. Whatever benefits might once have derived from participation now pale compared to the legitimacy the Left stands to gain by leading the denunciation of the system’s inherent corruption. There is no inside-outside strategy, because you don’t have that very expensive entrance ticket and the event is sold out.

Jay D. Jurie: 
Electoral politics: A path to the future or a road to ruin?

That money shapes elections is undeniable. National, state, and even most local elections cannot be won without enormous cash infusions.

As of April 30, the Obama campaign had raised nearly $217 million while the Romney campaign had raised more than $98 million. In the Ohio senatorial race, incumbent Democrat Sherrod Brown had raised over $12 million by March 31, while Republican Josh Mandel had raised over $7 million. Graphically depicting the funding disparities, Independent Scott Rupert had raised some $2,000 (Source: opensecrets.org).

Some contend that grossly disproportionate amounts of spending have made participation by progressives in the electoral process meaningless. However, there are other aspects that must be considered. One would be not just the amounts of money, but its sources.

While the U.S. Supreme Court Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission decision (2010) opened the floodgates to money, that includes cash from labor unions and civic organizations as well as corporate donors. In addition, individual contributors remain a significant factor. For example, the top five contributors to U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, included four labor unions and a citizens association. Of the nearly $5.4 million his re-election campaign has raised so far in the present electoral cycle, over $3 million came from small contributors, that is, those contributing less than $200 (Source: opensecrets.org.)

Although for-profits and wealthy donors have deeper pockets, funding from not-for-profit sources and small contributors may be significant, as shown in the Sanders example. Also illustrated by the Sanders example is the particular candidate or party involved.

Sanders has carefully constructed a base, and has such name recognition, that he may be very difficult to unseat in Vermont. In cases such as these, stepping away from the electoral arena would be self-defeating, it would only abandon turf that has already been won.

An aspect of vital importance is the campaign message, and how effectively it’s packaged and delivered. Particularly in swing elections, or districts, a well-crafted campaign message is an essential complement to campaign finance. Without a message that captures the mindset of the voters, or when running a scandal-ridden candidate, a monetary advantage may not suffice.

Depending on circumstances, timing may outweigh money. Since there is effectively a two-party system in the U.S., the only way people have to “punish” those in power is by voting “for the other guy.” Due to their displeasure with the George W. Bush regime by 2008, the Republicans took a beating. Two years later, the Democrats under President Obama took a “shellacking,” as he expressed it.

Most would likely agree that saturation of the media with campaign ads is the primary concern raised by the Citizens United decision. Those without the funding to outspend their opposition with ads usually understand they must rely instead on a ground game; going door to door, driving voters to the polls, and so on.

A good ground game can sometimes beat a well-financed corporate campaign. In 2004, the Florida branch of the now-defunct ACORN organization caught corporate interests off balance and got a minimum wage added to the state constitution.

Although the leadership of the Democratic Party functions as the junior partner of big business, there is no doubt that the Republicans are the senior partner. Historically, both parties have viewed it as important that some differences be maintained so as to preserve overall system legitimacy. So long as this Janus-style duality exists, the doors to moderation and a certain level of change have not been slammed shut.

For instance, it would be better for Sherrod Brown to remain in the Senate than for him to be beaten by Josh Mandel. If the playing field is abandoned to the far right, then so are appointments to the courts. Participation in electoral politics guarantees neither a rosy path to the future nor a road to ruin, but it remains part of a long journey that has to be taken.

There is no question but that campaign finance reform must be at the top of the list on any meaningful electoral reform agenda. Though it will take considerable pressure from outside the system, ultimately, this sort of change cannot be brought about without recourse to the electoral system. For those who want to participate in such an effort, go here to get involved with overturning Citizens United.

For more about why elections are an imperative component of a comprehensive social change strategy, see this excellent article in The Nation magazine:

David P. Hamilton’s response:

“[I]n political science terms, if you are outspent… the way that Republicans can outspend Democrats with unlimited corporate money, the Democrats are going to lose.” — Rachel Maddow on MSNBC.

“The system is totally gamed.” — Chris Hedges on Truthdig.

“I most certainly do believe the patient is critically ill, but… I haven’t given up hope entirely.” — Jay Jurie on Facebook.

Though admitting that the system is “critically ill,” Jay Jurie’s apologia for the existing electoral system would have us continue putting our energies into life-support mechanisms. He fails to mention that the patient is terminal.

There remain instances where participation in electoral politics continues to make sense, but the point is that with the onrushing tide of corporate money in politics, these instances are rapidly diminishing and those that remain are almost always restricted to supporting the less horrible of the two options presented to you by the 1%.

The idea that the financial support from non-profits can meaningfully mitigate the advantages of the for-profits ignores the existing wide disparity of financing and the actual record of overwhelming success enjoyed by better-financed corporate candidates.

The point is that when campaigns become more costly, as is happening now at a very rapid pace, the advantages of the wealthy increase. Jurie fails to acknowledge this dynamic or its implications for the future.

Sometimes electoral opportunities do arise on a local level that call for our commitment, but these are increasingly rare and don’t happen outside isolated constituencies. Bernie Sanders is a perfect example of such an aberration. He represents Vermont, which has the second smallest population of any state. There are more registered voters in the city of Austin than there are in Vermont.

Sanders ran statewide four times during the 1970’s without ever getting more than 6% of the vote. Finally, in 1981, Sanders won a mayoral race in Burlington, a college town with less than 40,000, by a 10-vote margin with four candidates running and the Democrats divided. Being the great guy he is, he won three more terms as mayor, but was defeated twice more before winning his first statewide office (on his seventh attempt) with his election to Congress in 1992.

He has consistently been reelected ever since and is now a U.S. Senator. That.experience was unique in time and place, little liberal Vermont in the late 20th century. I cannot conceive of a similar scenario occurring in any other state henceforth.

The capitalist hegemony is growing quickly. What Bernie Sanders once accomplished in Vermont, however laudable, is not a model that is very relevant today.

Leftist cadre should have more fundamental concerns than the devotion of their attention and political energy to helping elect Democrats. It is more important to focus on the rapid diminution of democracy that is concurrent with the rising power of corporate capitalist money, now dominating the electoral arena. The death of meaningful democracy given this power inequality is the principal issue of politics in the U.S. today.

Jurie’s argument essentially boils down to another rationalization for supporting Democrats, relying on their strongest argument, that the other guy is worse. This might be acceptable if you limit your political ambitions to marginal gains one might potentially achieve within the confines of identity politics.

Were gay rights my overriding goal, I would be more supportive of Obama. If your political horizons stop at verbiage in support of marriage equality, the right to fight in the imperial army, or the preservation of the Roe decision, you might be happy with the Democrats. But Obama is living proof that identity politics are innately reformist and do not significantly impact issues involving class relationships.

Capitalist hegemony can accommodate the civil rights of non-whites, women’s equality, and gay rights. It can live with legal pot and abortions. But it will not accept reforms that effect their class privileges, existing wealth and income inequality. Progressive taxation, taxing capital earnings the same as wages, estate taxes, wealth taxes, financial transaction taxes, uncapped social security taxes, widespread worker ownership, promotion of union membership, or the provision of good social services to the entire population are forbidden.

The capitalist class abhors democracy, a public sector devoted to social well-being for all, and the protection of the environment, all of which diminish their power and bottom line. It cannot tolerate the diminution of U.S. militarism or the end of a drug war, because it profits by tens of billions annually from each. Our electoral system is now incapable of impinging upon these core economic interests of the capitalist ruling class or their ownership of the political processes.

In response to this condition, Jurie recommends support for a constitutional amendment to reverse the Citizens United decision. This effort is doomed because it ignores of the fact that such an amendment would require the vote of two-thirds of each house of the Congress, plus majority passage by three-fourths of the state legislatures, all already densely populated by politicians on the payroll of the capitalist class and likely to soon become more so.

One might reasonably ask why a very large majority of these legislators, being corrupted fronts for the capitalist class, would vote against the class interests of their benefactors and themselves on a matter so grave as a constitutional amendment to reduce their power.

The Left, at least those to the left of the Democratic Party, has the opportunity to champion democracy. There is already widespread awareness of the rampant economic inequality and the rapid erosion of political democracy that has resulted from the growing influence of corporate money.

It was reflected in the instant popularity of the OWS themes. It is reflected in the lowest voter participation in the developed world. Anti-bankster consciousness is even common among Tea Party adherents and Ron Paul fans. It remains a consciousness without organized leadership. The Left can fill that breech.

But besides advocacy of both economic and political democracy, this leadership challenge requires a thorough critique of the advanced state of corruption of U.S. politics, maintenance of a steady focus on the overall system’s inherent undemocratic defects and rejection on principle of participation in all but the least corrupted electoral venues.

Jurie’s argument is trapped in the “duopoly” of conventional American two-party politics. Those who want fundamental change must escape that duopoly. Leftist leadership has more important things to do than support marginally better candidates trying to pass themselves off as reformers while hiding their corporate affiliations.

The electoral system engenders adherence to its norms, rewarding candidates who accommodate. It will increasingly operate in the interests of the capitalist class as the commodification of the electoral process continues unrestrained. To play in this rigged game is like being an old slot machine junkie living in a Vegas casino.

There is scant opportunity for an inside-outside strategy when there is no room available inside except at a price you cannot imagine.

Jay D. Jurie’s response:

“A revolutionary dialectic of the correct transitions must regard the ‘long march through the institutions’ as a practical and critical action in all social spheres. It must set as its goal the subversive-critical deepening of the contradictions, a process that has been made possible in all the institutions that participate in the organization of day-to-day life.” — Rudy Dutschke, German New Left leader, 1968.

In seeking a straw man for debate, David Hamilton has mischaracterized my position on electoral politics. For instance, my initial statement made it abundantly clear that I am acutely aware of the corrupting influence of money in politics, especially in the wake of the Citizens United decision.

My primary emphasis is on the construction of a vibrant grassroots movement that can challenge not only corporate power in the electoral arena, but replace capitalism itself with a system that, on a far more inclusive and democratic basis, serves the needs and aspirations of society as whole.

This would necessarily involve both electoral and non-electoral means. Not only would Hamilton abandon the electoral field of battle to corporate interests, so also would he leave millions in the lurch. Hundreds of thousands have fought for, and some have died, to secure the right to vote in this country over the past two and a half centuries. Most often the deck was stacked against them, but they put their shoulders to the wheel, built movements and slowly rolled society forward.

Electoral politics and social movements have had a reflexive relationship. Movements have made gaining wider public access to the ballot box possible, and use of the ballot has brought about important social changes. By way of example, the Civil Rights movement began after World War II and some 20 years later, resulted in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

 Since that time, African-Americans have not only experienced far greater access to accommodations and elected thousands of their own representatives to office, but have experienced access to numerous other opportunities, ranging from education to employment to fair housing.

To proclaim “game over” as Hamilton has done, denies all this history and those who not only fought for these gains, but for better or worse, those who still believe participation in the electoral process has some potential. To tell progressive constituencies such as labor, minorities, women, gays, or seniors that such participation is meaningless smacks of white upper middle class privilege, and will surely be regarded that way.

If the process doesn’t work, if it’s overwhelmed with money, and dominated by a duopoly, which it is, then as Rudi Dutschke informed us, all the more reason to be involved. There are a multitude of ways the present system can be confronted, challenging it to greater openness, responsiveness, and representation.

Again, the weight of history is behind this type of approach, and turning away from it does nothing to challenge the inherent contradictions. Exploiting these contradictions would eventually open the door to class conflict, or if not, at least help spark a legitimacy crisis.

Worse yet, while repudiating electoral participation, Hamilton provides nowhere else to turn. While he vaguely argues we should “champion democracy,” he doesn’t specify what that means. If change cannot be brought about through voting, then what else does Hamilton propose? He essentially urges a boycott of the polls in return for nothing to show for such an effort. This is a “bargain” very few will likely accept.

Hamilton’s position would be far more persuasive were he to propose a non-electoral strategy that might be viewed as feasible and capable of actually “making a difference.”

This reply is dedicated to the memory of Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore, who in 1951 gave their lives, in part, in the struggle to secure suffrage for everyone.

[David P. Hamilton, a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin in history and government has been an activist since the Sixties when he was a contributor to the original Rag. Jay D. Jurie, a resident of Sanford, Florida, has been involved with social change for several decades. He researches, writes, and teaches in the areas of public policy, public administration, and urban planning. Read articles by David P. Hamilton and Jay D. Jurie on The Rag Blog.]

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Jim Turpin : The Myth of ‘American Exceptionalism’

Posted on July 6, 2012 by Thorne Dreyer

Image from The America Issue. Inset image below from Reuters and The American.

Let me count the ways: 
The myth of ‘American Exceptionalism’

By Jim Turpin | The Rag Blog | July 6, 2012

“The position of the Americans is therefore quite exceptional, and it may be believed that no democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one” — Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835)

[Jim Turpin discusses the issues raised in this article with Thorne Dreyer on Rag Radio on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin and streamed live on the web. Listen to the podcast of Dreyer’s interview with Jim Turpin here.]

Though this early 19th century French political thinker extolled the Puritanical virtues and individualism of the newly born American government, there is no way he could have seen this being co-opted two centuries later as fervent nationalism by unscrupulous politicians of both political parties.

This belief in a “Puritan Americana” as qualitatively superior to the rest of the world, is frequently projected by many American politicians, including Ronald Reagan.

In his January 11, 1989 farewell speech he weaves his image of Americ

I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don’t know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity.

This “shining city” reference is straight from John Winthrop’s sermon, “A Model of Christian Charity” (1630), on the voyage to the Massachusetts Bay Colony:

For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world.

Winthrop’s thesis is preparation of his Puritan brethren for a society based on charity and decent human behavior in a harsh and new environment.

Winthrop states:

There is a time when a Christian must sell all and give to the poor, as they did in the Apostles’ times. There is a time also when Christians (though they give not all yet) must give beyond their ability, as they of Macedonia (2 Cor. 8).

Reagan mentions none of this, and his administration was not known for charity to the needy, from the Savings & Loan debacle to the total lack of response to the AIDs crisis of the 1980’s.

But was Reagan right? Are we exceptional as a people and country? I would answer “yes” and here is how the United States should be considered “exceptional”:

  • Massive U.S. military spending along with waging war and troop presence around the world
  • Record levels of U.S. poverty, hunger and unemployment compared to other countries
  • Increased power of the U.S. “national security state” that has gutted democratic principles
  • Record profits by U.S. corporations with no returns to the American people

Massive U.S. military spending and worldwide troop presence

The United States remains the number one country in the world on military expenditure.

In 2010, the U.S. spent $698 billion dollars on its military, as much as the top 15 other countries combined (including China, the U.K., France, and Russia) or 43% of the total world share of military spending. Though the U.S accounts for about 5% of the world’s population, we now account for almost 50% of the military spending.

The United States has military presence in over 150 countries around the world including such countries as Japan, Germany, and South Korea, from wars and conflicts that were concluded over 60 years ago.

Our very presence is an imperial footprint that both is symbolic for the occupied and has real life and death consequences for civilians.

In December of 2011, the President after almost nine years of occupation and unilateral war, finally withdrew all combat troops from Iraq and left a huge force of corporate mercenaries behind as proxy military.

What he did not mention to the American people was the massive economic toll that both wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have inflicted upon the American taxpayer.

According to the Watson Institute of International Studies at Brown University, Cost of War (2011), the costs of these two conflicts since 2001 are in the trillions.

Estimates for total dollars spent or projected to be spent ranges from $3.2 to 4.0 trillion and include:

  • $1.31 trillion dollars for the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan
  • $652.4 billion on additional “base funds” (overage for defense projects)
  • $185.4 billion on interest from borrowing monies from foreign countries
  • $74.2 billion in “foreign assistance” to the governments of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan
  • $400 billion on “homeland security” since initiating the “War on Terror”
  • $32 billion for more than a million veterans on medical and disability benefits
  • $1 trillion projected costs to veterans for medical/disability in the next 40 years. Does spending on war create jobs and if so how many?

Per the Cost of War report:

Wars in general stimulate demand for various outputs such as aircraft, ammunition, and uniforms.

Approximately 8.3 jobs are created by every $1 million in military spending… In fact, public funds would have created more jobs in the past decade if they had been invested in such industries or sectors as home weatherization, construction, healthcare, or education.

A million dollars of spending would create 15.5 jobs in public education, 14.3 jobs in healthcare, 12 jobs in home weatherization, or about the same number of jobs in various renewable energy technologies. A million dollars spent on construction (residential and non-residential structures) creates 11.1 direct and indirect jobs.

Record levels of U.S. poverty, hunger, and unemployment

The U.S Census Bureau reported in September 2011 that:

The nation’s official poverty rate in 2010 was 15.1 percent, up from 14.3 percent in 2009 — the third consecutive annual increase in the poverty rate. There were 46.2 million people in poverty in 2010, up from 43.6 million in 2009 — the fourth consecutive annual increase and the largest number in the 52 years for which poverty estimates have been published.

Additionally, 20.5 million Americans live in extreme poverty. This means their family’s cash income is less than half of the poverty line, or about $10,000 a year for a family of four.

Poverty can be defined and measured many different ways, which makes global comparison difficult, and can be based on GDP per capita, “poverty lines” based on gross salary, “purchasing parity power” and other measures.

The Economist recently detailed the measurement differences:

Poverty means different things in different countries. In Europe, the poor are those whose income falls below 60% of the median. Britain uses three measures: one relative, one absolute and a broader indicator of material deprivation, such as whether a child can celebrate his birthday. The concept of poverty becomes even more slippery when attempting international comparisons. The United Nations’ “human-development index” assesses countries across a range of indicators, such as schooling and life expectancy.

Using the United Nations’ “human-development index” (HDI) in the U.N.’s Human Development Report 2011, the United States ranks 4th behind Norway, Australia, and the Netherlands. This compares more favorably to the countries we recently have occupied (Iraq at 132 and Afghanistan at 172).

Though the United States HDI rating appears positive, the fact that over 46 million Americans live in poverty doesn’t help those struggling daily to survive in our country.

With poverty, inevitably comes hunger, and in one of the richest countries in the world, the United States has appalling hunger statistics. The governmental term for hunger is “food insecurity” and “very low food security” and the USDA in 2010 published remarkable hunger statistics including:

  • In 2010, 48.8 million Americans lived in food insecure households, 32.6 million adults and 16.2 million children.
  • In 2010, 14.5 percent of households (17.2 million households) were food insecure.
  • In 2010, 5.4 percent of households (6.4 million households) experienced very low food security.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, nine states exhibited statistically significant higher household food insecurity rates than the U.S. national average 2008-2010:

Texas ranks second worst after Mississippi…

  • United States      14.6%
  • Mississippi         19.4%
  • Texas                   18.8%
  • Arkansas             18.6%
  • Alabama              17.3%
  • Georgia               16.9%
  • Ohio                    16.4%
  • Florida                16.1%
  • California           15.9%
  • North Carolina   15.7%

Along with hunger comes the availability of fresh and healthy foods to the citizens of the United States, especially to low income families struggling to feed their families. A new USDA website “Food Desert Locator” indicates 10% of American families live in a “food desert”. A “food desert” is defined as any census area where at least 20% of inhabitants are below the poverty line and 33% live more than a mile from a supermarket. This means you are both poor and have little or no access to fresh and healthy food.

Unemployment remains a staggering statistic in the post 2008 recession and economic collapse for the citizens of the United States.

The most recent U.S. Bureau of Labor & Statistics report from May 4, 2012 details:

Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (7.5 percent), adult women (7.4 percent), teenagers (24.9 percent), whites (7.4 percent), and Hispanics (10.3 percent) showed little or no change in April, while the rate for blacks (13.0 percent) declined over the month…The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) was little changed at 5.1 million in April. These individuals made up 41.3 percent of the unemployed.

Bottom line from this report is, long term unemployment (for 27 weeks or more) for everyone is common and especially bad if you are Black (13.0%) or Hispanic (10.3%)… sadly, even returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan have a 9.0% unemployment rate for men and 9.9% rate for women. Welcome home veterans…

Rise of the U.S. national security state

As I have seen written on many protest banners lately, “Orwell’s 1984 was meant to be a warning, not an instruction manual.”

The United States since 9/11 has created a massive bureaucratic and basically unaccountable national security apparatus that not only is costing billions of dollars, but has unfettered access to information about the American public, that even 10 years ago would have seemed unimaginable. It has grown exponentially in the last 10 years and seems almost unstoppable.

The rise of this security apparatus seems to benefit one American institution: corporations.

The Washington Post in 2010, spent two years researching this topic in a series of articles called “Top Secret America,” including an attempt at listing corporations based on type of work, which shows hundreds of companies being paid billions of dollars for this clandestine work. There remains no one source that can firmly account how much is spent annually in this area.

Some of this report’s findings include:

  • Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security, and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.
  • An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.
  • In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings — about 17 million square feet of space.
  • Many security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating redundancy and waste. For example, 51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks.
  • Analysts who make sense of documents and conversations obtained by foreign and domestic spying share their judgment by publishing 50,000 intelligence reports each year — a volume so large that many are routinely ignored.

Beyond the enormous cost of these entrenched institutions, what is the effect to the constitutional principles of this country? Have we as a nation given over the rights expressed so eloquently in the Constitution and Bill of Rights, so that we can be “safe”?

From the new laws that allow indefinite detention and assassination of American citizens without trial, to the use of electronic surveillance and “non-military” application of drones in the United States, many legal and constitutional scholars now fear the worst has come to pass.

Record profits by U.S. corporations

While worker’s wages and net wealth have dropped precipitously since 2008, calculations for 2010 show that corporate profits account for 14% of the total national income, the largest rise since 1942, “when the need for war materials filled the order books of companies at the same time the government imposed wage and price controls, holding down the costs companies had to pay.”

Bottom line, companies are making massive profits at a time when most Americans have lost huge portions of their net accrued wealth.

The Federal Reserve released its “Survey of Consumer Finances” report this last June 2012 and the report details that middle class American families lost a staggering 39% of their net worth — from $126,400 to $77,300 — putting them roughly on par with their worth in 1992… a 20-year loss of net worth that sent what remains of the “middle class” reeling. The majority of this impact was a result of the housing crisis and recession that began in 2008.

So if the middle class was sucker-punched by the economy, how have corporate CEOs fared during this time period? Have they tightened their belts like the rest of us? Well… no.

The head of a typical public company made $9.6 million in 2011, according to an analysis by The Associated Press using data from Equilar, an executive-pay research firm.

That was up more than 6 percent from the previous year, and marks the second year in a row of increases. The figure is also the highest since the AP began tracking executive compensation in 2006.

The typical American worker would have to labor for 244 years to make what the typical boss of a big public company makes in one. The median pay for U.S. workers was about $39,300 last year. That was up 1 percent from the year before, not enough to keep pace with inflation.

This obscene accumulation of wealth by a corporate plutocracy was one of the driving forces behind Occupy Wall Street (OWS) in September 2011, one of the most creative activist movements in decades.

In OWS’ “Principles of Solidarity,” they state: “We are daring to imagine a new socio-political and economic alternative that offers greater possibility of equality.”

OWS, though belittled by both conservative and progressive pundits, put forth the following points of unity:

  • Engaging in direct and transparent participatory democracy;
  • Exercising personal and collective responsibility;
  • Recognizing individuals’ inherent privilege and the influence it has on all interactions;
  • Empowering one another against all forms of oppression;
  • Redefining how labor is valued;
  • The sanctity of individual privacy;
  • The belief that education is human right; and
  • Making technologies, knowledge, and culture open to all to freely access, create, modify, and distribute.

America is indeed exceptional on many levels. We remain a country envied around the globe for our ability to create, think, and believe we can be a better place for all people. Maybe we only now are beginning to see that war, nationalism, wealth, and power are not the tools to make this happen.

[Rag Blog contributor Jim Turpin is a native Austinite and member of CodePink Austin. He also volunteers for the GI coffeehouse Under the Hood Café at Ft. Hood in Killeen, Texas.]

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RAG RADIO / Thorne Dreyer : Cristina Herencia on Indigenous Peoples and Globalization

Posted on July 6, 2012 by Thorne Dreyer

Peruvian social psychologist Cristina Herencia on Rag Radio, Friday, June 29, 2012. Video by Jeff Zavala of ZGraphix who filmed the show live at the KOOP studios in Austin.

Rag Radio:
Peruvian social psychologist Cristina Herencia
on indigenous peoples and globalization

By Rag Radio | The Rag Blog | July 5, 2012

Peruvian social psychologist Cristina Herencia discussed the effect of globalization on the world’s indigenous peoples with Thorne Dreyer on Rag Radio, Friday, June 29, 2012.

Rag Radio features hour-long in-depth interviews and discussion about issues of progressive politics, culture, and history. The syndicated show is produced in the studios of KOOP-FM, Austin’s cooperatively-run all-volunteer community radio station. It is broadcast live on KOOP and streamed live on the Internet, and is rebroadcast on Sunday mornings on WFTE-FM in Mt. Cobb and Scranton, PA.

You can listen to Cristina Herencia on Rag Radio here:


On the show Herencia, who works in interdisciplinary social sciences with a specialty in the study of indigenous peoples, discusses the effect of globalization and the spread of global capitalism on native peoples, especially in the Americas.

She also addresses the historical — and continuing — injustices committed against native peoples; the reemergence of indigenous peoples’ movements on the public scene and the role of the United Nations in providing them with a forum; and what she believes the non-patriarchial, egalitarian, earth-rooted Indian cultures have to offer a contemporary world in crisis.

Herencia, who has been teaching introductory sociology at Austin Community College, has a Masters in Experimental Psychology from the State University of New York (SUNY) and a Ph.D in Latin American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin.

Her primary research deals with social identity in Native Andean peoples and cultures, especially in relation to gender, and the impact of globalization on their lives.

She has presented talks and papers in the United States and in Chile, Peru, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, Peru, and Spain — and in Havana and Paris. She attended the 1992 Columbus Quincentennial Commemoration and for the last nine years has participated in United Nations forums on indigenous peoples.

Rag Radio has aired since September 2009 on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin. Hosted and produced by Rag Blog editor and long-time alternative journalist Thorne Dreyer, a pioneer of the Sixties underground press movement, Rag Radio is broadcast every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CST) on KOOP, 91.7-fM in Austin, and is rebroadcast on Sundays at 10 a.m. (EST) 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 6, 2012, Maria Elena Martinez and Luz Bazan Gutierrez examine the legacy of the historic Raza Unida Party of the 1970s.

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Gregg Barrios : The Charmed Life of Nora Ephron

Posted on July 5, 2012 by Thorne Dreyer

Nora Ephron. Image from Indiewire.

Eat, love, and kvetch:
Nora Ephron’s charmed life

As much as she kvetches, she never whines. Her unique ability to take any pain in her life and turn it into a satiric essay or a romantic film script and have the last laugh is rare.

By Gregg Barrios | The Rag Blog | July 5, 2012

Nora Ephron lived a charmed life. Her parents were film writers, and she attended Wellesley. But again, she carved her own career single-handedly at a time when there were few bankable women directors in Hollywood (Penny Marshall and Barbra Streisand come to mind).

Her foray into film began as a scriptwriter when she decided to take a stab at writing a script for the film version of All the President’s Men with her then-husband Carl Bernstein, the book’s co-author. Their draft never made it to the screen, but the experience left Ephron smitten with screenwriting — something she said she’d never do because her parents had been script writers.

My first exposure to Ephron’s work came in 1983 with a book (Heartburn) and a movie (Silkwood). While Silkwood was her first collaboration with Mike Nichols (I consider Ephron to be Elaine May’s long-lost soul sister separated at birth), it was the book that had me reading non-stop. Heartburn was a poisoned dart aimed at then husband Bernstein’s cheating that led to an acrimonious divorce. Its opening lines typify her later style.

The first day I did not think it was funny. I didn’t think it was funny the third day either, but I managed to make a little joke about it. “The most unfair thing about this whole business is that I can’t even date.”

She can’t date because, like the real life Ephron, she is seven months pregnant when she discovers her husband’s infidelity. As much as she kvetches, she never whines. Her unique ability to take any pain in her life and turn it into a satiric essay or a romantic film script and have the last laugh is rare.

At heart, Ephron loved the old Hollywood films with dashing leading men and ladies. She uses that interest in her early successful films that paired Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, by reimagining old Hollywood classics. That was the best thing about her film work. She took You’ve Got Mail from Ernst Lubitsch’s The Shop Around the Corner and made it work 50 years later for audiences and at the box office.

Her Sleepless in Seattle was also a Hollywood remake of An Affair to Remember. Only instead of the tragic ending, the couple reunites at the top of the Empire State Building. When asked what makes a director good, she said, “The best directors love actors.”

Interestingly, her directed films focused on courtship and divorce — not marriage. For Ephron, the real drama wasn’t in the day-to-day boredom of marriage. Yet the 50-year marriage of Julia Child and her husband found its way to the center of her last film, Julie & Julia. Had Ephron mellowed or had her 20-year plus marriage to writer Nicholas Pileggi given her the relationship of her life? As she wrote in a six-word biography, “Secret to life, marry an Italian.”

Her one-liners on everything from death to the purpose of life appeared in her collected essays that were witty as they were acerbic. A latter-day Dorothy Parker or a female Woody Allen are some of the descriptions of her essay writing — especially in her last pieces for The New Yorker.

Her short, satiric film critiques of recent literary/film hits are among my favorite Ephron gems. In “The Girl with the Umlaut,” she takes aim at Steig Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander and spoofs his style in a laugh out loud manner. In “No, But We Saw the Movie,” she takes on Carmac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men as her clueless narrator confuses Javier Bardem for Benicio Del Toro.

Food and cooking have always been a part of Ephron’s DNA. Heartburn is filled with recipes — perhaps a template for Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate. In When Harry Met Sally, the film’s iconic line (“I’ll have what she’s having”) takes place in a restaurant, and a fellow journalist contends the famous fake orgasm scene channels Jack Lemmon’s allergy scene at a diner in the Gene Saks’ movie version of Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple.

In her collection, I Remember Nothing, she takes some pointed barbs at aging, and lists all the things she will miss and others that she won’t miss after she’s passed on. She lists Nathan’s hot dogs and bacon among the foods she’ll miss. And while some see Ephron as the quintessential Jewish yenta, she once said, “You can never have too much butter — that is my belief. If I have a religion, that’s it.”

When I saw her and sister Delia’s play off-Broadway in March, Love, Loss and What I Wore, I laughed myself silly (“Any American woman under 40 who says she’s never dressed as Madonna is either lying or Amish”) and then some when she described their play as “The Vagina Monologues without the vagina.”

Best of all, her sage entreaty to a graduating class at Wellesley: “Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.”

Nora, I miss you already. Reconsider.

[Gregg Barrios is a journalist, playwright, and poet living in San Antonio. Gregg, who wrote for The Rag in Sixties Austin, is on the board of directors of the National Book Critics Circle. His play I-DJ premieres in July at Overtime’s Gregg Barrios Theater in San Antonio. This article was first published at the San Antonio Current. Contact Gregg at gregg.barrios@gmail.com. Read more articles by Gregg Barrios on The Rag Blog.]

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Marc Estrin : ‘When in the Course of…’

Posted on July 5, 2012 by Thorne Dreyer

Image from skiptomylou.

A tale of two courses
of human events

‘In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury…’

By Marc Estrin | The Rag Blog | July 5, 2012

A recent Rasmussen poll found that 70% of Americans “Still Agree with Declaration of Independence.” If that is the case, it may be that they haven’t recently read beneath the fold to the fine print.

There, among others, we find as reasons for revolution a government’s

  • refusing Assent to Laws,
  • refusing to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people,
  • invading the rights of the people,
  • obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither,
  • obstructing the Administration of Justice,
  • keeping among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures,
  • affecting to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power,
  • subjecting us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws,
  • quartering large bodies of armed troops among us,
  • protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit,
  • imposing Taxes on us without our Consent,
  • cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world,
  • depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury,
  • transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences,
  • taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments,
  • transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny.

Because “In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury,” the writers and signers of the Declaration conclude that the government is “unfit to be the ruler of a free people.” In their case, they did something about it.

[Marc Estrin is a writer, activist, and cellist, living in Burlington, Vermont. His novels, Insect Dreams, The Half Life of Gregor Samsa, The Education of Arnold Hitler, Golem Song, The Lamentations of Julius Marantz, and The Good Doctor Guillotin have won critical acclaim. His memoir, Rehearsing With Gods: Photographs and Essays on the Bread & Puppet Theater (with Ron Simon, photographer) won a 2004 theater book of the year award. Read more articles by Marc Estrin on The Rag Blog.]

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Harry Targ : Revisiting the Cuban Revolution

Posted on July 5, 2012 by Thorne Dreyer

Havana street scene in 2010. Inset below: school kids in Havana, 2010. Photos by Desmond Boylan / Reuters.

Revisiting the Cuban revolution

Cuban society has been an experimental laboratory… If one set of policies became problematic, the Cubans moved in different directions. Usually change came after heated debate at all levels of society.

By Harry Targ /The Rag Blog / July 5, 2012

I participated in the 2012 “Seminar on Socialist Renewal and the Capitalist Crisis” co-sponsored by the Radical Philosophy Association and the Institute of Philosophy, University of Havana. More than 40 U.S./Canadian/ Latin American scholars met in conference with at least 75 Cuban scholars in a five-day conference to discuss the political and economic changes occurring in Cuba and the United States.

I purposely entitle this essay “revisiting the Cuban Revolution” because I came away from this exciting conference convinced that the revolution continues. I say this because I saw no reason to revise what I wrote in 1992 about the Cuban Revolution (Cuba and the USA: A New World Order? International Publishers, 6):

…the Cuban revolution (even until this day) has constituted a living experiment that most progressive forces around the world identify with. Even though each society has its own history, class structure, level of development, and revolutionary potential, Cuba’s desire to create a government to serve its people and at the same time to transform them from a traditional consciousness to a revolutionary consciousness is shared by progressives everywhere. For progressives, Cuba is a laboratory, a grand social experiment that will provide knowledge for others as they seek fundamental change in their own societies… Cuba’s successes in the years ahead are successes of all progressive forces and, similarly Cuba’s defeats are defeats for all who wish to create egalitarian and humane societies.

The idea of “revolution” refers to a fundamental transformation of economic and political structures and peoples’ consciousness of their place in society and the values that should determine human behavior. Also, revolution is not a fixed “thing”but a process. That means that changes in structures, patterns of behavior, and consciousness are changing over time and in the case of revolution are moving toward, rather than away from, more complete human fulfillment.

What has been most fascinating to observe about the Cuban Revolution is its constantly changing character. Cubans have debated and made decisions about gradual versus fundamental changes, the need to experiment with different ways to allocate scarce national resources and, most critical, how to respond to external economic, political, and military assaults.

Cuban society has been an experimental laboratory, changing public policies as contexts demand. If one set of policies became problematic, the Cubans moved in different directions. Usually change came after heated debate at all levels of society.

For example, after the 26th of July Movement seized power, the revolutionary regime launched programs to reduce rents for urban dwellers, established a nationwide literacy campaign, and after a cool U.S. response to the new government, put in place a large agrarian reform program. As United States hostility escalated Cuba established diplomatic and economic relations with the former Soviet Union. From that point U.S./Cuban hostilities became permanent.

In the mid-1960s, Cuba engaged in a great debate, to some degree unresolved, between those who wanted to move the Revolution along the path to “moral incentives,” that is creating a society in which people act because of their commitment to communist ideals, versus those who argued that in the short run “material incentives,” wages and benefits, needed to serve as the source of human motivation.

Later, the Cuban government embarked on a campaign to produce more sugar than ever before to earn scarce foreign exchange in order to advance the domestic economy. The 10 million ton sugar campaign failed with negative consequences for the sectors of Cuban society that were ignored. Then Cuba embraced the Soviet model of development, including joining the Eastern European Common Market.

By the 1980s, while the economy grew, Cubans saw a decline in the commitment to the Revolution. This recognition led to a campaign of “Rectification,” to reinstill in society and consciousness, the spirit of the Revolution. When the Socialist Bloc collapsed between 1989 and 1991, once again the Cuban Revolution had to adapt. “The Special Period” was instituted in the face of a decline in the economy of at least 40 percent. The Revolution survived, contrary to the predictions of outside experts.

In the 21st century, despite devastating hurricanes, a global economic crisis, and an escalating United States economic blockade, the Revolution continued. Now, the Cubans are embarking on a new set of policies that are designed to overcome economic stagnation, inadequate agricultural productivity, bureaucracy and corruption in government, and insufficient grassroots participation in decision-making, particularly at the work place.

After extensive debate in the society at large, from the leadership of the Communist Party to virtually every workplace, neighborhood and village, the Cubans have decided on new structures and policies.

The new policy guidelines include the expansion of a market in the production of goods and services. This expansion will include a dramatic shift of employment from the state sector to self-employment. Emphasis will be placed on developing cooperatives in manufacturing and services as well as in agriculture.

In the agricultural sector efforts are being initiated to encourage a dramatic increase in those who can return to the land, increasing domestic food production while reducing the need to import food from abroad. New forms of grassroots participation in addition to revitalizing the mass organizations will occur. And the ration system of food distribution will be replaced by the establishment of a safety net for those still in need of food. And where possible, enterprise autonomy, such as in the renovation of Old Havana, will be encouraged and supported.

The new guidelines, over 300 in all, are designed to renovate economic and political institutions, stimulate local entrepreneurial enterprise, increase political participation, and overcome the continuing economic crisis that a small country such as Cuba finds itself in as a result of natural and political disasters as well as a continued effort by the “Colossus of the North” to overthrow the regime.

Debate within Cuban society (and among our North American delegation) about these new guidelines has been animated. Perhaps most basic is the concern about whether the economic reforms will undermine the Socialist character of Cuban society after over 60 years of struggle. Some worry that the introduction of markets may undermine the spirit of compassion and revolutionary consciousness that was inspired by the heroic Che Guevara and the band of scruffy revolutionaries who overthrew a neocolonial regime in 1959.

Still others debate about whether cooperatives constitute a productive and yet inspirational step in the long history of building Socialism and Communism. And what about youth, people ask. Is the revolution ancient history for young people, a youthful population that has had access to a rich educational experience and live a healthful life. Will they have the same fervor for the Revolution that their elders and foreign friends have had?

And, in fairness to the young, how can the Revolution be preserved while serving the lives of people whose historical experiences are different from their elders?

There are no easy answers to these questions; no guarantees of success; no convincing narratives of a linear development from a contradictory present to a utopian future. But, as I clearly saw in 1990 when I started attending meetings of U.S. and Cuban scholars, there is reason for hope. The Cuban Revolution has survived, given so much to the world, and continued to intrigue progressives everywhere. I returned from my encounter to Cuba in June 2012, with renewed optimism.

[Harry Targ is a professor of political science at Purdue University who lives in West Lafayette, Indiana. He blogs at Diary of a Heartland Radical — and that’s also the name of his new book which can be found at Lulu.com. Read more of Harry Targ’s articles on The Rag Blog.]

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