I didn't write this. Tim Wise did. I am reprinting it because It is a most important document on race. I hope you will take the time to read it and let me know your thoughts.
March 18, 2008
Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama and the Unacceptability of Truth
Of National Lies and Racial America
By TIM WISE
For most white folks, indignation just doesn't wear well. Once affected or conjured up, it reminds one of a pudgy man, wearing a tie that may well have fit him when he was fifty pounds lighter, but which now cuts off somewhere above his navel and makes him look like an idiot.
Indignation doesn't work for most whites, because having remained sanguine about, silent during, indeed often supportive of so much injustice over the years in this country--the theft of native land and genocide of indigenous persons, and the enslavement of Africans being only two of the best examples--we are just a bit late to get into the
game of moral rectitude. And once we enter it, our efforts at righteousness tend to fail the test of sincerity.
But here we are, in 2008, fuming at the words of Pastor Jeremiah Wright, of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago--occasionally Barack Obama's pastor, and the man whom Obama credits with having brought him to Christianity--for merely reminding us of those evils about which we have remained so quiet, so dismissive, so unconcerned. It is not the crime that bothers us, but the remembrance of it, the
unwillingness to let it go--these last words being the first ones uttered by most whites it seems whenever anyone, least of all an "angry black man" like Jeremiah Wright, foists upon us the bill of particulars for several centuries of white supremacy.
But our collective indignation, no matter how loudly we announce it,cannot drown out the truth. And as much as white America may not be able to hear it (and as much as politics may require Obama to condemn it) let us be clear, Jeremiah Wright fundamentally told the truth.
Oh I know that for some such a comment will seem shocking. After all, didn't he say that America "got what it deserved" on 9/11? And didn't he say that black people should be singing "God Damn America" because of its treatment of the African American community throughout the years?
Well actually, no he didn't.
Wright said not that the attacks of September 11th were justified, but that they were, in effect, predictable. Deploying the imagery of chickens coming home to roost is not to give thanks for the return of the poultry or to endorse such feathered homecoming as a positive good; rather, it is merely to note two things: first, that what goes around,
indeed, comes around--a notion with longstanding theological
grounding--and secondly, that the U.S. has indeed engaged in more than enough violence against innocent people to make it just a tad bit hypocritical for us to then evince shock and outrage about an attack on ourselves, as if the latter were unprecedented.
He noted that we killed far more people, far more innocent civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki than were killed on 9/11 and "never batted an eye." That this statement is true is inarguable, at least amongst sane people. He is correct on the math, he is correct on the innocence of the dead (neither city was a military target), and he is most definitely correct on the lack of remorse or even self-doubt about the
act: sixty-plus years later most Americans still believe those attacks were justified, that they were needed to end the war and "save American lives."
But not only does such a calculus suggest that American lives are inherently worth more than the lives of Japanese civilians (or, one supposes, Vietnamese, Iraqi or Afghan civilians too), but it also ignores the long-declassified documents, and President Truman's own war diaries, all of which indicate clearly that Japan had already signaled
its desire to end the war, and that we knew they were going to surrender, even without the dropping of atomic weapons. The conclusion to which these truths then attest is simple, both in its basic veracity and it monstrousness: namely, that in those places we committed premeditated and deliberate mass murder, with no justification whatsoever; and yet for saying that I will receive more hate mail, more hostility, more dismissive and contemptuous responses than will those
who suggest that no body count is too high when we're the ones doing the killing. Jeremiah Wright becomes a pariah, because, you see, we much prefer the logic of George Bush the First, who once said that as President he would "never apologize for the United States of America. I don't care what the facts are."
And Wright didn't say blacks should be singing "God Damn America." He was suggesting that blacks owe little moral allegiance to a nation that has treated so many of them for so long as animals, as persons undeserving of dignity and respect, and which even now locks up hundreds of thousands of non-violent offenders (especially for drug possession), even while whites who do the same crimes (and according to the data, when it comes to drugs, more often in fact), are walking around free. His reference to God in that sermon was more about what God will do to such a nation, than it was about what should or
shouldn't happen. It was a comment derived from, and fully in keeping with, the black prophetic tradition, and although one can surely disagree with the theology (I do, actually, and don't believe that any God either blesses or condemns nation states for their actions), the statement itself was no call for blacks to turn on America. If anything, it was a demand that America earn the respect of black people, something the evidence and history suggests it has yet to do.
Finally, although one can certainly disagree with Wright about his suggestion that the government created AIDS to get rid of black folks--and I do, for instance--it is worth pointing out that Wright isn't the only one who has said this. In fact, none other than Bill Cosby (oh yes, that Bill Cosby, the one white folks love because of his recent moral crusade against the black poor) proffered his belief in
the very same thing back in the early '90s in an interview on CNN, when he said that AIDS may well have been created to get rid of people whom the government deemed "undesirable" including gays and racial minorities.
So that's the truth of the matter: Wright made one comment that is highly arguable, but which has also been voiced by white America's favorite black man, another that was horribly misinterpreted and stripped of all context, and then another that was demonstrably accurate. And for this, he is pilloried and made into a virtual enemy of the state; for this, Barack Obama may lose the support of just enough white folks to cost him the Democratic nomination, and/or the Presidency; all of it, because Jeremiah Wright, unlike most preachers opted for truth. If he had been one of those "prosperity ministers" who says Jesus wants nothing so much as for you to be rich, like Joel Osteen, that would have been fine. Had he been a retread bigot like Falwell was, or Pat Robertson is, he might have been criticized, but he would have remained in good standing and surely not have damaged a Presidential candidate in this way. But unlike Osteen, and Falwell, and Robertson, Jeremiah Wright refused to feed his parishioners lies.
What Jeremiah Wright knows, and told his flock--though make no mistake, they already knew it--is that 9/11 was neither the first, nor worst act of terrorism on American soil. The history of this nation for folks of color, was for generations, nothing less than an intergenerational hate
crime, one in which 9/11s were woven into the fabric of everyday life: hundreds of thousands of the enslaved who died from the conditions of their bondage; thousands more who were lynched (as many as 10,000 in the first few years after the Civil War, according to testimony in the Congressional Record at the time); millions of indigenous persons wiped off the face of the Earth. No, to some, the horror of 9/11 was not new.
To some it was not on that day that "everything changed." To some, everything changed four hundred years ago, when that first ship landed at what would become Jamestown. To some, everything changed when their ancestors were forced into the hulls of slave ships at Goree Island and brought to a strange land as chattel. To some, everything changed when they were run out of Northern Mexico, only to watch it become the
Southwest United States, thanks to a war of annihilation initiated by the U.S. government. To some, being on the receiving end of terrorism has been a way of life. Until recently it was absolutely normal in fact.
But white folks have a hard time hearing these simple truths. We find it almost impossible to listen to an alternative version of reality. Indeed, what seems to bother white people more than anything, whether in the recent episode, or at any other time, is being confronted with the recognition that black people do not, by and large, see the world like we do; that black people, by and large, do not view America as
white people view it. We are, in fact, shocked that this should be so, having come to believe, apparently, that the falsehoods to which we cling like a kidney patient clings to a dialysis machine, are equally shared by our darker-skinned compatriots.
This is what James Baldwin was talking about in his classic 1972 work, No Name in the Street, wherein he noted:
"White children, in the main, and whether they are rich or poor, grow up with a grasp of reality so feeble that they can very accurately be described as deluded--about themselves and the world they live in. White people have managed to get through their entire lifetimes in this euphoric state, but black people have not been so lucky: a black man who sees the world the way John Wayne, for example, sees it would not
be an eccentric patriot, but a raving maniac."
And so we were shocked in 1987, when Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall declined to celebrate the bicentennial of the Constitution, because, as he noted, most of that history had been one of overt racism and injustice, and to his way of thinking, the only history worth celebrating had been that of the past three or four decades.
We were shocked to learn that black people actually believed that a white cop who was a documented racist might frame a black man; and we're shocked to learn that lots of black folks still perceive the U.S. as a racist nation--we're literally stunned that people who say they experience discrimination regularly (and who have the social science
research to back them up) actually think that those experiences and that data might actually say something about the nation in which they reside. Imagine.
Whites are easily shocked by what we see and hear from Pastor Wright and Trinity Church, because what we see and hear so thoroughly challenges our understanding of who we are as a nation. But black people have never, for the most part, believed in the imagery of the "shining city on a hill," for they have never had the option of looking at their nation and ignoring the mountain-sized warts still dotting its face when it comes to race. Black people do not, in the main, get misty eyed at the sight of the flag the way white people do--and this is true even for millions of black veterans--for they understand that the nation for whom that flag waves is still not fully committed to their own equality. They have a harder time singing those tunes that white people seem so eager to belt out, like "God Bless America," for they know that whites sang those words loudly and proudly even as they were
enforcing Jim Crow segregation, rioting against blacks who dared move into previously white neighborhoods, throwing rocks at Dr. King and then cheering, as so many did, when they heard the news that he had been assassinated.
Whites refuse to remember (or perhaps have never learned) that which black folks cannot afford to forget. I've seen white people stunned to the point of paralysis when they learn the truth about lynchings in this country--when they discover that such events were not just a couple of good old boys with a truck and a rope hauling some black guy out to the tree, hanging him, and letting him swing there. They were never told the truth: that lynchings were often community events, advertised in papers as "Negro Barbecues," involving hundreds or even thousands of whites, who would join in the fun, eat chicken salad and drink sweet tea, all while the black victims of their depravity were being hung, then shot, then burned, and then having their body parts cut off, to be handed out to onlookers. They are stunned to learn that
postcards of the events were traded as souvenirs, and that very few whites, including members of their own families did or said anything to stop it.
Rather than knowing about and confronting the ugliness of our past, whites take steps to excise the less flattering aspects of our history so that we need not be bothered with them. So, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for example, site of an orgy of violence against the black community in 1921, city officials literally went into the town library and removed all reference to the mass killings in the Greenwood district from the papers with a razor blade--an excising of truth and an assault on
memory that would remain unchanged for over seventy years.
Most white people desire, or perhaps even require the propagation of lies when it comes to our history. Surely we prefer the lies to anything resembling, even remotely, the truth. Our version of history, of our national past, simply cannot allow for the intrusion of fact into a worldview so thoroughly identified with fiction. But that white version of America is not only extraordinarily incomplete, in that it
so favors the white experience to the exclusion of others; it is more than that; it is actually a slap in the face to people of color, a re-injury, a reminder that they are essentially irrelevant, their concerns trivial, their lives unworthy of being taken seriously. In that sense, and what few if any white Americans appear capable of grasping at present, is that "Leave it Beaver" and "Father Knows Best,"
portray an America so divorced from the reality of the times in which they were produced, as to raise serious questions about the sanity of those who found them so moving, so accurate, so real. These iconographic representations of life in the U.S. are worse than selective, worse than false, they are assaults to the humanity and memory of black people, who were being savagely oppressed even as June Cleaver did housework in heels and laughed about the hilarious hijinks
of Beaver and Larry Mondello.
These portraits of America are certifiable evidence of how disconnected white folks were--and to the extent we still love them and view them as representations of the "good old days" to which we wish we could return, still are--from those men and women of color with whom we have long shared a nation. Just two months before "Leave it to Beaver" debuted, proposed civil rights legislation was killed thanks to Strom
Thurmond's 24-hour filibuster speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate. One month prior, Arkansas Governor Orville Faubus called out the National Guard to block black students from entering Little Rock Central High; and nine days before America was introduced to the Cleavers, and the comforting image of national life they represented, those black students were finally allowed to enter, amid the screams of enraged, unhinged, viciously bigoted white people, who saw nothing
wrong with calling children niggers in front of cameras. That was America of the 1950s: not the sanitized version into which so many escape thanks to the miracle of syndication, which merely allows white people to relive a lie, year after year after year.
No, it is not the pastor who distorts history; Nick at Nite and your teenager's textbooks do that. It is not he who casts aspersions upon "this great country" as Barack Obama put it in his public denunciations of him; it is the historic leadership of the nation that has cast aspersions upon it; it is they who have cheapened it, who have made gaudy and vile the promise of American democracy by defiling it with lies. They engage in a patriotism that is pathological in its
implications, that asks of those who adhere to it not merely a love of country but the turning of one's nation into an idol to be worshipped,it not literally, then at least in terms of consequence.
It is they--the flag-lapel-pin wearing leaders of this land--who bring shame to the country with their nonsensical suggestions that we are always noble in warfare, always well-intended, and although we occasionally make mistakes, we are never the ones to blame for anything. Nothing that happens to us has anything to do with us at all. It is always about them. They are evil, crazy, fanatical, hate our freedoms, and are jealous of our prosperity. When individuals prattle on in this manner we diagnose them as narcissistic, as deluded. When nations do it--when our nation does--we celebrate it as though it were the very model of rational and informed citizenship.
So what can we say about a nation that values lies more than it loves truth? A place where adherence to sincerely believed and internalized fictions allows one to rise to the highest offices in the land, and to earn the respect of millions, while a willingness to challenge those fictions and offer a more accurate counter-narrative earns one nothing but contempt, derision, indeed outright hatred? What we can say is that such a place is signing its own death warrant. What we can say is that such a place is missing the only and last opportunity it may ever have to make things right, to live up to its professed ideals. What we can say is that such a place can never move forward, because we have yet to fully address and come to terms with that which lay behind.
What can we say about a nation where white preachers can lie every week from their pulpits without so much as having to worry that their lies might be noticed by the shiny white faces in their pews, while black preachers who tell one after another essential truth are demonized, not only for the stridency of their tone--which needless to say scares
white folks, who have long preferred a style of praise and worship resembling nothing so much as a coma--but for merely calling bullshit on those whose lies are swallowed whole?
And oh yes, I said it: white preachers lie. In fact, they lie with a skill, fluidity, and precision unparalleled in the history of either preaching or lying, both of which histories stretch back a ways and have often overlapped. They lie every Sunday, as they talk about a Savior they have chosen to represent dishonestly as a white man, in very picture to be found of him in their tabernacles, every children's story book in their Sunday Schools, every Christmas card they'll send to relatives and friends this December. But to lie about Jesus, about the one they consider God--to bear false witness as to who this man was and what he looked like--is no cause for concern.
Nor is it a problem for these preachers to teach and preach that those who don't believe as they believe are going to hell. Despite the fact that such a belief casts aspersions upon God that are so profound as to defy belief--after all, they imply that God is so fundamentally evil that he would burn non-believers in a lake of eternal fire--many of the
white folks who now condemn Jeremiah Wright welcome that theology of hate. Indeed, back when President Bush was the Governor of Texas, he endorsed this kind of thinking, responding to a question about whether Jews were going to go to hell, by saying that unless one accepted Jesus as one's personal savior, the Bible made it pretty clear that indeed,
hell was where you'd be heading.
So you can curse God in this way--and to imply such hate on God's part is surely to curse him--and in effect, curse those who aren't Christians, and no one says anything. That isn't considered bigoted. That isn't considered beyond the pale of polite society. One is not disqualified from becoming President in the minds of millions because they go to a church that says that shit every single week, or because
they believe it themselves. And millions do believe it, and see nothing wrong with it whatsoever.
So white folks are mad at Jeremiah Wright because he challenges their views about their country. Meanwhile, those same white folks, and their ministers and priests, every week put forth a false image of the God Jeremiah Wright serves, and yet it is whites who feel we have the right to be offended.
Pardon me, but something is wrong here, and whatever it is, is not to be found at Trinity United Church of Christ.
Tim Wise is the author of: White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son (Soft Skull Press, 2005), and Affirmative Action: Racial Preference in Black and White (Routledge: 2005). He can be reached at:
timjwise@msn.com
This essay originally appeared in Lip.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama and the Unacceptability of Truth
Sunday, March 30, 2008
The Government to the Rescue
Isn’t capitalism great! Tens of thousands of us are losing their homes due to unscrupulous sales practices of financial institutions. Our standard of living is plummeting. But Government is coming to the rescue! Not for you and me but for the very financiers who scammed us from the start. The Federal Reserve’s unprecedented offer has made available tens of millions of tax payer dollars to insure that these giant Wall Street investment companies won’t lose any more money and that the corporate customers of the financial giant Bear Stearns will not suffer needlessly. The capitalist’s mouthpieces tell us that Bear Stearns’ management will not be getting any of our tax money. Nobody is talking about filing fraud charges against them. Instead, their criminal acts will leave them “busted“. For example, the Wall Street apologists point out that the Chairman of Bear Stearns is really taking a hit. A month ago his stock in his company was worth over one billion dollars. But when the value of his stock plummeted from $171.50 per share to $2, his stake plunged to about $27 million. JPMorgan took pity on their criminal cohort’s management and raised their offer to $10. Now his stake is well over $100 million. You wouldn’t believe the changes he has been forced to make to live within his means. Wouldn’t it be nice if that concern for the fat cat’s wellbeing bled over to concern for the rest of us.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
The Willie Hortonization of Barack Obama
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
The "Perils" of Being Inconvenienced
You are fighting a righteous fight. Your cause is just. You are facing powerful forces with little but your own courage. If ever the broad masses of people are going to be mobilized into supporting the cause; now is the time!
Not!
There are some people who just don’t want to be bothered. “Your cause may be just but please take your demonstration to another part of town”.
ADAPT, the militant, confrontational and proud of it; arm of the disability rights movement held its biannual meeting/demonstrations September 10-13 in Chicago. Each day hundreds of people with disabilities took over major office building to press their demands.
It is expected that the leaders of the American Medical Association, the political leaders of the state of Illinois and the leadership of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees would have strong objections to being the targets of ADAPTs wrath. So were a vociferous few office workers and others to whom the blockades created an “inconvenience.”
Reading the internet stories about the takeovers unleashed some pissed off people.
“I support anyone’s right to speak their voice, but why involve innocent people and disrupt their lives?”
“Making a pest of yourself is not usually an effective way of gaining attention for your cause. All it does is gain attention for the fact that you're an annoying pest”.
“Look I'm all for protest, freedom of speech and taking a stand when something is wrong. That being said, it is not OK to take away the freedom of my fellow Americans who happen to work in a building that (you are) protesting in front of. That is what happened. You can poo poo the argument and say that it was only a few hours and you have to live in deplorable conditions, locked up, etc. I agree with you that is BS but locking me into the building does not help your case. Yes I understand now that you are pissed, but now I hate you. Think about that.”
Some people don’t know how to act when confronted with a moral question. On the one hand, there were quite a few who empathized with the general thrust of the protestors but were outraged that they themselves were actually confronted.
Nobody likes to be inconvenienced. Very few know how to respond when confronted with moral stands.
But, happily, many do.
Being inconvenienced has its own rewards
Fifteen years ago I was working for the Hotel and Restaurant Workers Union in Washington, DC. There was a labor dispute at one of the major hotels (The Mayflower, if you’re familiar with D.C.). We were doing our best to annoy the guests. Hopefully, they would check out, complain to management, or show solidarity in some way, shape or form. Usually, however, the aggrieved guests would show us that their loyalty was with management and not with the workers.
One day, a cab pulled up in front of the hotel. A woman bound out of it. She was dragging her suitcase with one hand and holding a briefcase with the other. Sexist it is but, I couldn’t help notice she was quite attractive. But she was very upset and was talking very fast.
“Oh my God! I flew in for a conference at this hotel! I didn’t know there was a strike! There is a conference here that I am attending! My agency made my reservation! My grandfather was a Progressive Union coal miner! My Dad was a shop steward! I would never cross a picket line! What should I do"? She said with tears in her eyes! One of my responsibilities with the union was “guest relations” so I went to talk to the inconvenienced woman.
Our eyes met. I assured her that she could attend her conference. I asked her to complain to management and demand that her room be “comped” (free) and get the conference organizers to urge management to settle the strike immediately. I told her that every morning a 6:00 am we would be waking the hotel’s guest with greetings from our bull horns.
She walked the picket line everyday on her lunch break. She brought others to walk the picket line. She complained to management. She had the conference sponsor protest. The workers referred to her as my “girl friend.” This was a person who embraced her being inconvenienced. She brought encouragement to everyone who walked the line with her. My boss told me to get her name and address so we could send her our thanks. Unfortunately, she had checked out and I didn’t get her information. She was gone.
Five years later, I was smitten by a woman in an on-line chat room. I told her I had worked for the Hotel Workers Union in D.C. She was quiet for a moment. “Did you manage the strike at the Mayflower Hotel?” I had found my “girl friend.”
We are married now and are very happy about the way things turned out.
Not everyone who is inconvenienced in the struggle for justice is going to wind up with a great love, but you never know.
What we do know is when confronted with a demonstration; a strike, or other action, people need to get outside themselves. Consider why they are being inconvenienced, look for ways to support the cause and be proud that they were on the right side in the struggle for justice.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
AFSCME: Lost Its Way
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) is a union with a proud history. It led the way in actively organizing Black people. It battled for workers who were legally forbidden to unionize. It inspired many with its spirited struggles.
Dr. Martin Luther King made his “I have a dream” speech amidst proud AFSCME workers. Dr. King gave his life supporting AFSCME members on strike in Memphis, Tennessee. Clearly, AFSCME made its mark standing with people of color and others on the outside of the predominant society.
September 12, 2007, ADAPT, a national organization of people with disabilities (PWDs) shut down the Illinois headquarters of AFSCME.
So What’s the Problem?
Why would an organization that represents the interests of people on the outside of society shutdown the headquarters of an organization that has a history of representing people also on the outside?
People with disabilities have always been excluded from the mainstream of society. Until the middle of the nineteenth century PWD’s were hidden in attics, sent out to beg, or left to die of neglect. Reformers encouraged the establishment of institutions for PWDs, where they could live and perhaps receive medical care. For 100 years, institutionalization was the primary way people with disabilities were treated. Inspired by the civil rights struggles of the late 1950’-early 1960’s, PWDs started agitating for their own rights. Among these rights were to live independently, outside of institutions.
There were and still are powerful forces that resist closing institutions. You have the owners and other people who make a living from these institutions; Doctors who commit people to places where they hold a financial stake. Then there is AFSCME.
AFSCME members spilled blood organizing the low paid and underappreciated workers. They succeeded in raising the pay and standard of living of these workers. But now, they perceive the job security of these employees and dues paying members in jeopardy by the struggle of PWDs to escape the claws of the institution.
“Hey Hey, Ho Ho, Institutions Have to Go”
AFSCME’s reputation is at stake.
Not only does AFSCME want to keep these monuments to the nineteenth century open; they even want to increase funding to these places where people are held against their will (interesting, AFSCME represents a large number of prison guards as well).
AFSCME refuses to support legislation to increase spending on home and community based services for PWDs. Henry Bayer, the leader of AFSCME in Illinois pledged his support for more federal spending on community care if ADAPT would agree to fight for MORE funding for institutions! AFSCME lobbied long and hard that institutions such as the Lincoln Developmental Center in Lincoln, Illinois and Bellfontaine in St. Louis, Missouri, remain open.
AFSCME does not see PWDs as human beings. To them, we are a source of jobs. More jobs will result in creating community settings for people with disabilities, not less. But AFSCME cannot see that. Instead of hanging on to an outmoded, demeaning, and shameful model of treating PWDs, AFSCME should be looking to the future.
AFSCME is leading other organizations who should know better. “Jobs with Justice” uncritically supports the institutionalization of PWDs. Their justification for this is supporting AFSCME members job security over the freedom for those incarcerated in state institutions.
Sadly, the leadership of AFSCME is exposing its back pedaling on basic trade union issues.
AFSCME is throwing away its militant history along with its progressive principles.
How many times has the AFSCME rank and file heard these words?
“…we could accomplish more by finding common ground and being productive rather than being divisive and confrontational.”
This is not management talking. This is AFSCME’s whining about the ADAPT demonstration.
Martin Luther King, III spoke at a national meeting of ADAPT several years ago. He spoke of the history of the Civil Rights Movement and compared it to the struggle of PWDs. His message: “Our struggles are entwined”.
Randy Alexander, Memphis ADAPT Organizer said of AFSCME;
"For an organization that has its roots in the civil rights movement, their treatment of people with disabilities is even more despicable. The union and its members make a lot of money by advocating keeping people with disabilities and older folks stuck in nursing homes and other institutions instead of being able to live in their own homes like other people. It's unconscionable that the union fights for workers' rights at the expense of our rights. In ADAPT, we know that you can't have one without the other."
AFSCME can no be considered a progressive organization as long as it stands in the doorway of progress.
Sunday, August 5, 2007
Capitalism has Outlived its Usefullness
I watched the
I wanted to write about how
I was going to close by making the point that the war in
But I started thinking; if we weren’t involved in a catastrophic war where would we spend the $300 million a day the war is costing us? Would this money go to rebuilding our power grid? Would prescription drugs be available to those who need them? Would our roads, bridges, rail roads, air traffic control systems be improved? Would health care for all be affordable?
Nahhh! I don’t think so. Since 2001 the Department of Transportation, the Department of the Interior, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s have all received budget cuts of up to 4%. The Corps of Engineers, despite what they were doing in
These are the federal departments most directly responsible for the upkeep of our national infrastructure; they are not even close to staying even with the degeneration of our national infrastructure. The physical degeneration of our country didn’t start under the current administration. The infrastructure was crumbling under previous administrations as well.
Why? Isn’t our government supposed to meet the needs of we, the people? The truth is, government sees to the needs of those who control the national purse strings. The Investment Bankers, Wall Street Tycoons, Oil Company Magnates and the others who control 80% of our country’s wealth call the shots. If they want a tax cut, they get a tax cut. If they want less regulation, they get ‘em. If they want to increase their control over the world’s oil, the government does its best to accommodate them.
There are men and women in government who are decent and actually try to represent the interests of the majority of people. But the rich and powerful are winning the ideological class war; and large numbers of us who are not part of the economic elite have bought into their lies.
The big lie is that the rich deserve everything they have and if you are not happy; it’s your own fault. Not happy with your lack of health insurance? Eat healthier and you won’t need it. Not happy because your workplace closed and now you’re forced to work two jobs to make as much as one used too? It’s your own fault for not getting that Masters Degree in Business. Not happy because the color of your skin seems to draw the attention of the police as you drive? Quit whining – You should be more careful where you drive. You’re not happy because it’s impossible for your power chair to negotiate the curb cuts in your neighborhood? Blame your Mother for taking thalidomide. Not happy because it’s getting more expensive to gas up your car? Blame the environmentalists for blocking drilling off the coast of
They’ve got us so turned around that for the first time in history the have-nots are blaming folks who have less for our dissatisfaction. In fact, many of us are more likely to identify with the rich and powerful than with our neighbors and co-workers.
History is filled with examples of how economic systems become obsolete and are replaced. It was only a couple of hundred years ago with the start of the industrial revolution that the feudal system was replaced by capitalism. That was a good thing. Feudalism became a brake on the ability of society to move ahead. Capitalism filled the historical bill. People who had a stake in maintaining feudalism fought hard against the budding capitalists. There were revolutions aimed at overthrowing or restricting the power of the feudalists in
It is time to end capitalism's reign. It no longer is capable of moving the standard of living for all forward. It is incapable of providing the breakthroughs to benefit humanity. Those who profit from capitalism are engaged in a giant war to maintain their privilege and make us think that these inequalities are right and just.
Let’s get over our fear of being called names and open our minds and our hearts to create an economic system where greed is not good but concern for our co-inhabitants of this planet is.
Sunday, July 1, 2007
Savoring our Victories:
The following was written in August of 2006 for the newsletter of the Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities in
Savoring Our Victories: A personal testimony from an advocate who took part in the Freedom Days rallies.
It was hot and uncomfortable. Nearly a hundred disability rights activists were surrounded by thousands of Democrats - it was Democrat day at the Illinois State Fair. We were wearing bright yellow t-shirts. The Democrats wore blue. We arrived two hours before the program was to start to ensure front row seats. We went to provide witness of our commitment to see our brothers and sisters freed from the yoke of state operated institutions. The Democrats were there for a photo opportunity for the upcoming campaign. As the buses carrying the party faithful arrived, more blue shirts surrounded us. Individuals carrying signs snaked into our midst. We moved our chairs, blankets and support dogs closer.
One hundred or so young African American people were led to fill the gap between the stage and us. If we were going to be able to keep our ground and make our statement, we were going to have to fight. Union leaders and party functionaries gave their marching orders to their troops: Occupy the area in front of the stage so the photographs would show a wall of support for the leaders of the Democratic Party. Slowly, our resistance began. Shoulders moved together, powerchairs inched forward. The stronger we became the weaker and more uncertain they became. Their leaders caucused while the yellow shirts became bolder in defending our rights and turf. We cheered as one of our own loudly lectured the blue shirts saying we weren't going to allow our issues to disappear.
The blue shirts started leaving. We could hardly believe it. Save for a few they were leaving the areas they had once infiltrated! One of the blue shirted leaders even asked if he could wear our yellow shirt. It was a rout! We looked at each other with pride. Those with arms high-fived each other!
Most of us rarely enjoy the power and purpose that we felt. We won. Our leaders, as good as they are didn't negotiate this victory. We didn't win in court. We won as a result of a ragtag action army.
The next day was Republican Day. We still had our yellow shirts - they had sport shirts and golf pants. Again, we showed up two hours early to take our position at the front of the stage. However, they would not let us in. Admission was by ticket only. We lined up in front of the entrance. They learned their lesson from the day before and soon we were welcomed guests enjoying front row access. In addition the Republican leadership agreed to meet with our leaders to discuss the issues.
It's a couple of days later, and I know a lot of us are still smiling. We are thinking of the young and powerful blue shirts complaining about being grabbed, yelled at (often in a language they couldn't understand) and being nudged by wheelchairs. We are thinking how our yellow shirt's held onto our turf! We are thinking of how fast the politicians caved to our moral authority.
This is the glory of building movements. To savor the victories together, however small, that comes from the passion, action and the unity of individuals.
