The Newest Golden Rule

Larry Sommers and the other big shot economists on Obama's team are expressing "foot stomping" rage that the Wall Street institutions that we have given Billions of dollars to have been using a good percentage of that money to pay bonuses to the same financial wizards that got us into this mess.

But they are powerless to do anything about it. They tell us we are a nation of laws. A contract is something that is sacrosanct. It can't be messed with or changed by a third party.

This will come as news to the hundreds of thousands of working people who have seen their pensions, healthcare and wages slashed. Just a matter of weeks ago, the government was threatening the jobs of tens of thousands of people whose jobs depend on the domestic auto industry. Given an ultimatum by the government, the auto workers were forced to accept wage cuts to put them more in line with what non-union workers receive.

What makes a contract between millionaires sacred and those between corporations and millions of workers profane?

Could it be the golden rule? He who has the gold makes the rule?

Bailout: Bonus Bologna

by Cilla Sluga
Wait a minute! I learned today that AIG (American International Group), the same company that took more than $170 billion in taxpayer bailout money… my money; your money through our Federal Reserve System, now plans to give executive bonuses to the tune of $165 million. The same people that took AIG to the brink of collapse are rewarding themselves for their unimaginable mismanagement.

Tim Geithner, the Treasury Secretary pretended to be outraged on the Sunday morning talk show this weekend. He said he was foot-stomping mad and demanded that AIG not give the money. Unfortunately, he sighs forlornly, these bastards are going to get their money because lawyers said that AIG is contractually obligated to pay it.

Oh really? Contractually obligated, ey? Tell that to the auto worker in Detroit. Tell that to the retirees or those close to retirement, who paid into pension plans their entire work life, and had them guaranteed in their contracts, but will not receive them because the company claimed it could no longer afford it, and the courts backed them up.

What makes a contract between millionaires sacrosanct while contracts between corporations and their employees can be ripped into little pieces?

A while back I heard a pundit say that this was a war between the people who showered before work and those who showered after. It is the absolute truth. And our “liberal” new administration has taken its stand with those who shower before work. Geithner can act and shout as loudly as he wants on television. However, unless the government does something about it, it’s hollow blather. AIG bigwigs should be worried about joining Bernie Madoff, rather than collecting their bonuses.

Crossposted at: Big Noise

The First Few Steps

by Cilla Sluga & Mike Meiselman

It’s unusual to have such an in-depth conversation with a total stranger. But, we liked her almost immediately. She was tall, in her twenties and had a cute three cornered smile. She asked pointed questions and was not the least bit interested in chit-chat. Pretty remarkable since Jen was our server at a semi-fast food restaurant.

We’re not quite sure how the conversation started; however, within no time at all, Jen was asking us about our politics. She didn’t believe we were as lefty as we claimed. She asked if we knew any leftist anthems. Mike obliged her, there in the small restaurant dining room, by singing The Internationale, clenched fist in the air.

Eventually, she wanted to know what kind of activism we were currently involved in; when we told her we were disability rights activists, her eyes widened. Her sister had spina bifida.

Jen, was not just our server, it turns out she was the restaurant manager. She asked if our group needed money. What? Someone was offering to help our organization with cash. We tried to tell her we weren’t an official 501(3) C; that we probably weren’t eligible. However, she would not be deterred. She said, “If we can have a fundraiser for the local high school cheerleaders, surely we can have one for an organization that works for the rights of disenfranchised people.”

So, we promised to provide her with the information she required.

A week or so later, we took requisite documents to the restaurant and she sat down with us again. Her intensity and inquisitiveness had grown. She confessed she was not much of an activist, but was angry about a lot: School of the Americas, the wars, the budget crisis, poverty, racism, bigotry, and Rush Limbaugh to name a few.
She wanted to know what our group was doing right now. We told her about projects great and small. We talked about an accessible fishing pier at the lake. We told that the statue of Lincoln at the state capitol was still inaccessible, on this the bicentennial of “the great emancipator’s” birthday. When talked about involuntary sterilization act being debated in the state legislature; and other mutilations that children with disabilities have gone through, all at the hands of parents and guardians. She cried tears of anger and sadness.

She reminded us of others we know. They care, deeply, about the world and its people, but feel powerless to change it. She said she felt unable to change things… so rather than stay angry, she confessed, she put it out of her mind as much as she could.

We told her that anger was a good motivating force, and to use it; but it would not sustain her. The only real antidote to frustration and/or anger is activism. Jen said it was all so overwhelming; how could she just pick one or two things when so many things were wrong?

Both of us also remember feeling that way. The frustration Jen and others feels is like burning rubber off the tires; it makes a lot of smoke, just doesn’t get you anywhere. We found progressive groups of people and started working together to change things. We felt less angry because we were actually doing something. In fact, it was invigorating.

One thing you quickly learn once you start fighting back is that is that the enemies turn out to be the same entities. If you are fighting for a clean environment, you learn that the people behind the pollution are also responsible for derailing regulations on Wall Street. The same forces that profit from keeping institutions open are the same ones who profit from prescription drugs that are priced out of reach for people of poor and moderate means. They don’t want regulation either… they want profits. They don’t want equality, they want it all.

The ruling class wants us to fight with one another for limited resources so we don’t focus on them and their system of wealth for the rich and crumbs for the rest of us. We must continually fight, not just for the daily needs of our people, but also to knock chunks of power out of their hands and put it in ours.
She still wasn’t sure. We believe there are a lot of people in the same position. For them the most difficult step of a journey isn’t the first one. It’s more like the second or third step. Once you stick your toe into an issue, you can feel the power on the other side. What usually happens after that; people get scared, put blinders on and refuse to look at injustice any longer. It also requires us to examine our system of equality, wealth distribution and privilege. Once you start doing that, you get called names, like “red” and “socialist”. It is enough to scare most people away.

We want to say do not be deterred. Take Barack Obama’s story about grassroots organizing in Chicago. He saw the poverty; he knew the issues; he spoke to the people; yet at his first meeting, no one showed up. That’s pretty devastating. He was disheartened and thought about quitting. Then he thought that quitting and realized that wasn’t going to improve anything for the people he cared about. He felt he had no choice to but to try and try again. He succeeded in building leadership from the community where little existed before. That enabled him to go on to create or sustain other social movements.

Find your passion. Bring about change in your neighborhood, or city. Fight for women’s rights, or cleaning up the superfund site down the road, or racism, or disability equal rights. Change a neighbor, or local council’s idea about how to deal with people who are disfranchised and you are changing the world.

Crossposted at Big Noise.

Does White Skin Give You Privilege?

More than a few years ago, I relocated to Baltimore MD and went out looking for a job. I found one in a small factory on the west side of the city. They made pretend fireplaces out of concrete. The plant was filthy; there was concrete dust everywhere, but I was going to be making $2.00/hr. Beside the plant manager, I was the only white face there.

I went to introduce myself to my new co-workers. This is a hard working group of guys, I thought, as I watched them labor. The first guy I introduced myself to grunted and asked how much money I was making.

“Two bucks an hour,” I replied.

“Boys, we got a problem. This white boy is making two dollars an hour.” All I heard was angry laughter. The men gathered themselves together and walked in the direction I was coming from, the manager’s office. They opened the door and entered.

“How could you pay this kid 20 cents more than you are paying us. You cannot do that. He doesn’t have the faintest idea of what we do or how we do it… and you’re paying him more than you’re paying us!”

“OK, I’ll cut his pay. He will make what you are making.”

“WAIT A MINUTE,” I protested as my own self-interest was on the line. My co-workers joined me in protesting.

“You’re not gonna to cut his pay--you are gonna raise ours!” the workers insisted.

The manager disappeared for a few minutes, and returned with the news that every worker would now receive $2.00/hr.

After my first day’s work, my coworkers took me out for all the diet sodas I wanted, “on the house.”

The question is, why did the manager offer me an extra twenty cents an hour? Some of my coworkers had worked there for a year or more without a pay raise. They knew what they were doing. I was off the street. The management saw me as becoming the crew chief or supervisor. They did not think that any of their current employees would be able to do that job. Based on my white skin, they saw that I was “executive talent.” Apparently, white guys cannot judge talent.

The same thing happened to me when I went to work at a plating factory. Plating is filthy, corrosive, poisonous, dangerous, unhealthy, and as unpleasant a work environment can be.

The plant manager warmly received me. He expressed concern about being able to hold on to “talented workers.” He immediately told me I had a future if I stayed. He offered me considerably more an hour than what he was paying the 100% black workforce. He assured me that in no time he would move me into management.

When I was an organizer for the Hotel and Restaurant Workers Union, they sent me to be part of a team organizing the workers at a luxury resort in the mountains of Virginia, the Homestead. Opened in the 1800s, it represents the epitome of southern hospitality. Guests are still expected to “dress” for dinner.

The Homestead featured an all black wait staff and annual events, such as, the watermelon carrying races, etc. Since there had not been black people living in the county since the 1960s. The hotel imported Jamaicans every year to pretend to be “ole black Joe.” The wait staff lived on the grounds in an old run-down dormitory with three toilets and three showers for about 150 people.

Poverty is pervasive in this part of the mountains. Imagine houses with roofs caved in, but still inhabited.

It was a very difficult place to organize. More than one organizer had been chased out of town by a local shooting buckshot. Besides the coalmines, the hotel provided most of the employment in the area. People were glad to have any job.

My teenage daughter came to visit me in the middle of the campaign. She joined me on my rounds as I talked to people about the union. As my daughter saw the poor conditions the workers lived in, she said, “These people are certainly going to vote for a union. They have nothing to lose, and everything to gain.”

We lost the election for union representation 5 to 1. Why? In the words of more than one worker, “At least we have it better than the blacks.” And, they were right. They did not have much, but at least they were regarded by the local power structure as being “better than Black.” In an area where white people had very little, that meant a lot.

Our new Attorney General, Eric Holder, called us a nation of “cowards” for not having honest discussions about race in America. He is right. Stories like mine happen far more often than can be imagined. Black people know it; white people do not want to admit it, but white skin privilege exists.

Try renting an apartment. Statistics show that white people on a waiting list get housing before Black people. If you are white, you can go into a jewelry or clothing store worrying about security following you around.

Part of having an honest dialogue is to accept the reality that white people enjoy privilege based on their color and nothing else.

Howe Could They...

Updated 1-14-09

by Big Noise and Magitator

There is a perverse pride, being from Illinois. We take a chest thumping pride at our corrupt politics and gangster past. Our daughter, who lived in Chicago for several years, is now in Boston. When the Blago scandal broke, she and someone from Rhode Island were talking about it. The woman from RI was saying how corrupt their government was. Our daughter, with great bravado replied, “There was more corruption on my block in Chicago, than in the whole state of Rhode Island.”

(OK,-she-is-Mike’s-daughter,-but-we-don’t-like-to-make-those-kind-of-distinctions-in-our-home,-so-I-called-her-my-daughter-too-but-I-don’t-want-to-be-presumptuous-or-make-her-mom-feel-bad-but-I-digress…)

Seriously, watch the Illinois pundits that provide commentary on national television. They smile while they pundit. Folks talk to one another about it on the street, smile and shrug. Illinois, the birthplace of “the smoke-filled room”; the “vote early and often” cliché; the patronage of the Dailey machine; the gangster owned city tow lots; and more. What more can we expect here?

I cannot deny I was a part of that Illinois “our politicians and more corrupt than your politicians” fun group. However, it all changed yesterday. I attended a committee hearing about the closure of Howe Developmental Center. We wanted to show our support for closure by showing up at the budget allocation commission meeting. No money means it would have to close.

(Campaign for Real Choice Photo)

Howe is a hellhole of a residential facility. The federal government decertified it a year ago. Equip for Equality (our protection and advocacy agency) has investigated the facility seven times documenting describing in gruesome detail the deaths of 21 people and multiple instances of abysmal care. Two more people died there in the last two months. The United States Department of Justice is investigating violations of the Constitutional rights of the people living there.

The committee meeting was to start at 3:00. It started at 5:30 (it is after all, Illinois). When they finally met, their first order of business was to “quarantine” any action on the closure until sixty days after the senate impeachment trial verdict. Thus, they knocked the train to close Howe right off the track.

Have these folks every heard of multi-tasking? Can they only handle one thing at a time? People are dying for Christ’s sake!! Our most vulnerable people need action, their very lives are at stake; and this joint committee just put down the ball and walked off the court.

One legislator, Elaine Nekritz, Democrat from Des Plaines spoke for the closure of Howe. She noted Illinois dead last in offering community options to people with disabilities. She also pointed out we are under federal mandate to shut down these institutions. She was outvoted 10 to 1.

AFSCME, and other supporters of keeping Howe open want to use the additional time to pressure the politicians.

We have to use that same time to speak the truth to the legislators. As advocates for people with disabilities, we will use our voices for the most vulnerable. They should not disregard us. We have numbers: as we continue to organize ourselves, our strength will make them feel the power of the disability rights movement.

Crossposted at BigNoise

Here is excellent information on specifics on why Howe should be closed NOW

Darrow Hozian

(Photo Description: Darrow smiling at the camera. Note the red bandanna he has on his left arm at the bottom of the picture; the bandannas served as our Action Team "colors" at last year's disability rights/independent living conference.)

I first met Darrow Hozian at the office of the Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities in Illinois. I had just been hired and a major part of my duties was to write, publish and mail "The Catalyst", our monthly newsletter. When my first issue was completed and the printer delivered them to the CCDI office to mail to our membership, I had no idea what to do.

Luckily, for me, Darrow and his long time partner Janice Faulstich, had volunteered to do CCDI’s mass mailings a long time before me. They knew what to do. They knew how to sort the 1800 addresses by zip code and which zip codes went in rubber bands with which other. I was so glad to be working with them. It wasn't all that easy either.

Both Darrow and Janice had Cerebral Palsy; I had a hard time understanding what they were saying. Sometimes, they would get as frustrated with me as I would be frustrated with myself. But, we worked well together for two years and liked and respected each other. The Coalition office isn’t the same since Darrow and Janice no longer volunteer their labor there.

Darrow was an individual of tremendous strength and good will. He and Janice’s phone number were at the top of many people with disabilities phone list. If someone's personal assistant didn't show up or someone needed additional help, Darrow was there. If he wasn't Janice was.

Last week we heard from Janice that Darrow was in Intensive Care. This was the second time in the last several months Darrow was admitted to the ICU. I guess we were in denial. It was difficult to imagine someone of Darrow’s strength life being threatened.

On Friday, January 9, Janice got off the elevator at the ICU and knew that Darrow had passed.

Darrow and Janice; it is hard to say one name without the other. But, each has their own identity. They agreed on many things but, like all couples, had their disagreements too. Janice is looking forward to returning home and volunteer for even more tasks. She might even look for a job.

JoAnn Bayer and Darrow Hozian both died in the first two weeks of the New Year. How sad for all of us whose lives have been touched by them. How sad for the Disability Rights Movement to lose two of our shining stars. How important it is for the rest of us to do our best to find dozens of replacements for each leader we have lost.

Cilla (BigNoise) also wrote about Darrow today. You can read her column here.

Harry and George H.W.

(Pictured: Harry Meiselman entertaining the crew playing his harmonica on the hangar deck of the USS San Jacinto circa, 1943)

President Bush and I share a history. We both have fathers who served aboard the USS San Jacinto in World War II. My father, Harry Meiselman, was an enlisted man who joined the Navy, just after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Before that, he was in vaudeville and worked in the Hoboken, N.J. ship yards. George H.W. Bush came from elite prep schools and Yale. My dad reached the rank of petty officer and “bossed” a quad 40 antiaircraft gun. George H.W. was an officer and a pilot.

Today, I watched the commissioning and setting of the first watch of the Navy’s newest nuclear powered super air craft carrier; which is named after my dad’s crew mate on the San Jacinto.

It filled me with emotion. First, was the disgust at the addition of a new weapon of mass destruction and world domination. Second though, was pride at seeing the crew of the boat running to “bring the ship to life.”

I saw our daughter, a Navy veteran,and the children of so many others of us facing the new challenges ahead them. I also thought of my father, as so many of our fathers, running to take their place in the struggle for victory in World War II.

My father died in 1963. Before George H.W. was elected to Congress, before he was CIA director, before he was Vice President or President. My father told a story about the shakedown cruise of the San Jacinto.

There weren’t many Jews on board; all of them were enlistees. The officer corps and the pilot positions were seemingly reserved for those of a higher class. My father referred to them as “young ivy leaguers”.

Before my father died, he told stories of “pogroms” aboard the ship. Young Ivy League pilots would search the ship looking for and beating jews. My father took pride that the Jewish crewmen gave as good as they got.

My father never mentioned George H.W. Bush by name. His story was about Jewish resistance to antisemitism. His stories were lessons for me and my brother not to allow others, no matter how rich or powerful, to push us down. He wanted us to defend ourselves.

I’m not saying that George H.W. Bush had anything to do with these pogroms my father spoke about. But, I do sometimes wonder.

Guess Who is Running for President

1967 – The Civil Rights Movement had been in high gear for 15 years. A movie, "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" was released. It's plot involves a white family whose progressive politics are shaken up when their young daughter falls in love with an African-American. The makers of the film wanted to confront the racism that exists even among northerners who supported the struggle for integration in the South. In order to do this, they made the African-American impossibly perfect. First, they cast Sidney Poitier. Gorgeous! He graduated with highest honors from very prestigious universities. He was a medical doctor who had already started contributing his energies and skills to helping people in the third world. He refused to have pre-marital sex with his very willing fiancé. He even left a couple of dollars near the parent's phone to repay them for a long distance call he made. Perfect. Yet, the father was opposed to his daughter's relationship. He just could not get over the fact that the "impossibly perfect" boy friend is Black.

Forty-one years later, white people face another test. There is a Black man running for President. He seems to be almost impossibly perfect. He rose from humble beginnings. He is young, athletic, and vital. He and his almost impossibly perfect wife have been married for nineteen years without a hint or scandal. He graduated at the top of his class from very prestigious universities. He taught Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago for twelve years. He chose to work to empower unemployed steelworkers and their families in tough streets of South Chicago. He devoted his life to public service rather than follow the typical path of someone with his resume and get rich quick.

The USA is in horrible shape. The gap between rich and poor is greater than it has been since the robber barons of the nineteenth century. The rich's greed has led to the housing crises, the crises in health care, the crises in unemployment, the crises in trade, the crises in energy, crises in the life and death issue of war and peace.

The Black man should be leading in the polls by a lot. But he is not.

It can't be because people think his opponent has a better program. Eighty percent of the people in fact, believe the Black man's program is better than the white man's.

The people do not believe the white man stands for change. Especially when this white man touts his 90% support of the incumbents policies.

So why isn't Obama running away with the election? How can it be that McCain might actually win and subject us to more of the same?

Is it that large numbers of white people are like the father in "Guess
Who's Coming to Dinner" and just can't get over the fact that our "impossibly perfect" candidate is Black?

Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama and the Unacceptability of Truth

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.

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.

The Willie Hortonization of Barack Obama

The Republicans and Democrats have long used racial fear as a weapon to maintain their power. Today they are aiming their best shots at Barack Obama. In 1988 the Republicans unleashed their infamous Willie Horton Ads where a hulking African/American was shown exiting prison. The message was that their opponents were letting criminals on the street where these "scary" Black people would be free to terrorize white people at 3 a.m.

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.