People Before Profit blog

The United States of No

Wed, 26 Aug 2015 15:24:00 +0000

I've always believed that democracy was the best form of government because people can change it. And like a lot of us, I was taught that the American form of democracy was the model that should be imitated by nations across the planet. Especially ingenious was the system of "checks and balances." This arrangement means that no one branch of government can singularly decide a political course without the consent of the others.

This much-praised system was adopted to prevent the re-emergence of an autocracy. But checks and balances also worked to keep the practice of slavery alive up until the Civil War. And in the wake of abolition, when corporations became the dominant form of business organization, the same systems were used to exploit the labor force. Even as the country's wealth grew, the gap between rich and poor widened. It took more than half a century of effort and the devastation of the Great Depression before important reforms like a minimum wage, child labor protections, the 40-hour work-week and the right to organize became federal law.

Political scientists have begun to research the issues that arise around veto power in multiple branches of government. Studies have shown that the more capacity a democracy has for blocking changes, the more income inequality the nation is likely to have. Harvard historian Jill Lepore wrote about this phenomenon in a recent New Yorker piece. Drawing on the work of several scholars using different analytical tools, she says that income inequality is greater in the United States than any other democratic country in the developed world. In fact, we regularly hold the record for inequality across 40 countries on six continents.

This inequality ranking also correlates with the number of ways democracies block change. Lepore reviews the work of two scholars of comparative politics who studied 23 long-time democratic countries with developed economies. They counted the number of "veto players" or choke points in each form of democratic government. Most democracies have parliaments with one body (not two), and therefore only one house with veto power. A few countries have two veto points. Australia and Switzerland have three. Of those democracies with developed economies, only the United States has four. The scholars found a correlation between the size of the income inequality in a democracy and the number of choke points in the system. The more veto players a government has, the greater the income inequality gap.

To compound the problem, the American system not only contains the most veto players, it has the most malapportioned legislative body. Among the eight economically developed democracies in the world with an upper house, the U.S. Senate is the most unrepresentative. California, with almost 40 million residents, has two senators, as does Hawaii, with less than a million and a half. The Senate simply does not represent the population the way upper houses in other democratic countries do.

That distortion helped keep slavery going for decades after the British had outlawed both the trading and owning of human beings. It also means that any legislative attempt to change the rules of the economy that might narrow income inequality or stop human-caused climate change or do any other big job will require the four veto players to line up in agreement - including the one that represents dramatic population disparity. That's been rarely possible in our history.

To get all four lined up in this country usually takes a crisis, a strong grassroots movement and elected officials willing to push for change. Even then, there is no guarantee. This month marks the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Voting Rights Act. But even after it was renewed by a sizable majority in both the House and Senate, and then signed by the president, the Supreme Court voted 5 to 4 to eviscerate its key section. That's what happens when a system includes as many veto players as ours does.

Sad that our democracy is so cluttered by checks and balances that it stymies justice. From slavery to workers' rights to saving the planet, it has kept the blocks in place that hold us back from making changes, even when they are so obviously necessary. But it feels better to know what's required for change to occur than to live in a fog of constant frustration. Our situation is ominous, but it isn't hopeless.

Rev. Jim Conn is the founding minister of the Church in Ocean Park and served on the Santa Monica City Council and as that city's mayor. He helped found Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, Los Angeles, and was its second chair, and was a founder of Santa Monica's renters' rights campaign.

Reprinted by kind permission of the author and Capital and Main.

Julian Bond: in the footsteps of Robeson, Du Bois

Mon, 24 Aug 2015 11:39:00 +0000

This past June, Julian Bond told me he was deeply inspired by the new wave of community organizing sweeping the country. He was in awe of students at Appalachian State University in North Carolina who were mounting an effective campaign against racism.

What he didn't get was that he had played a key role in inspiring the App State students. I had met with them about six months after he did. They pegged the birth of their movement to Julian's visit to their campus.

Julian had faith in the courage of everyday people to fight for justice and equality. As for himself: well, he was pleased to do his bit, but he never saw himself as a great leader.

That made him one.

As a professor at several colleges and universities, Julian dispelled the myth that the civil rights movement consisted of "Rosa Parks sitting down and Martin Luther King getting up." He detailed for his students how thousands of "ordinary" people had risked their lives for decades and were eventually able to force the government to act.

He told his students not to wait for a charismatic leader before they took action to overcome the injustices we face today. "If you, yourselves, take leadership," he said, "eventually the leaders will follow."

Julian Bond was looking forward to next year's celebration of the modern Black Power movement's 50th anniversary, which is being organized by the SNCC Legacy Project. Julian had been a key figure early on. Shortly after the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965, African Americans in Atlanta exercised their "power" by electing Julian to the Georgia House of Representatives. But that body refused to seat him because he was an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War and a supporter of those who refused to be drafted. He was seated only after the Supreme Court ordered the state of Georgia to seat him.

He continued to oppose the war.

If Julian believed strongly in something, he took a stand no matter what.

As chairperson of the NAACP, he championed gay rights even though it put him at loggerheads with some of the clergy who were key leaders in the organization.

In 2013, he tied himself to the White House fence to protest the Keystone pipeline even though it put him at loggerheads with his many friends in the Democratic Party leadership.

The Movement was his career

With his stunning good looks, resonating voice and quick intelligence, Julian could have become a Hollywood star. As a teenager, RC Cola hired him as a model. Over the years, he acted in plays, narrated documentary films, was the host of television's "America's Black Forum" and once hosted "Saturday Night Live."

However, he never made a career out of his celebrity. His career was the Movement.

He was born into the struggle for equality. His father, Horace Mann Bond, was a college president in Georgia and Pennsylvania. Paul Robeson and W. E. B. Du Bois were frequent guests of the Bonds. Julian followed in their footsteps.

Like them, he understood that the fight for equality for African Americans is inextricably intertwined with the fight for economic justice for all. Like them, he saw beyond the racial divide of U.S. society into its class division and saw within its class division the role that racial inequality plays.

Like them, he transcended the civil rights movement and fought for justice on a variety of fronts.

He used humor to build unity

In 1960, Julian helped establish the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). SNCC organizers moved to communities across the South to support African Americans who were risking their lives by trying to register to vote. Most organizers were long on courage and short on organizational know-how.

Julian was part of the small group that filled the void. They created an organization based on participatory democracy that most often worked awkwardly, but worked.

Julian became the communications director. He helped the media and public outside the South understand the Movement.

Most leaders of SNCC were people who constantly "let it all hang out." Julian did not feel the need to be like that. He drew strength from his calm, Quaker-like inner core.

Many white staff members had never before worked for black leaders and most of the black leaders in SNCC had never before worked with Northern "liberal" young white people. Julian was one of the very few SNCC leaders who took the time to defuse the inevitable tensions and misunderstandings.

He used humor.

For example, he wrote a memo to new white staff members called "How to be SNCCY." He wrote, "There are several auxiliary habits one should pick up ... like hand-clapping. A note to the wise: when in a mass meeting, watch some Negro staff member and try to make your hands come together at the same time his do. Under no circumstances should you watch James Forman or Julian Bond!"

He built lasting organizations

Aside from helping to establish SNCC, Julian was the co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which today does heroic work in the face of growing attacks.

Furthermore, in 1998 he rescued the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from the oblivion many had predicted. The organization was scandal-ridden, broke and dysfunctional. As chairperson, Julian helped put it back on its feet to once again become a nationally respected treasure. He also worked to expand NAACP programs because, he said, "everybody is one color or another."

More recently he helped found the SNCC Legacy Project, dedicated to helping today's youth build a strong movement for social change.

At the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington, Julian said: "Still we march. ... We still have work to do. None of it is easy, but we have never wished our way to freedom; instead, we have always worked our way."

Julian always said, "I am a hopeless optimist; I always believe things will work out."

We lost Julian Bond on Aug. 15 to a vascular disease.

He would say, "The Movement can go on without me. No one is irreplaceable." He would be correct about the former, but as it applies to him, wrong about the latter.

Photo: Paul Robeson, left, with Julian Bond, aged 9, in 1949. Photo by John W. Mosley. Mosley (1907-1969) was a Philadelphia-area African American photographer whose images appeared in African American newspapers. Charles L. Blockson Collection, Temple University Libraries.

Spreading peace in Japan and worldwide

Thu, 20 Aug 2015 13:35:00 +0000

KYOTO -- What is needed for the peaceful people of the world to build a lasting structure of peace -- a firm bulwark against the nationalist wars of governments everywhere? I gained new insights from recent participation in the annual peace conferences commemorating the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The Japanese peace movement is in a life and death struggle to maintain one critical structure of peace - one that has rooted Japan in a war-free environment since 1945. Imposed by the United States after Japan's surrender, Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution is a renunciation of war that has kept Japan free of involvement in war for decades. No Japanese citizen has been sent to fight, kill, or die in any of the U.S. backed wars since then: Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Afghanistan, or Iraq.

With the onset of U.S. cold war-style belligerency towards China, the current Japanese Prime Minister Abe is pressuring the Japanese Diet (parliament) to remove Article 9. There is also pressure to pass several "war bills", as they are known to the movement, which will remove other post-war restrictions on the military. The Japanese majority opposes these moves as both unconstitutional and dangerous. The presence of peace protestors rallying and marching in the park during the official government commemorations on August 6 and the faint smattering of applause from the 40,000 gathered to hear Abe's official address are unmistakable signs of that opposition. As only a few of the hundreds of international peace delegates were given official seats at the commemoration, I stood beneath the trees in Peace Memorial Park, hearing that faint applause amid the pounding of protest drums and the roar of cicadas joining in a determination to be heard.

I first learned of Article 9 in a visit to the Kyoto Museum for World Peace, Ritsumeikan University. On the wall hangs a beautifully knit tapestry banner of Article 9, which reads: "Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes. In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized." (Article 9, the Constitution of Japan, Chapter II. Renunciation of War).

For Americans to participate in anniversary observances around the August 6 and August 9 horrific atomic bombings of civilian populations is a necessary act of repentance and reconciliation, whether in peace actions at home or in Japan. That the Japanese people feel remorse for the actions of their government in Hawaii, China and Korea binds us in the call for peace.

From my experiences, I think that every nation should have an Article 9. We can spread the peace! The international adoption of constitutional amendments which renounce war is both necessary and possible, for victors as well as vanquished.

In May over 1,000 Japanese delegates traveled to New York for the United Nations Review Conference of the 2010 Non-Proliferation Treaty, now signed by over 189 parties. The Japanese peace movement delivered more than six million signatures from all over Japan, calling for an international convention for the abolishment of all nuclear weapons. The petition asks all governments to enter negotiations without delay for a convention banning nuclear weapons.

The cries of the world's people demand peace: No nukes! No war! No hate! To support these demands, sign the Japanese peace movement's online petition here.

Photo: Cathy Deppe

Thoughts on Greek crisis and in defense of Syriza, Part 1

Wed, 19 Aug 2015 12:49:00 +0000

This is part one of a three-part series.

The current crisis in Greece and the Eurozone is fluid and far from settled. The latest clash last month between Greece and its elite adversaries in Europe - Germany in the first place - is provoking a wide-ranging debate. I can't claim to be an expert so what follows is offered in a provisional spirit.

Greece has been in a deep depression for five years. That's a long time to be bleeding from its social and economic pores. Unemployment is more than 25 percent and far higher among youth. Public spending, wages, and pensions have been ruthlessly cut. Homelessness has become a massive problem. Physical infrastructure is collapsing. Crime as well as suicides are up, and despair and competes with solidarity and hope.

Moreover, the final financial package reached when Europe's leaders met with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras last month will only exacerbate these catastrophic conditions.

Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, Thomas Piketty, and other prominent economists have said repeatedly that what Greece needs is a mix of government spending on pressing social needs, low interest rates, higher wages and incomes, and, above all, debt relief. This is the only way to buoy up demand for goods and services, stimulate investment in new plants and equipment, climb out of indebtedness, and breathe life into a chronically underperforming economy.

But leaders of the Eurozone - a zone of capitalism that was distinguished in the second half of the 20th century by its superior level of social rights and benefits compared with capitalisms across the pond and globally - did exactly the opposite at the meeting in Brussels.

In their view, austerity in the form of drastic spending cuts, budget surpluses, and onerous debt obligations may be painful, but it is pain that if endured by the Greek people and government will bring about a recovery as well as restore integrity to their finances. But here is the problem: reality doesn't sustain this view. In fact, the experience of Greece as well as other European countries since the 2008 global meltdown provides ample evidence that austerity and unsustainable debt payments in an imploding economy is a formula for slower growth, mounting human misery, and a long stay in debtors' prison.

Which explains why last month's package of austerity measures received such a negative reception from so many mainstream economists, not to mention the Greek people and government.

In brief, the package includes further cuts to pensions, a rise in the retirement age to 67, privatizing important industries, gutting workers' rights once again, and a huge increase in regressive sales taxes. The agreement also commits Greece to a budget surplus of one percent in 2015, rising to 3.5 percent by 2018, precisely the wrong medicine for a listless economy. Worse still, if the budget fails to meet those targets, automatic spending cuts will kick in regardless of economic conditions.

Perhaps most damning of all, the package contains no debt relief in any form, despite the recommendations of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to include such relief. Nor are there bridge loans to shore up the collapsing banking system or upfront money to cover Greece's immediate debt repayments.

This draconian settlement - this hazing of the "upstart" Tsipras - can't be explained by the argument that Greece's northern neighbors, Germany in the first place, have their own financial problems and are not in a position to help. The truth: Germany has deep pockets and some debt restructuring wouldn't break the bank in Berlin. Similarly, the European Central Bank and some other European states could easily assist Greece too.

Nor is a full explanation to be found in the claim the German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Wolfgang Schauble, her finance minister, are simply and slavishly doing what is necessary to guarantee the steady stream of unearned (parasitic) income that flows from Greece to German banks. While this tag team zealously advocates for German financial interests and resists any talk of "haircuts" (mark down of debt owed to Greece's creditors, that is, banks in Germany and northern Europe), their posture in Brussels shouldn't be reduced to only this narrow calculus.

Germany asserts dominance over Europe

What then was the main factor determining Germany's behavior toward the Greek government in Brussels? It was politics, but of a particular kind - raw, vengeful, aggressive, selfish, and hegemonic. The meeting in Brussels was no family reunion. It was a German-administered smackdown! Unmediated class power bared its teeth and imposed its will.

And its will was to maintain and reinforce German dominance over the whole of Europe and its increasingly restive populations - not just Greece, not just the southern tier of states that sit on the Mediterranean.

The mission, therefore, of the two top representatives of German capital in the Brussels "negotiations" was to crush even the smallest pretensions of Syriza - Greece's radical-minded governing party - and the Greek people to challenge the exploitative, parasitic and anti-democratic relations that define the European Union in its current form.

The German elites' worst nightmare wasn't that a few concessions to the Greek government would change the structure of the EU, or interrupt the flow of capital to the continent's main financial centers, or constitute too big a burden on their finances.

Rather, their fears were twofold:

* First, any concessions might stoke the ambitions of the anti-austerity movement in Europe as well as Greece to contest the whole logic and practice of austerity.

* Second, a party of the left - and not unimportantly on a continent in which a reconstituted left is gaining ground - would claim credit for successfully standing up to German bullying.

The Italian communist Antonio Gramsci once said that in many instances, hegemonic powers exercise their rule over subordinate peoples and states with a mix of consent and force. But in this instance, Germany took the opportunity to forgo any semblance of consent or "go along to get along," and employed exclusively a policy of force - "exploitive domination," to use the words of the late social theorist Giovanni Arrighi.

Germany must have been aware that its hard-nosed, punitive settlement would raise eyebrows, including in elite circles far beyond Athens. But it decided that a show of force at this moment was politically necessary to secure its dominant position in the EU and forestall oppositional stirrings from below or other rival centers of power.

On its face, German capital came out the victor; there should be no question about that. The terms of the memorandum for Greece were punishing; Syriza looked impotent; and though the rest of Europe (and the Obama administration) grumbled, no one publicly challenged Germany's posture.

The struggle for a new Europe

And yet one has to wonder if German capital's moment of triumph might herald the beginning of the EU's decline, at least in its current hierarchical, exploitive form. Even if it isn't yet in a full-blown legitimacy crisis, it is fair to say that far fewer people believe any longer in the notion of "social Europe," or that the EU states are equal and sovereign, or that Europe is a "common home."

Such shedding of illusions, however, is only a first step in the building of a movement of the "immense majority" that has the political capacity and moral authority to roll back austerity policies and reconstruct a new Europe resting on substantive equality, cooperation, sovereignty, and robust and people-centered democracy.

Such a movement will require several things:

* the sustained engagement of millions of people,
* the further reconstitution, renovation, and expansion of the left in Europe,
* the employment of multiple forms of struggle,
* the utilization of rifts within ruling circles and between capitalist states, and
* a concerted effort to win elected offices, including a readiness to lead and/or participate in governing coalitions.

It will require as well new forms of intra-European cooperation and internationalism. The dialectic between sovereignty, democracy and a common European home will have to be reimagined and recast along new lines.

As for Greece, to think that a tiny country like Greece - the weakest link in the European chain - can go it alone in a capitalist dominated, globalized world, or lift itself out of its present crisis without far more substantial challenges to the austerity regime in the rest of Europe (including the formation of new, pro-people governments), or fast forward to socialism (as the Communist Party of Greece and some others on the left advocate) is tantamount to allowing one's radical disposition to take flight from reality. And we should know by now that dealing with reality is an absolutely necessary starting point of emancipatory politics.

Photo: Syriza flags wave at a 2007 rally. (Michalis Famelis/Own work/Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons)

Tribune Katrina editorial shows contempt for democracy

Tue, 18 Aug 2015 14:41:00 +0000

They barged into my bedroom at the crack of noon with frantic reports of a hurricane in the Gulf that could ruin the city. "Go back to sleep," I told my boyfriend. "They're on drugs."

It was August 27, 2005, four days before Tulane's semester start that never came to be.

To be sure, I was one of the lucky ones, privileged enough to know someone with a car. I arrived in Houston on August 28, 2005 -- one day before Katrina made landfall.

The most graphic consequences of the storm are well documented, and I will not detail them here. I still lack that motivation.

Upon returning to the city, the discovery of my flooded home and spoiled commodities were overshadowed by two words painted on the roof: "NEED ICE." Someone had been on that roof begging for life's most basic necessity -- water.

Nearly ten years later, I woke to another disturbing report about Hurricane Katrina that at first blush appeared to be the result of drug-induced delusion. But this time, the troubling message was not delivered by teenage bohemians, but by a member of the Chicago Tribune's editorial board.

Kristen McQueary's "In Chicago, Wishing for a Hurricane Katrina" praises the purifying effects of the natural disaster and wishes a Katrina-like storm upon the city of Chicago. It was later lightly edited, but its original can be found here. According to McQueary, with the ten year anniversary of Katrina approaching:

"I find myself wishing for a storm in Chicago - an unpredictable, haughty, devastating swirl of fury. A dramatic levee break. Geysers bursting through manhole covers. A sleeping city, forced onto the rooftops. That's what it took to hit the reset button in New Orleans. Chaos. Tragedy. Heartbreak."

The reset button to which McQueary refers is the government's post-Katrina ability to "slash positions" and "detonate labor contracts."

"An underperforming public school system saw a complete makeover. A new schools chief, Paul Vallas, designed a school system with the flexibility of an entrepreneur. No restrictive mandates from the city or the state. No demands from teacher unions to abide. Instead, he created the nation's first free-market education system. Hurricane Katrina gave a great American city a rebirth."

After becoming the subject of backlash on Twitter, McQueary defended her article in a tweet: "If you read the piece, it's about finances and government. I would never diminish the tragedy of thousands of lives lost." Then, with all the grace of Iggy Azalea, she penned a follow-up editorial clarifying that her Katrina piece was not meant to show racism or a lack of empathy, and that she was "horrified and sickened at how [her] column was read."

Hurricane Katrina was by far the costliest natural disaster in our nation's history, and the deadliest since 1928. But McQueary's biggest blunder may not have been her crude meteorological metaphors. Essentially, she pulled a Donald Trump. She expressed with striking candor a claim more disciplined conservatives only convey in coded language: democracy stifles progress in our government, in our schools, and in our workplaces.

After Katrina, the state superintendent announced no public schools would open during the 2005-2006 school year despite the fact that much of the city remained dry. The Louisiana legislature then passed Act 35, which raised the student standardized test passage rate below which the state can take over schools from 60 percent to an arbitrary 87.4 percent -- but only for Orleans Parish. The state then took over 102 of the 128 Orleans Parish public schools, paving the way for a charter school revolution. Starting next year, New Orleans will become the first city in the nation to have an all-charter school system.

At my first job out of college, I gained some insight into the construction of what McQueary's editorial extols as "the nation's first free-market education system." I was working to regain collective bargaining rights for the United Teachers of New Orleans, which, with 7,500 members was the state's largest union before the storm. Before Katrina, its members comprised the backbone of the black middle class in New Orleans.

One of my first work assignments was at a newly established charter elementary school in New Orleans East. Parents were upset at allegations that the gym teacher, son of the principal and his wife, who was the school's director, had imposed corporal punishment, made children stand in the rain, called students "whores," used the mother of all racial epithets, and brandished a semi-automatic pistol in the students' presence. The allegations were later substantiated. The controversy broiled for months, but nothing was done until the union got involved, organizing parents, teachers, and the community around the welfare of the children. Far too late, and after I had moved on from that position, the principal, school director, and gym teacher were terminated.

The situation in the Village de Lest neighborhood had racial overtones. The administrators and gym teacher were white. The children were primarily black and Vietnamese. My observations there were by no means the exception. A majority of the teachers and administrators at New Orleans charters are white; the vast majority are not from New Orleans.

The central authority of the school board in New Orleans has diminished, but its power has not flowed to teachers and parents. With the elimination of neighborhood schools and subversion of the union, parents and teachers are divided, left to fight their own individual battles with school CEOs (formerly known as principals).

But there are pockets of democratic resistance among the students themselves. Students have staged walk-outs and sit-ins to protest injustices like teacher firings, harsh discipline, and a lack of learning material. Last year, charter school students at one local high school presented their grievances at a meeting of the charter board. Students complained that they must recite the school's "core values" (a pledge) just to get into the building, and if they do it incorrectly, they must start over again. Only the low wage support staff is black -- none of the teachers or administrators. The students lack textbooks; instead, they learn from outlines tailored towards state tests. They are forced to walk on lines of tape in the hallway, lest they become one of the majority of students who gets suspended in any given year.

Administrators justified their strict disciplinary policies on the basis that the college preparatory academy is tasked with preparing students for university life.

As a graduate of the very university that helped orchestrate the charter school takeover, it is hard for me to fathom how training students to parrot a corporation's values and walk on a line of tape prepares students for university studies in any meaningful way.

Charter advocates tout improved state test scores and graduation rates as evidence of success. Many journalists report these statistics, (McQueary included) then omit relevant information like the fact that state administrators changed what constitutes a passing score, and the fact that once the schools remaining under Orleans Parish School Board control are taken out of the picture, the city's charter school graduation rates are embarrassingly low (40-60 percent range in 2014). Recovery School District charters have an average ACT score of 16.4, below the requirements for a scholarship to any Louisiana university.

New Orleanians are all too familiar with what it is like to have the important aspects of their lives ripped from their control. We can only hope that just as New Orleanians retook control of their lives after the storm, so too will they retake control of their schools. The market-based illusion of "voting with your feet" in an all-charter system is no substitute for actual democracy, especially for a people with the keenest sense that there is no place they'd rather be.

The story of New Orleans is one of resilience and the ability to overcome outside interruptions. It is a story that McQueary does not fully comprehend. So I'll sum it up with a quote that she may have heard of, for it is familiar to both journalists and New Orleanians alike:

"Times are not good here. The city is crumbling into ashes...Its condition is so bad that when I write about it, as I intend to do soon, nobody will believe I am telling the truth. But it is better to live here in sackcloth and ashes than to own the whole state of Ohio." -Lafcadio Hearn, 1879

[Lafcadio Hearn, 1850-1904, was an international writer who spent time in the U.S. including Cincinnati and New Orleans, in the post Civil War era]

Photo: June, 2007, by OdoFemi McDuffy, a friend who worked on that union campaign with me in New Orleans.

In Wisconsin, Labor Day is more significant than ever

Tue, 18 Aug 2015 11:58:00 +0000

Terese Agnew is one of Wisconsin's most honored contemporary visual artists whose "Portrait of a Textile Worker" has gleaned international attention and continues to do so. Her quilt art has been featured on PBS and her landscape sculptures and other contemporary media reside in major collections showcasing her unique social commentary and ecological sensitivity.

In informing me about another project a year from now, the tireless Agnew detailed an immediate "side project" to get the public and particularly the media to think about the important roots of our only official national holiday approved by Congress and devoted to workers. Since Labor Day is approaching Monday, September 7, that's the project that should be put first and seemed to inspire her deepest passion when she wrote me.

Agnew is most upset at the media neglect of Labor Day, not just as celebration of working families but a reminder of the unity of effort that brought labor a vital place in a capitalist market system. It's all being dismissed by the media as another sales day gimmick or excuse for shopping. Some of that is our preoccupation with celebrity society and apps-laden social media existence. But much is the forgotten legacy of what Americans worked for centuries to accomplish.

"Anyone who knows even a bit of labor history opens up their newspaper on Labor Day or watches TV news and withers in disappointment: gas grills 30 percent off! Rock -bottom prices on summer sportswear and back to school clothing! Sales Sales Sales!" she wrote, asking if this is truly what the day should mean.

The same lack of context occurred to me when Gov. Scott Walker opened the Wisconsin State Fair the week of the first Republican presidential debate on FOX. For personal reasons and totally void of historical knowledge of the real significance, he said he saw something prescient in how Abraham Lincoln addressed the state fair in 1859 a year before becoming president (implying he could be God's similar gift to the nation). Well, the speech is not famous in Lincoln lore but it is known to many students of Wisconsin history since Lincoln used the occasion to push against slavery and for workers, public education and love of nature, according to the records: He exhorted his audience to "prefer free labor, with its natural companion, education." He saw agriculture as an opportunity for "cultivated thought," saying, "Every blade of grass is a study; and to produce two, where there was but one, is both a profit and a pleasure." In no way is Walker's history in office close to that measure.

Labor historians are also well aware that internationally it was May Day that was the chosen time to celebrate workers and that it was Chicago's Haymarket protest in May of 1886 along with Wisconsin's Bay View tragedy about the same time that spilled blood to create the eight hour day and led over decades of union activism to other improvements in working conditions that Americans now take for granted, such as child labor laws, vacations and overtime.

American business leaders, forced to concede the formidable advances organized labor brought but fearing workers' growing strength and dreading any tinge of communism which they sought to associate in the public's minds with international labor, went along with the push for a national holiday under President Grover Cleveland but insisted it be far removed from May. Rather typically the corporations have since sought to hijack labor's own exciting past gains by turning the national holiday into another excuse for shopping and loafing.

So a vast history lingers behind Agnew's anger and her sense of neglected Americana - and this seems to her the ideal time to correct the record. I asked the artist if I could spread her campaign of personal feeling, message and request beyond the confines of Wisconsin to all readers for Labor Day action, and she added a headline:

Dear Friends and Supporters of the Labor Movement,

I was 24 years old when my step-dad finally explained to me what Labor Day as a national holiday was really meant to signify. People fought and died for the 8 hour day, safe working conditions and decent pay. Workers linked arms for fair wages that could sustain a family after a job well done . . . for damn hard work as a matter of fact-work that built the US economy, the infrastructure of our country and continues to strengthen our communities to this day. It was a movement the nation agreed to set aside a day to celebrate. Workers united against all odds to counter the most powerful magnates in history-the "Robber Barons" for starters, who fought viciously against working people, maiming, murdering and all too often "crushing" them.

But here we are - not crushed yet even in Wisconsin (though a little beaten down to be sure.) Well it's time to speak up again!

This coming Labor Day 2015 - instead of opening up the newspaper or TV news for an avalanche of sales for products made in awful working conditions across the globe - let's write letters to the editor to our newspapers and media outlets and offer up the many compelling reasons that organized labor is more important than ever. Let's challenge the lies and false characterizations of Unions that so often find their way into print. Let's really celebrate Labor Day and do some educating while we're at it.

I've started a list of issues that need to be told with pride, spunk and clear, hard facts. Let's start a fresh, historically inspired, but up to the moment contemporary offensive on why Organized Labor is essential today.

Add your own to my list or pick your favorite:

The basic needs of families with parents working full time-are not SPECIAL INTERESTS-unless you think the well-being of most Americans is a special interest. (Note this recent front page story in the Washington Post underlying the modern hardship of the issue.)

Wages in the last 40 years have stagnated in the United States. The numbers coincide all too perfectly with the decline in union membership. Now, no matter how hard you work-you're worth less than you would have been in 1975. Unless you're in a union-and that success has been used against us!

Unlike most corporations -where the boss really is the BOSS -- there is no such thing as a union boss since all union representatives are VOTED in with a majority vote by the workers they serve, and it is up to those members to make sure their leaders behave within a democratic structure.

As membership in US labor unions plummeted - from one in every three private sector workers enrolled in a union in the 1950's to one in 20 today - the wage inequalities between black and white workers grew ever larger. The sharp decline in union jobs helps to explain racial economic gaps today.

In so-called "right to work" states, the economic well-being of workers, families and supporting public institutions are getting worse.

We need to tell the media: get the facts and report them correctly! If you spoke up before Wisconsin became a right to work -thank you. Rinse and repeat.

Happy Labor Day-I look forward to seeing you all IN PRINT!!

With all good wishes and in solidarity,

Terese Agnew

Agnew then provided Wisconsin residents with contacts, which can readily be expanded to everyone's media outlets.

I first met Terese Agnew decades ago when she was a daring art student innovator in Milwaukee. Now she lives with her family on a farm in western Wisconsin, still active in community, labor and cultural causes with several projects as creator and participant, including a public installation project that will begin in La Crosse in October of 2016 and then move around the state resurrecting historic and iconic figures from Wisconsin's past as inspiration for lost values and fresh appreciation of nature.

Photo: Terese Agnew standing in front of her work The D.O.T. Straightens Things Out, during PBS filming in Milwaukee. The work is in the collection of the Milwaukee Art Museum. Dominique Paul Noth.

Julian Bond, civil rights leader, dies at 75

Mon, 17 Aug 2015 13:58:00 +0000

ATLANTA (AP) - Julian Bond's life traced the arc of the civil rights movement, from his efforts as a militant young man to start a student protest group all the way to the top leadership post at the NAACP.

Year after year, the calm, telegenic Bond was one of the nation's most poetic voices for equality, inspiring fellow activists with his words in the 1960s and sharing the movement's vision with succeeding generations as a speaker and academic. He died Saturday at 75.

Former Ambassador Andrew Young said Bond's legacy would be as a "lifetime struggler."

"He started when he was about 17 and he went to 75," Young said. "And I don't know a single time when he was not involved in some phase of the civil rights movement."

Bond died in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, after a brief illness, according to a statement issued Sunday by the Southern Poverty Law Center, an advocacy group that he founded in 1971 and helped oversee for the rest of his life. His wife, Pamela Horowitz, said Bond suffered from vascular disease.

Her husband, she said, "never took his eyes off the prize and that was always racial equality."

The son of a college president burst into the national consciousness after helping to start the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, where he rubbed shoulders with committee leaders Stokely Carmichael and John Lewis. As the committee grew into one of the movement's most important groups, the young Bond dropped out of Morehouse College in Atlanta to serve as communications director. He later returned and completed his degree in 1971.

Bond was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives in 1965, but fellow lawmakers, many of them white, refused to let him take his seat because of his anti-war stance on Vietnam. The case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in his favor. Bond finally took office in 1967.

"If this was another movement, they would call him the PR man, because he was the one who wrote the best, who framed the issues the best. He was called upon time and again to write it, to express it," said Eleanor Holmes Norton, who was Bond's colleague on the student committee and later wrote a friend-of-the-court brief for the American Civil Liberties Union when Bond's case was before the high court.

President Barack Obama called Bond "a hero."

"Justice and equality was the mission that spanned his life," Obama said in a statement. "Julian Bond helped change this country for the better."

In 1968, he led a delegation to the Democratic National Convention, where his name was placed in nomination for the vice presidency, but he declined because he was too young.

He served in the Georgia House until 1975 and then served six terms in the Georgia Senate until 1986. He also served as president of the law center from its founding until 1979 and was later on its board of directors.

Bond was elected board chairman of the NAACP in 1998 and served for 10 years.

He was known for his intellect and his even keel, even in the most emotional situations, Young said.

"When everybody else was getting worked up, I could find in Julian a cool serious analysis of what was going on," Young said.

In the most intense debates, Bond was "always a gentleman" and never mean, his wife said.

Bond was often at the forefront of protests. In 1960, he helped organize a sit-in involving Atlanta college students at the city hall cafeteria.

"We never thought that he really would participate and be arrested because he was always so laid back and cool, but he joined in with us," recalled Carolyn Long Banks, now 74, who said Bond never sought much recognition in those early years.

Bond was "a thinker as well as a doer. He was a writer as well as a young philosopher," said Charlayne Hunter-Gault, a journalist who struck up a friendship with Bond in the early 1960s, when she was one of the first two black students to attend the University of Georgia. At the time, Bond was an activist in Atlanta with the newly formed committee.

His eloquence and sense of humor "really helped sustain the young people in the civil rights movement."

Hunter-Gault said she hopes a new generation of activists draws lessons from Bond's life and work as they embrace the Black Lives Matter movement.

"Everybody is not going to be out there in the street with their hands up or shouting," she said. "There've got to be people like Julian who participate and observe and combine those two things for action and change that make a difference."

Morris Dees, co-founder of the law center, said the nation lost one of its most passionate voices for justice.

"He advocated not just for African-Americans but for every group, indeed every person subject to oppression and discrimination, because he recognized the common humanity in us all," Dees said.

This included immigrant rights and the rights of gays, lesbians and transgender people. Bond chaired an LGBT task force for the NAACP to help the African American community fight the challenges of homophobia and transgender discrimination.

Bond told the audience at a 2011 NAACP convention in Los Angeles, "We know sexual orientation is not a choice. We know homosexuality is not a mental illness. We know you can't 'pray the gay away.'"

He said gay rights are another component of civil rights.

"Sexual disposition parallels race. I was born black and had no choice. I could not and will not change it if I could. Like race, our sexuality isn't preference. It is immutable, unchangeable, and the constitution protects us all from prejudices and discrimination based on immutable differences."

After leading the NAACP, Bond stayed active in Democratic politics. He also made regular appearances on the lecture circuit and on television and taught at several universities.

Horace Julian Bond was born Jan. 14, 1940, in Nashville, Tennessee. In addition to his wife, a former staff attorney at the law center, survivors include five children.

___

Holland reported from Washington, D.C. Associated Press Race and Ethnicity Editor Sonya Ross, also in Washington, contributed to this report. Additional peoplesworld.org reporting was also added.

Editor's Note: Check People's World later this week for an appreciation of Julian Bond by civil rights veteran Larry Rubin.

Photo: Julian Bond, left, and Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton at a rally opposing a ballot initiative aimed at prohibiting same-sex marriage in that state in June 2012. (Bobak Ha'Eri/Own work/Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Commons)

The left’s challenge: facing institutional and individual racism

Wed, 12 Aug 2015 15:06:00 +0000

This is going to sound harsh but for me there is noteworthy parallel (note, I say parallel rather than equivalence) between the phenomenon of Donald Trump's garbage and the support by his followers in the past few days and the reaction of the Bernie Sanders campaign and its supporters to a couple of protests at rallies held to give Sanders a platform for his campaign.

We can learn about the dominant ideological positioning of the Trump campaign, the Republicans generally, and the extremism of the bulk of their vocal primary supporters by the apparent response of many GOP voters to the Megyn Kelly/GOP-FOX debate kerfuffle. The tenor of the backlash to Kelly's strong questions about Trump's sexism (notably not lodged against the nine other sexists on the platform) and other of Trump's critics reveal how obviously, sexism, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, and anti-working-class sentiments are at a fever pitch over on the right.

With this in mind, what does the response of Sanders' supporters and his campaign to the events in Seattle this past weekend suggest about what is happening over here on the left? Focused and emotionally intense criticisms that range from denunciations of the protesters' "tactics" to denunciations of one of them as a Palin supporter or as Hillary Clinton plants or whatever is to me revealing of how some of us on the left handle public discomfort addressing racism-our own and the power structure's. Defenses of Sanders' record in the 1960s and making the point that he hired an African American woman in his social media campaign ring hollow, with good reason, for too many people. (They seem to parallel Trump's own claim that he can't be sexist because he likes women CEOs or whatever garbage fell from his bloated yap.)

Sanders has given good speeches about racism, with special focus on how his presidency might address the racist criminal justice system and systemic education inequalities. But these speeches and statements seem to be made in all the traditionally correct spaces (to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, e.g.). I'd like to see him whip up a crowd composed racially of whites like the Seattle rally denouncing racism-both its individualist utterances and its structural articulations-like Richard Trumka did in 2008 and subsequently. Let's make that kind of condemnation part and parcel of ordinary politics. Sanders gives excellent class-based political analysis in his speeches, if this one in his Seattle appearance later that evening is a good sampling -maybe his intensity was fueled by the events of the afternoon?

But the protests really aren't even about Sanders either, as I see it. In addition to saying stop hurting us, protest is usually also about raising the consciousness and courage of the sympathetic and revealing the contradictions, hypocrisies, or true allegiances of those who denounce protest. Some of the observations offered on a local Seattle news website by Washington State Senator Pramila Jayapal seem very reasonable to me. The response by many in that crowd in Seattle, many who support Sanders online, etc. is way off-base, she hinted. Some of it goes like this: if you don't stop picking on Sanders, you're gonna lose my support (statement that seems to be oft repeated in the comments section of any Facebook post not eh subject). Instead, she'd like to see Sanders' supporters also vocally support the protests.

Personally, I'd like to see them get as angry about the wave of killings of African American people that has gripped this country, as angry about incarceration, unequal opportunities, etc. as people did about Cecil, even more angry than they got about missing a short stump speech at an outdoor rally on a hot day.

Jayapal's also reasonably advises: "Here's what I would love even more: for the Sanders campaign and BLM nationally to sit down and talk about an agenda on racial justice that he can use his presidential platform to help move. Imagine rolling out that agenda and inviting black people to talk about it on stage with him. Now that excites me."

Perhaps hammering out a common agenda violates the de-centered concept of the Black Lives Matter movement, but I imagine there are still excellent ways of working something out along with other national and local Democratic and progressive candidates.

Photo: Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., greets his supporters at a rally, Aug. 10, at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu)

Native Americans gather to support the Sanders campaign

Fri, 07 Aug 2015 13:12:00 +0000

When Bernie Sanders held that nationwide live stream event, my community center, the American Indian Center of Chicago (AIC), was asked by the Sanders campaign to be one of the meeting places for his event.

We had about 150 people for the event -- filling up the largest room in the building! Natives and non-Natives during the 20-minute countdown expressed reasons why they were interested in Sanders. They spoke of "higher wages for the working class," and " taxing the rich." Some spoke of how mainstream media isn't talking about Bernie enough and when they do it isn't very informative about his politics. While all this was being said, I was happy to notice the range in age and race of those in attendance. And there was a high level of enthusiasm from people signing up to volunteer and make donations to the campaign -- some of the strongest I have seen.

The countdown ended and Bernie Sanders walked out, wasting no time with boring opening statements. He opened his speech strong and coined a new hashtags for the night: #EnoughIsEnough. He talked about how too many people are living in poverty. Bernie said " We cannot continue to maintain a starvation minimum wage." Bernie continued to talk about how every person should receive healthcare, paid time off, maternity leave, and free education.

I think one of the moments that stood out the most and got the most applause and adoration from the group was when he spoke of police brutality. Sanders said, " We're tired of seeing black people yanked to the ground and assaulted ...We have to combat institutionalized racism in the U.S." Bernie ended this statement with a bold #EnoughIsEnough.

Bernie went on to talk about the need for a new "political revolution" and "strong grassroots organizing." At the end of program, the Sanders campaign asked viewers to send out a mass text message with the word WORK to sign up to volunteer.

I hope that the level of enthusiasm continues and grows in new and unexpected ways. I'm hoping that at some point during this election season Native Americans are going to be able to directly ask questions of the presidential candidates. I want to know how Bernie Sanders is going to address the issues facing Natives. If his campaign can keep up this energy around Bernie, I feel that he might have a real chance to win this.

Photo: Bernie Sanders Facebook page

Amend Constitution to add a right to vote

Thu, 06 Aug 2015 14:01:00 +0000

On Aug. 6, the Voting Rights Act, keystone of the civil rights movement, will mark its 50th anniversary. This was an act, passed in the wake of the "Bloody Sunday" demonstrations in Selma, designed to correct, as President Lyndon Johnson stated at the time, "a clear and simple wrong."

"Millions of Americans are denied the right to vote because of their color," he said. "This law will ensure them the right to vote."

But now, 50 years later, it is not time to celebrate that achievement; it is time to demonstrate against the concerted campaign to undermine it.

In 2006, after extensive hearings, the Senate reauthorized the temporary parts of Voting Rights Act unanimously. It passed the House with only 33 votes against it. President George W. Bush reaffirmed his commitment to enforce it. But the campaign to reverse or undermine the voting rights of people of color never ends.

After the Civil War, the 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, guaranteed former slaves the right to vote and gave Congress the power to enforce that right on the states. Blacks voted in large numbers. Black candidates were elected to state legislatures and even to Congress. The white response was brutal. The Ku Klux Klan terrorized blacks trying to vote. Southern Democrats took back statehouses and city councils and passed a range of measures to lock blacks out of voting: poll taxes, literacy tests, double primaries and at-large districts.

In 1965, the Voting Rights Act changed this. Black voter registration surged across the South. Under Section 4, the states that had a history of voter discrimination were put under special Section 5 scrutiny, with the Justice Department requiring pre-clearance of any laws affecting voting.

Yet, as Jim Rutenberg summarizes in "Overcome: A Dream Undone" in the New York Times Magazine, the campaign to undermine the act began before the ink was dry on its signing. Republicans launched their Southern Strategy, making themselves the party of white sanctuary. Then, to win elections, they set out to find ways to weaken the Voting Rights Act and constrict the right to vote.

The five person right-wing majority on the Supreme Court led the way. In Shelby County, Ala v. Holder, Chief Justice John Roberts gutted the preclearance provisions of the Voting Rights Act, arguing - despite detailed congressional findings to the contrary - that discrimination in voting was no longer a problem.

That opened the floodgates. Republican-dominated state legislatures across the country immediately passed laws to constrict the right to vote. They demanded official ID that African-Americans lacked disproportionately, cut days for early voting, reduced voting on Sundays, ended same-day registration, invalidated students IDs for voting and more. They gerrymandered districts, revived at-large elections and other means to reduce the voting power of people of color. It is simply obscene that Republicans have devoted themselves to creating obstacles to voting to help them win elections.

The right to vote protects all other rights in a democracy. Yet the Constitution does not explicitly guarantee an individual right to vote to all Americans. The 15th, 19th, and 26th Amendments only outlaw discrimination in voting on the basis of race, sex and age. All other aspects of voting are generally left to the states and localities. While the 1965 Voting Rights Act was rightfully hailed as the most important law of the 20th century, the fundamental right to vote for all Americans is still an unfinished task.

Selma moved us forward, but Shelby has pushed us back. We've gone from protecting the right to vote to suppressing it. It took a grassroots voting rights movement to gain a Voting Rights Act. It will again take a grassroots voting rights movement to add a right to vote amendment to the U.S. Constitution on the road to a more complete democracy.

Photo: Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts played a major role in the gutting of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. | Nati Harnik/AP

A Middle East nuclear weapon-free zone: a vital next step

Thu, 06 Aug 2015 13:10:00 +0000

Seventy years after the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 45 years after the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) entered into force and 20 years after the NPT was extended indefinitely, it's time and past time to look at the status of efforts to rid the world of what's been called the only true weapon of mass destruction.

And it's vital to see the relationship between the NPT's provisions and the new nuclear arms agreement with Iran, now the subject of sharp debate in Congress.

Under the NPT, the five acknowledged nuclear weapons states - the U.S., Russian Federation, United Kingdom, France, and China - agreed not to transfer nuclear weapons, other nuclear explosive devices, or their technology to any non-nuclear-weapon state.

They also agreed to "pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control."

Unfortunately, we have yet to see much progress toward "general and complete" nuclear disarmament - the only secure way to rid the world of a scourge which could quickly end life on earth as we know it.

Nearly all nations have signed the NPT. Only Israel, India, Pakistan and South Sudan have never signed it, and North Korea withdrew from the treaty in 2003. Pakistan and India acknowledge their nuclear weapons; Israel does not, although it is estimated to have over 200 weapons in its arsenal. There are no signs that South Sudan, which just became an independent nation in 2011, has or plans to develop nuclear weapons.

In 1995, over 170 countries meeting at the Review and Extension Conference extended the NPT indefinitely, outlined next steps to implement the pact, and decided to hold review conferences every five years.

Meanwhile, non-nuclear nations, especially in the developing world, have often been sharp in their criticism of the five major nuclear powers who have signed the NPT, and especially the U.S., for failing to lead negotiations for total abolition.

Participants in the most recent NPT review conference, held April 27-May 22 in New York City, were unable to agree on a consensus document. A major issue was support the U.S., United Kingdom and Canada gave to the objections of the Israeli government - which hasn't signed the NPT - to scheduling a conference on a Middle East zone free of nuclear or other mass destruction weapons.

Planning for such a conference should have had the enthusiastic support of all four governments, as well as every country in the world.

A number of nuclear free zone agreements have already been concluded, in Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, the South Pacific and Antarctica.

A Middle East Nuclear Weapon Free Zone could be a very big step toward achieving real security for all the countries in the area, and could make it easier to reach peaceful, diplomatic resolution of other conflicts in a very troubled region.

Overlooked in the often contentious debate over the nuclear agreement with Iran is that Iran itself has long advocated such a zone in the Middle East.

Writing July 31 in the British publication The Guardian, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif called the new agreement "not a ceiling but a solid foundation on which we must build."

Noting that the accord "cements Iran's status as a zone free of nuclear weapons," Zarif said it is time to expand that zone to cover the entire Middle East.

He said Iran's proposal is supported by "some of its Arab friends in the Middle East," but called Israel "the holdout," a situation he said must be addressed directly.

Challenging the concept that "mutually assured destruction" could bring stability and nonproliferation, Zarif called that doctrine "the primary driving force behind the temptation by some countries to acquire nuclear weapons, and by others to engage in expanding and beefing up the strength of their nuclear arsenals."

Zarif called starting talks for a treaty with "robust monitoring and compliance-verification" a step in the right direction.

It would seem obvious that such a treaty would not only reassure neighboring countries about Iran, it would also be one more significant step on the way toward worldwide abolition of nuclear weapons.

Active proposals date back to 1974, when Iran and Egypt jointly proposed setting up a Middle East nuclear weapon free zone in a resolution in the UN General Assembly.

Since 1980 the General Assembly has passed the resolution each year, without debate. Starting in 1991 the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has lent its support as well.

The IAEA envisions a zone extending from Libya in the west to Iran in the east, and from Syria in the north to Yemen in the south - a region now one of the world's most conflict-ridden areas.

Adding the Middle East to the list of nuclear weapon free zone agreements around the world should help greatly to set the stage for successful negotiations to rid the world entirely of these potentially catastrophic weapons.

Photo: People participate in an anti-nuclear rally in Union Square in New York, Sunday, April 26, 2015. | Seth Wenig/AP

Thank you Pope Francis for talking about climate change

Wed, 05 Aug 2015 13:27:00 +0000

For climate change activists who were looking to shore up the three-legged stool of support for arguments supporting the science of climate change and hoping to shape policies to mitigate climate change impacts, it was an extremely pleasant surprise that a fourth leg was added to the climate change education and advocacy stool. Thank you Pope Francis!

Those three legs included the science community, grassroots and environmental organizational support and advocacy, and the political community and process. But now we have another powerful support beam to shore up efforts to educate, advocate and broaden support. Religion. Pope Francis has conveyed a moral, ethical, spiritual, and communal message that cleverly, but deliberately uses logic, facts, and scientific reasoning to support education, policies and actions on climate change. It has the further potential to reach a distant audience who was either indifferent or skeptical because religion has often been used by climate change deniers as an excuse as to why we "shouldn't worry, God will take care of all." Pope Francis' encyclical on the environment or "On Care For Our Common Home" has revealed that religion, all along, was really intertwined with scientific study and findings with respect, to the planet that sustains all of life as we know it.

The pope's weight and gravitas on climate change is more than raising awareness to the flock, and potentially bringing around 1.2 billion Catholics, or neutralizing some of the denier's religious arguments against recognizing climate change. Pope Francis' statement on the conditions, and actions needed on climate change is a marriage and consummation of morality and science. And frankly it's just plain exciting that a pope recognizes the moral crisis that faces humankind that's tied up in politics and economics. Of course this pope has been refreshingly turning heads since his tenure started. Pope Francis is connecting the dots of climate change through science, economics, and calling for a moral and just response, not simply proportional. Francis has put our entire economic model and ethos on trial. His encyclical on protecting the earth has as many references to science as religion and condemns our economic activity and lack of proper urban planning as a primary source of the devastation we're unleashing on our planet. In bringing it home to the masses, the pope reminds us that it's the poor and working class that will bear the burden of climate change impacts. Drought in some places, flooding in others lead to dislocation, famine and war.

We're already seeing those impacts and scenarios play themselves out in places like Syria, over 1 million Syrians have been forced to relocate due to drought impacts on crop yields, turning Syria from a commodity exporter to importer that led to huge escalations in food prices and exacerbated by negligent and harsh responses from the Bashar al-Assad government, fueling the Syrian Civil War. These conditions and realities surrounding global warming haven't been lost on institutions like the U.S. Defense Department, which late last year issued a report stating that climate change was a "threat multiplier," which could create civil unrest, the spread of disease, and destabilize susceptible places and regions, and poses an "immediate risk" to national security. When you have both the U.S. Defense Department and the pope agreeing on the science and impacts of global warming, you would think you have something irrefutable.

But here we go again. The nonscientists, intent on undermining the truth and any responsible action and responses to climate change, are still on the move. Fox News minions have already declared the Pope the "most dangerous person on the planet." And Fox's Republican Party field of presidential candidates is only too proud and happy to carry that message into the presidential primaries. Jeb Bush said the pope should really just butt out of politics (except when church and state stand side by side on other social matters dear to Republicans) and matters of science. Bush said it's "arrogant" to raise the scientific consensus of global warming. Bobby Jindal, another Republican presidential candidate and climate change denier who previously had warned his own party of being the "stupid party," now seems quite prophetic about the likes of Jeb Bush, himself, and pretty much the entire Republican presidential field and party followers when it comes to climate change.

And that makes perfect sense. Pope Francis is appealing to a higher power or reason, logic, and enlightenment views to address the most pressing challenge that humans have faced in their existence. Francis' scathing and insightful statements on our economic model and philosophy are consistent with this environmental encyclical. Unfettered capitalism, driven by greed, selfish interests, disdain for the poor, disrespect of the planet, the pillaging of natural resources benefitting the very few, coupled with the lack of heart, mind, and will to realize that we have not only the responsibility, but the means to correct this ill that, would not only preserve humanity, but ensure it thrives in an egalitarian way, will be memorialized in failure, that this current generation failed to recognize and act to save the human population.

The pope wonderfully summarizes the policy aspects of climate change and an optimistic way forward.

"We know that technology based on the use of highly polluting fossil fuels - especially coal, but also oil and, to a lesser degree, gas - needs to be progressively replaced without delay. Until greater progress is made in developing widely accessible sources of renewable energy, it is legitimate to choose the less harmful alternative or to find short-term solutions. But the international community has still not reached adequate agreements about the responsibility for paying the costs of this energy transition. In recent decades, environmental issues have given rise to considerable public debate and have elicited a variety of committed and generous civic responses. Politics and business have been slow to react in a way commensurate with the urgency of the challenges facing our world. Although the post-industrial period may well be remembered as one of the most irresponsible in history, nonetheless there is reason to hope that humanity at the dawn of the twenty-first century will be remembered for having generously shouldered its grave responsibilities."

As Pope Francis inspires us to think through how humans act upon the world and themselves both justly and unjustly, he at last has brought a voice into the discussion around climate change that is merging the voices of science, religion, and politics. He reminds us that humans have socially created and engineered religion and politics, while science ultimately rules. Maybe the pope is saying that God is nature, or the environment. Regardless, we have a powerful moral figure who brings science and enlightenment thinking into a problem that has the ability to destroy us or compel us to come together to realize our finest moment.

Photo: Pope Francis greets well wishers in St. Peter's Square, Vatican, June 6, 2014. (Alfredo Borba/Wikipedia/CC)