People Before Profit blog

Peace and Jobs: A Conversion Conversation

Thu, 28 Jan 2016 13:24:00 +0000

As this country hurtles into a new year, I am grateful for the stop sign at Martin Luther King Jr.'s national holiday. It offers time for me to consider again the meaning of my life as well as our national purpose. This year I am remembering that King's life focused not only on civil rights, but also jobs. His vision of justice went beyond voting and equality to decent work for livable pay. That's why he went to Memphis - to support striking garbage workers.

I am old enough to remember the early days of the peace conversion movement in the 1970s. Following the end of the war in Vietnam many people thought that the savings no longer needed for the military in that misadventure could be turned into social investments such as hospitals, schools and such, bringing good jobs with them. Again, at the end of the Cold War, in the late 1980s similar ideas had been proposed - the Speaker of the House even sought to create a commission to study the possibilities.

Now the issue of jobs presents itself again. If we need to keep 75 percent of known fossil fuel reserves in the ground to reverse human-caused climate change, then all those people who dig coal and drill for oil and gas need something else to do to provide for their families and sustain the often rural communities that have grown up around oil fields and mines - places like Wyoming, West Virginia, Kentucky, not to mention urban California areas such as Carson and Wilmington, that offer good union jobs.

Catholic priests in these regions trying to teach Pope Francis' encyclical on climate change are facing some scared parishioners, even as they themselves wonder, "How much of a price does Appalachia have to pay?" as one priest asks. "The fact is, we're going to have to pay a higher price than the average person reading that encyclical." That's a serious concern.

So I was delighted to see that a major economist has written a book on this subject, Greening the Global Economy, and as usual Robert Pollin's research upends the conventional wisdom. I first learned about Pollin's work during the struggle for a living wage in Los Angeles. His studies demonstrated the economic benefits that accrue to a region by raising people's incomes - especially at the bottom. We depended on his research to make our case.

In his new work, Pollin assesses the ability to convert this economy from fossil fuels to alternative power. He thinks it can be done over the next 20 years by investing "between 1.5 and 2 percent per year of the gross domestic product to energy efficiency and clean, low-emission renewable energy sources." That in itself is remarkable. Many critics of human-caused climate change don't think it can actually be done at any price. He argues that we can make the change without wrecking the economy.

Furthermore, he and his fellow researchers demonstrate that this transition can create many more jobs than it now takes to satiate our hunger for fossil fuels. He looks at six of the world's "large-scale fossil-fuel-producing countries" - Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, South Africa and the United States - and shows how in each case switching to renewable fuels generates substantially more jobs than staying with fossil fuels. In the case of Indonesia, more than three times the number of jobs.

Economics and labor writer Jonathan Tasini also worries about those fossil fuel workers and their communities. He thinks that spending $4 to $7 trillion over the next 20 years would support retirees, sustain localities, and create new decent jobs. Those are great goals, but that's a lot of money. Tasini puts such an expenditure in the context of a U.S. economy which was worth $17.7 trillion in 2014. He compares it to the $4 to $6 trillion spent on the Iraq and Afghan wars, as well as the $2 trillion used to shore up the economy following the Great Recession. Such amounts of money are not only manageable, they are in the realm of our recent experience.

When Tasini talks about changing our economy from fossil fuel based to renewable energy while creating jobs, he speaks of a "just transition." He means that we can make the changes that save the earth and include justice for workers, while preserving their communities.

The phrase reminds me of those peace conversion discussions from decades past. They went far beyond simply creating more jobs. They would have turned some critical resources toward rebuilding America. The phrase also brings to mind Dr. King's commitment to justice as well as jobs, which those priests who are trying to teach the Pope's encyclical could find helpful. It's a national purpose worth our efforts - one that could bring more jobs and save the Earth. It calls me to think deeper and do more.

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 renter's rights campaign.

Reprinted by permission of the author and Capital and Main. Photo courtesy of Capital and Main.

Flint's water crisis and the GOP's class war

Tue, 26 Jan 2016 17:16:00 +0000

Why did Flint suffer a water catastrophe that now requires that children be treated as if they had been poisoned?

It wasn't because the people were negligent. From the moment Flint began taking its water from the polluted Flint River, residents warned about water that came out of the faucet brown, tasted foul and smelled worse. They began packing public meetings with jugs filled with water that looked like brown stain.

It wasn't because the democracy failed, because in Flint democracy had been suspended. The city, devastated by the closing of its auto plants and industrial base, has been in constant fiscal crisis. Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, one of the crop of proud conservative governors promising to cut taxes for the rich and get government out of the way, appointed an emergency manager to run the city. Elected officials had no say.

It wasn't because the city manager and the state environmental agency and the governor weren't warned. Warnings were issued from the beginning. General Motors even suspended using the water because it was too corrosive for the auto parts it was making. Nevertheless, city and state officials assured the worried residents of Flint that it was still safe to drink.

The result is that Flint's children - particularly those in the older, poorer, disproportionately black neighborhoods - have been exposed to elevated levels of lead.

Lead poisoning isn't like contracting a cold or getting the flu. Lead is an immediate and unrelenting threat to health. It causes miscarriages and births of low-weight babies. Children exposed to lead can have disabilities that afflict them for their entire lives. Lead stays in your bones. Yet even after a federal EPA official warned that the tests were being skewed to underreport levels of lead, even after heroes like LeeAnne Walters reported that her children's hair was falling out and that they were developing rashes and constantly sick, even after the heroic pediatrician Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, an Iraqi-American, reported elevated levels of lead in children's blood, their concerns were dismissed, their alarms scorned, they were attacked for sowing hysteria and the poor residents of Flint were told the water was safe to drink.

Why were the people and the obvious signs and the experts ignored?

They would not have been ignored if these were wealthy suburban neighborhoods and the water suddenly turned brown. They would not have been ignored if the children of an all-white community were at risk.

State officials dismissed the complaints as exaggerated. The brown water was just rust. Officials thought people ought to be grateful for what they had. The laws, they wrote, ensure the water is "safe to drink." It doesn't regulate how it looks, its "aesthetic values." The water looks bad because it's from the "Flint River." Flint is old and poor. The pipes are old and poor. The people are black and poor.

They just have to learn to put up with it. And if the lead seems to be at dangerous levels, flushing the system before the tests, skewing the sample to the most recently built systems can jigger the results to get by. Some might get hurt, but no one worth caring about.

This is the ugly reality of the right-wing assault on America's working people and particularly on people of color. They want to get "government out of the way" - out of the way of their greed. The successful have earned special treatment - in taxes, in contracts, in interest rates, in public investment. The unsuccessful need to learn self-reliance. They need to accept what they get and be grateful for it.

Flint is not a bug in their perspective; it is a feature. They fought against African-Americans getting the right to vote. Now they use "emergency" to set up dictators - emergency managers - to occupy predominantly African-American communities. They worry that the poor get too much "free stuff" - food stamps (once a Republican program), health care through Medicaid (so they refuse to expand it), unemployment insurance when they lose their jobs (so they limit its coverage), minimum wages (which they fight against) and "costly regulations" that require safe water and clean air and safer workplaces.

The "establishment" Republican candidate Jeb Bush has called for a "regulatory spring cleaning" to strip away regulations that protect health and safety. The Republican Congress annually seeks to cut backs EPA's budgets and authority. The Republican governors gleefully gut the budgets of their own state agencies. They don't worry. The children of the rich will be protected. It is the poor - of all races but disproportionately people of color - who will be left at greater risk.

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder should have the common decency to resign. The state and the federal government should step in and rebuild Flint's water system immediately. A federal investigation should issue indictments where justified. But this isn't simply about water and Flint. This is about an ideology that believes in this rich country, the privileges of the few must be protected, even if the necessities of the many are sacrificed. "Of course there is class warfare," billionaire Warren Buffett once acknowledged, "and my class is winning."

This article originally appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times. It is reprinted here with the permission of Rainbow PUSH.

Photo: Mike Ahrens of Muskegon, Mich., held a sign up about Flint's water crisis in Ann Arbor Jan. 18. Junfu Han | AP

What would happen if Bloomberg ran for president?

Mon, 25 Jan 2016 15:44:00 +0000

I have said more than once that the presidential campaign and its outcome could well depend on what is happening in the larger political environment over the coming year. And that environment isn't entirely predictable. It can change in unanticipated ways. And these changes can quickly alter - even turn upside down - the election terrain and the prospects of candidates, parties, and the coalitions and movements that support them.

A downward slide of the global economy, for example, isn't out of the question, according to economist Larry Summers. If it happens, it will undoubtedly change the dynamics of the elections in significant ways. Much the same could be said about another terrorist attack.

And this morning we are greeted with the news that Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York and billionaire, is considering a run for the White House as an independent. Bloomberg, according to the NYT, is exasperated especially by Donald Trump on the right and by Bernie Sanders on the left.

If it goes beyond a trial balloon and Bloomberg enters the race, it too will shake things up. While prudence tells me to wait before offering any opinion, my initial reaction is that his candidacy would disadvantage the presidential run of the Democratic nominee, be it Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton - not to mention the broad democratic movement that hopes to defeat the right and emerge out of this year's elections on higher ground.

In the 1992 presidential campaign, the independent candidacy of Ross Perot, another billionaire by the way, hurt the reelection bid of the elder George Bush, thus helping a relative newcomer to national politics - Bill Clinton - win the presidency. A Bloomberg presidential run, I suspect, would cut the other way, making it more difficult for the Democratic nominee to win the White House as well as weakening the leverage of the broader people movement in the post election period.

Stay tuned.

This was reposted from Sam Webb's blog.

Photo: Michael Bloomberg. | Mary Altaffer/AP

Western lands and the “material out of which countries are made”

Thu, 21 Jan 2016 14:41:00 +0000

Let's face it, we Easterners - and by this I mean anyone who lives east of the Mississippi River - don't really get the Western land use issue. It is so big: the land, the sky, the history. At first glance, an Easterner may want to dismiss the armed grouplet that took over Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Harney County, Oregon, as a bunch of fringe right-wingers.

They are that. But they also have seized upon decades of grievances about federal land policies, economic insecurity and poverty; the dynamic tension between federal and state control that has existed since the founding of the country; and other collective histories that gather like storm clouds over the Big Sky horizon. Some of these histories include: Manifest Destiny, the Indian Removal Act, and the expansion of slavery, which was at the heart of the U.S. - Mexican War in the 1840s.

In my two road trips out West--the first from Chicago to Yellowstone National Park and the second from Chicago to the westernmost point on the lower 48, Cape Alava, Washington, located on that state's Olympic Peninsula--the states we had to cross seemed to go on and on.

I remember the big joke during one of our trips was: "Are we still in Nebraska?" As in Willa Cather's novel, My Ántonia: "There was nothing but land; not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made."

And indeed, as Cather suggests - land, air, water, flora, fauna, minerals, plus the labor applied to such material--are precisely the material of which countries - and economies and profits - are made. The grandeur boggles the mind.

Whose land?

There's value in the land, above it and below it too. The current armed takeover is merely the most recent in a series of armed standoffs with the federal government over land use. Other examples have included: the Bundy Ranch in April 2014; Oregon's Sugar Pine Mine in April 2015; Montana's White Hope Mine in August 2015. Now it is happening in Oregon again, in January 2016 at the Malheur Wildlife Refuge.

The federal government owns almost half the land (46.9 percent) in eleven Western states, according to a Congressional report. Various federal agencies are in charge of "40 million acres, about 28 percent of the 2.27 billion acres of land in the United States," including grasslands and forests, national parks and wildlife refuges. It owns 61.2 percent of Alaska. By contrast, the government owns about four percent of the land in the other 38 states; overall, federal ownership has declined in the last two decades.

Regarding current federal land use policies and ranchers, surely there is room for improvement. But the government is supposed to manage in the public's interest--not solely in the interest of ranchers or loggers or any other group label that the militias co-opt to legitimize their plight.

And when it comes to rhetorical fig leaves to cover land grabbing and profiteering, Native people have heard it all.

Yet Native tribes are not joining forces with the armed militia takeover. That could be because the armed militia is not calling for federal lands to be returned to their original inhabitants. Instead, the militias call for a return to "loggers" and "ranchers," and some call for state and local control. This puts them at odds with tribal and Native people's interests. In addition, these militias are notorious for their racism, including ties to anti-Native groups.

In those eleven states where the federal government owns almost half the land (Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, Wyoming), one form of anti-Native racism comes from groups that urge the takeover of Native lands and natural resource rights.

Case study: Montana

In Montana, residents have expressed alarm at the shadowy network of armed militias, far-right racist hate groups, legislators and lobbyists. One group called the American Lands Council, which tries to put on a moderate front, has ties to the modern-day land-grab movement (of which the Bundys are a part). Their sights are set not only on federal lands but Indian tribal lands as well. Montana state Senator Jennifer Fielder co-leads a group,the Sanders County Resource Council, along with the founder of the Militia of Montana, John Trochmann, according to the blog Montana Cowgirl.

Fielder, who is also vice chair of the state GOP, works closely with the American Lands Council, introducing many of its land transfer bills and groups such as the Wisconsin-based Citizens for Equal Rights Alliance (CERA) that have specific anti-Indian agendas. According to an October 2015 report coauthored by three Montana human rights and Native rights groups, CERA is "dedicated to terminating tribal governments, abrogating treaties and turning management of tribal resources over to state government. CERA is, according to an opinion piece published in the Missoulian, "the most notorious anti-Indian group in the country."

The report warns, "ALC's alliance with CERA again highlights the group's ties to a broader far-right movement that threatens treaty rights, civil rights and environmental protection."

In a 2014, Indian Country Today article, "Anti-Indian CERA doesn't like the law of the land in United States, or us, apparently," author Terri Hansen exposes CERA's stated mission. "Federal Indian Policy is unaccountable, destructive, racist and unconstitutional. It is therefore CERA's mission to ensure the equal protection of the law as guaranteed to all citizens by the Constitution of the United States."

Serving corporate interests

These anti-Native and anti-federal government agendas are linked as covers for private interests. A Koch brothers-funded group, Americans For Prosperity, donates money to the American Lands Council. The formidable AFP, along with other Koch brothers networks of think tanks and policy groups, influence politics across the nation and the land-grab movement with its inherent anti-regulatory agenda is right up the oil billionaires' alley and their corporate/billionaire brethren's.

Take the real beef barons--not the ranchers but giant agribusiness, like the four meat-packing corporations--who through their monopoly control 82 percent of the market and are able to set low prices for cattle, putting pressure on ranchers, according to Tom Philpott in Mother Jones.

"But the real beef that struggling ranchers should take up with the federal government involves not zealous federal regulation, but rather its opposite: the way the feds have watched idly as giant meat-packing companies came to dominate the US beef production chain," he wrote.

Public interest in public lands

With more and more attention on beef production and consumption as a major contributor to many health and environmental problems, from climate change to heart disease, maybe turning over public lands to the meat-packing conglomerates is not in the public interest.

What could serve the public interest, for instance,is working with ranchers on regulating themeat-packing industry, as Philpott suggests. In addition, there are many time-tested ways to smartly utilize the lands for recreation, tourism and education.

According to 2011 report by the White House Rural Council, "The great American outdoors ... represents a critical source of jobs and an invaluable national treasure.

Department of Interior-managed lands alone attract more than 400 million visits each year, representing approximately 8 percent of overall tourism spending in the United States."

Wouldn't it be great if every school-age child got a chance to visit a working ranch? Or hike a Western wildlife refuge? Or learn about Native cultures of the West?

The armed standoff in Harney County has yet to be resolved; they are a symptom of the decades-long tumult over land use that continues to roil the West. But with Native groups such as the Paiute speaking up in Oregon, and human rights groups fighting back in Montana, there is reason for hope. Despite the armed takeovers, anti-Indian racism and the billionaire-backed lobbyists, the people of the West - white, Native, and other groups - have so far rebuffed the militias' agenda, for which the entire nation should be grateful.

Photo: Andy Nelson/AP

Michigan poisons poor to save a few bucks

Wed, 20 Jan 2016 15:10:00 +0000

Flint, Michigan is impoverished. The auto plants have closed. Forty percent of the city's 100,000 residents live below the poverty level. It is majority minority. It's been in fiscal crisis since 2011, with the state taking over budgetary control and a state-appointed "emergency manager" driving policy focused on cutting spending.

Flint residents are Americans, but like many impoverished Americans they are forgotten. And state officials led by Gov. Rick Snyder have shown that they consider the residents disposable.

In Flint, the water supply has been poisoned by lead. Police are now delivering bottled water from door to door. But it may be too late for hundreds of kids who are already suffering from elevated levels of lead in their blood. The damage done is irreversible with lifelong consequences, including lowered intelligence and long-term mental and emotional damage.

How did this happen? The emergency manager - accountable only to the governor and state officials - decided to save money by switching Flint's water supply from Lake Huron to a cheaper source, the Flint River. Only the river had been poisoned by waste from nearby factories for generations. The toxic wastes not only turned the water brown, it corroded the aged pipes of Flint's water system, unleashing lead into the water. Federal law required that the water be treated, but that would have cost $100 a day, so it was not done.

Parents began to complain of rashes and hair loss. The state's environmental quality agency denied there was a problem. High-level state officials knew that the water supply was lead poisoned for six months before declaring an emergency. Finally, a Flint pediatrician tested the blood of children and discovered lead levels double and even triple the prior amounts. State officials denounced her work before realizing the truth could no longer be hidden.

Finally, Gov. Snyder ended the denial. He declared an official emergency, and four days later called for delivering bottled water. The head of his environmental agency resigned. Snyder apologized for the catastrophe, but calls for him to resign continue to build.

Flint is not alone. Across America, in ghettos and barrios, reservations and rural valleys, the poor are isolated and too often forgotten. Systems basic to civilization - plumbing, water systems, school houses, garbage collection and treatment, roads and public transport - are in squalor, lacking even the investment to keep them up to minimum standards. Impoverished neighborhoods often lack hospitals, grocery stores, and decent public spaces. The poor are left to fend for themselves, rising to attention only when violence breaks out, when innocents are shot, when tragedies like Flint become public.

The cost of this callousness - in lives lost, disease, mental damage, crime, drugs, hopelessness - are immense. This isn't about money. We pay more on the back end - in prisons and emergency rooms, cops and guards, prisons and addiction centers - than we would have to spend on the front-end investments that would give every child a chance.

Conservatives continue to call for dismantling environmental regulations. They slash budgets for policing violations by corporations or cities. They want to slash support for poverty programs and block-grant them to the states and localities. The next time you hear that rap, think of Flint, its poorest children betrayed by state officials. Think of Flint deprived even of safe water in order to save a few bucks. Think of Flint and investigate your own community - the horrors of Flint are not exclusive to that city.

This article originally appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times. It is reprinted here with the permission of Rainbow PUSH.

People's World has a reporting team on the ground covering the crisis in Flint. Follow their coverage on the People's World Facebook page, and on Instagram at @peoplesworld_action.

Photo: Earchiel Johnson/PW

Stand up for Flint's children

Tue, 19 Jan 2016 12:49:00 +0000

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and other state officials should be held fully accountable for their role in the poisoning of the children of Flint. What they did is morally reprehensible and criminal. It is one more example of how class exploitation and racial oppression interpenetrate in catastrophic, sometimes even deadly, ways in this beleaguered city.

The actions - or inactions - of Governor Snyder and others in high places should land them in prison. There is no justifiable defense for the harm done to the children of Flint. The next news cycle shouldn't turn this travesty into yesterday's news.

Imagine the reaction if children in the superrich neighborhoods of Grosse Pointe tested positively for lead poisoning due to governmental negligence. The uproar would be immediate and the culprits held accountable. Their excuses, no matter how plausible sounding, would be contemptuously dismissed. Prison time would be in their future for such an egregious and callous breach of the public trust.

The life of every child should be precious, fulfilling, and magical no matter where they live or the color of their skin or the class background of their parents. A life of endless opportunities for some and cramped possibilities for the rest shouldn't be a standard that decent people tolerate.

So, please sign the petition. It's a small way that you can stand up for the children of Flint and their families in their struggle for justice.

Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore was born in Flint and first became famous for his Emmy Award winning 1989 film, Roger & Me, a documentary about what happened to Flint after General Motors closed its factories and opened new ones in Mexico, where the workers were paid much less. Through Democracy for America, Moore has an online petition: Demand Gov. Rick Snyder resign and face arrest for poisoning Flint's water. To sign the petition, go here.

People's World reporters are on the ground covering the Flint water crisis and will be filing reports this week.

Photo: Flint residents protest against Gov. Rick Snyder, asking for his resignation and arrest in relation to Flint's water crisis on Jan. 14, at the Capitol in Lansing, Mich. Jake May | The Flint Journal | via AP

Alan Rickman, star of stage and “Harry Potter,” dies at 69

Fri, 15 Jan 2016 16:35:00 +0000

LONDON (AP) - British actor Alan Rickman, a classically trained stage star and sensual screen villain has died. He was 69. Rickman's family said Thursday that the actor had died after a battle with cancer.

The highly respected star and Labour Party supporter was born to a working-class London family in 1946 and trained at the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He once said in an interview that he "was born a card-carrying member of the Labour Party." Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said Mr. Rickman was "one of the greatest actors of his generation."

Rickman was often cast as the bad guy; with his rich, languid voice he could invest evil with wicked, irresistible relish.

His breakout role was as scheming French aristocrat the Vicomte de Valmont in an acclaimed 1985 Royal Shakespeare Company production of Christopher Hampton's "Les Liaisons Dangéreuses.''

Film roles included the psychopathic villain Hans Gruber who tormented Bruce Willis in Die Hardin 1988; a deceased lover who consoles his bereaved partner in 1990's Truly Madly Deeply; the wicked Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves in 1991; and a wayward husband in 2003 romantic comedy Love Actually.

Millions know him from the Harry Potter films, in which he played the potions and defense against the dark arts teacher Severus Snape, who was either a nemesis or an ally - possibly both - to the titular teenage wizard.

Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling tweeted that "there are no words to express how shocked and devastated I am to hear of Alan Rickman's death. He was a magnificent actor (and) a wonderful man."

Mohammed Saghir, the present-day Sheriff of Nottingham - now a ceremonial role in the English Midlands city - paid tribute to Rickman's version of Robin Hood's famous foe. "His sheriff was a gloriously nasty character who it was easy to love to hate and who he appeared to have great fun playing," Saghir said.

Rickman's villains were memorable, and included an Emmy-winning turn as "mad monk" Rasputin in a 1996 TV biopic.

But Rickman's screen roles were remarkably varied, and included the upright Col. Brandon in Ang Lee's 1995 film version of Sense and Sensibilityand Irish political figure and a leader of the 1916 Easter Uprising Eamon de Valera in the 1996 historical drama Michael Collins.

He had a sideline in comic sci-fi, bringing knowingness and fun to the spoofGalaxy Quest in 1999 and delivering existential ennui as the voice of Marvin the Paranoid Android in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in 2005.

Rickman appeared frequently onstage, earning Tony Award nominations for "Les Liaisons Dangéreuses" in 1987 and Noel Coward's "Private Lives" in 2002.

Rickman was also a filmmaker, directing and co-starring opposite Kate Winslet in the 2014 costume drama A Little Chaos. Seventeen years earlier, he'd directed Emma Thompson and her mother Phyllida Law in The Winter Guest.

Frequently charming in person, Rickman was, by his own account, uncompromising as an actor. "The animal in me takes over," Rickman told the Associated Press in 2011 when he appeared on Broadway in Theresa Rebeck's play "Seminar.""You're as polite as possible, but it's not always possible."

Guardian journalist Katherine Viner worked with Rickman on a play called "My Name is Rachel Corrie," which he directed, about a U.S.activist killed in Gaza by an Israeli army bulldozer while trying to protect a Palestinian family's home from demolition.Ms. Viner described him as "the most loyal, playful and generous of friends."

Rickman is survived by his partner of 50 years, Rima Horton, whom he married in 2012. Rima Horton was Labour party councillor for the Kensington and Chelsea London Borough Council from 1986 to 2006.

Morning Star contributed to this article.

Photo: Alan Rickman. | AP

A mailman offers a big bear hug in sympathy and harmony

Fri, 15 Jan 2016 10:15:00 +0000

A solitary figure stands on the sidewalk. She is looking my way, with her pink baseball cap sitting slightly a-kilter upon her head. A diminutive, elderly lady, her eyes light up as I walk closer. "Hello, is that you?" she asks with a slight German accent. I respond with a song. "I just met a girl named Maria, Maria, and suddenly that name will never be the same," I belt out with all my mailman bravado. She puts her arm through my arm holding the mail, and starts humming, "Here comes the bride," then stops herself by saying, "No, no that's not right."

She points to her house and says, "That's my house, the one right there. That's my house." I answer, "Yes it is, Maria. That's your house. And look, I have a letter for you today." She looks at whatever mail I have for her quizzically. Dennis, her roommate and caregiver, comes out on the porch to tell me, "John, Maria has been waiting and looking all afternoon for you and your truck. Good to see you again." I wave at Dennis, then wrap my one free arm around Maria to end our ritual with a great big bear hug. "See you tomorrow, my dear. Make sure you look for me." Dennis comes down off the porch to make sure that she gets back in the house safely. Before she goes into the house I wave goodbye one last time, hoping it is not the last time.

This was not always my relationship with Maria. She was the lady who would be out in her garden and would always want to stop me for a chat. The conversations were hard for me to follow, and it being the last street on my route, I was invariably pressed for time. To be truthful, when I could, I would try to avoid her. No time for nut jobs today and it was always a relief if I was lucky enough to get by her house when she wasn't in the front yard.

One day, Maria caught me on the sidewalk and Dennis followed close behind her. As she began to speak to me, Dennis handed me a business card. He said, "Read this, it will help explain." On the front of the card it said "Alzheimer's Foundation" and on the back it read, "Please excuse me and be patient with me. I am experiencing severe memory loss." Dennis said, "I just wanted you to understand, John." It was then that I sang out that riff from West Side Story for the first time. And I gave Maria the first of her many mailman bear hugs.

I now look forward to seeing her rather than trying to avoid her as I did for so many months. With winter herenow, our visits are few and far between. But spring will be coming soon, and I hope that with the budding of new blooms and the more temperate weather, that I can also look forward to more frequent visits with Maria. The effects of this disease sometimes can spread rapidly, and I hope that is not case for her. I am still practicing that song, trying to get it just right.

I last saw Maria and Dennis two days before Christmas. He handed me a card and when I opened it, it was simply inscribed, "Thank you for being so nice to Maria. She always looks forward to seeing you. Merry Christmas." I thought to myself, "No, thank you, Maria, and thank you, Dennis, for you have given me a gift - the gift of understanding how lucky I am to have this job that allows me to meet special people like you two. You help me put my life in perspective."

A famous man once said: You will take on the nature, the habits, and the power of thought of those with whom you associate in a spirit of sympathy and harmony. I like that, and for this New Year I hope that all of us find a sense of sympathy and harmony with those around us.

Photo: David Goldman/AP

Looking back, glancing ahead

Thu, 14 Jan 2016 14:03:00 +0000

Biggest footprint on world stage: Pope Francis, for his speeches on economic justice, poverty, and climate change; modesty and modest lifestyle; appeals for peace and non-violence; lifting up the people and crisis of the Global South; role in facilitating diplomatic breakthrough between the U.S. and Cuba; and, last but not least, willingness to challenge the profit-making and growth logic of capitalist development.

Biggest splash on sports scene: Who else but Steph Curry, the basketball point guard extraordinaire of the Golden State Warriors? He's a magician on the court and, with his team mates, is reconfiguring the game.

Biggest noise on cultural scene: Star Wars, anyone?

Biggest losers: Donald Trump and his band of not-so-merry pranksters running for the Republican Party nomination - though not identical, no one should be fooled, they're cut from the same ugly cloth.

Biggest threat to democracy, economic security, equality, peace, and a livable planet: The Republican Party. This gang of wreckers doesn't fit on what might be considered the normal spectrum of U.S. politics. In temperament, outlook, and practice they are - ready for it? - authoritarian, anti-worker, racist, sexist, xenophobic, and misogynist. They despise organized labor. They're committed to the restoration of a racist order that would return people of color to a caste system every bit as racist, exploitative, and oppressive as was the old Jim Crow.

And there's more! Some of them believe in biblical "end times" scenarios. Every one of them is a climate denier of the worst kind. Few things agitate them more than the fact that "their country" will be majority minority in the not-too-distant future. Diplomacy isn't in their vocabulary either; only military solutions command their attention.

And this movement's origins and animating vision lie with the most backward groupings of capital - big, medium, and small sized, notwithstanding their support among a substantial section of white working people.

While it will be an uphill climb for the Republicans to gain complete control of the federal government, it shouldn't be discounted. The recent mass shootings in Paris and San Bernardino should be evidence enough that the political conversation and mass sentiments can shift rapidly and in an ugly direction and, as a result, change the political dynamics of the election to the advantage of the Republican Party.

Biggest challenge: No surprise here, a knockout of the Republicans in November. Nothing else even comes close to that in political significance. Everything, therefore, has to be placed in that context, including the contest between Hillary and Bernie. Moreover, the electoral arena, which is where most people engage politically, if they engage at all, should become the main - not simply one more - arena of struggle for progressive and left people.

The right wing, no doubt, will approach it that way. They understand that their project of remaking the country to fit their backward worldview rests in large measure on utilizing the ballot box to secure complete control of the federal government and then turning their dogs loose.

Biggest turnaround: The decision of President Obama, contrary to the predictions of political pundits, to go on the offensive on the heels of the Republican Party victory in the 2014 elections. Using his executive power, he has addressed a whole range of issues, including immigration, carbon emissions, the XL pipeline, sentencing guidelines and other judicial reforms and, earlier this week, gun violence.

Biggest new player on political scene: Black Lives Matter, and the families of victims of police violence. Their words and actions shone a spotlight on a crisis of epidemic proportions, changed the national conversation, and set an example for the rest of us.

Biggest setback: Not sure, but the election setbacks for left and progressive governments in Latin America are in the running for this unhappy award.

Biggest obligation: To save the planet. The climate conference in Paris was a step forward, especially when compared to the debacle at the previous meeting in Copenhagen. But it didn't measure up to what science says we must do in order to keep average global temperatures below a rise of 2 degrees C. Thus, anyone who is concerned about our planet's future must quicken their pace, greatly extend their reach, and be in the thick of the coming elections.

Biggest heart - two winners: the Muslim community and Planned Parenthood.

The Muslim community withstood with dignity and resolve a new round of Islamophobia, coming from the likes of Trump and others on the right, who demagogically exploited the events in Paris and San Bernardino. While the worst of the racist scapegoating and stereotyping appears to be over, it hasn't gone away by any measure and should nudge (to put it nicely) the broader democratic movement to embrace this struggle in a more full-blooded way.

Planned Parenthood, for standing firm against the relentless attacks of the extreme right, not to mention the murderous assault by a terrorist on one of its centers in Colorado. Here too the attack has ebbed a bit, but it will continue for sure and argues as well for a more vigorous response from the progressive community.

Biggest unsung hero: The U.S. labor movement that, despite its initiatives on issues like wage stagnation, Social Security and Medicare, racial and gender equality, gay rights, and climate change, goes unrecognized by far too many people.

Biggest transformation: The way that tens of millions of people think differently (that is more humanly) about sexuality, gay rights, and being gay. The scale of the change could only happen because a movement took shape over time that was able to scale up and out its support, story, and demands in a sustained, creative, and flexible way. No other movement on the progressive end of the political spectrum has been able to match this in recent decades. Other movements have emerged and show great promise, but haven't yet achieved transformative capacity and power.

Biggest surprise: the enthusiastic responses to two candidates of the left, one here - Bernie Sanders; and the other - Jeremy Corbyn, the new leader of the British Labor Party across the pond. And when combined with the success of new left formations in Europe it gives even the hard-core pessimist cause for hope and, for me, an upbeat note to end on.

Photo: Demonstrators protest climate denial and push for climate change education. | AP

“We were here first”: Occupied Oregon land still belongs to Paiute tribe

Wed, 13 Jan 2016 10:43:00 +0000

"We were here first," said Charlotte Rodrique, chairwoman of the Burns Paiute Indian Tribe, whose ancestors lived on what is now the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, currently occupied by a white militia group. This incident points up, among a host of other issues, the need for the federal government to enforce treaties with American Indian nations, the 371 treaties that have been flagrantly broken by the same government. In fact, touch the surface of any land issue in the United States from Florida to New York, from the Carolina coast to California and at all points in between, and strong and legitimate claims by Indian nations will arise.

All of the U.S. is ancestral Native land fraudulently taken from its rightful owners in the biggest land grab in world history. All of this country is Indian land. The U.S. still legally belongs to Native people. As one Paiute tribal member recently stated, "All lands have been stolen from the Indian tribes."

On January 2, armed militia, adding historic insult to historic injury, took over federal buildings at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, ancestral Paiute Indian land, ostensibly, to protest the sentencing of Dwight Hammond, and his son, Steven Hammond, to prison terms of five years each for setting fire to public lands (note, regarding land occupancy: the Hammonds only purchased their ranch in 1964). This group wants the refuge "returned" to ranchers and loggers.

American Indian reaction to the occupation has been immediate, vehement and sometimes facetiously sarcastic. Typical online comments ranged from "Laugh Out Loud" (LOL) to Facebook memes showing images of the occupiers underlined with "We want our land back."

Why? Because here are white ranchers, whose ancestors in all likelihood aggressively stole Indian land, complaining that their land is being stolen. It was never their land to begin with.

In this case the land in question belongs to the Paiute people whose occupancy goes back 15,000 years. We must look at the historical background.

The occupied land of the wildlife refuge is comprised of 187,000 acres and was the 19th century Malheur Indian Reservation. This was under the Treaty of 1868, which was never ratified by Congress. Because of this technical shortcoming, the reservation was formally established in 1872 by order of President Ulysses S. Grant.

But white settlers began encroaching on the reservation as soon as it was established. They began requesting boundary changes to the reservation that would reduce Indian land. Grant, under heavy pressure from the land-hungry, Indian-hating settlers, opened for white settlement areas of the reservation on the northern shores of Malheur Lake. This was a severe blow to the Paiute people who gathered important food resources from that area. Conflict increased between Indian and white leading to the Bannock War of 1878.

In January 1879, captured Paiutes and Bannocks were removed in knee-deep snow, many in shackles, from the Malheur Reservation to the Yakama Reservation, 350 miles to the north in present-day Washington state. One group reportedly force-marched by U.S. soldiers simply disappeared. They were never found.

Jubilant at the Indian removal, ranchers and settlers swarmed into the reservation, grazing their herds on the best meadowlands (ultimately upsetting the delicate ecological balance). The U.S. Army did next to nothing to remove these trespassers from Indian land. In fact, the federal government did a complete about face and at the behest of the Indian agent "discontinued" the reservation in October 1879.

Presently, a small group of Paiute live on an allotment of 760 acres, purchased for the Burns Paiute Tribe in 1935 under the National Recovery Act of 1933. This is a few miles northwest of the city of Burns. It is a draconian cutting of the original Malheur Indian Reservation of 1.5 million acres.

Thus the occupiers who "want their land back," are displaying unmitigated racist gall.

The occupation brings up another point. The whole world is watching the disparity in law enforcement in the U.S. as it relates to Indian and white. As one tribal member put it, "We would be dead by now if we acted like them." This brings to mind Wounded Knee and the government reaction to occupation by Native people.

The Burns Paiute Tribe has set as its priority the return of the Malheur refuge to reservation status or at the very least maintaining it as a wildlife refuge that will protect its natural and cultural integrity. There are still Indian cultural sites on the refuge and the Paiute people still engage in food gathering in the refuge. Tribal members traverse the area to gather plants for traditional crafts and Native medicine. Cultural items that have found have been in the refuge thousands of years old, giving mute testimony to Indian life on the land since time immemorial.

The forcible removal of the Paiute people from the Malheur Reservation in the 19th century in violation of their treaty rights brings to mind the Trail of Broken Treaties protest in 1972 and the continued failure of the U.S. to live up to its treaty obligations - the law of the land.

Native claims to the land exist all over the country, the only difference being that Indian occupancy in the West, parts of which are comparatively sparsely populated, are of much more recent vintage than in the eastern part of the U.S., but the principle of the legitimacy of Indian claims is all the same. There is even a story still abounding that insurance companies in certain parts of Tennessee are reluctant to provide types of coverage for fear of the resurgence of Cherokee claims arising from fraudulent land taking in the 18th and 19th centuries.

But in the meantime the focal point of the struggle for Indian rights is the sharpest in the West as exemplified by the Bundy group's occupation of land originally taken in violation of treaty obligations by the federal government. There needs to be a resurgence of the movement for enforcement of the treaties, which would clear up confusion on the part of these johnny-come-lately militias who "want their land back."

Photo: Mule deer bucks at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, Oregon. Barbara Wheeler/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Harney County residents say go home Bundy

Mon, 11 Jan 2016 11:35:00 +0000

My first prediction of 2016: the armed takeover of the federal wildlife refuge in Harney County, Oregon, will be remembered as a spectacular failure for the Bundy-led right-wing militia grouplet. They have little support among local residents for their call to arms. The local community does not want them there.

That includes supporters of the Hammonds, the two ranchers who went back to federal prison to serve the full five years required for a federal arson conviction. Many might assume that their white supporters would be rallying around the cause because they are bound by their whiteness.

But according to a report by The Nation, residents of Burns, Oregon, next to the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, "are poor, white and conservative. Not a single one of them has joined the Bundy militia."

And, by the way, the Hammonds have said through their lawyers, they don't support the insurrection either.

The local community also includes members of the Burns-Paiute Tribe whose ancestors were, as tribal Councilman Jarvis Kennedy said in a Jan. 6 press conference, "killed and ran off" the same land the Bundys claim for their anti-government cause.

"We weren't removed. We were killed and ran off our land. Marched in the snow out there. Hundreds of miles to forts. When they finally let us go we didn't have no place to go. Our land was already taken. They gave us 10 acres at the city dump. Think about that. Think about those little kids ... those elders. Would you want to be out there? Walking. Marching."

Kennedy was describing the long and bloody story of genocide carried out by the U.S. government, colonial settlers and commercial interests. This is a pattern the Bundys and their militia movement fit into perfectly.

"We don't need these guys here," Kennedy continued. "They need to go home and get out of here. We as Harney County people can stand on our own feet. We have our own rights. And we're hardworking people."

If there is any group in the United States of America who has the most righteous grievance against the federal government on land ownership and management, it is the Native peoples.

Councilman Kennedy said the people in the area have the kind of intelligence, tenacity and toughness to make "something out of nothing."

"We, as Harney County residents, don't need some clown to come in here and stand up for us. This community is hard working. We made something out of nothing here," he said.

"We survived without them before and we'll survive without them when they're gone."

What few jobs do exist are with the government either in the schools or the wildlife refuge itself, and therefore people are temporarily out of work.

The Nation's Zoe Carpenter wrote, "'The lady that cleans the refuge-she's out of a job,' points out a former BLM employee who was playing a lottery game at Central Pastime. 'Everybody's shut down. It's really unfortunate that somebody's agenda is bigger than the whole community.'"

In rural areas around the country, it is often government entities that serve as a local economic engine either through direct government jobs, including the military, schools and postal service, or through services to other sectors like agriculture. Land and the great outdoors also serve as rural job creators.

In other words, you shut down the government by force, you shut down the community.

The Bundys and their kin did not find some modicum of support amongst a population that - in general - has no love for the feds. And that is a great testament to the common sense and basic decency of the people in the area.

Since the 1990s, the federal government's ownership of land has actually decreased, according to a congressional report. Most of it came from the federal Bureau of Land Management's transfers to the Alaskan state government, Native tribes and Native corporations.

If you notice the Bundysdo not mention returning land to Native tribes. Instead Ammon Bundy says their goal is "to get the logger back to logging, the rancher back to ranching."

Or, in other words, private hands, like paper giant Georgia-Pacific, owned by the infamous Koch brothers. (Ask Wisconsin about Koch Industries and their logging and mining operations there.)

In fact, here's my second prediction of 2016: the militiamen will NEVER call for federal land to be returned to Native control.

Let me explain. Whether armed and or unarmed, the "vast right-wing conspiracy," as Hillary Rodham Clinton famously called it, see federal Western lands as a way to make the wealthy wealthier, and not to right a historic wrong or to keep public lands public.

For example, the American Lands Council is a group whose sole mission is to grab Western lands from federal to state control. They are supported by donations from local governments (Republican-run) and from groups like Americans For Prosperity, a Koch-run outfit.

The American Lands Council just issued a statement saying, in part, that they totally support the Hammonds and taking back the land from what they call "federal mismanagement" but not through armed force.

Yet this group is in cahoots with some of the worst of the far-right white supremacist groups, according to an October 2015 human rights report.The report links ALC to anti-Native groups seeking to grab tribal lands and water, mineral and other rights.

Although ALC states it does not seek control over Native lands, its mission is of "general concern to Indian Country," the report states, because states are seen as "often hostile to tribal interests and less committed to upholding treaty obligations than the federal government."

The vast right-wing conspiracy did not conspire too well on the takeover. Seems the Bundys overplayed their hand and now their allies are running for cover. With their Republican billionaire buddies in Washington, D.C., and Donald Trump trumpeting their cause, they thought the Harney County community would rally to their side.

Lucky for the country, the hardworking people of the county have been holding their ground.

Photo: Burns-Paiute tribal chairperson Charlotte Rodrique talks to reporters about the armed occupation of the Malheur refuge. | Manuel Valdes/AP

Republican victory in 2016 would strengthen new “patrimonial oligarchy”

Fri, 08 Jan 2016 11:09:00 +0000

The hateful and reactionary ideas spewing from the mouths of the Republican Party candidates confront us with the clear and present danger we would face next November were any one of them to be elected president.

The danger will be compounded if the GOP retains majorities in the House and Senate with the possibility of several extreme right wing justices being appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The GOP also controls 31 governorships, 67 of 98 partisan state legislative chambers and has total control of governorships and both chambers of the legislature in 24 states.

The GOP extremists have used their power without hesitation to obstruct President Obama, to roll back voting and reproductive rights, to erode the labor movement, and to block efforts to address climate change while cutting taxes on the wealthy and serving up austerity budgets.

But in the last few elections the American people have faced a new development compounding and fueling this extreme right danger: the accelerated massive concentration of wealth and the re-emergence of what French economist Thomas Piketty calls the "patrimonial oligarchy."

The wealthiest 20 people now own more wealth than half the entire population. The top .1 percent or 300,000 richest families own as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent.

The mere concentration of wealth in a few hands allows these individuals to accelerate their concentration of wealth. In 2010, the top 1 percent of U.S. families captured as much as 93 percent of the nation's income growth, according to Emmanuel Saez, a University of California at Berkeley economist.

Individual wealth concentration is reflected in corporate wealth concentration. 2015 quietly set a record for global corporate mergers and acquisitions at $4.34 trillion.

The super wealthy are not just sunning themselves on their exclusive island getaways. They are determined to hijack the political system by aggressively using their unlimited assets to fund campaigns and Super PACs to further enrich themselves.

The 2010 Citizens United decision by the US Supreme Court, under its right wing majority, unleashed a torrent of money into the political arena. In 2012 presidential candidates spent $2 billion on their campaigns. That is expected to rise to $5 billion in 2016.

As Sen. Bernie Sanders said, "The U.S. Supreme Court essentially said to the wealthiest people in this country: you already own much of the American economy. Now, we are going to give you the opportunity to purchase the U.S. Government, the White House, the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House, governors' seats, legislatures, and state judicial branches as well."

The New York Times reported in October that 158 families provided half the early money to presidential candidates. Of that 138 supported GOP candidates. Some candidates are being promoted by one or two billionaire patrons.

The radically magnified influence in the political arena of a relative handful of billionaires is new. It greatly increases the threat to existing democratic institutions, imperfect as they are, including the right to vote which is being curtailed in many states.

The New York Times also did a recent expose of the small group of billionaires who are attempting to hijack Illinois politics, including the state's richest individual, hedge fund magnate Kenneth Griffin. The group backed the successful election of another billionaire, Bruce Rauner, as governor in 2014.

"In the months since (Rauner's election), Mr. Griffin and a small group of rich supporters - not just from Chicago, but also from New York City and Los Angeles, southern Florida and Texas - have poured tens of millions of dollars into the state, a concentration of political money without precedent in Illinois history," reports the Times.

In essence these billionaires are attempting to smash the Democratic Party majority in the state legislature, including the dominating machine elements and destroy the political power of the labor movement. They want to replace it with their own oligarchic direct rule.

These developments make defeating the extreme right and their billionaire backers in the 2016 elections all the more urgent.

The most recent rise of the extreme right began in the 1970s when sections of the U.S. ruling class - grouped around the oil, military and banking interests - launched an all out effort to undo the gains of New Deal and Great Society Programs and reassert U.S. global, economic and military domination. This coincided with the beginning of growing wealth inequality.

These forces captured the Republican Party and engineered the nomination of Ronald Reagan.

The battle against the ultra right led by a growing broad multi-class alliance which includes the labor movement and other democratic forces has been fought out in election cycles, the legislative battlefield and in the arena of public opinion since then.

While income inequality has emerged as a major issue and important shifts against the ultra right have taken place on key issues the electorate is still deeply divided, with a substantial section, misled, disillusioned and disengaged.

The extreme wealth concentration is reverberating in the Democratic Party as well, with efforts by the conservative New Democrats to undercut a shift to the left. The 3rd Way is supported by the Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, banking and insurance corporations.

Extreme wealth concentration is and will continue to deepen class divisions and tensions within the multi-class coalition that works in and with the Democratic Party.

Right wing domination of significant levers of government in tandem with accelerating wealth concentration pose increased danger to democratic institutions at every level. And yet the mere concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few oligarchs, or .1 percent, creates the possibilities for the broadest kinds of coalitions and movements, unlike anything we have ever seen.

The challenge before labor, communities of color, women, youth and other democratic forces is to continue to build the biggest, broadest, most diverse and tactically mature movement possible to win in 2016 and set the stage for bigger victories ahead.

Photo: Fight Back News.org

Gun control alone can't curb violence

Thu, 07 Jan 2016 13:45:00 +0000

America may now have more guns than people.

As President Barack Obama announces new executive action on gun control, U.S. gun manufacturing is a growth industry, almost doubling since the beginning of Obama's Administration (5.6 million in 2009; 10.9 million in 2013). From 2001 to 2013, according to a Centers of Disease Control and Prevention report, 406,496 Americans were killed with firearms on U.S. soil. In contrast, the number of U.S. citizens killed by terrorists at home or abroad over the same years number 3,380. Chicago suffered a spike in gun homicides in 2015 with 470 homicides and 2,939 shooting victims, the worst of all U.S. cities.

Studies show a clear correlation: the more guns, the more homicides and the more people shot. Cities are racked by gun violence, yet gun ownership is much more prevalent in rural areas, as vividly displayed by the Bundy bunch that occupied an Oregon wildlife refuge over the weekend.

According to a General Social Survey report, gun ownership is declining. About 35 percent of adults were estimated to live in a household with a firearm in 2014, down from over half in the early 1980s. As hunting has declined in the country, so has gun ownership. Gun ownership is higher among whites than among blacks or Hispanics, higher among men than women. Gun ownership rises with income. It is higher among those earning more than $90,000 a year than among those earning less than $25,000. It is highest in the South Central U.S. and lowest in the Northeast and Pacific regions.

Now weapons designed for the purpose of mass killing in war are available for purchase at gun shows, online and at many gun stores. These weapons are powerful enough to stop trains or strafe planes that are landing or taking off. These are tools for terrorists, easily available for sale in America.

Obama has already delivered 15 national statements after shocking incidents of gun violence. Yet no national reforms have been passed - or even gotten much consideration. After the Charleston massacre, the Economist magazine compared mass shooting in the U.S. with the grotesque air pollution in China: a horrible health hazard which the country appears incapable of addressing.

Gun control doesn't cost much. America has another abiding challenge - the explosive catastrophe of urban poverty - that also goes unmet. The City Observatory, an urban policy think tank in Portland, Ore., reports that the number of high-poverty urban neighborhoods in the nation's 51 largest cities tripled - to 3,100 - between 1970 and 2010. The number of poor persons living in those areas doubled over those years. The poor are more isolated and concentrated than ever. African-Americans and Hispanics suffer the highest rates of poverty - and are the most isolated into separate and unequal neighborhoods. Twenty percent of U.S. children lived in poverty by end of 2013; poverty among African-American children was nearly twice that (38 percent).

To deal with our impoverished neighborhoods, it isn't enough to get rid of the guns. The public squalor of our inner cities has to be addressed: schools modernized, affordable housing built, mass transit supplied, available jobs created. Dealing with entrenched poverty costs real money, but less than we spend on the police, jails, drugs, alcoholism, and chronic illness - the dysfunction that comes from poverty.

Today's politicians don't want to spend political capital on guns or fiscal capital on poverty. They'd rather pay more on the back end from failing to act than risk the up-front political and economic costs of dealing with the problems. So the war on guns is lost; the war on poverty abandoned. And the hopes of millions are dashed by that failure. In the circus of the current presidential campaign, these are two fundamental challenges that ought to be at the center of our debate.

Rev. Jesse Jackson is the founder and president of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition. He was a leader in the civil rights movement alongside Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and was twice a candidate for President of the United States. This article originally appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times. It is reprinted here with the permission of Rainbow PUSH.

Photo: Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow PUSH Coalition lead a protest in Chicago on Dec. 6, 2015, in response to the Laquan McDonald shooting, following the release of documents showing that police officers' accounts of the 2014 killing of McDonald differed greatly from what was captured on dashcam video. Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune | AP

2015 “Are you serious?” awards

Wed, 06 Jan 2016 12:56:00 +0000

Each year Dispatches From The Edge gives awards to individuals, companies, and governments that make following the news a daily adventure. Here are the awards for 2015:

The First Amendment Award to U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter for issuing a new Law Of War manual that defines reporters as "unprivileged belligerents" who will lose their "privileged" status by "the relaying of information" which "could constitute taking a direct part in hostilities." Translation? If you report you are in the same class as members of al-Qaeda.

A Pentagon spokesperson said that the military "supports and respects the vital work that journalists perform." Just so long as they keep what they see, hear, and discover to themselves? Professor of constitutional law Heidi Kitrosser called the language "alarming."

Runner up is the U.S. Military College at West Point for hiring Assistant Professor of Law William C. Bradford, who argues that the military should target "legal scholars" who are critical of the "war on terrorism." Such critics are "treasonous", he says. Bradford proposes going after "law school facilities, scholars' home offices and media outlets where they give interviews." Bradford also favors attacking "Islamic holy sites," even if that means "great destruction, innumerable enemy casualties, and civilian collateral damage."

The Little Bo Peep Award for losing track of things goes to the U.S. Defense Department for being unable to account for $35 billion in construction aid to Afghanistan, which is about $14 billion more than the country's GDP. The U.S. has spent $107.5 billion on reconstruction in Afghanistan, more than the Marshall Plan. Most of it went to private contractors.

The Pentagon response to the report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan on the missing funds was to declare that all such information was now classified, because it might provide "sensitive information for those that threaten our forces and Afghan forces." It has since partially backed off that declaration.

While it is only pocket change compared to Afghanistan, the Pentagon also could not account for more than $500 million in military aid to Yemen. The U.S. is currently aiding Saudi Arabia and a number of other Gulf monarchies that are bombing Houthi rebels battling the Yemeni government. Much of that aid was supposed to go for fighting Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), against which the U.S. is also waging a drone war. The most effective foes of AQAP are the Shiite Houthis. So we are supporting the Saudis and their allies against the Houthis, while fighting Al-Qaeda in Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

If the reader is confused, Dispatches suggests taking a strong painkiller and lying down.

The George Orwell Award For Language goes to the intelligence gathering organizations of the "Five Eyes" surveillance alliance - the U.S., Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand - who changed the words "mass surveillance" to "bulk collection." The linguistic gymnastics allows the Five to claim that they are not violating Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. In the 2000 decision of Amann v. Switzerland, the Court found that it was illegal to store information on an individual's private life.

As investigative journalist Glen Greenwald points out, the name switch is similar to replacing the word "torture" with "enhanced interrogation techniques." The first is illegal, the second vague enough for interrogators to claim they are not violating the International Convention Against Torture.

A runner up is the U.S. Defense Department, which changed the scary title of "Air Sea Battle" to describe the U.S.'s current military doctrine vis-à-vis China, to "Joint Concept for Access and Maneuver in the Global Commons." The Air Sea Battle doctrine calls for bottling up China's navy, launching missile attacks to destroy command centers, and landing troops on the Chinese mainland. It includes scenarios for the use of nuclear weapons. "Global Commons," on the other hand, sounds like a picnic on the lawn.

The Lassie Come Home Award to the U.S. Marine Corps for creating a 160-pound robot dog that will "enhance the Marine Corps war-fighting capabilities," according to Captain James Pineiro. Pineiro heads up the Corps's Warfighting Laboratory at Quantico, Virginia. "We see it as a great potential for the future dismounted infantry."

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is also designing an autonomous fighting robot. Can the Terminator be far off?

The Golden Lemon Award goes to Lockheed Martin, the biggest arms manufacturer in the world, which has managed to produce two stunningly expensive weapons systems that don't work.

The F-35 Lightning II is the single most expensive weapons system in U.S. history: $1.5 trillion. It is supposed to replace all other fighter-bomber aircraft in the American arsenal, including the F-15, F-16 and F-18, and will begin deployment in 2016.

Slight problem.

In dogfights with the three-decade-old F-16, the F-35 routinely lost. Because it is heavy and underpowered, it is extremely difficult to turn the plane during air-to-air combat. It has a fancy 25-MM Gatling gun that gets off 3,000 rounds a minute - but the plane can only carry 180 rounds. As one Air Force official put it, "Hope you don't miss." Oh, and the software for the gun won't be out until 2019.

And that's not the only glitch.

The F-35 has stealth technology, but its Identification Friend or Foe system is so bad that pilots are required to get a visual confirmation of their target. Not a good idea when the other guys have long-range air-to-air missiles. The $600,000 high-tech helmet the pilot uses to see everything around him often doesn't work very well, and there isn't enough room in the cockpit to turn your head. If the helmet goes out, there is no backup landing system, so maybe you had better eject? Bad idea. The fatality rate for small pilots (those under 139 pounds) at low speeds is 98 percent, not good odds. Larger pilots do better but the changes of a broken neck are still distressingly high.

But it is not just Lockheed Martin's airplanes that don't work, neither do its ships.

The company's new Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), The Milwaukee, broke down during its recent East Coast tour and had to be towed to Virginia Beach. The LCSs are designed to fight in shallow waters, but a recent Pentagon analysis says the ships would "not be survivable in a hostile combat situation." The LCSs have been plagued with engine problems and spend more than 50 percent of their time in port being repaired. The program costs $37 billion.

And Lockheed Martin, along with Northrop Grumman and Boeing, just got a $58.2 billion contract to build the next generation Long Range Strike Bomber. Sigh.

The Great Moments In Democracy Award goes to Jyrki Katainen, Finnish vice-president of the European Commission, the executive arm of the 28-nation European Union. When Greece's anti-austerity Syriza Party was elected, he commented, "We don't change policies depending on elections." So, why is it that people have elections?

A close runner up in this category is German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble, who denounced Athens' government for not cracking down on Greeks who can't pay their taxes. The biggest tax dodger in Greece? That would be the huge German construction company Hochtief, which has not paid the Value Added Tax for 20 years, nor made its required contributions to social security. Estimates are that the company owes Greece one billion euros.

The Ty-D-Bowl Cleanup Award to the U.S. State Department for finally agreeing to clean up plutonium contamination, the residue from three hydrogen bombs that fell near the Andalusia town of Palomares in southern Spain in 1966. The bombs were released when a B-52 collided with an air tanker. While the bombs did not explode - Palomares and a significant section of southern Spain would not exist if they had - they broke open, spreading seven pounds of highly toxic plutonium 239 over the area. Plutonium has a half-life of 24,000 years.

While there was an initial cleanup, Francisco Franco's fascist government covered up the incident and played down the dangers of plutonium. But recent studies indicate that there is still contamination, and some of the radioactive materials are degrading into americium, a producer of dangerous gamma radiation.

When Spain re-raised the issue in 2011, the U.S. stonewalled Madrid. So why is Washington coming to an agreement now? Quid pro quo: the U.S. wants to base some of its navy at Rota in southern Spain, and the Marines are setting up a permanent base at Moron de la Frontera.

As for nukes, the U.S. is deploying its new B61-12 guided nuclear bomb in Europe. At $11 billion it is the most expensive nuke in the U.S. arsenal. The U.S. will base the B61-12 in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and Turkey, a violation of Articles I and II of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Those two articles ban transferring nukes from a nuclear weapon state to a non-nuclear weapon state.

Dispatches assumes they will also bring lots of mops and buckets.

Buyer Beware Award to the purchasing arm of the U.S. Defense Department that sent dozens of MD-530 attack helicopters to Afghanistan to build up the Afghan Air Force. Except the McDonnell Douglas-made choppers can't operate above 8,000 feet, which means they can't clear many of the mountains that ring Kabul. The Afghan capital is at 6,000 feet. It also doesn't have the range to reach Taliban-controlled areas and, according to the pilots, its guns jam all the time. The Pentagon also paid more than $400 million to give Afghanistan 16 transport planes that were in such bad condition they couldn't fly. The planes ended up being sold as scrap for $32,000.

The Pogo Possum "We Have Met The Enemy and He Is Us" Award goes to the Defense Intelligence Agency for warning Congress that "Chinese and Russian military leaders ... were developing capabilities to deny [the] U.S. use of space in the event of a conflict." Indeed, U.S. military satellites were jammed 261 times in 2015 - by the United States. Asked how many times China and Russia had jammed U.S. signals, Gen. John Hyten, head of the Air Force Space Command, replied, "I don't really know. My guess is zero."

This article originally appeared in Conn Hallinan's blog Dispatches From the Edge.

Photo: Niklas Hellerstedt/Flickr/CC

Oscar-winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler dies at 93

Mon, 04 Jan 2016 15:31:00 +0000

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Haskell Wexler, one of Hollywood's most famous and honored cinematographers and one whose innovative approach helped him win Oscars for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and the Woody Guthrie biopic Bound for Glory, died December 27, 2015. He was 93.

Wexler died peacefully in his sleep, his son, Oscar-nominated sound man Jeff Wexler, told The Associated Press. Jeff Wexler posted on HaskellWexler.com: "Accepting the Academy Award in 1967, Pop said: 'I hope we can use our art for peace and for love.' An amazing life has ended but his lifelong commitment to fight the good fight, for peace, for all humanity, will carry on."

Progressive activist

A progressive activist, Wexler photographed some of the most socially relevant and influential films of the 1960s and 1970s, including the Jane Fonda-Jon Voight anti-war classic, Coming Home, the Sidney Poitier-Rod Steiger racial drama In the Heat of the Night, the Oscar-winning adaptation of Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and John Sayles' Matewan, tale of a coal miners' strike in 1920 in Matewan, a small town in the hills of West Virginia.

He was also the rare cinematographer known enough to the general public to receive a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame. Wexler was honored with lifetime achievement awards from the American Society of Cinematographers (becoming the first active lenser to be so honored), the International Documentary Assn. and the Society of Camera Operators.

"We are deeply saddened by the death of one of our most esteemed board members," said International Cinematographers Guild President Steven Poster. "Haskell's cinematography has always been an inspiration to so many of us not only in the Guild, but in the entire industry."

Versatile and intuitive approach

Throughout his career, Wexler was noted for his versatile and intuitive approach.

For Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, the last film to receive an Oscar for best black and white cinematography, he used hand-held cameras to capture the tension of the tirades between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. For In the Heat of the Night, he put silks over the tops of sets and aimed lights at their centers. His aim was to contribute to the tension between Poitier's big-city black detective and Steiger's Southern white lawman.

As visual consultant on George Lucas' American Graffiti, he hosed down the streets to achieve a moody, reflective style. He helped give Terence Malick's Days of Heaven a hazy, dreamlike atmosphere.

He traveled the world directing and photographing documentaries

When Wexler wasn't working on big-budget studio fare, he traveled the world directing and photographing documentaries for favorite causes.

His 1969 Medium Cool mixed documentary and dramatic elements, telling the story of a fictional television photographer who covers the violence of Chicago police against protesters at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The real-life unrest was filmed on the spot for the movie, and its "cinema verite" approach was closely studied by aspiring filmmakers.

"I was under surveillance for the entire seven weeks I was in Chicago, by the police, the Army and the Secret Service," Wexler once told a reporter.

According to Richard Natale of the entertainment industry news source Variety:

Beginning with his documentary on the Washington Freedom March, The Bus, in 1965, Wexler busied himself with documentaries of social injustice. He shot Interview With My Lai Veterans, directed by Joseph Strick, which won an Oscar in 1970. With co-director Saul Landau he shot Brazil: A Report on Torture and An Interview with President Allende (both 1971), The Swine Flu Caper, The CIA Case Officer, 1982's Quest for Power: Sketches of the American New Right and Target Nicaragua: Inside a Secret War.

Other documentaries included Hail Columbia and Introduction to the Enemy. He also shot the 1980 film No Nukes. His 1975 documentary Underground, which dealt with the leftist faction known as the Weathermen, resulted in a controversial attempt at seizure of his materials by the FBI.

Later documentaries he helmed included Bus Rider's Union, directed with Johanna Demetrakas; Who Needs Sleep, about the danger to film crews of overlong shooting schedules that result in fatigue - and people falling asleep on the road home; and 2013's Four Days in Chicago, in which he returned to the setting of Medium Cool and his hometown to document the Occupy Movement's demonstrations against the 2012 NATO Summit.

As recently as December 5, 2015, Wexler presented, along with Chaz Ebert, the International Documentary Association's prestigious Career Achievement Award to Gordon Quinn, founder and artistic director of Kartemquin Films, Chicago's premier documentary film center.

In addition to his wife, the actress Rita Taggart, and sons Jeff Wexler and film director Mark Wexler, he is survived by a daughter, Kathy Wexler; four grandchildren; and one great-granddaughter.

For a 2004 Vimeo of an interview with Wexler on a boat ride on the Chicago River, go HERE.

Photo: HaskellWexler.com

Barbara Russum contributed to this article.

Don't get caught up in the media's electoral name game

Mon, 04 Jan 2016 12:19:00 +0000

CHICAGO - We leftists have a script for arguing about elections. It goes something like this:

One of us strides to the footlights, throws up a fist, and proclaims that anyone who votes is a reformist, or an opportunist, or a politico-sexual deviant with masochistic tendencies.

And the rest of us laugh at that person, for being too young to vote or too old for that motorcycle jacket, and for thinking that boycotting an election is a real thing.

Then someone in a vest, or with historically accurate facial hair, assumes a dramatic pose and announces that never will they ever contemplate voting for [Democratic Party candidate]. Moreover, unless you support a third-party candidate, you aren't even a real vegan.

Scattered applause. Someone attempts to start a "Jill... Stein... Jill... Stein!" chant, but it falls flat, and he pretends he has to take a phone call.

Finally, a venerable sage shuffles forward. They've been there and back again, and will speak counsel to the hotheads, the youth, the starry-eyed utopians. Their oracular message is this: [Democratic Party candidate] may not share our ideals, but only voting for [Democratic Party candidate] can advance the fight for equality and justice.

And so it goes, from age to age unchanging. The Théâtre de la Huchette, in Paris, has been performing the same two plays since 1957, but we could teach them a thing or two about sticking to a script.

And here we are, at it again. Primaries haven't even begun yet, and we're already barraged with "what ifs" and litmus tests, arguments about whether leftists can (should? must?) support a Clinton candidacy and social media sniping about who's a "real" progressive or a "real" socialist.

These arguments aren't just tiresome; they're dangerous. They show an undemocratic way of thinking about elections, a politics of celebrity that focuses on people rather than issues.

They make us fight on enemy terrain.

Elections are easier to buy than social movements, so the ruling class tells us that elected leaders are the ones who count, the ones who do the work. That our role in a democracy is to vote every couple of years, then sit back and watch someone govern. That democracy means choosing the right person to sit at the fancy desk and be the decider.

Those of us on the left, who pontificate about democracy and should therefore know better, are not immune to this delusion. We persist in hanging our hopes on candidates, in framing our discussion of electoral issues around a name, even though we know that masses, not individuals, are the ones who make change.

Rahm Emanuel didn't fire his police chief because he had a "road to Damascus" moment about racial justice. He did it because we knocked him on his ass with a runoff election and a mobilization against police violence.

The New Deal, the Civil Rights Act, the Affordable Care Act, withdrawal from Iraq: marches, sit-ins, teach-ins, editorials, resolutions. And, yes, elections. Struggle. Masses in motion, not leaders in isolation.

We should know better, but we get suckered into election analysis dominated by names and faces rather than movements and issues. We start talking about who we're voting for rather than what we're fighting for.

Electoral mobilization is a tactic, like a strike or a petition drive, but we treat elections as issues in themselves. We reframe our program in terms of what we can do for a candidate. We make it about winning an election, which has only a superficial relation to advancing an issue.

The 2016 elections have nothing to do with Trump vs. Sanders or Clinton vs. Rubio or Ted Cruz vs. Mechagodzilla. The names are just distractions. It's about the same things it's always about: income inequality, police brutality, jobs, deportations, defense spending, reproductive freedom, education, student debt, the environment, LGBTQ rights...

These are the issues, and electoral work is a powerful tactic for advancing them. It puts us in touch with new people, builds alliances, and offers vastly increased opportunities for education and ideological work.

And let's not forget, in passing, that the people we elect make real decisions that help or hurt real people.

But let's not make it personal.

It isn't about Bernie or Hillary (or that other one). It isn't about the decider at the fancy desk. It's about a movement for justice that will, in a year, be surging, holding ground, or in a more or less disordered retreat based on the priorities of a new administration.

And when you go to the polls, remember, it isn't about you, either. Don't make the mistake of thinking that who you vote for determines what you fight for. It's not about the person. It's about the people.

Photo: AP

Everyone’s talking about socialism, but what is it?

Mon, 04 Jan 2016 11:23:00 +0000

Bernie Sanders may or may not win the Democratic presidential nomination, but he has already done something stunning: put socialism into the mainstream political debate in the United States. Sixty years after McCarthyism made socialism "un-American," Sanders has placed it back on the American agenda. I say "back" because, as others have noted, socialism has a long history in our country, with such prominent advocates as Helen Keller and Albert Einstein.

But this resurgence should not make long-time supporters of socialism feel self-satisfied. On the contrary. Even for the most dedicated believers, socialism has been a pretty abstract concept, or one defined, stereotyped and hobbled by the experiences of Russia and the Soviet Union, many of which were harsh, even cruel (and criminal), ultimately self-destructive, and inapplicable to American society and culture. For Americans new to the idea of socialism, it's often burdened with notions of faceless bureaucracy, one-party rule, government control of every aspect of life, stifled creativity, cheesy "socialist realism" paintings, and the like.

Now, in the Sanders era, advocates of socialism are challenged to think and talk about what socialism really is, its essential promise, how it fits the American experience, what it might look like for the U.S., and how it's a goal every American can embrace and help make a reality.

Below I offer a few ideas.

But first, here's what Bernie Sanders had to say about socialism.

Bernie Sanders showed how socialism makes sense for America

Sanders made a powerful case for his vision of socialism in a speech at Georgetown University on Nov. 19. In the New Deal of the 1930s, Sanders said, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt acted "against the ferocious opposition of the ruling class of his day, people he called economic royalists":

"Roosevelt implemented a series of programs that put millions of people back to work, took them out of poverty and restored their faith in government. He redefined the relationship of the federal government to the people of our country. He combatted cynicism, fear and despair. He reinvigorated democracy. He transformed the country.

"And that is what we have to do today," said Sanders.

Both FDR and Lyndon Johnson, who enacted Medicare and Medicaid in the 1960s, were assailed by the right wing as socialists in their day, Sanders noted.

He did not mention the enormous mass movements of the 1930s and 1960s that pushed both Roosevelt and Johnson to act. But he acknowledged it implicitly when he declared that today, "we need to develop a political movement which, once again, is prepared to take on and defeat a ruling class whose greed is destroying our nation. The billionaire class cannot have it all. Our government belongs to all of us, and not just the one percent."

"A ruling class whose greed is destroying our nation" - Sanders didn't say it specifically, but that is the essence and logic of capitalism. Defeating this ruling class, according to Sanders, means bringing about "a culture which, as Pope Francis reminds us, cannot just be based on the worship of money."

Sanders cited calls by Roosevelt in 1944 and Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s for an economy that serves the people. In their view, he said, you cannot have freedom without economic security - as Sanders put it, "the right to a decent job at decent pay, the right to adequate food, clothing, and time off from work, the right for every business, large and small, to function in an atmosphere free from unfair competition and domination by monopolies. The right of all Americans to have a decent home and decent health care."

Getting to that freedom means reshaping political power in our country, Sanders said, because "today in America we not only have massive wealth and income inequality, but a power structure which protects that inequality."

"Democratic socialism, to me," he said, "does not just mean that we must create a nation of economic and social justice. It also means that we must create a vibrant democracy based on the principle of one person one vote."

Is this pie in the sky? Is it impractical? Is it socialism?

How socialism can transform our society to serve the people

Clearly, the connection between our economic and political structures is stronger than Sanders indicated. They are not two parallel systems. We have a political power structure that maintains, protects and preserves an economic system that fuels inequality and injustice. Our economic system based on greed drives (in many ways or in important ways) our political system. The right-wing-dominated Supreme Court's notorious Citizens United ruling is just one illustration of the role of Big Money - Big Capital - in politics. This is why it's called "capital"-ism.

Socialism is simply about rebuilding our society so that working people of all kinds, all colors, all languages, all faiths - the auto worker from Mississippi, the African American nurse, the computer technician in Silicon Valley, the McDonald's worker in Florida, the teacher in Fargo, the gay family farmer and the farm laborer from Guatemala, the Korean American musician, the Irish American truck driver, the Muslim scientist, the Catholic customer service rep, the Jewish college student, the teenager trying to land a first job, and so many others - the people who make this country run - not a tiny group of super-rich corporate profiteers - are the deciders, the planners, the policymakers. The driving force is not the ruthless quest for ever-larger individual profit, as it is under our current capitalist system, but pursuit of the common good - equality, freedom from want and fear; expanding human knowledge, culture and potential; providing a chance for everyone to lead a fulfilling life on a healthy planet.

Sanders showed how socialism is rooted in American values. Socialism is about deep and wide democracy. It is not about an all-powerful central government taking over and controlling every aspect of life. It is not about nationalizing this or that or every company. But it does mean that the public will have to take on and take over a few key "evil-doers":

Taking on Big Oil and Big Finance

* Number one on the list will probably have to be the giant energy corporations - Big Oil, the coal companies, the frackers. This section of corporate America plays a central role in the U.S. economy, but also in its politics - and it's a dangerous and damaging one. It's well known that these folks not only ravage our environment and worker health and safety, and hold communities hostage with the threat of job loss if they are curbed, while at the same time blocking progress on a green economy. But they also back and fund far-right policies on a whole range of issues. (It's not just the Koch brothers.) This sector of the economy will clearly have to be restructured in the public interest.

* Number two: the giant banking and financial companies - commonly known as "Wall Street" although they are sprinkled around the country. We've seen how they wrecked our economy and destroyed lives and livelihoods. For what? Simple greed. They will need to be returned to their socially needed function: to protect ordinary people's savings and to fund investment in the social good, driving a thriving economy and society: new technologies to save our planet from climate change disaster, flood protection for example; a 21st century public education system rich in resources to enable the next generations to flourish; expanded medical research and a national health system that serves every American with top quality, humane, state of the art care from one end of life to the other; exploration of space and our own planet to enrich human society; and so many more.

You may have a few others to add to the list of key evil-doers that will probably be on top of the list to be challenged and taken over.

But aside from that, socialism can mean a mix of:

* Worker- and community-owned co-ops.

* Companies democratically owned and run by local or state entities. This is not new: we already have, for example, more than 2,000 community-owned electric utilities, serving more than 48 million people or about 14 percent of the nation's electricity consumers. Then there's the state-owned Bank of North Dakota.

* Privately run companies.

* Individually owned small businesses.

For socialism to work, public expression and participation will have to be mobilized and expanded, in the economy and in all other areas of life, for example by measures like:

* Strengthening and enlarging worker-employee representation and decision-making.

* Expanding the New England town hall meeting concept.

* Implementing proportional representation and other measures to enable a wide range of views to be represented in our government at every level.

* Taking money out of political campaigns.

* Making voting easy.

Obviously there's a lot more to think about and figure out - these are just a few suggestions.

Shedding stereotypes about socialism

Bernie Sanders and others take pains to call themselves democratic socialists. That's because the concept of socialism - in essence, a society based on the "social" good - has been tainted by much of what happened in the Soviet Union and some other countries. But there's nothing in socialism that equates to dictatorship, political repression, bureaucracy, over-centralization and commandism, and so on. Those features of Soviet society arose out of particular circumstances and personalities. But they were not "socialist." As events have shown, in fact, socialism requires expanded democracy to grow and flourish.

Socialism does not mean a small group "seizing power." It doesn't mean radical slogans either. Red flags and images of Che or Lenin not required, nor relevant. Socialism means an energized, inspired, mobilized vast majority from all walks of life, from "red" state and "blue," coming together to make changes, probably one step at a time.

Socialism is not a "thing" that will "happen" on one day, in one month, one year or even one decade. History shows that vast and lasting social change hasn't happened that way. I expect it will be a process of events, small steps and some big ones - and elections will play a big and vital role - creating transformations that perhaps we won't even recognize as "socialism." Perhaps it will only be in hindsight that we will look back and say, "Oh yes, we've got something new." And it's not an end product. There is no "end of history."

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels became famous for analyzing capitalism and how it exploits and oppresses the 99 percent - OK they didn't use that term, but that's what they were talking about. Capitalism started out as a productive and creative force, they wrote, but it contained the seeds of its own decline. It has created a massive and ever-widening working class but most of the wealth this class produces and sustains goes into the pockets of an ever-smaller group of capitalists: that's called exploitation. It creates so many problems that eventually it will have to be replaced. Change is on the agenda.

Thank you Bernie Sanders.

You can watch Bernie Sanders' Georgetown speech and his responses to questions from students here (about 1-½ hours). The text of his prepared remarks is here.

P.S.: What others are saying: a sampling

Tim Egan, a columnist at the New York Times whose writing I generally admire, suggests that socialism equates to nationalizing corporations. He suggests Sanders would have nationalized General Motors rather than bail it out in 2008-2009. But socialism really isn't about nationalizing things, as I discuss above.

The Washington Post has a quiz: "Are you a democratic socialist like Bernie Sanders?" None of the 10 quiz questions actually have to do with transforming the economy in any fundamental way.

Then there's "Bernie Sanders, Democratic Socialist Capitalist."

Historian Eric Foner advises: "How Bernie Sanders should talk about democratic socialism."

Sociologist Staughton Lynd disagrees with Foner.

Political economist Gar Alperovitz has a different take in "Socialism with an American face."

And so does Rand Paul ... "There's nothing sexy and there's nothing cool about socialism," he told Glenn Beck.

Meanwhile, "A high school teacher helps clarify 'socialism' for Donald Trump (and you!)." But he doesn't!

If you read through these, you'll find there's a raft of confusion out there! As writer Jonathan Chait aptly notes about much of it: "[F]or a term so freighted with the capacity to inspire its supporters and terrorize everybody else, 'socialism' is oddly bereft of any specific meaning."

On the other hand, this article does offer some more precise definitions.

I hope I've added something useful to the discussion.

Photo: Bernie Sanders speaking at a town meeting at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona, in July. Gage Skidmore/Flickr/CC