People Before Profit blog

How redlining led to rioting: Police and segregation

Tue, 29 Sep 2015 14:50:00 +0000

A pattern has emerged-in Oakland, New York, Cleveland, Baltimore, the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, and beyond. Police claiming to feel threatened kill unarmed black men. Protests follow, sometimes including violence. The Department of Justice finds a pattern and practice of racially-biased policing. The city agrees to train officers not to use excessive force, encourage sensitivity, prohibit racial profiling. These reforms are all necessary and important, but ignore an obvious reality that the protests are not really (or primarily) about policing.

In racially isolated neighborhoods where jobs are few and transportation to job-rich areas is absent, where poverty rates are high and educational levels are low, where petty misbehavior and more serious crime abound, young men and cops develop the worst expectations of each other, leading to predictable confrontations.

In 1968, following more than 100 urban riots nationwide, almost all in response to police brutality or killing by police, a presidential commission concluded that "[o]ur nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white-separate and unequal" and that "[s]egregation and poverty have created in the racial ghetto a destructive environment totally unknown to most white Americans." The Kerner Commission added that "[w]hat white Americans have never fully understood-but what the Negro can never forget-is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it."

"White society" was a euphemism. It was government-federal, state, local-whose explicitly racial laws, policies, and regulations ensured that black Americans would live separately. St. Louis and Baltimore, the bookmarks of our recent incidents, illustrate this.

A hundred years ago, both cities adopted ordinances prohibiting African Americans from moving to blocks where whites predominated. After the Supreme Court banned such rules in 1917, St. Louis's planning board preserved the policy. In neighborhoods where deeds prohibited sales to African Americans, the board prohibited anything but single family homes. Where neighborhoods had black families, it permitted multifamily structures, saloons, and factories. It changed zoning designations when necessary to enforce racial boundaries. Baltimore's official "Committee on Segregation" coordinated building and health inspectors' efforts to condemn black residences found in white neighborhoods. The committee also organized neighborhood associations to adopt pacts pledging white homeowners never to sell to black purchasers.

The federal government led nationwide to enforce segregation. In the 1930s, many urban neighborhoods were modestly integrated when both European immigrants and African Americans walked to factory jobs. Cities razed such neighborhoods to construct federally financed segregated public housing-in St. Louis, for example, for blacks on the north side, for whites farther south.

During World War II, the government built segregated housing for defense workers. In cities with previously few black residents, this imposed rigid segregation on burgeoning black populations.

Faced with post-war housing shortages, President Harry Truman proposed expanding public housing. Conservative Republicans, rejecting government participation in private markets, introduced a "poison pill" amendment requiring that public housing be integrated. They knew that if the amendment passed, Southern Democrats would oppose any public housing, defeating the program. Northern liberal Democrats like Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota campaigned against the integration amendment, uniting with their Southern colleagues to defeat it, and the 1949 Housing Act funded segregated housing.

When civilian housing construction recovered, the government promoted suburbanization. The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) guaranteed bank loans to builders on condition that no homes be sold to African Americans. The FHA even provided model deed language barring re-sales to non-whites.

Such subdivisions blossomed in virtually every metropolitan area. Best known is Levittown, N.Y.-17,000 homes for veterans, sold initially for about twice national median family income (less than $125,000 in today's dollars). Affordable to working class families of any race, federal policy restricted them to whites.

As suburbanization accelerated, whites left segregated public housing, lured to racially exclusive communities by FHA or G.I. bill mortgages. Soon, white projects had vacancies while black waiting lists were long. Housing authorities then opened all projects to African Americans. When industry also left inner cities and black workers couldn't get to good suburban jobs, ghetto impoverishment grew.

The FHA refused to insure mortgages in black neighborhoods as well-"redlining" neighborhoods to indicate they were uncreditworthy because African Americans lived in (or even near) them.

Unable to get mortgages and restricted to overcrowded neighborhoods where housing was in short supply, African Americans paid rents considerably higher than those for similar dwellings in white neighborhoods, or bought houses on installment plans with no equity rights. Higher housing costs forced black families to double-up, sometimes subdividing single-family homes. City services declined where black populations increased and neighborhoods turned into slums. If they were close to downtown businesses, federal, state, and local governments collaborated in "slum clearance" programs that relocated black residents to outlying areas.

That's how formerly all-white Ferguson evolved. Government cleared the St. Louis slums it had created to construct the city's trademark Gateway Arch, university expansion, and freeway interchanges that brought white suburbanites to downtown jobs. Some displaced residents received government vouchers to subsidize rents in outlying areas, but with no requirement that landlords must accept them. When only landlords in borderline areas took vouchers, new ghettos like Ferguson were created.

Houses in places like Levittown cost more than seven times national median income. In 1968, we adopted a Fair Housing Act, telling African Americans they were free to move to such suburbs. A few have, but the homes are now unaffordable to most black working families whose grandparents could have found housing there 60 years ago. Whites who bought such houses gained, over the last 65 years, hundreds of thousands of dollars in equity appreciation, wealth they used to send children to college or to provide for their own retirements.

Housing equity is Americans' most important source of wealth. Average black family income is now about 60 percent of white family income, but black household wealth is only about 5 percent of white household wealth. This disparity is almost entirely attributable to federal policy that prohibited black families from accumulating equity during the suburban boom and thus from bequeathing that wealth to children, as whites have done.

We don't have what is commonly termed "de facto" segregation-primarily resulting from private prejudice, income differences, preferences to live separately, or demographic trends. Our segregation is "de jure," resulting mostly from racially explicit public policies designed to create residential patterns we too easily accept as natural or accidental. These policies were blatant violations of constitutional guarantees that have never been remedied. Without remedy-desegregation, in short-we are sure to see more Fergusons, and Baltimores, and Clevelands, and vainly hope to avoid them by teaching police to be gentler.

This article is from Washington Spectator.

Photo: "We want white tenants" by Arthur S. Siegel. This image is available from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID fsa.8d13572. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons.

Homicides and violence: Moral crisis for our nation

Fri, 25 Sep 2015 14:21:00 +0000

Venita Haskins is grieving, again. She tragically lost her son, Damon Haskins to gun violence over Labor Day weekend in Brooklyn, New York. And she's still grieving deeply the loss of her daughter, Tamecca who died by gun violence on July 4th weekend only a mile away.

On a typical day, 40 Americans are murdered. In 2013, over 14,000 people were victims of homicide. Like Damon and Tamecca, they are not nameless; they are our fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, children and neighbors.

After declining for a number of years following the crack-cocaine epidemic of the 1980-90s, many major urban areas are experiencing a sharp rise in rates of homicide and violence leaving behind grieving families, fearful and traumatized communities.

The U.S. has the highest murder rate among developed capitalist nations. While homicides occur among every sector of the population, (in 2010, 50 percent of homicides victims were white and 47 percent were African American) they disproportionately strike African American communities. In Chicago most homicides occur in racially segregated pockets of concentrated high poverty.

African Americans are almost eight times as likely as whites to be homicide victims, and 12 times as likely to be murdered compared to other developed countries. Approximately 8,000 African Americans are murdered each year, 49 percent of total homicides. Since 1980, 260,000 black men have been murdered.

When a mass murder takes place like Charleston or Sandy Hook, it is a tragedy. The nation is shocked and grieves. But the violence and homicides occurring daily are also a national tragedy, a public health and moral crisis.

Aside from the attention generated by President Obama's "My Brother's Keepers" private sector initiative, public policy is not directed to stop the crisis. Like police murders of African Americans, unless one lives where higher rates of homicides occur, people often become used to the daily killing.

Capitalist ruling class and right wing propaganda daily bombards us with images criminalizing African Americans, particularly youth. Anti-black racist ideology convinces people, especially whites, that black lives don't matter.

This is rooted in U.S. capitalism's violent and bloody history of systemic racial oppression, stretching back to slavery and the genocide of Native Americans.

Racism and poverty, which are endemic to capitalism, are dehumanizing. Violence is a reflection of that oppression. In turn, racism justifies violent police repression, the death penalty and mass incarceration. The same anti-black "blame the victim" racism, which justifies police murders, also blames African Americans for the conditions that cause homicides and violence.

This is intertwined with the history of violence and militarization pervasive in U.S. society including the repression of the U.S. working class and its efforts to organize and imperialist wars of aggression.

When homicides get particularly bad, mayors and elected officials visit a neighborhood, speak at funerals and flood the community with police. The police chief makes a big announcement about some new strategy to end the violence, usually more aggressive policing. Then the cameras leave and the story recedes from the headlines until the next murder and the same thing happens again.

The cause in the spike in murders is complex and is sparking debate over how to address it. Some right wing commentators, academics and officials refer to the "Ferguson effect." They assert the spike is a result of relaxing aggressive policing in response to protests over the last year against police killing of unarmed African Americans.

African American communities are on the horns of a dilemma - stopping the violence now often means demanding a greater police presence as the only seeming viable solution. Crime is real and law enforcement is needed to protect communities. But police departments too often respond with aggressive policing, become occupying armies leading to more abuse and killing.

Many communities are organizing "stop the violence" marches. Such efforts helped stem violence during the crack-cocaine epidemic of the 1980-90s and more recently. In some cities, most notably Newark under Mayor Ras Baraka, elected officials are rallying residents and adopting a community policing policy.

But working class and communities of color are up against much bigger forces impossible to fight alone. Some factors can't be ignored beginning with the deadly combination of systemic racism and concentrated high poverty reflected in hyper segregation, joblessness, low wage jobs, underfunded schools, health care and affordable housing.

The proportionally higher rate of murder among African Americans and institutionalized racism, use of racial profiling and "aggressive policing" methods, mass incarceration and police murders of unarmed African Americans are part of the same history of racial oppression.

The National Rifle Association (NRA) and gun manufacturers are flooding communities with guns, reaping vast profits off the homicides. States and cities stand nearly helpless against the NRA's ability to sway legislation and the courts with their deep pockets.

Life in American cities is shaped by massive wealth inequality and Neo-liberal policies of financialization, privatization and directing vast resources toward gentrification, creating playgrounds for the rich. Meanwhile, millions work low wage jobs without benefits.

Neo-liberal policies are like a hyena that descends on a wounded prey, in this case cities already hollowed out by de-industrialization, with millions of union wage manufacturing jobs outsourced and public sector jobs eliminated through austerity. This has disproportionately impacted the African American and Latino communities.

While the economy has improved somewhat, the recovery has bypassed the African American community where unemployment is at 10 percent (officially), double the national average. African American youth unemployment is officially 18 percent.

A true gage is the workforce participation rate - 61 percent of African Americans are employed or 38 percent are unemployed. In Chicago African American unemployment is 27percent and over 90 percent among African American male teens.

In Cincinnati Ohio, 76 percent of African American children 6 years and under grow up in poverty.

These dire conditions especially impact young people, cutting off routes to higher education, leading to hopelessness and alienation. Without options many youth fall into a life of gang activity and drug trafficking. With the flood of cheap weapons added to this toxic mix, violence and death are often the result.

These conditions are a fundamental challenge to our sense of morality and democracy. Radical reforms are needed beginning with funding for a massive WPA style jobs program to rebuild our infrastructure and construct environmentally sustainable communities and fund education, including free university tuition, mental health services, substance abuse counseling and cultural opportunities. Dialog is needed to break the social isolation with gangs.

At the same time, special additional measures are needed to target communities impacted by high concentrations of poverty and racial segregation.

It calls for changing policing policies, reformation of the drug laws, including legalization, ending mass incarceration and a mass movement to stand up to the NRA and gun manufacturers and impose stricter gun control laws.

There is much at stake in the outcome of the 2016 elections. The broad based people's movement emerging must make ending homicides and violence, institutionalized racism and the dire conditions that help give rise to them a central aspect in the elections and beyond. It is the only way to achieve a just, peaceful, democratic and truly humane society for all.

Photo: John Minchillo/AP

Donald Trump is amusing us to death

Fri, 25 Sep 2015 13:08:00 +0000

Several media and culture watchers have expressed amazement that the recent Republican debates were watched by more than 50 million people. I was not surprised at all, because just such an audience for just such events was predicted 30 years ago. I am also not surprised that Trump continues to get coverage in the media. He is a perfect example of the state of our culture- and more's the pity.

In 1985, Neil Postman published his prophetic, seminal study of media and culture, "Amusing Ourselves to Death," in which he discussed the difference and effects of media's transition from a linear format based on words, to a non-linear format based on pictures. Postman's theory was that this change would have a profound impact on society, making it more difficult to communicate, absorb and pay attention to ideas, which depend on stringing words together in a line so that they become convincing, while at the same time making it much easier to communicate emotions, because pictures are great at that-witness the cat-playing-the-piano videos on YouTube, or the haunting eyes of Anne Frank. No thinking necessary.

So, what kind of emotions do we seek? Well, as with most organisms, we seek emotions and images that give us pleasure, not pain, and that's why Postman predicted that we would indeed amuse ourselves to death, seek entertainment in all things, avoid thinking. The upshot is that, 30 years later, Postman's prophecy has come true: Everything has become entertainment, everything has become show-business (to quote the subtitle of Postman's book) - our own lives (check out Facebook and see how fascinating and fun we all are), pictures of dogs yawning and kitties sneezing on the internet ("Awwww!"), news reporting, and of course, politics.

If everything is entertainment, it was not surprising at all that the GOP debates were watched by millions of people, because many of us watched it to see what funny stuff would happen with that hilarious character, Donald Trump. And of course, he didn't disappoint, because he is a character, much like Archie Bunker from "All in the Family"-a know-nothing blowhard, proud of his ignorance, a bully, yet somehow "wise" to how the world works. His admission in the first debate was clear, in front of 24 million people, that he gave money to Hillary Clinton, and she showed up at his wedding - political celebrity that she is - a trophy for his money. As a character in "This is Spinal Tap" once said, "Money talks, bull.... walks."

So, Trump knows that Mexico is "sending" (notice the active verb) murderers, rapists, etc., to the U.S., because, well, he just knows. He's successful and, as Tevye the Dairyman has told us, "When you're rich, they think you really know." He knows he can make Mexico pay for a wall that in his estimationwould be counter-productive to Mexico's own agenda of sending us undesirables. Howdoes he know this? He just knows-the same way that Archie Bunker knew that the government was being taking over by "Porto Ricans," women, and guys with long hair and limp handshakes. You could almost see Trump struggling to keep his inner Bunker quiet in his confrontation with Megyn Kelly during that first debate-he might have said, in his brutal way, "Megyn, stifle yourself."

In a way, Trump is a truth-teller. He has indeed "touched a nerve." He taps into the inchoate, powerless and semi-anesthetized anger (it's not rage...yet) of middle- and lower-class people who know they are being screwed by rich people and their minions the politicians, and that this unholy alliance is barely discussed in the establishment media. In that sense, he has a lot in common with the Occupy Movement and, of course, the Tea Party.

Trump is, of course, a superb entertainer. His later riff on Anthony Weiner was a wonder of comic timing, rivaling the work of Jackie Mason. His mean-spiritedness was on full display when he opined,"Look at that face, would you vote for that face?" regarding candidate Carly Fiorina, and put down Rand Paul for even deigning to be on the same platform with him during the second debate. Is that not Don Rickles on display?

Why do we watch? Some of us watch to get an idea of what people in the public eye think. Some of us watch because we want to feel superior to the poor, rich sap, the same way we felt superior to Archie. Others of us watch, just as Postman predicted, because we know that Trump is entertaining, lotsalaffs, that Trump is going to make a spectacle of himself. And to paraphrase Chris Hedges' post-Postman book title "Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle," he certainly does.

It does no good to criticize him in traditional political terms, for he is not a politician at all. He is an entertainer and he is the embodiment of Postman's dire prediction.

Photo: DonkeyHotey/Flickr

Pope Francis offers the world a prophetic voice

Wed, 23 Sep 2015 11:11:00 +0000

Washington is girding itself for what will be an historic visit by Pope Francis this week. So many are expected to flock into the city that government employees are encouraged to work at home. The pope will address a joint session of Congress, celebrate mass, meet with the president and tend to the impoverished. He may meet with the low-wage workers who serve food to the senators and not just with the senators. He will then go to Philadelphia and New York, give an address on climate change and possibly celebrate mass on Wall Street.

Already the political crossfire has begun, with conservatives assailing the pope for not understanding modern markets. One columnist condemned him as a false prophet, standing against "modernity, rationality, science and ... the spontaneous creativity of open societies."

Republicans are outraged that at Laudato Si, the Pope's stunning encyclical addressing our relationship to God's creation of nature and calling on us to change our ways to meet the challenge of climate change. While the Republican presidential campaign has been fixated on building walls, the pope represents the voice of Jesus that calls for caring for the stranger on the Jericho Road. While conservatives worship Adam Smith and the marketplace, the pope scorns the false idol of materialism, rejects the "magical conception of the market." "To claim economic freedom," he wrote in the encyclical, "while real conditions bar many people from real access to it, and while possibilities for employment continue to shrink, is to practice a doublespeak which brings politics into disrepute."

Liberals, on the other hand, shudder at the pope's embrace of life and continued commitment to the church's rejection of abortion. This pope has called for a "jubilee" that, among other things, offers greater forgiveness for those who have divorced or had abortions.

Francis is the first pope to come from the South, from Argentina in his case. He named himself after Saint Francis of Assisi, who, the pope noted, "lived in simplicity and in wonderful harmony with God ... (showing) us just how inseparable is the bond between concern for nature, justice for the poor, commitment to society and interior peace."

Without question, the pope's visit will spark major political disputes, as partisans pick and choose phrases to club their opponents with. But the pope has no party. He carries the message of the Gospel, of Jesus born into poverty, who dedicated his ministry to the poor. Jesus taught us to come to the aid of the poor, to feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, care for the sick and visit the prisoner. We would be judged, he taught, for "whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me." Jesus of Nazareth ministered to the poor, and that alarmed the rich and powerful, who reacted with fear and anger.

Pope Francis now offers the world a prophetic voice. We must not sacrifice people at the "altar of money" or worship the "golden calf." He calls on us to amend our ways so we can meet the challenges of climate change, poverty, war and division.

The pope is grounded in the values of the Church, the teachings of Jesus. He is not a policy wonk or a political partisan. Personal responsibility and charity are central to his teaching. And he knows that governments, institutions and markets created by man reflect their values. If distorted, they can have perverse effects and must be reformed.

In a time of extreme inequality, with millions still in absolute poverty, with growing displacement of peoples stoking hatreds and fears, with climate change a clear and already present danger, Pope Francis calls us to change, to return to core values, and build anew.

His prophetic voice is badly needed in this troubled times. No doubt his message will be distorted and hijacked for partisan political purposes. But beneath that din, we should consider his words, weigh his wisdom and look into ourselves. He is summoning us to unleash our better angels. We would be wise to listen and reflect.

Photo: Susan Walsh/AP

Is nation's gain Wisconsin's loss?

Tue, 22 Sep 2015 12:30:00 +0000

Wisconsin is waiting to see if it is the biggest loser in Gov. Scott Walker's abrupt suspending of his presidential campaign Monday, Sept. 21. It was accompanied by a brief, blunt plea to other candidates to also thin the herd and let a "conservative" in the so-called positive mold of Ronald Reagan make the case against front-runner and acknowledged master of the negative, Donald Trump.

The other candidates - more than a dozen-must be grateful Walker didn't anoint anyone by name. What could he offer them but an example of failure? His poll numbers were in the negative when he departed, a big change from last winter when he unofficially announced and started building a war chest.

His inaptly named explorative committee, Unintimidated, piled in $20 million by May 31, but he had to wait until June (it took that long to pass his controversial two-year state budget) to formally announce. At that point the rules of how much can be collected-and for what - changed. (Quitting after three months means none of these new figures are available.)

But even in June his poll numbers had slipped from April-and when Trump sucked the air out of the presidential race that up-ended any hopes for Iowa, where Walker had to win.

But it was not Trump that did him in. It was Walker himself who appeared muddled and whose continued bragging about how he had taken away the rights of workers in his home state that actually did him in. His fade started pre-Trump.

Some hired guns saw it last March when he catered so hard in Iowa to evangelicals and ethanolics that he lost some high-priced campaign experts like Liz Mair. These advisers were learning the hard way what people who covered Walker for two decades in Wisconsin knew. He may sell himself as a fighter but he is a ducker - a professional political prevaricator who tests the wind and adjusts from severe to mild conservative and back again depending on what he decides the feedback is saying. What worked statewide looked silly nationally.

By early September, New Yorker humorist Andy Borowitz was quipping that the Koch brothers were cutting their losses and selling Walker back to Wisconsin. Sept. 21 the joke became painfully close to the truth.

Granted the political cowering that comes with every bad poll. But even some supporters find the haste of his exit strange. He started as the apparent winner of Billionaire Bingo, with rich donors lined up to back him and even an April blessing from the Koch brothers when David openly referred to Walker as their favorite candidate.

The politicos are now asking how so much money could be eaten so fast. Could the blame only be on skittish billionaires who believe in early poll numbers like they believe in balance sheets-or were they just turning away from the former golden boy?

Why did Walker the self-described Braveheart get out so fast? Questions are flying about expensive hires and fires, the size of the payroll, whether pseudonyms stood in for staff people and how the mixed bags of money were handled. Walker is no stranger to accusations of campaign tricks, so whether true or not this will take months to sort out.

One specter has been laid to rest, though - Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch. The lieutenant governor that even Walker didn't want is not likely to step up as many feared should he go to work for another candidate or explore private sector interest.

Democrats are of course horrified at his return full time to Wisconsin where he has been virtually invisible racing around the country to court money or disappearing into debate woodwork. His absence was strangely calming. But even some conservatives have mixed feelings about getting Walker back. Some kicked off those Walker traces to gallop forward with their own bills, others are flailing around trying to find their own souls, even others are angry about the legislative messes he left them. Some Democrats hope he will come back a bit humbled. Others expect the old Walker to reassert himself when he realizes how much support has eroded.

A clue could be the Wisconsin Supreme Court and the elderly justice who died in his chambers the same day Walker bailed out. N. Patrick Crooks was not quite a swing vote given his 80 percent tendency to vote with the four majority conservatives. But there was that important 20 percent, some well reasoned dissents and an amiable manner. Before his death, two experienced independent thinking judges, Joanne Kloppenburg and Joe Donald, were already running for his seat in the April 2016 election, joined by a Walker pet, Rebecca Bradley, whom he had just elevated to the appeals court.

Walker could play politics and appoint her a justice ahead of the April election. "The old Walker would," stated one conservative. "The new Walker doesn't want to face another loss," said a veteran legal reporter. What he does could be a sign of which Walker the state must now deal with. Photo: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker in Dallas, Sept. 2. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

Two things could derail Bernie Sanders’ “political revolution”

Mon, 21 Sep 2015 15:37:00 +0000

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has mounted what is certainly the most significant campaign for president by a socialist since Eugene Debs,who ran from prison in 1920 and received almost one million write-in votes. As someone actively involved in Bernie's campaign in Ohio, I have several concerns that I fear may derail this historic effort.

Debs actually ran five times as the Socialist Party's candidate for president, with a platform calling for the end of the capitalist system and its replacement by socialism. Sanders also calls for a "political revolution," but his program has more limited goals seeking only major reforms of the existing economic system.

Sanders' clear and powerful speeches presenting this program are resonating with masses of working people, who have thronged his campaign rallies in far greater numbers and enthusiasm than he or anyone else expected, greatly disconcerting national front runner Hillary Clinton. His support is growing and he has overtaken Clinton in the current polls in Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two primary states.

But can this last and is Sanders actually electable? Two serious obstacles stand in his way.

The first is the same problem Debs faced. The United States, despite outrageous inequality and injustice, is not in a revolutionary situation. The voters, however strongly they respond to Sanders, still hope for change within the existing system and are not clamoring for revolution.

The issue before the electorate in 2016 is not whether or not we will have socialism; it's whether or not we will have democracy. It's whether working people will have decent living standards and space to fight for needed change. Sanders' mission as a Democratic candidate is not to defeat the "billionaire class"; it's to defeat the Republicans, whose party has the support of most, but not all of that class. There are billionaires, like Warren Buffett and George Soros, who are Democrats as well as democrats - bourgeois democrats to be sure - but people who agree with Sanders that "the billionaires can't have it all." They believe in a progressive tax reform and the use of this new revenue to create jobs, rebuild the infrastructure, develop renewable energy industries, raise the minimum wage and permit unions to organize. They believe that the preservation of capitalism requires reforms to redistribute the wealth and provide greater economic security for working people. They also have enormous influence in the Democratic Party, the only electoral-legislative vehicle capable of preventing a right-wing extremist takeover of the federal government.

Sanders needs to recognize the lesson, not only of Debs, whose heroic efforts won only a marginal vote in national elections, but also of the more recent experiences of George McGovern in 1972 and Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. Neither of these latter candidates advocated socialism, but McGovern was a strong progressive and outspoken opponent of the Vietnam war and U.S. Cold War policies generally. Unfortunately, his views were too advanced for the leadership of the Democratic Party which boycotted and sabotaged his election. He got clobbered, winning only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia, and the election wound up delivering the United States and Vietnam to the malicious and corrupt Richard Nixon. Obama, on the other hand, after winning the nomination based on grassroots and progressive forces including labor, the Black community, and young people, recognized he needed the Democratic Party to win the general election and made an alliance with Hillary Clinton, who represented, then as now, the corporate forces in that party. In return for their support they got key Cabinet positions in finance and foreign and military policy.

So Sanders must refine his message to focus on the right-wing extremist section of "the billionaire class." Otherwise, even if Sanders miraculously wins the nomination, it is not at all clear he could win the election without making similar compromises.

But Sanders also faces a second very serious obstacle. He has little following, name recognition or ties to the African American and Latino communities, and without their active support it is difficult to see how anyone can win the Democratic nomination. Sanders has an excellent voting record with respect to issues of concern to these communities and can boast of some history in the civil rights movement, but whether this is enough to overcome the massive support and extensive ties Clinton has, especially with African Americans, is a serious question and Sanders has shown some ineptitude in this regard.

As he began his campaign in South Carolina where Black voters are the majority of the Democratic primary voters, he chose Dr. Cornel West as his emissary to the Black community. West has antagonized much of the African American leadership by his extreme, reckless and unwarranted criticism of Obama as well as attacking Obama's defenders like civil rights leader Rev. Al Sharpton who has continually fought against the relentless, racist GOP attacks on the nation's first African American president. Anyone who thinks they can win over the Black community by associating with attacks on President Obama is extraordinarily out of touch.

Sanders also suffers from the same weakness that has historically afflicted the Socialist Party and was one of the reasons the left wing of that party broke away and formed the Communist Party in 1919. That is, the belief that the racist oppression of Black people is mainly an economic question that will automatically be resolved with economic reforms and socialism. It is this attitude that provoked the hostile reaction by the activists of Black Lives Matter movement

who disrupted Sanders' speech at the Netroots Nation forum in Phoenix in July.

Sanders has scrambled to address this issue and hired some Black staff, but the problem keeps surfacing and is a major reason his supporters remain overwhelmingly white. In his recent appearance at the New Hampshire Democratic Party convention, Sanders drew large and well deserved applause when he denounced the gender wage gap, but said nothing about the more historic and fundamental racial wage gap, a central aspect of the systemic racism pervading our country. Clinton actually seems to have a better understanding of the central role of the fight against racism in the fight for progress.

Despite his shortcomings that may in the end prove his undoing, Sanders still makes the strongest attack on the fundamental economic injustices confronting working people, and attracts the largest crowds. He is having the biggest effect on moving the electorate to the left, exposing the bankruptcy of the GOP and, additionally, legitimizing the idea of socialism. For these reasons, progressives and socialists should give him wholehearted support even as we keep in mind the main goal is to defeat right-wing extremism in 2016 and must be ready to back whoever wins the Democratic nomination in order to achieve that. That is the task of the moment, the necessary immediate step in moving towards the ultimate political revolution our country needs.

Photo: Bernie Sanders. Wikimedia Commons

Lakota 57 verdict means “open season” on Indians

Mon, 21 Sep 2015 12:51:00 +0000

It was an infamous decision. Magistrate Judge Eric Strawn ruled on Sept. 1 that Trace O'Connell, was not guilty of disorderly conduct when he poured beer, threw objects, yelled racist statements and physically threatened young Lakota children at a hockey game in Rapid City, S.D., in January. O'Connell was the sole person charged in the racist attack although 15 or more men were involved.

The judge ruled that dousing the children with beer and yelling hateful statements was neither racist nor offensive, but "celebratory." This is beyond incredible. It is abysmal, abominable and hideous racism (both the behavior and the "legal" decision). Following that line of so-called reasoning, it can be assumed that if Native Americans threw beer on a group of whites and made threatening statements this would be dismissed as just "celebratory." No court in the land would so rule. We all know that just the opposite would happen: Native defendants would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law in our racist court system.

The judge's decision is tantamount to declaring an "open season" on Indians, children in particular, that will reverberate throughout the country, particularly in other areas of the Western states. The racist killings of Indian people by the police and atrocities against Native children will continue. It is just a question of when and where.

This odious decision has, I am sure, already heralded truly "celebratory" gatherings by the racist goons guilty of the horrendous attack on the children.

It brings to mind the days of the civil rights movement in the South when racist white judges and juries routinely found "not guilty" white hooligans who abused and killed civil rights workers and African Americans simply fighting for the right to vote and for desegregation.

Something has to be done, instead of simply waiting for another atrocity to be committed. There has to be a "turning point." The attack on the children and this loathsome legal decision should be a "turning point." We must make it such a juncture.

During the civil rights movement a "turning point" was reached when the fire hoses were unleashed on African American elementary school children demonstrating on the streets of Birmingham, Alabama.

The racism in law enforcement in Indian Country has been a crisis for longer than recent memory, but it has escalated when our children are not seen as fit to be protected by the legal system. (We have already seen the continued kidnapping of Indian children by South Dakota in violation of the Indian Child Welfare Act) .

We need to have a national meeting of Native people and supporters to robustly address this crisis post haste. There has to be national coordination and strategy to confront and bring to justice these racist perpetrators and to deal with a rogue justice system.

Photo: I Support the Lakota 57/Facebook

For Rosh Hashanah: We resolve to do better in the year 5776

Mon, 14 Sep 2015 11:29:00 +0000

Let me tell you something about the Men's Group I'm in. We formed in early 2009 at the Workmen's Circle in Los Angeles, so we're going on seven years now. We've fluctuated in number - now we're at four - and we meet for two hours twice a month. We're pretty homogeneous, maybe too much for our own good, as we're all Jewish guys in our 60s and 70s (we did have some non-Jewish and younger and older participants but they moved away).

Our group isn't therapy, and we're not out to "fix" anyone. We just share the truths about our lives, issues with our careers, our marriages and relationships, kids, parents, aging, sex and sexuality, our health, our fears, the changes we're going through. We try to speak from the heart and not give unwanted advice. We don't waste time talking baseball or movies.

And yet, there is a therapeutic effect. If I come in one week with an issue that's troubling me, I'm not going to come back the next time and say the same thing, and the next, and the next. To do so would only say, in so many words, that I'm not truly interested in addressing my problem, but only want a regular supply of shoulders to cry on. I've learned there's a word for people like that: Vampires. They suck all your energy, your attention, your good will, but they don't give back mutual support.

The Jewish New Year season comprises two major holidays, Rosh Hashanah, the New Year itself, this year September 14; and Yom Kipur, known as the Day of Atonement, September 23. During this time, Jews are asked to give thanks for the year past, to review their actions, apologize for their misdeeds and make amends, and resolve to do better in the year to come.

In a similar way to our Men's Group, the New Year season discourages vampirism. In both our group and in the Jewish tradition, we try to remain real and authentic, honoring our selves and others, and the commitments we make. If we value the bonds of community, we assume the burden of honesty and candor. If we are going to be depending on one another in the months and the years to come, we have to be open, frank, trustworthy and constructive.

There is much our progressive movement can learn from the men's group, and from the Jewish New Year. Are those of us (you know who you are) who endlessly carp and quibble about every faux pas of the President, in whom we are so deeply "disappointed," or bemoan a 2016 candidate's failure to lift up this or that hot issue - are we not acting as a kind of political vampire, injecting negativity, hopelessness and futility into our ranks? Are we coming back week after week with the same unresolved complaints, expending precious energy that could be better applied to actually achieving something in our union, our neighborhood or school? And aren't the "vampires" letting us down, the rest of us trying so hard in this climate to keep our heads above the waters of cynicism, aiming for a little victory now and then?

This may be a good time to think about repairing frayed relationships, taking a long view of our movement's needs as we both build independent politics on the one hand, and strengthen the unity of all those forces working compassionately for justice and peace. If we can work together harmoniously and supportively on the main issues, we'll likely find that the issues separating us are not so fundamental after all.

A year from now we'll be heading into the final stretch of what will surely be a stressful electoral campaign. Let us hope that the internal "reset" we perform on ourselves now leads to more effective collective work, and to great gains and accomplishments, in the critical months ahead.

Have a good and healthy New Year!

Photo: A man blows the traditional shofar (ram's horn) to celebrate Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, at a ceremony in Seattle. Joe King CC 2.0

Letter carriers “looked good” on Labor Day

Fri, 11 Sep 2015 16:21:00 +0000

DETROIT - The rays of the unforgiving sun begin to beat upon the brim of my baseball cap. This day is gonna burn my butt. As I turn into the parking lot across from the grassy field that was once the old Tiger Stadium, I can see that we are going to have a good turnout. I see the red shirts. That's our signal of solidarity. My letter carriers have arrived at that the crack of dawn, well actually about a half hour past that crack, to begin assembling for the 2015 Detroit Labor Day March. Two hundred strong at 7:30 AM is a mighty good way for a guy like me to celebrate my favorite holiday; the Worker's Day; Labor Day. As I exit my vehicle I begin to sweat with the anticipation of the day. And with the realization that the Bloody Mary bar has not yet arrived to nurse the aches and pains from last night's overachievements.

I am the guy with the bullhorn. I really never wanted to be in this position but life is funny. I jokingly asked Santa for a bullhorn about five years ago at Christmas and one showed up under the Xmas tree. I know my wife would not have ever given me this mouthpiece so I really have to think that Santa exists. Who else would do something like giving a guy like me an amplified speaking device? Definitely a divine soul, or maybe a drunken Santa. Either way, I am leading 200 letter carriers in song and chant down Michigan Avenue on this hot, sweltering morning and it is glorious. We look good and our message is resounding.

The Detroit Labor Day March is one of America's pre-eminent Labor Day events. Our letter carrier branch (NALC Branch 3126) was the first of the local NALC branches to get re-involved in the glorious tradition of marching in Detroit's Labor Day event. In 2003 we gathered together five or six folks and we joined the marchers in our humble huddle. On this Labor Day, as we have done for the past few years, we now number in the hundreds. Our message for "Saving the Postal Service" echoes as we march down Michigan Avenue and spill into Hart Plaza. I tip my hat to the efforts of the Michigan Association of Letter Carriers for propelling this event forward and making this day an exciting day for letter carriers and their families. Some of my NALC brothers and sisters travel some distance to be here and their energy is high octane to my petrol!

My red shirt is covered in sweat. As I get older and fatter, the shirt becomes wetter. Oh well, as long as I don't die in the street here, maybe no one will notice. I holler out the chants, and surprisingly, the people respond. I amaze myself every year with this ritual. It is fun, and sweating in the hot sun is fun. These letter carriers, you letter carriers, are the best group of folks to be around at 9 o'clock in the morning. I really mean it. Not just at a march, but anytime. I hate mornings. But not with you. Even at work you make me laugh. Even when I don't want to.

We approach the end of the March heading towards Hart Plaza. I am thankful that though covered in sweaty red shirtedness, I have not yet collapsed or died. The folks that have had to endure the last hour of my bullhorn bravado are probably not as thankful as I that I am still breathing.

In the glistening sun I see the inspiration that brings me to these Labor Day marches. Sixty foot high-in-the-sky steel arches. The solar sphere dances on the giant gears bursting out of the earth. Sixty-three feet in the Detroit sky rises Transcending: the Western hemisphere's largest tribute to the Labor Movement. I love this sculpture; it is a wonderful work of art that should bring tears to any man or woman who works for a living. David Barr designed these arches along with Sergio De Giusti who created the bronze reliefs that accompany the magnificent arcs. "View the symbols of capitalism through the ring that labor built." Those were the words of the Metro Times newspaper when honoring Transcending with an award for public art. The two arches do not meet. There is a gap at the apex. This is a broken rainbow. Some say a work of defiance. Others say it represents that Labor's work is never done. I've been told that it is about remembrance. The artist who created it could tell us best. But his voice has been silenced.

David Barr died this Aug. 28. He was an artist that we should know more about, and hopefully future generations will know more about him and his unique artistic prowess. His work was a combination of science, mathematics and art. His "Four Corners Project" was an artistic endeavor to mathematically and spiritually unite the four corners of the Earth including New Guinea, Greenland, Machu Pichu, and Easter Island. He also created the Michigan Legacy Art Park at Crystal Mountain, Michigan. This project combines over thirty works of art in a natural setting in a thirty-acre park in northern Michigan. I have been there and it is amazing.

Albert Einstein said this (and he was a pretty smart feller), "Strange is our situation here upon Earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes for a divine purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that we are here for the sake of others...for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy. Many times a day, I realize how much my outer and inner life is built upon the labors of people, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received."

David Barr exerted himself for the sake of his art, for the sake of Labor, and for the sake of others. His arches are quickly becoming the iconic images of a Detroit attempting to blend the past Labor struggles of our workers with the uncertain story that is yet to be written about those workers. That is the nature of great art. It speaks of what we know and warns us to not be so comfortable with our hopes and visions of what is to come. Look up at the arches when the sun goes down; you will see a bright light. Right there at the apex. That is the twinkle of a great artist, maybe even winking at you. Or your girl. This art will speak for eternity. These words from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., embedded in tiles on either side of Dave Barr's masterpiece, are timeless. "The arc of history bends towards justice." Rest in peace my brother.

Photo: Postal workers in the Labor Day event in Detroit. | apwu480.org/

Thoughts on Greece, Syriza and its left critics, Part 2

Fri, 11 Sep 2015 12:12:00 +0000

This is part two of a three-part series. See part one here.

"Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past." - Karl Marx

"What childish innocence it is to present one's own impatience as a theoretically convincing argument!" - Frederick Engels

If any of us wants to judge the conduct of Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and Syriza in their negotiations with the Eurogroup (the finance ministers and heads of state that make up the Eurozone) in July, a close look at the concrete situation in Greece and Europe is necessary. At the core of any analysis is an examination of the distribution of power among contending class and social forces, the larger socio-economic matrix in which these forces collide, and the parameters and limits of social change.

That may seem obvious and not require mentioning, but I'm afraid it's a method some on the left seem averse to and thus avoid.

But this omission inevitably leads to speculative and abstract thinking which then tacks in the direction of 1) sweeping and negative judgments of classes, people, and parties who fail to "measure up" to what are considered moments of "transformative" possibility, and 2) grandstanding to show off one's radical temper and credentials.

This may make for good political theater complete with righteous indignation at "opportunities squandered." But once the noise in the room subsides, it becomes apparent that beneath the militant bluster and sharp criticism of those who are doing the heavy lifting in difficult circumstances, something is missing. And that something is a reliable framework for making such evaluations - not to mention constructing a politics that has the potential to bend, even rupture, the structures of exploitation and oppression to the advantage of working people and their allies.

Which brings me back to Syriza and its leader Alexis Tspiras. Any fair evaluation of their role must ask: What is the concrete situation in which they govern? Is the playing field level between Syriza and its ruling class adversaries? Or does one side have an advantage, and if so, how much of an advantage? Does each side have the same to lose? Is Grexit - Greece quitting the Eurozone - a realistic option? And if so, is an orderly exit possible? What solidarity can be expected across Europe and globally?

What about Tsipras?

Tsipras didn't go into the negotiations with the leaders of the Eurogroup in Brussels with his eyes closed. As numerous interviews show, he was well aware that the balance in political, economic, and institutional power overwhelmingly favored his opponents sitting in the political and financial centers of Europe. And he knew that the objective of his main adversaries, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble, was to cut the new prime minister and Syriza - a party of the left - down to size, while imposing another round of harsh measures on the new Greek government in exchange for some financial assistance.

Nevertheless Tsipras still hoped that the large "no" vote of the Greek people in a referendum a week before the negotiations began might give German leaders reason to pause, to reconsider their draconian bargaining posture, and maybe, just maybe, consider some form of debt relief.

Or, alternatively that the vote would nudge France and Italy, as well as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), to show some backbone and stand up to the German capitalist juggernaut.

When neither happened, Tsipras had to know that the "jig was up" and that he (and the Greek people) would have to accept a punishing settlement and a humiliating defeat. Which is what happened.

Upon returning to Athens, Tsipras said as much to the Greek parliament. He didn't prettify the settlement. But he also made the point that there was no good alternative.

If the negotiations (or "waterboarding" as one observer called it) had any redeeming virtue, it was only in the fact that it laid bare for the rest of Europe the exploitative, unequal, anti-democratic, and coercive relations that are at the core of the structure and practice of the European Union (EU) and Eurozone.

Greece and the Eurozone

Unsurprisingly, not everyone was happy with what they heard. The main criticism coming the left was that Tsipras should have had a plan B. And for most of these critics, plan B amounted to leaving the Eurozone, which is a monetary union of 18 of the 28 countries of the EU, that use a common currency - the euro - and abide by a set of common rules.

Tsipras, however, rejected this option as an unmitigated disaster.

And he has a point. For Grexit to be a realistic alternative it has to rest on more than the ideological disposition of its advocates. They have to demonstrate that the majority of Greek people supports such a course of action; that Greece has the necessary economic wherewithal to withstand the economic firestorm that will inevitably and immediately come with an exit; and, finally, that sustained and substantial solidarity, including material, can be expected from the rest of Europe.

But none of these conditions can be met.

First of all, polls and interviews show the Greek people aren't ready to bail out of the Eurozone. Public opinion in Greece has been consistently and emotionally attached to membership in the European Union and the Eurozone. The "no" vote on the referendum prior to the Brussels smackdown was both a rejection of austerity and an insistence that a new path, anchored in debt relief and sustainable growth, be found within, not outside of, the Eurozone.

To the extent that Grexit is a realistic option, it is, ironically, an option for Germany, not Greece, in this sense: Germany, with its powerful economy, deep financial reserves, and nearly unchallenged voice in Europe, doesn't fear that a Greek exit would trigger a financial breakdown across Europe.

Indeed, Schauble floated the idea that Greece should be expelled from the Eurozone for a year or two after which it could, if its financial house was deemed back in order by the Troika (European Central Bank, European Commission, and IMF), apply for readmission.

With German leaders saying they basically did not care if the Greeks left the Eurozone, Greece's bargaining position effectively collapsed. It became an easy target for the Germanic capitalist bully to teach all of Europe a lesson.

If, as the German leaders believed, chaos spreading to the rest of Europe was very unlikely in the wake of a Greek exit, the same couldn't be said for Greece. No one knows exactly what a country's exit from the Eurozone would look like. It has never happened so far. But what can reasonably guessed is that it wouldn't be pretty for a poor country like Greece.

It's one thing for the restive British to consider leaving the EU and quite another for Greece - a small country at the bottom of the food chain in Europe - to quit the Eurozone. Its resources are meager and it doesn't possess anything close to an integrated and modern economy. And this is more so today than when it entered the EU 14 years ago.

Let's face it: if Greece were to give the finger to the Eurozone, its credit markets would freeze up and its banks would be thrown into deeper crisis. It is almost certain that inflation would spike up as the price of imported goods would skyrocket. Exports, meanwhile, might become more inviting, but that isn't automatic by any means. Investment, private and public, would go south for sure, while business and consumer savings would take a hit. And the crisis of everyday living would spread and deepen.

No "sugar daddy" for Greece

If there is a "sugar daddy" ready to step in and fill the breech upon Greece's exit from the Eurozone, it is still a well-kept secret. Cuba on its exit from the grip of U.S. colonialism had the Soviet Union to assist it, but Greece has no such benefactor waiting in the wings.

It is simply wishful thinking, therefore, to believe that after a short period of pain and privation, a dynamic developmental path would somehow assert itself and whisk Greece out of the kingdom of hardship and plunk it down in the kingdom of plenty.

Finally, any viable exit strategy from European institutions has to include sustained and substantive solidarity actions of the left, progressive, and working class movements in Western Europe and North America. But so far that hasn't developed. In fact, the various detachments of the working classes and people across Europe (and worldwide) are in most instances fighting from defensive positions against the austerity policies of their own governments and the EU. The challenges to the regime of austerity and neoliberalism across Europe haven't been sustained or successful yet. If they had, the dynamics of the current struggle between Greece and the Eurogroup and Germany would be very different.

This undeniable reality should give some modesty to the insistent claims of some on the left outside of Greece that Syriza should show some chutzpah and choose a policy of "rupture."

To criticize Tsipras and Syriza, therefore, for their failure to Grexit seems more than a little quixotic and fanciful to say the least.

Now no one should interpret this to mean that remaining in the Eurozone is a good option. But the fact is that the Greek people are not choosing between a bad and a good alternative. Their choice is between which is the least painful and which might position them over the medium term to see some light at the end of the tunnel.

The Greek Communist Party (KKE) and some others on the left want to hear none of this. The choice between staying or leaving in their view is a false one. The only alternative in present circumstances is a socialist revolution, they say. Anything less than that isn't worth considering.

Reality-based strategy

But here's the problem: There is no evidence that the Greek people favor such a course of action. If the Greek people are ready to overthrow the system, it escapes me. Then again, I'm thousands of miles away. But I do know this: it can't be based on the voting strength of the KKE in parliamentary elections. At last count it received about 5 percent of the vote in parliamentary elections, and if polls are accurate, its vote will be about the same in coming elections in October.

All of which underscores the fact that communists like the rest of humanity have to live in the world as it is. They can seek succor in Marxist Leninist texts (but the question is how to interpret these for today) and the notion of socialism's inevitability (a very problematic claim if not qualified and reconstructed), but neither can substitute for a reality-based elaboration of program, strategy, tactics, demands, and political initiatives.

The final chapter in the riveting saga that is playing out in Greece and Europe hasn't reached a denouement. Just as it was premature to think that the "no" vote in the July referendum in Greece heralded a new day for that beleaguered county, it is also unwise to conclude that the latest negotiations (or really, the hazing of Tsipras) in Brussels bring to a conclusion this savage confrontation. German capital and its acolytes won this round, and won it decisively. But not so decisively that white flags of surrender are flying in Athens.

Moreover, the Greek elections next month will once again put the future of the country into the hands where it belongs: the hands of the Greek people. In going to the voting booth they will have the opportunity to support one or another party and their respective path to extricate Greece from its present troubles.

Syriza and the left

Obviously, in calling a snap election, Tsipras hopes Syriza will be able to expand its representation in Parliament and its influence in society. People on the left should hope for its success.

Syriza is not your garden variety social democratic party that was ascendant in the last half of the 20th century. Many of its leaders and members were part of the KKE up until 1991, while others come from other traditions on the left. Marxism and socialism are part of its vocabulary and figure prominently in its analysis and direction. And notwithstanding recent political setbacks, it retains transformative aspirations.

Its rise a few years ago is part of a necessary process of reconstitution of the left in the wake of the historic defeat of communist, socialist, and working class movements in the 1990s. Its defeat will not create more favorable conditions for the left to emerge in some newly packaged, strengthened, and "pure" form in Greece or elsewhere.

The recent decision of a group of Syriza's members of Parliament to form a new organization on a "more radical ground" certainly has an appealing ring to it. But one has to ask: Will the division of the left strengthen the hand of the Greek people in their fight against austerity, or weaken it? If experience elsewhere is of any value, it seems the latter is more likely.

Now what?

At any rate, while anything is possible when the Greek people go to the polls in two weeks, it is likely that they will once again show no desire to exit the Eurozone.

Instead, they will probably choose to "stay put," but not passively, not in a supine position. All evidence suggests a closely contested election. If Syriza prevails, its mandate from the Greek people will be to create as well as take advantage of whatever space exists in the present situation to defend popular democracy, living standards, and national sovereignty.

Meanwhile, the left across Europe has a responsibility to step up the pressure on the Troika, to exploit the cracks appearing between the IMF and the other capitalist "institutions," and to open up new fronts of solidarity. Securing debt relief is of crucial importance.

If at some point an exit from the Eurozone begins to look like a necessary course of action, it has to be the result of a conscious decision of a majority of the Greek people. Only they have that right. It can't be the fancy of any party no matter where it sits on the political spectrum.

Why? Because in the event that they exit the Eurozone, the Greek people will surely experience some difficult days (to say the least) and they may well feel buyer's remorse. That doesn't necessarily constitute a major problem. But what would is if they feel, based on the hardship that they will inevitably endure in the short and medium run, that they have been sold a fraudulent "happy days are here again" bill of goods about leaving the Eurozone. If that happens politics could quickly take a sharp turn to the extreme right.

It is natural to look for a quick fix to the crisis in Greece and Europe, but there probably isn't one in present circumstances. In the end, a strategy that stands a chance of lifting Greece and its European neighbors out of the current economic crisis necessitates a relentless and united struggle to qualitatively shift the balance of forces in Europe as well as Greece. Such a shift would create the conditions to enact - not socialist revolution - but radical economic and political reforms and replace outdated and anti-democratic structures of governance in Greece and Europe.

While Greece is a tiny country and Syriza a new party of the left, their success in overcoming the current crisis would give fresh momentum, confidence, and experience to people in Europe and worldwide, including the United States, who themselves yearn for a world in which peace, substantive equality, sustainability, solidarity, and humanism are at the core of daily living.

Photo: Alexis Tsipras, leader of Syriza. Joanna/Flickr

An appreciation of Oliver Sacks, 82

Thu, 10 Sep 2015 11:28:00 +0000

Many of us are mourning the passing of the popular British-American neurologist, professor and bestselling author Oliver Sacks, who died recently at the age of 82. Sacks' writing chronicled case histories of his brain-disordered patients whose challenges were detailed in the most sympathetic and fascinating of ways. Over the years, several of their stories, highlighting the immense variety in which human consciousness presents itself, became inspiration for stage and film productions.

A native of London, six-year-old Oliver was sent away to live in the English countryside by his physician parents to spare him the horrors of the Nazi Blitz. That the youngster suffered terribly as a result of the relocation in an institution headed by a cruel headmaster might have left both indelible psychological wounds as well as a depth of understanding for the plight of the afflicted. Sacks' approach seemed to come from the most humane of places; he treated his patients as individuals to be understood rather than as objects to be studied. He once shared that he felt closer to them than to his most familiar neighbors.

Living in the Topanga Canyon area of Los Angeles while a neurology resident at UCLA, Dr. Sacks became acquainted with the work of 19th-century "migraine physician" Edward Liveing. During that period Sacks experimented with a variety of drugs. In his book Hallucinations he noted that it was then that he decided that he wanted to become the Liveing of his era by authoring books on neurological complications and diseases.

Adding to the constellation of traits that made up Sacks' seemingly insatiable wellspring of curiosity about how the brain functioned was that he himself suffered from a rare and incurable brain disorder known as prosopagnosia, or face blindness. Individuals with prosopagnosia are not able to recognize faces - family members, the closest of friends, or in the most extreme cases, even one's own face.

Portrayed by Robin Williams, Dr. Sacks was introduced into public discourse by the 1990 film Awakenings, which followed his inspired approach to patients who were suffering from an atypical form of encephalitis. After years rendered virtually unresponsive by the disorder, they were given an experimental treatment that included administration of the drug L-Dopa by the young doctor, and for a short time the group (one member played notably by Robert De Niro) was brought back to life in glorious fashion only to return, sadly, to their original vegetative state.

Sacks once said that we "see with our eyes and with our brain. Seeing with the brain is called imagination," bringing to mind an illuminating chapter in his bestselling book The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, entitled "The President's Speech." The neurologist had been treating a group of patients stricken with global aphasia, a malady causing their brains to be incapable of understand the meaning of specific words. So clever however was their adaptation, that by instinctively focusing on the non-verbal cues of the speaker, the patients had become astute decoders of the "intent" embedded in the message being sent. After arriving late one day for an appointed meeting with his patients, the good doctor was surprised to see many of them laughing uproariously at a televised speech being given by President Ronald Reagan. After investigating, Sacks found that their spontaneous response had been caused by "the old Charmer, the Actor, with his practiced rhetoric, his histrionisms, his emotional appeal." The president, it seemed, could "crack up" the assemblage but he could not deceive these human lie detectors!

In 2001, Sacks revealed that he had not been in a close relationship for years, adding that he viewed his shyness as a disease that had been a major obstacle throughout his life. In his autobiography On The Move: A Life, published earlier this year, he spoke of his homosexuality. In 2008 he started a relationship with the writer Bill Hayes.

In a February 2015 New York Times essay Sacks let the world know that he had only a short time remaining due to a metastasized ocular tumor that had invaded his brain and liver. He declared his wish to deepen his friendships, bid farewell to loved ones, continue to write, see more of the world and "to achieve new levels of understanding and insight." He passed away in his home in Manhattan on August 30th.

Photo: Wikipedia (CC)

What kind of "healthy" economy is healthy for working people?

Thu, 03 Sep 2015 13:28:00 +0000

Bernie Sanders' socialist presence in the Democratic presidential primary promises, hopefully, to keep the much-needed conversation on income inequality front and center in our national debates.

Unfortunately, the discussions of income inequality too often get subsumed into questions about the health of the U.S. economy overall. Yet, the health of the economy and reducing income inequality are not the same discussions at all. In fact, many proposals to prop up or restore the health of our current economic system are actually at odds with improving the standard of living for workers in the U.S. For example, while "Right-to Work" laws might to some extent be effective in creating business-friendly environments attractive to corporations, in states with such legislation workers tend to receive less in both wages and benefits.

Nonetheless, despite this data, Governor Bruce Rauner of Illinois is pushing for right-to-work legislation by creating "economic empowerment zones" in which local communities could decide if workers can opt out of paying dues to the unions, which protect them in the workplace and bargain for their wages and benefits. In this case, empowering the economy means disempowering workers and decreasing their wages and benefits.

Gov. Sam Brownback's efforts to improve the local economy in Kansas by dramatically slashing taxes on businesses and the wealthy overall has resulted in severe social decay, leaving a wasteland without adequate revenue to sustain public schools or vital social services.

So much for trickle-down economics.

But even the ludicrous pretense that the wealth redistributed to the top will trickle down has been dropped.

Donald Trump, for example, in a recent interview with The Detroit News actually outlined a plan to drive down wages even more, pointing the finger at autoworkers who, he believes, earn too high of a wage. Expressing dismay that Ford plans to open a factory in Mexico, Trump proposed an alternative strategy for lowering labor costs that would keep jobs in the U.S. by closing plants in Michigan and moving production to more corporate-friendly regions: "You can go to different parts of the United States and then ultimately you'd full-circle-you'll come back to Michigan because those guys are going to want their jobs back even if it is less. We can do rotation in the United States-it doesn't have to be in Mexico."

We see here no plan to address income inequality as a social ill but only to exacerbate it as a corporate benefit for the wealthy. Moreover, Trump reveals that the sought-after boosts in corporate profits are not intended at all to trickle down. The wealth only trickles up from wage reductions workers suffer, perpetrating another mass re-distribution of wealth from the bottom to the top.

For all their railing against calls for re-distribution of wealth, our nation's economic elite seem to engage quite a bit in the practice.

Of course, even many of the most persistent arguments marshalled to defend policies aimed at addressing the wealth gap rely, typically, on their own brand of trickle up economics. Venture capitalist Nick Hanauer, for example, dismisses "the dire warnings of economic calamity [that] rain down" whenever the prospect of raising wages arises. He terms this alarmist response "Chicken Little economics," documenting that these alarms have sounded with every substantial increase in the minimum wage since 1938 without the economic sky ever having fallen.

In urging New York to raise its minimum wage to fifteen dollars, Hanauer points to Seattle and San Francisco as cities that significantly increased its minimum wage to the benefit rather than detriment of their economies. Raising the minimum wage, so goes the argument, creates more able consumers, buoying the economy as a whole and causing wealth to trickle up.

Still, these arguments center on the question of whether raising the minimum wage-a small step in addressing income inequality-help or hurt the economy. They never question the current economic arrangement in any fundamental way. Consider, for example, some of the following headlines on stories covering this ongoing issue on CNBC.Com: "State Minimum Wage Hikes: Help or Hindrance?" and "Easy Street or the Breadline?: New Year Wage Hike Debated."

From a progressive political perspective, what if we discover that raising the minimum wage would hurt the economy and result in job loss? For example, the Congressional Budget Office forecasts 24.5 million workers will benefit from a raise in the federal minimum wage to $10.10, but 500,000 workers would lose their jobs. Should we then cease to advocate for the infinitesimal redistribution of wealth that would help low-wage workers, who play a role in producing the wealth of our nation, meet their basic needs? Should the progressive position be that those working for low wages must continue to do so and stop asking for more, regardless of whether or not they can meet their basic needs on those wages, so that more people aren't thrown out of work and the economy isn't hurt?

Of course not, but progressives need to reframe the debate. To those who argue that raising the minimum wage will hurt the economy, we need to ask how smartly organized is an economy in which those who do vital and necessary work cannot afford to meet their most basic needs.

The health of an economy, it seems to me, should correlate directly to the health of the people living within it, not to their immiseration. If a healthy or strong economy requires that those who work within it to produce and distribute goods and services are not able to access those goods and services to meet their needs, then we need to question the human viability of that economy, not worry about whether we're hurting the economy with our policies. Indeed, an economy that achieves health when the people working within it suffer is one that we need to hurt by dismantling and overhauling it. What we need to do is remind ourselves that the purpose of an economy is, in the most efficient way, to produce and distribute goods and services to meet the needs of those living within the economy. As the wealth gap increases, it seems clear our economy is not doing that. The economy is supposed to serve us; we aren't supposed to serve the economy.

Malcolm X famously said, "We didn't land on Plymouth rock. Plymouth rock landed on us." We might adapt this saying: working people did not hurt economic health but so-called economic health could hurt working people.

This article is abridged from the original, which appeared on Politicus.

Photo: Quinn Dombrowski/Flickr/CC

Climate change and oil portfolios: Divesting in the future

Wed, 02 Sep 2015 14:49:00 +0000

SANTA MONICA, Calif. - I've always thought that if the various Protestant denominations can be said to represent a socio-economic sector of American culture, then the people who made up the United Methodist Church (UMC) were the middle of the middle. I mean that across the country - and particularly in this region, which includes Southern California - Methodists never wanted to be bothered about too much social or economic justice, and when they were it was a sign that even the center of the country was getting on board.

I can vividly remember when, in the early 1970s, the UMC in my region finally climbed on board the national grape boycott to support farm workers, just as I can recall when the Conference (as the regional body is called) decided to push for divestment in South Africa. So this year when a wide majority of delegates supported divesting from fossil fuels, I knew something had shifted: Human-caused climate change had penetrated the middle of the middle and divestment was seen by them as a meaningful tool to stop it.

Divestment -- taking investment funds out of fossil fuel companies -- "removes the social license that allows the industry to operate with impunity," as Sierra Magazine recently put it. But more emphatically, it attacks the choke point of capital that big oil and coal require to constantly find new deposits and take raw product out of the ground. Christopher Hayes calls this constant need for capital the "Achilles' heel" of the fossil fuel industry. It's not about hurting the bottom line so much as taking away its life-blood -- capital.

Managers of mutual funds that are not invested in fossil fuels know that this intensive use of capital for exploration and extraction does not necessarily show up in a payoff to stockholders. Green Century Capital Management's CEO says that "in 2013 and 2014 the top 200 oil companies (by amount of reserves) spent $674 billion in capital expenditures, on projects like offshore drilling and figuring out how to extract oil from tar sands. In that same period, those companies paid only $126 billion in dividends to their shareholders." In other words, putting money in fossil fuels is not very profitable.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the arguments against divestment from fossil fuels parallel the supposed case made against divestment from South Africa:

Divestment means "walking away from" climate change (just like divestment from South Africa meant walking away from the victims of apartheid).

Divestment means "ending the dialogue" with fossil fuel companies, and losing our influence (just like with companies who did business with South Africa).

Divestment "will hurt" the world's poor the most (like it would South Africa's poorest).

Divestment "will upset" the prudent and complex decisions that investments require.

Divestment attacks a sector that is "fundamental" to our economic system.

Do you hear the ring from decades past? Those same arguments were the ones rejected by investors in the case of South Africa -- a rejection that helped turn the tide in dismantling apartheid.

Fortunately the Methodists in this Conference saw through those arguments again, joining 10 other regions across the country seeking fossil fuel divestment by the Methodists' national pension fund. In doing so they linked arms with more than 500 campaigns worldwide http://www.peoplesworld.org/new-divestment-movement-targets-fossil-fuel-giants/ pushing for divestment by colleges, universities, faith communities, state and local retirement funds, and foundations.

Internationally, some of the places that have already divested include France's largest insurance company and Norway's government pension fund. In California, educational institutions from Stanford University to Pitzer College to De Anza Community College have taken action, as well as the Methodist-related Claremont School of Theology, which has begun discussing divestment. In the East, even the foundation established with Rockefeller money -- the first name in oil in this country -- has voted to end its ties to fossil fuels.

You could say it's about time, but efforts like these take time. The question about human-caused climate change is, as always, do we have enough time before we reach a point beyond remedy? I take the UMC action as a sign that it can be done.

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

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.

Photo: Fossil Free Facebook page

The stench of fascism seeps into the 2016 elections

Tue, 01 Sep 2015 14:45:00 +0000

After two white racists urinated on a homeless Latino worker and assaulted him with a metal pole, they fulminated, "Donald Trump was right, all these illegals need to be deported."

When Republican presidential candidate Trump was asked about the assault he shrugged his shoulders and coldly responded, "It would be a shame...I will say that people who are following me are very passionate. They love this country and they want this country to be great again. They are passionate."

This is an incitement to violence and green light to scapegoat immigrants. It's more than xenophobia, it's the stench of fascism.

The brutal assault was instigated by Trump's call to deport all 11 million undocumented workers and their children, including those born in the U.S., citizens protected by the 14^th Amendment. "They need to go," he declared. This was on top of earlier racist statements Trump made against Mexican people.

Once one constitutional right is attacked no right is sacred. Once one community is scapegoated, no one is safe. Once violence is acceptable, our democracy is threatened.

Imagine Trump spewing racist hatred from the White House while his Justice Department looks the other way, or worse, abets; while governmental agencies facilitate corporate plunder and extremists are nominated to the Supreme Court.

Trump is not alone. Irrationality and open racism, misogyny, homophobia and transphobia pervade this pack of Republican presidential candidates. They are appealing to the absolute worst among the Republican primary voters, whipping up a frenzy of hatred.

Trump's extremist positions are resonating with a section of voters. "It's what everyone is feeling but afraid to say," said one woman who attended a Mobile, Ala. rally. The entire field is now scrambling to match his extremist appeal. Jeb Bush, who once denounced the racist idea of "anchor babies," has done an about face and embraced it.

With an open declaration that the public discourse shouldn't be restrained by "political correctness," anything goes now. That none of the candidates challenged Trump's openly misogynistic statements in the Republican debate proves it.

And "making America great again" implies the U.S. should make ethnic and racial cleansing official policy by deporting undocumented immigrants and unleashing racist police officers in communities of color.

In their haste to outdo each other, the Republican Party candidates are banking on the appeal to fearful and alienated white male working-class voters influenced by right-wing extremist ideology.

Ironically, Trump's brainlessness at the Mobile rally was too much even for the right-wing National Review: "Trump stood throughout his pageant in a cocksure fighting pose, breaking his stance only to turn around and bathe in the adulation. His thoughts were meandering, irrational, and wholly self-contradictory; his grasp of reality left much to be desired; his aim was to offer up a firework-laden piece of self-serving performance art, aimed squarely at the unserious and the easily led."

Much of the corporate media is making a spectacle of this, and some well-meaning people are dismissing it as something that will pass. But we dismiss this as the ranting of ignorant candidates at our peril. Similar mistakes were made with George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, who were packaged as folksy and subsequently did great damage.

To fervently appeal to hatred and turn a blind eye to violence is to open the door to a new political dynamic that once unleashed carries unpredictable consequences. It will influence the Republican primaries and the 2016 general elections. It encourages candidates for U.S. Senate, House and state legislatures to do the same.

Such hateful and irrational ranting didn't come out of thin air. It is the fruit of over 35 years of right-wing extremism, beginning with the right-wing takeover of the Republican Party during the Reagan presidency, massive concentration of wealth, right-wing talk radio and media, American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) takeover of state legislatures, NRA pushing fear to remove all restrictions on gun control, the anti-Muslim frenzy, etc.

Right-wing extremism spawned and sustains racist violence, including the Charleston massacre, violence against transgender people, Tea Party, border vigilantes, the "birthers," violence against abortion clinics, and voter suppression.

Powerful forces including the Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson, Norman Braman, Diane Hendricks and other plutocrats, support it. Forty of the wealthiest Americans have already spent $60 million bankrolling this hate in the Republican primary.

It serves as another warning of the immense stakes in the 2016 elections, which can deliver a resounding repudiation of these ideas and policies and break the right-wing domination of our democratic institutions.

This right-wing frenzy stands in sharp contrast to the majority public support for unions, taxing the rich, raising the minimum wage, criminal justice reform, action on the climate crisis, marriage equality, expanding Social Security, and new awareness of police crimes and institutional racism.

The labor movement and its allies, #BlackLivesMatters, women, LGTBQ, immigrant rights, environmental, student and other movements, are establishing a different framework for the 2016 elections. And the Democratic candidates are responding with bolder positions.

This is the basis for assembling and inspiring a broad multi-class, multi-racial coalition with labor and the democratic movements at the center, which also must necessarily include the Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party. Without this outlook, defeating the hate and division championed by the GOP will not be possible.

Photo: Donald Trump speaking at the 2015 Conservative Political Action Conference, by Gage Skidmore. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons.