Truth, the environmentalist

 I posted an ad on the local BB for riders to go to the Rainbow Gathering.  My first reply was from a person named Truth. 

Truth:  Hi there- just wanted to let you know that air conditioning causes holes in the ozone layer. being a  rainbow person i thought you might want to know that. blessings-Truth

Bodhi:  Only when it leaks out of the  pipes.  At a certain recent historical point, they stopped using freon and now use a less damaging refrigerant.  Why?  As a Rainbow Person, you don't use a refrigerator?  You use an ice box and buy a new ecological block of ice every day?  The refrigerant in your refrigerator will cut holes in the ozone layer also. 
In Peace, Bodhi

Truth:  Dear Bodhi, Hey,  I wasn't being snarky when sharing that info with you-I thought you might want to know.I am sorry that my email seems to have upset you. Your reply was filled with snark though, and that's kind of sad. I have a sun frost solar powered fridge btw and it doesn't use freon, it uses a different refrigerant which does not make holes in the ozone. And before I could afford the fridge, I had my cooler buried in a creekbed. But I truly was not trying to out "planetarily correct" you. I thought I was being friendly. 

-Truth

Sister Truth,
No offense taken at all.  I found your need to tell me amusing.  It is true that you have gone a long way to have a more ecological refrigerator.  I hope your solar refrigerator runs on sulfur dioxide or anhydrous ammonia; if not, it probably is loaded with the same or similar less damaging refrigerant as the air conditioner in my late model car. 

It is false that air conditioning cuts holes in the ozone layer.  Freon refrigerant, when released into the atmosphere, cuts holes in the ozone layer.  Freon refrigerant, contained within an intact refrigerant system, whether air conditioning or refrigerator or freezer, does not cut holes in the ozone layer.  Freon is no longer used since 1995, and other similar chlorofluorohydrocarbons are being phased out.  Nowadays, refrigerant is usually a blend of less damaging chlorofluorohydrocarbons. 

Sorry.  I'm a bit dumb witted and you need to be specific when you speak to me.  When you say, "just wanted to let you know that air conditioning causes holes in the ozone layer," then I think, Truth thinks that running an intact air conditioner will cut holes in the ozone layer.  She must be either exaggerating or has been ill informed.  She probably means that freon escaping from broken refrigerant systems have cut a major hole in the ozone layer that has damaged the Earth.  She may not know that legislation was passed almost a decade ago to outlaw some CFHCs and phase out others while funding research to develop new safer refrigerant alternatives.  I wonder if Truth has a refrigerator?  I wonder if Truth knows that there is a refrigerant in it, most likely the same one that is in my late model car air conditioner.  Other possibilities are: she is homeless and has no refrigerator, she uses an ice box, she lives off the grid at high altitude and drops her food into a box in the river, she has a totally ecological refrigerator.  The most likely alternative was that she had a regular refrigerator and didn't realize that it uses refrigerant also. 

You saw my ad for a rider to the Gathering but you don't need a ride there.  You noticed that a Rainbow sister uses air conditioning.  You know there is an ingredient in air conditioners known for damaging the ozone layer.  You assumed that I was either a Rainbow hypocrite with a cavalier attitude about environmental damage, or I was ignorant about how refrigerants can do environmental damage.  You assumed that all air conditioners always damage the ozone layer.  You conflated the potential for refrigerant leaks with the fact that refrigerants have done damage.  You assumed that the dangerous ones that caused the alarm and did most of the damage, and continue to damage the ozone layer even though they were removed from circulation almost a decade ago.  Taking the good natured course, you chose to educate me of a piece of information with love and kindness in your heart. 

As a chronic asthmatic, I used inhalers.  One day, about 20 years ago, I noticed that the propellant inside my life-saving medicine was freon!  That meant that I and every asthmatic on the planet was exhaling freon into the atmosphere every day!  I began a letter writing campaign that lasted about 7 years.  Now look around you.  Freon propelled inhalers have all been replaced. 

I am delighted to see a blossoming of a whole new generation of Rainbow youths.  I love to see the rainbow colors, the dreadlocks, the health food and vegetarianism, the lack of consumerism and instead a sense of reverence for Mother Earth.  I love it!  But here's my gripe. 

About 85% of Rainbow youths smoke tobacco.  A few years ago, I asked some young brothers and sisters why they smoked.  I got answers like: "Oh! It's American Spirit.  It has no additives." Or, "I pick up every single cigarette butt."  I was perplexed that they could justify the damage to their own immediate and long term health with such flimsy excuses.  One possibility was that they had been sold a bill of goods by some advertizing agency. 

I thought, how could an marketer capture an entire market niche of Rainbow youths if they don't watch TV or read magazines, and cigarette billboards are outlawed most places?  If I were a tobacco company advertizer, and I wanted to sell to a market niche, how would I promote my product?  PLANTS!  I would put plants in places where that market niche congregates and have them give out cigarettes for free, like they did to the Armed Forces in WWII. 

At last year's Gathering, I looked for tobacco company plants.  I saw one spaced out youth, all dressed in tie dies with a bandana around his head, and a 5lb can of loose tobacco hanging from a strap behind his neck with an endless supply of rolling papers wandering throughout the camps giving out smokes. He was reminiscent of the beautiful girls who carried trays of smokes slung by a strap around the back of their neck, around at events and restaurants in the 30's.  I never spoke to him. 

But there was an older woman, also dressed in beads, bracelets, and tie dies, replete with bandana around her head, who looked to me like a washed up drunk.  She sat not far from main circle, right off one of the main paths, sitting behind a booth where she gave out and endless supply of cigarettes.  She had a deep throaty cough, probably due to her chain smoking.  I could understand why you would want to get a cigarette from that other cute youth, but who would want to approach this sad, coughing woman to get a free cigarette?  I chatted with her for a while, and then asked if she was a plant from a tobacco company.  She was taken aback.  She looked at me with outrage and shame, but didn't answer my question.

I am perplexed that health food, environmentalist Rainbow youths all seem to smoke tobacco.  They know the bad effects to their health, but may not know that they are being exploited by profiteering capitalists to enrich heartless corporations.  I asked so many blossoming Rainbow youths why they smoke, and the best answer was that "It's cool!" 

Be honest with me, Truth, do you smoke tobacco?
In Peace, Bodhi

A discussion of Mother India with friend Madhukar

 Madhukar brought up 'ADVAITA-SPEAK,' a frequent practice among the advocates of Advaita.  He contested that only those who practice what they preach have any meaning to their words.  Madhukar is an American with east Indian heritage, and a fellow traveler and Buddhist. 

• Madhukar: ...SO PASSIONATELY DISCUSSING. INSTEAD THEY SHOULD DO SADHANA (SPIRITUAL PRACTICE) OF THE PATH THAT LEADS TO HIS GOAL. IF THAT IS THE GOAL THEY HAVE CHOSEN...♥

• Bodhi: I noticed in India that a popular pass time for devout men was to discuss the true meanings of the Sanskrit slokas. I found they discussed it ad nauseum, but didn't incorporate the meaning into their lives. I know India has changed a lot since I was there. Are the high minded men still doing that, Madhukar? You're there.
  
  When I was there, women would wake up before dawn, get the fire going, grind the flour, make the chappatis and aloo sabji, and in Kashmir, they heated up the water for the men's hot baths. Then she would feed the men, clean up after breakfast, immediately begin cooking lunch, and have lunch ready by 10:30am. Then they might pack a lunchbox, and send the children to dad's work with a hot lunch. After lunch she would sweep the floor, shine the cooking pots, and cow/deer dung the floor and walls. Then she would take the laundry to the water hole which could be a stream, a "tank," a government spigot in the middle of town, a well, or up in the Himalayas, a spring. She would wash the laundry at the water hole, bathe herself and her baby, then fill up several large jars. With the help of other women, she would stack the jars on a woven grass ring on her head 2-3 jugs high, grab the laundry with one hand, and the freshly bathed baby in the other hand, and haul the water & clean laundry back home, sometimes several miles. Then she might go shop for an ounce of oil to cook supper, and a few vegetables, and collect firewood or cow pods. While she did all this, men would sit around smoking bidis and playing dice, reading the newspaper and sipping tea, or reciting their favorite Sanskrit slokas to argue the true meanings with a friend. Is it still like that?
  

• Madhukar: firstly---i am no longer in India; having returned a few months back to the States. but i did live there and in Nepal for 3 years. with 7 other trips before that as well....and---i would have to say that, YES--it is that way exactly still---in the hinterland. its fundamentally a patriarchal society--for all its Devi worship and Divine Mother worship. i have had to work my way thru all this --- one step at a time--reading, interviewing, cajoling, and making friends with folks---and at first accepting, then rejecting and finally resolving and blowing out the backside of the thing. to project my own system or 'mores' on another culture---is as totally bogus, as the presumptions that many have that in america the streets are paved with gold and that we are all depraved materialistic hedonistic sex maniacs. it is good to wrestle with all these things --- and see other cultures and the our own thru their eyes---which is an EYE OPENER as well. in many respects---in the hinterland of India---not much has changed for 5000 years---except they have cell phones now. and tractors. but when i first arrived 11 years ago--- i harvested potatoes behind a waterbuffalo with a wooden plow---just like it was 500 years ago.... India has changed more in the last 10 years---than in the previous 100. it will all trickle down as the middle class grows. yes---i can critique mother India --because i love her---just as i can critique my own country---- i just want a better and more just life for everyone.
  

  
  

  
  
• Madhukar: ...and regarding these so-called 'men of religion'--- i understand and completely 'get' your point. i would feel the same if i saw that here in an american judeo-christian patriarchal society as well.

• Bodhi:  Exactly!
  

  
  
• Bodhi: My mom and dad came to see me in Budh-Gaya. They hoped to convince me to return to the USA with them. My meditation teacher, Anagarika Munindraji, took us for a walk to some smaller nearby villages. My parents were tired and rested on a low wall. Beyond the wall was a long stretch of paddy fields, each small plot with a rammed earth wall around it. There was an intricate system of gullies and spouts from higher fields to lower ones. On the high end near the wall, there was a well with a unique device for pulling up the water. There was a large fulcrum holding up a long pole, not centered. On the short end was bound a large boulder. On the long end, was a long rope with a 1-2 gal bucket fasted on. A withered and bent old man with a rag tied around his brow, was pulling one small bucket after another out of the well and pouring it into the top of the gully. In other words, this single old man was planning to flood acres of paddy fields bucket by bucket. My parents were awestruck!
  
  They sent me to ask him in Maghahi language if he would rather live in the USA? He replied, "What for? Life is good right here." (Btw, I can't remember not one single word in Maghahi.)
  

  
  

  
  
• Madhukar: Ah! 'what for?--"life is good right here! i understand...♥

My Second Visit to the Tea Party

The meeting began with a report from the Republican Party meeting.  Supervisor Pinches had been there and described the budget shortfall issue.  One way the county is reducing costs is by cutting jobs via attrition, which in turn reduces county services.   He reports even the unions have agreed to take 10% pay cuts. The reporter impassioned that we need to generate more business in the county to generate more government revenues.

At this point, one member pointed out that there was a “non-member” present.  He overlooked the fact that there were 5 non-members present.  He called out my name and said that I had written bad things about this group.  He asked the leader to call me out.  I asked if this was a members only group?  The leader said this group is open to the public and non-members were welcome.  I apologized to the man for saying anything that had slighted him.  He responded that he was not personally slighted, but the group had been.  I made a mental note to shake his hand and apologize directly after the meeting.  I sought a non-offensive approach to ask him what I had said that was untrue, harmful, or malicious. 

The next topic: how to contact your elected officials. The group leaders had been to a “Wright Online” seminar.  They had prepared a series of handouts to share from the seminar, the first of which was distributed tonight.  They were very well organized and made a lot of very good suggestions on communicating with one’s government representative. I love that they suggested starting each letter with “Honorable…” I start my letters like that, just as I was instructed in my school years long ago.  I haven’t seen anyone address a letter to a legislator like that for years, except for myself.  I often think, have we lost all respect for our elected representatives?  Then I respond to myself, Well, Yeah! There’s hardly a handful of elected representatives that haven’t sold out to the corporate industrial war profiteers! 

Someone said that letters in the post have to be inspected for anthrax and therefore take a long time.  I threw in that you could fax your letter.  The leader agreed that a letter could take 3 weeks to arrive on the desk of your elected representative.  It is better to call.  He gave an excellent instruction of whom to ask for and what to say about your point. 

Anyway, I made a suggestion about calling local numbers instead of calling Washington DC; local numbers are rarely closed or overloaded, and you still just talk to an aide.  The speaker took my suggestion as a hostile criticism although I thought I was agreeing and enhancing his point. He was giving the group a great grass-roots democratic lesson.  He mentioned that it is best to see your legislator face to face.  After respectfully speaking your mind, you then hand them a written statement of your issue.  Great suggestion! 

The next issue discussed was the Redistricting Plan of northern California.  The leader presented his original unique redistricting plan, which made a lot of sense.  Since I haven’t given redistricting much thought, I couldn’t take a stand for or against his plan.  It seemed to be logical to divide voting districts by county.  There was a big important meeting happening tomorrow in Santa Rosa.  At our last election, we voted that a citizen’s committee would carry out the redistricting rather than the majority party in the legislature.  Tomorrow will be the northern California public hearings of the Citizen’s Council and this Tea Party group leader asked for support to accompany him to submit his unique plan at the Santa Rosa City Council Chambers. 

The plan is to split Mendocino County from Sonoma County and not have to deal with Sonoma County environmentalists or big money interests of vineyards, and also to get rid of Mike Thompson. Then, the Secretary began using crude language while she was presenting the plan, and speaking in unsubstantiated generalizations. She even apologized for her language but justified it because she was so tired that she couldn’t think of the correct words to use.  I worked to maintain my equanimity and remain open and non-judgmental.

As the 2 leaders explained the plan, I gleaned that the Tea Party wants to split high population areas from rural areas, and not split counties.  By keeping whole counties as intact voting blocks, they could avoid “Voting Rights bullshit.” I was taken aback that anyone could think that a law to protect the right to vote would be considered bullshit.  The requirement for redistricting plan proposals was to keep "communities of interest" together. The Tea Party leader explained that the logging, ranching, and mineral interests in northern California were very different from the manufacturing and environmental interests of the high population areas like Santa Rosa and Sonoma County.  The plan had obviously taken a lot of work and had some logic and merit.  I really admired their excellent motivational force and organizing.

I further gleaned from the ensuing discussion that the members of the Tea Party consider themselves to be conservatives positioned against the leftists: progressives and socialists. The leader explained that he doesn't care about Democrats or Republicans. I thought that was an excellent declaration! 

An example of how his redistricting plan could benefit the county is the long advocated Willits Bypass of Highway 101. When a finite amount of money goes to a district, the legislature has to decide how to carve up the pie. They would normally allot the funds to a high population area instead of a rural area since, by force of population density, it would benefit more people. As such, the bypass has been delayed for a decade. This issue would be resolved with his simple redistricting plan. 

It is true that Mike Thompson has a very large and unusual district making up parts of several counties and widely diverse populations from liberal environmentalist to redneck, urban to rural, ranchers to lumberjacks, vineyards to pot growers.  Representative Thompson often sites the difficulty of balancing the needs of the many diverse groups that he represents.  The members of the Tea Party mentioned that they would be glad to see Thompson go.  Another person volunteered that Thompson could still run for office even if he didn’t live within the district.  The leader concurred. 

The final topic was the rising price of gasoline.  The Secretary emphasized that it was due totally because Obama has restricted offshore drilling and new drilling contracts. It was due to the unjust moratorium on drilling in the gulf.  They were planning a demonstration on Saturday to say, "drill baby drill.” Someone in the group said he doesn't want to demonstrate on the street corner like hippies.

A voice of reason among the group suggested that there were other factors influencing the rise of oil prices.  He mentioned several separate causes: not just the moratorium but also unrest in Middle East and more.  Yet, no one mentioned the utterly obscene profits of the oil companies, so I decided to mention it myself.  I raised my hand and the Secretary graciously called upon me.  I mentioned the fact from recent news that the oil companies has made such record profits in the first quarter of this year that they exceeded any other company in all of history.  I asked her if their record-breaking profits had anything to do with the rise in fuel prices? 

Well, suddenly the Secretary became unhinged.  She began her verbal assault with a severely cynical tone saying, “Oh we wouldn’t want to make profits, would we?  Profits are so evil, aren’t they?”  The pitch of her voice rose as she recounted how the oil companies made more profits than the whole American government, and continues to exceed their own records quarter after quarter.  I thought she had just justified my point exactly, but she went on upbraiding me. 

I felt the hackles rising on my spine.  My heart rate increased and my breathing became fast and shallow.  My fingers were tingling.  I noted all these bodily states and breathed.  After being married to a screamer that believed “he who screams loudest wins the fight,” I had a great deal of experience staying calm during an onslaught of verbal abuse.  I breathed and calmed myself.  I already knew not to scream back at abusers. 

In her frenzy, she mentioned how oil is the cheapest form of energy, which could never be replaced by windmills or solar cells.  I contended that the overflow costs of the health effects of pollution caused by petroleum need to be considered when you call oil “cheap.”  She talked over me, not listening or considering my points.  She proclaimed that petroleum is a natural product and we need it due to the other products made from it like plastic.  I mentioned that plastic can be made from cotton, i.e. Saran Wrap and Bakelite.  In response she declared that those products were obviously flawed since the better petroleum-based plastics have replaced them. 

She screamed that petroleum products do not cause pollution or any negative health effects.  I responded that that was the most preposterous thing I ever heard.  She then made a direct threat.  She proclaimed that she would fight me every step of the way, me and people like me with liberal values. She went on to be utterly disrespectful using exaggerated superlatives. Folks in the audience were shocked and told her " you're losing ground." Then her husband intervened, whereupon she rushed from the room in a humiliated rage. Her husband, the leader of the local Tea Party, commanded me to hold back, as well.

Folks in the audience were stunned to see her ragging on me like that. After the meeting adjourned, many rushed to me to apologize for her assault. I mentioned that I am not against profits. I, myself, am a capitalist and my livelihood depended upon profits.  Several mentioned that they agreed that profit is good, but obscene profits are bad.  I thought about how, after all the careful and excellent organizing the local Tea Party was doing, that the Secretary’s behavior had just discredited the whole group. 

I rushed over to Mike, the leader.  I praised his efforts to effect grass-roots democracy.  I said although we don’t see eye to eye on many points, we actually agree on a lot.  He was surprised to hear this.  I said we both agree on having a country where we are free to disagree.  I asserted that we can still be neighbors living beside each other in Peace yet disagree on politics.  That’s why I love America, and I admire his efforts.  I reiterated that I am not here to contend with the Tea Party, but rather to create a coalition.  I shook his hand and again praised his excellent organizing skills and lessons in democracy.  Then I looked for the other man to whom I wanted to apologize, but he was gone. 

I noticed some differences from the last meeting of the Ukiah Valley Patriots that I attended. There were no volumes of Ayn Rand visible.  There were no choruses from the audience shouting, “Evil, evil.” There was no talk about gun rights.  The leader was very careful to be completely neutral and democratic in his proposals and discussions. There were only half as many participants today as last time. I wonder if my Letters to the Editor have taken some of the wind from the sails of folks who realize that they don't want to effect change at the end of a gun barrel?

 

MLK Speech to the APA 1967 calling for creative maladjustment

Dr. Martin Luther King addressed the American Psychological Association convention in 1967, as reprinted in the APA Monitor in 1999: King’s challenge to the nation’s social scientists
APA Monitor Introduction: In September, 1967, Martin Luther King Jr., was only 38-years-old but already president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize when he took the podium at APA’s Annual Convention in Washington, D.C.

A re-reading of his powerful address today captures the urgent tone of the 60s, as he cajoled the nation’s social scientists to ‘tell it like it is.’ In fact, to APA’s membership, whom he addressed as ‘concerned friends of good will,’ his plea for help in changing a society ‘poisoned to its soul by racism,’ seems now ever more poignant in light of the tragedy that struck only seven months later.
The words he spoke that Sept. 1, as the convention’s Invited Distinguished Address, were reprinted in the Journal of Social Issues (Vol. 24, No. 1, 1968). While the speech was in galley proofs, the shocking and numbing news of his assassination was released.
Here is the full text of his speech: 

The Role of the Behavioral Scientist in the Civil Rights Movement

by Martin Luther King Jr.

It is always a very rich and rewarding experience when I can take a brief break from the day-to-day demands of our struggle for freedom and human dignity and discuss the issues involved in that struggle with concerned friends of good will all over the nation. It is particularly a great privilege to discuss these issues with members of the academic community, who are constantly writing about and dealing with the problems that we face and who have the tremendous responsibility of molding the minds of young men and women all over the country.

The Civil Rights Movement needs the help of social scientists
In the preface to their book, ‘Applied Sociology’ (1965), S. M. Miller and Alvin Gouldner state: ‘It is the historic mission of the social sciences to enable mankind to take possession of society.’ It follows that for Negroes who substantially are excluded from society this science is needed even more desperately than for any other group in the population.

For social scientists, the opportunity to serve in a life-giving purpose is a humanist challenge of rare distinction. Negroes too are eager for a rendezvous with truth and discovery. We are aware that social scientists, unlike some of their colleagues in the physical sciences, have been spared the grim feelings of guilt that attended the invention of nuclear weapons of destruction. Social scientists, in the main, are fortunate to be able to extirpate evil, not to invent it.

If the Negro needs social sciences for direction and for self-understanding, the white society is in even more urgent need. White America needs to understand that it is poisoned to its soul by racism and the understanding needs to be carefully documented and consequently more difficult to reject. The present crisis arises because although it is historically imperative that our society take the next step to equality, we find ourselves psychologically and socially imprisoned. All too many white Americans are horrified not with conditions of Negro life but with the product of these conditions-the Negro himself.
White America is seeking to keep the walls of segregation substantially intact while the evolution of society and the Negro’s desperation is causing them to crumble. The white majority, unprepared and unwilling to accept radical structural change, is resisting and producing chaos while complaining that if there were no chaos orderly change would come.

Negroes want the social scientist to address the white community and ‘tell it like it is.’ White America has an appalling lack of knowledge concerning the reality of Negro life. One reason some advances were made in the South during the past decade was the discovery by northern whites of the brutal facts of southern segregated life. It was the Negro who educated the nation by dramatizing the evils through nonviolent protest. The social scientist played little or no role in disclosing truth. The Negro action movement with raw courage did it virtually alone. When the majority of the country could not live with the extremes of brutality they witnessed, political remedies were enacted and customs were altered.

These partial advances were, however, limited principally to the South and progress did not automatically spread throughout the nation. There was also little depth to the changes. White America stopped murder, but that is not the same thing as ordaining brotherhood; nor is the ending of lynch rule the same thing as inaugurating justice.

After some years of Negro-white unity and partial success, white America shifted gears and went into reverse. Negroes, alive with hope and enthusiasm, ran into sharply stiffened white resistance at all levels and bitter tensions broke out in sporadic episodes of violence. New lines of hostility were drawn and the era of good feeling disappeared.

The decade of 1955 to 1965, with its constructive elements, misled us. Everyone, activists and social scientists, underestimated the amount of violence and rage Negroes were suppressing and the amount of bigotry the white majority was disguising.
Science should have been employed more fully to warn us that the Negro, after 350 years of handicaps, mired in an intricate network of contemporary barriers, could not be ushered into equality by tentative and superficial changes.

Mass nonviolent protests, a social invention of Negroes, were effective in Montgomery, Birmingham and Selma in forcing national legislation which served to change Negro life sufficiently to curb explosions. But when changes were confined to the South alone, the North, in the absence of change, began to seethe.

The freedom movement did not adapt its tactics to the different and unique northern urban conditions. It failed to see that nonviolent marches in the South were forms of rebellion. When Negroes took over the streets and shops, southern society shook to its roots. Negroes could contain their rage when they found the means to force relatively radical changes in their environment.
In the North, on the other hand, street demonstrations were not even a mild expression of militancy. The turmoil of cities absorbs demonstrations as merely transitory drama which is ordinary in city life. Without a more effective tactic for upsetting the status quo, the power structure could maintain its intransigence and hostility. Into the vacuum of inaction, violence and riots flowed and a new period opened.

Urban riots.
Urban riots must now be recognized as durable social phenomena. They may be deplored, but they are there and should be understood. Urban riots are a special form of violence. They are not insurrections. The rioters are not seeking to seize territory or to attain control of institutions. They are mainly intended to shock the white community. They are a distorted form of social protest. The looting which is their principal feature serves many functions. It enables the most enraged and deprived Negro to take hold of consumer goods with the ease the white man does by using his purse. Often the Negro does not even want what he takes; he wants the experience of taking. But most of all, alienated from society and knowing that this society cherishes property above people, he is shocking it by abusing property rights. There are thus elements of emotional catharsis in the violent act. This may explain why most cities in which riots have occurred have not had a repetition, even though the causative conditions remain. It is also noteworthy that the amount of physical harm done to white people other than police is infinitesimal and in Detroit whites and Negroes looted in unity.

A profound judgment of today’s riots was expressed by Victor Hugo a century ago. He said, ‘If a soul is left in the darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.’

The policymakers of the white society have caused the darkness; they create discrimination; they structured slums; and they perpetuate unemployment, ignorance and poverty. It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes; but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society. When we ask Negroes to abide by the law, let us also demand that the white man abide by law in the ghettos. Day-in and day-out he violates welfare laws to deprive the poor of their meager allotments; he flagrantly violates building codes and regulations; his police make a mockery of law; and he violates laws on equal employment and education and the provisions for civic services. The slums are the handiwork of a vicious system of the white society; Negroes live in them but do not make them any more than a prisoner makes a prison. Let us say boldly that if the violations of law by the white man in the slums over the years were calculated and compared with the law-breaking of a few days of riots, the hardened criminal would be the white man. These are often difficult things to say but I have come to see more and more that it is necessary to utter the truth in order to deal with the great problems that we face in our society.

Vietnam War.
There is another cause of riots that is too important to mention casually - the war in Vietnam. Here again, we are dealing with a controversial issue. But I am convinced that the war in Vietnam has played havoc with our domestic destinies. The bombs that fall in Vietnam explode at home. It does not take much to see what great damage this war has done to the image of our nation. It has left our country politically and morally isolated in the world, where our only friends happen to be puppet nations like Taiwan, Thailand and South Korea. The major allies in the world that have been with us in war and peace are not with us in this war. As a result we find ourselves socially and politically isolated.
The war in Vietnam has torn up the Geneva Accord. It has seriously impaired the United Nations. It has exacerbated the hatreds between continents, and worse still, between races. It has frustrated our development at home by telling our underprivileged citizens that we place insatiable military demands above their most critical needs. It has greatly contributed to the forces of reaction in America, and strengthened the military-industrial complex, against which even President Eisenhower solemnly warned us. It has practically destroyed Vietnam, and left thousands of American and Vietnamese youth maimed and mutilated. And it has exposed the whole world to the risk of nuclear warfare.

As I looked at what this war was doing to our nation, and to the domestic situation and to the Civil Rights movement, I found it necessary to speak vigorously out against it. My speaking out against the war has not gone without criticisms. There are those who tell me that I should stick with civil rights, and stay in my place. I can only respond that I have fought too hard and long to end segregated public accommodations to segregate my own moral concerns. It is my deep conviction that justice is indivisible, that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. For those who tell me I am hurting the Civil Rights movement, and ask, ‘Don’t you think that in order to be respected, and in order to regain support, you must stop talking against the war?’ I can only say that I am not a consensus leader. I do not seek to determine what is right and wrong by taking a Gallop Poll to determine majority opinion. And it is again my deep conviction that ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher of consensus, but a molder of consensus. On some positions cowardice asks the question, ‘Is it safe?!’ Expediency asks the question, ‘Is it politic?’ Vanity asks the question, ‘Is it popular?’ But conscience must ask the question, ‘Is it right?!’ And there comes a time when one must take a stand that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular. But one must take it because it is right. And that is where I find myself today.

Moreover, I am convinced, even if war continues, that a genuine massive act of concern will do more to quell riots than the most massive deployment of troops.
Unemployment.

The unemployment of Negro youth ranges up to 40 percent in some slums. The riots are almost entirely youth events-the age range of participants is from 13 to 25. What hypocrisy it is to talk of saving the new generation-to make it the generation of hope-while consigning it to unemployment and provoking it to violent alternatives.

When our nation was bankrupt in the thirties we created an agency to provide jobs to all at their existing level of skill. In our overwhelming affluence today what excuse is there for not setting up a national agency for full employment immediately?

The other program which would give reality to hope and opportunity would be the demolition of the slums to be replaced by decent housing built by residents of the ghettos.

These programs are not only eminently sound and vitally needed, but they have the support of an overwhelming majority of the nation-white and Negro. The Harris Poll on August 21, 1967, disclosed that an astounding 69 percent of the country support a works program to provide employment to all and an equally astonishing 65 percent approve a program to tear down the slums.

There is a program and there is heavy majority support for it. Yet, the administration and Congress tinker with trivial proposals to limit costs in an extravagant gamble with disaster.
The President has lamented that he cannot persuade Congress. He can, if the will is there, go to the people, mobilize the people’s support and thereby substantially increase his power to persuade Congress. Our most urgent task is to find the tactics that will move the government no matter how determined it is to resist.

Civil disobedience.
I believe we will have to find the militant middle between riots on the one hand and weak and timid supplication for justice on the other hand. That middle ground, I believe, is civil disobedience. It can be aggressive but nonviolent; it can dislocate but not destroy. The specific planning will take some study and analysis to avoid mistakes of the past when it was employed on too small a scale and sustained too briefly.

Civil disobedience can restore Negro-white unity. There have been some very important sane white voices even during the most desperate moments of the riots. One reason is that the urban crisis intersects the Negro crisis in the city. Many white decision- makers may care little about saving Negroes, but they must care about saving their cities. The vast majority of production is created in cities; most white Americans live in them. The suburbs to which they flee cannot exist detached from cities. Hence powerful white elements have goals that merge with ours.

Role for the social scientist.
Now there are many roles for social scientists in meeting these problems. Kenneth Clark has said that Negroes are moved by a suicide instinct in riots and Negroes know there is a tragic truth in this observation. Social scientists should also disclose the suicide instinct that governs the administration and Congress in their total failure to respond constructively.

What other areas are there for social scientists to assist the civil rights movement? There are many, but I would like to suggest three because they have an urgent quality.

Social science may be able to search out some answers to the problem of Negro leadership. E. Franklin Frazier, in his profound work, Black Bourgeoisie, laid painfully bare the tendency of the upwardly mobile Negro to separate from his community, divorce himself from responsibility to it, while failing to gain acceptance in the white community. There has been significant improvements from the days Frazier researched, but anyone knowledgeable about Negro life knows its middle class is not yet bearing its weight. Every riot has carried strong overtone of hostility of lower class Negroes toward the affluent Negro and vice versa. No contemporary study of scientific depth has totally studied this problem. Social science should be able to suggest mechanisms to create a wholesome black unity and a sense of peoplehood while the process of integration proceeds.

As one example of this gap in research, there are no studies, to my knowledge, to explain adequately the absence of Negro trade union leadership. Eight-five percent of Negroes are working people. Some two million are in trade unions but in 50 years we have produced only one national leader-A. Philip Randolph.

Discrimination explains a great deal, but not everything. The picture is so dark even a few rays of light may signal a useful direction.
Political action.

The second area for scientific examination is political action. In the past two decades, Negroes have expended more effort in quest of the franchise than they have in all other campaigns combined. Demonstrations, sit-ins and marches, though more spectacular, are dwarfed by the enormous number of man-hours expended to register millions, particularly in the South. Negro organizations from extreme militant to conservative persuasion, Negro leaders who would not even talk to each other, all have been agreed on the key importance of voting. Stokely Carmichael said black power means the vote and Roy Wilkins, while saying black power means black death, also energetically sought the power of the ballot.

A recent major work by social scientists Matthew and Prothro concludes that ‘The concrete benefits to be derived from the franchise-under conditions that prevail in the South-have often been exaggerated.,’ that voting is not the key that will unlock the door to racial equality because ‘the concrete measurable payoffs from Negro voting in the South will not be revolutionary’ (1966).

James A. Wilson supports this view, arguing, ‘Because of the structure of American politics as well as the nature of the Negro community, Negro politics will accomplish only limited objectives’ (1965).
If their conclusion can be supported, then the major effort Negroes have invested in the past 20 years has been in the wrong direction and the major pillar of their hope is a pillar of sand. My own instinct is that these views are essentially erroneous, but they must be seriously examined.

The need for a penetrating massive scientific study of this subject cannot be overstated. Lipset in 1957 asserted that a limitation in focus in political sociology has resulted in a failure of much contemporary research to consider a number of significant theoretical questions. The time is short for social science to illuminate this critically important area. If the main thrust of Negro effort has been, and remains, substantially irrelevant, we may be facing an agonizing crisis of tactical theory.

The third area for study concerns psychological and ideological changes in Negroes. It is fashionable now to be pessimistic. Undeniably, the freedom movement has encountered setbacks. Yet I still believe there are significant aspects of progress.

Negroes today are experiencing an inner transformation that is liberating them from ideological dependence on the white majority. What has penetrated substantially all strata of Negro life is the revolutionary idea that the philosophy and morals of the dominant white society are not holy or sacred but in all too many respects are degenerate and profane.

Negroes have been oppressed for centuries not merely by bonds of economic and political servitude. The worst aspect of their oppression was their inability to question and defy the fundamental precepts of the larger society. Negroes have been loath in the past to hurl any fundamental challenges because they were coerced and conditioned into thinking within the context of the dominant white ideology. This is changing and new radical trends are appearing in Negro thought. I use radical in its broad sense to refer to reaching into roots.

Ten years of struggle have sensitized and opened the Negro’s eyes to reaching. For the first time in their history, Negroes have become aware of the deeper causes for the crudity and cruelty that governed white society’s responses to their needs. They discovered that their plight was not a consequence of superficial prejudice but was systemic.

The slashing blows of backlash and frontlash have hurt the Negro, but they have also awakened him and revealed the nature of the oppressor. To lose illusions is to gain truth. Negroes have grown wiser and more mature and they are hearing more clearly those who are raising fundamental questions about our society whether the critics be Negro or white. When this process of awareness and independence crystallizes, every rebuke, every evasion, become hammer blows on the wedge that splits the Negro from the larger society.

Social science is needed to explain where this development is going to take us. Are we moving away, not from integration, but from the society which made it a problem in the first place? How deep and at what rate of speed is this process occurring? These are some vital questions to be answered if we are to have a clear sense of our direction.

We know we haven’t found the answers to all forms of social change. We know, however, that we did find some answers. We have achieved and we are confident. We also know we are confronted now with far greater complexities and we have not yet discovered all the theory we need.
And may I say together, we must solve the problems right here in America. As I have said time and time again, Negroes still have faith in America. Black people still have faith in a dream that we will all live together as brothers in this country of plenty one day.

But I was distressed when I read in the New York Times of Aug. 31, 1967; that a sociologist from Michigan State University, the outgoing president of the American Sociological Society, stated in San Francisco that Negroes should be given a chance to find an all Negro community in South America: ‘that the valleys of the Andes Mountains would be an ideal place for American Negroes to build a second Israel.’ He further declared that ‘The United States Government should negotiate for a remote but fertile land in Equador, Peru or Bolivia for this relocation.’

I feel that it is rather absurd and appalling that a leading social scientist today would suggest to black people, that after all these years of suffering an exploitation as well as investment in the American dream, that we should turn around and run at this point in history. I say that we will not run! Professor Loomis even compared the relocation task of the Negro to the relocation task of the Jews in Israel. The Jews were made exiles. They did not choose to abandon Europe, they were driven out. Furthermore, Israel has a deep tradition, and Biblical roots for Jews. The Wailing Wall is a good example of these roots. They also had significant financial aid from the United States for the relocation and rebuilding effort. What tradition does the Andes, especially the valley of the Andes Mountains, have for Negroes?
And I assert at this time that once again we must reaffirm our belief in building a democratic society, in which blacks and whites can live together as brothers, where we will all come to see that integration is not a problem, but an opportunity to participate in the beauty of diversity.

The problem is deep. It is gigantic in extent, and chaotic in detail. And I do not believe that it will be solved until there is a kind of cosmic discontent enlarging in the bosoms of people of good will all over this nation.

There are certain technical words in every academic discipline which soon become stereotypes and even clichés. Every academic discipline has its technical nomenclature. You who are in the field of psychology have given us a great word. It is the word maladjusted. This word is probably used more than any other word in psychology. It is a good word; certainly it is good that in dealing with what the word implies you are declaring that destructive maladjustment should be destroyed. You are saying that all must seek the well-adjusted life in order to avoid neurotic and schizophrenic personalities.
But on the other hand, I am sure that we will recognize that there are some things in our society, some things in our world, to which we should never be adjusted. There are some things concerning which we must always be maladjusted if we are to be people of good will. We must never adjust ourselves to racial discrimination and racial segregation. We must never adjust ourselves to religious bigotry. We must never adjust ourselves to economic conditions that take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few. We must never adjust ourselves to the madness of militarism, and the self-defeating effects of physical violence.

In a day when Sputniks, Explorers and Geminies are dashing through outer space, when guided ballistic missiles are carving highways of death through the stratosphere, no nation can finally win a war. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence, it is either nonviolence or nonexistence. As President Kennedy declared, ‘Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind.’ And so the alternative to disarmament, the alternative to a suspension in the development and use of nuclear weapons, the alternative to strengthening the United Nations and eventually disarming the whole world, may well be a civilization plunged into the abyss of annihilation. Our earthly habitat will be transformed into an inferno that even Dante could not envision.

Creative maladjustment.
Thus, it may well be that our world is in dire need of a new organization, The International Association for the Advancement of Creative Maladjustment. Men and women should be as maladjusted as the prophet Amos, who in the midst of the injustices of his day, could cry out in words that echo across the centuries, ‘Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream’; or as maladjusted as Abraham Lincoln, who in the midst of his vacillations finally came to see that this nation could not survive half slave and half free; or as maladjusted as Thomas Jefferson, who in the midst of an age amazingly adjusted to slavery, could scratch across the pages of history, words lifted to cosmic proportions, ‘We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. And that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ And through such creative maladjustment, we may be able to emerge from the bleak and desolate midnight of man’s inhumanity to man, into the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom and justice.

I have not lost hope. I must confess that these have been very difficult days for me personally. And these have been difficult days for every civil rights leader, for every lover of justice and peace.

A response to the Tea Party's letter to the editor

This is an answer to the letter dated 4/27/11, from Mr. Amagi, the Morgans, the Lowes, the Smiths, the Cannons, and Grillis, and Mr. Olsen entitled “Not dupes” about my alleged misrepresentation of the tea party movement and the Constitution class sponsored by the Ukiah Valley Patriots. 

First, I would like to apologize if I have offended you.  Please forgive me if I have misrepresented you or your affiliated group to be something it isn’t.  Next, I’d like to state that the Ukiah Valley Patriots do not have a monopoly on patriotism.  Although I don’t enjoy membership of their group, I am also a middle-aged Ukiah Valley patriot, as well as a Constitutional scholar. 

I originally heard that there was a political activist group meeting monthly at Jensen’s. Being a political activist myself, I was not only curious, but also intent on forging bridges and ties in order to unite all of us political activists into a great coalition.  I was shocked to find that the activist group I had made so much effort to attend was the Tea Party.  I had to decide whether to continue in the door, or leave.  I chose to enter and listen with an open mind.  The abovementioned letter states that I have only been to one Tea Party meeting.  In fact, I have gone to three, but two of them were cancelled for various reasons, leaving only one meeting actually attended.  I agree it is not at all easy to take time out from one’s busy life to attend meetings.  I made great efforts to arrive at the Tea Party meetings, only to find most of them cancelled without even a note on the website or on the restaurant door. 

The abovementioned letter assumes that I get my information from far left blogs or news programs.  It is true, that the media portrays the Tea Party movement as screaming, gun-toting individuals with an agenda to disrupt.  That’s why I was originally struck with fear when first I discovered the political activists I was pursuing were the Tea Party.  But I decided to find out for myself right from the horse’s mouth. 

At the meeting I attended, I was immediately struck by how much we had in common.  We were in agreement that the tax code needed reforming.  We agreed that taxes were not all bad; they only needed to be made fairer.  We were all in accord about corporate tax loopholes, offshore tax havens, and the Federal Reserve printing up too much money.  Another thing we all had in common was our love for the Constitution.  We also agreed that both the Democrats AND Republicans were representing corporations more than they were representing the will of the People.  Pretty soon I was starting to feel comfortable and excited about the Ukiah Valley Patriots.  I also admired how they could recruit 40 people to a meeting when I could barely recruit seven.  And I loved the fact that they were sponsoring a free class on the Constitution.  Why didn’t I think of that? 

Although I was agreement with them on many points, I also heard many things that disturbed or terrified me.  The calls of “Evil!  Evil!” that I heard while one man gave an exposé of the political and financial involvements of George Soros seemed radically extreme.  When someone mentioned that Senator McCarthy was on the right track and should not have been stopped, I admit, chills of terror shot up and down my spine. 

I saw a tome of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged in a position of honor on the table.  Since I had recently read it, I was excited to discuss it with this group. It turned out that only a few of them had read it.  Noting the honor bestowed on the book, I assumed that the Ukiah Valley Patriots were free market neo-liberals like most of the other folks that admire Ayn Rand’s philosophy.  I engaged the secretary in a discussion about free markets and the Constitution.  She explicitly stated to me that the Constitution supports free enterprise.  I argued that there is nothing in the Constitution about free enterprise.  The secretary contended, as did Ayn Rand, that the Founding Fathers established the Constitution to protect free enterprise.  I responded that the only thing even close was the right to own private property.  She, and several echoes from around the room stated that this right IS about free enterprise.  Now, in the abovementioned letter, the authors make it very clear that the Constitution was NOT established to promote free enterprise, contrary to what was discussed at the Tea Party meeting.  So it is true, if the Ukiah Valley Patriots were sponsoring a class on the Constitution and they stated at their meeting that it was established to promote free enterprise, and they admired the philosophy of Ayn Rand, I jumped to the conclusion that they were planning on spinning the Constitution classes to support their neo-liberal beliefs.  Please forgive me for any wrong assumption about the Constitution class.  I regret not having attended them all. 

The one Constitution class I did attend was excellent.  But it did have some spin.  I didn’t think they could teach me anything new about the Constitution but I was happy to have been proven wrong.  I learned how some rights were for citizens, some for individuals, and some for the People.  I saw the underpinnings of armed revolution designed right into the Constitution not only in the right to bear arms, but also in the government’s right to raise taxes to enlist armies to put down insurrections.  I had never put those two facts together before.  The spin came in when the teacher emphasized that it is not only our right to bear arms, but it is our obligation.  He then went on to say that we have the right to bear arms and petition the government for redress of our grievances in BIG groups, implying that we are obligated to get into an armed militia to petition the government for redress at the end of a gun barrel. 

 Believing that we can have an unarmed revolution pressuring the government by force of massive coalitions of disparate groups, I saw an opportunity to plant a seed of Peace.  I suggested to the teacher that a trade union is a huge mass of people who use collective bargaining to non-violently petition the government for redress of grievances.  I was particularly thinking of the government workers in Ohio that were having their Constitutional rights to bargain with their boss, the Ohio government, stripped from them by their Tea Party governor.  The Constitutional teacher was taken aback for a moment, with objections heard muttered around the room, that THAT was different.  Case closed! 

So when I hear everyday middle-aged working class people at a Tea Party meeting tell me that Senator McCarthy and the HUAC was right and shouldn’t have been stopped, and that Soros is evil but the Koch brothers are heroes, and boast to me about their license to carry a concealed weapon, it is not from left wing blogs that I draw my conclusions.  And it is true, that the UVP do not say who is underwriting their program; I assumed that it was the Koch brothers who are notorious for underwriting other Tea Parties.  And it is true that the Tea Party movement is not monolithic.  And just because a few individuals Tea Party members boast about their license to carry a concealed weapon doesn’t make all Tea Partiers armed, wild-eyed extremists. 

After a brief 4-sentence mention of the local Tea Party in my letter to the editor “Feeling Powerless,” it was interesting that a dozen people felt compelled to write over 1100 words in response. Nor was I even referring to the Tea Party in my letter when I talked about neo-con fascists.  It is also interesting that the non-monolithic Ukiah Valley Patriots assumed I was talking about them when I mentioned neo-con fascists.  I was actually thinking about Milton Friedman, George Bush, Dick Cheney, Bill Clinton, signers to the Project for the New American Century, Erik Prince, Paul Wolfowitz, Ben Bernanke, Donald Rumsfeld, Ron Regan, Alan Greenspan, Tim Geithner, Larry Summers, Charles & David Koch, Rahm Emanuel, William Daley, John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and many more. 

And as far as deficit spending, although the government should NEVER be run for profit like a corporation, it is commonplace for fledgling businesses to run on deficit spending until their product improves or their market share expands enough to turn a profit.  If Toyota Motors didn’t run on deficit spending for nearly 2 decades with protectionist government tariffs, there would never have been today’s Prius or Lexus.  History demonstrates that government deficit spending and protectionist tariffs stimulate economic growth.  Of course, I wouldn’t include racking up deficits on bank bailouts or endless wars.  Usually the spending that stimulates the economy is in improving the infrastructure and upgrading the human capital with education and skills training.  Or to provide a social safety net during economic downturns. 

If we expect to change our government to one that represents the People, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty, instead of securing the profits of big corporations at the People’s expense, then we need to join together instead of contending with each other.  I invite the Ukiah Valley Patriots to join together with other patriots to work in concert to establish a more representative government. 

Feeling Powerless

I am getting very discouraged in my effort to bring America to its senses. I don't see what the Republian/neocon endgame is in enriching the already filthy rich, destroying the economy, and removing collective bargaining rights. I also can't understand why everyone doesn't see through their lies. How could anyone in their right mind accept cuts to social programs and education while reducing taxes for the rich?

The local group of progressive activists can hardly get more than 7 people at best to show up. The Tea Party gets 40. 35 of the 40 people at the Tea Party are legitimately angry about our current government, and eat up the twisted lies being told to them by the Koch-trained liars. They are teaching a class on the Constitution that spins it into a charter for free enterprise rather than a charter to protect individual and collective rights.

I just read a piece by Robert Reich about the Republican strategy to divide and conquer, and he finishes it with a question: What is the Democratic strategy to counter this? The unfortunate answer is none. The Democrats are mostly doing the same thing as the Republicans.
 
Representative Kucinich recently wrote me to report that the House just voted to eliminate all funding for the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) - one of the few programs in the budget dedicated to conflict prevention and non-violence - while they added another $158 billion in the same budget for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. How do Americans tolerate this miscarriage of justice? 

Last week as Hillary Clinton condemned Egyptian and Iranian governments for arresting and beating protesters, a former U.S. Army and CIA officer was violently ejected from the her audience and arrested for a silent protest of America's foreign policy. Did anyone notice the irony?
 
 Justices Scalia and Thomas were wined and dined on a Tea Party junket at a retreat over a year ago before ruling in favor of the Koch-financed "Citizen's United v. FEC" decision. They should have recused themselves, but they legislated from the bench in favor of their donors.

I am weeping from frustration and powerlessness. I can't believe this is happening. How far will the neocon fascists push the American public until there is an uprising? Will it take 30 years of Mubarach Koch dictatorship until we begin to demonstrate in the streets? Are Americans willing to sit down and take this abuse? I am at my wit's end. Why aren't American activists demonstrating in the streets like in Egypt?

Collective Bargaining and the Constitution

The First Amendment to the US Constitution gives us the right to petition the government for redress of grievances.  How else will the common man do that without a labor union?  Therefore, unions are guaranteed in the US Constitution. 

Whatever Governor Walker is doing in Wisconsin is unconstitutional. 
Will DFA pay for a court trial to take it to the Supreme Court?  Or is the Supreme Court currently stacked with philosophically pro-corporate, anti-populist justices that it would surely rule against organized labor. 

In addition, the Citizen's United Supreme Court decision ruled that only Corporations AND labor unions can give unlimited support to political candidates.  That leaves labor unions the ONLY force that can balance the purchase of elections.  And Governor Walker would like to skew the balance in favor of corporations. 

A Wall of Separation Between Corporation and State

The Tea Party advocates told me that the Constitution protects capitalism.  That perplexed me.  I have read the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights several times and couldn't recall seeing anything about capitalism.  As a matter of fact, I carry a copy of the Constitution with me like a Christian will carry a Bible.  I can't say that I am a great Constitutional scholar, but I have a pretty good familiarity with it.  

I contended that I never saw anything about capitalism.  The closest thing I could imagine is the right to own private property.  They responded that this right IS capitalism, but the founding fathers just didn't have that word yet.  I again contended that capitalism means buying low and selling high, which is not at all the same as the right to own private property.  They disagreed, and affirmed that it is the same.  

So I looked up the word Capitalism: an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision for profit, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market. 

The first real capitalists were the Dutch East India Company founded 1602.  They used capital for investment, but no one ever used the word Capitalism until it was coined in 1867 by Karl Marx in his book co-written with Engels, Das Capital.  The meaning Marx gave it was using capital (money) to buy commodities to sell for profit.  That seems pretty simple to me and confirmed my contention that capitalism is not the same as the right to own property.  There is no right in the Constitution to own property for profit.  Although the founding fathers assumed that shops and businesses would conduct commerce everywhere in the new Republic, they found no reason to guarantee the right to free enterprise or the right to make profits. 

That's why I believe we need to amend the Constitution to guarantee Constitutional rights only to human persons, as well as making election financing answerable only to the Public for which they will be elected.  These together will make a Wall of Separation between Corporation and State.  
Links:
http://duhc.org/about_whoWeAre.html
http://movetoamend.org/
http://afd-e-news.blogspot.com/2011/02/resolutioncalling-for-constitutional.html

Ft. Bragg, CA, declines corporate personhood

Here's the resolution that Alliance for Democracy members from the Mendocino County (CA) chapter submitted to the Fort Bragg City Council on January 24:

 

WHEREAS, the 1885 US Supreme Court erroneously gave corporations the rights of persons under the 14th Amendment, and;

 

WHEREAS, over the succeeding 125 years, corporate-friendly Supreme Court decisions have expanded these so-called “corporate personhood rights” to overturn municipal, state and federal laws enacted to curb corporate abuses; thereby rendering local governments ineffective in protecting their citizens against corporate harms to the environment, to health, to workers, to independent business, to local and regional economies, and;

 

WHEREAS, giant corporations have also used these corporate personhood rights to spend billions of dollars to influence government through lobbying, campaign contributions, ownership of the mass media, and massive advertising and public relations efforts, and;

 

WHEREAS, this massive corporate political impact has overwhelmed the voice of common citizens, crippled municipalities' ability to benefit local residents, and undermined people's faith in democracy, and;

 

WHEREAS, the current US Supreme Court is on a path of to eliminate any restrictions on corporate campaign contributions, and;

 

WHEREAS, municipalities and citizens across the nation are joining with the Campaign to Legalize Democracy to call for an Amendment to the US Constitution to Abolish Corporate Personhood;

 

THEREFORE, be it resolved that the City of Fort Bragg, California, hereby calls on our legislators to call for an Amendment to the US Constitution to Abolish Corporate Personhood and return our democracy, our elections, and our communities back to America’s human persons and to thus reclaim our sovereign right to self-governance."

Suggestions to raise government revenues

From the founding of our nation up until the establishment of income tax, our country supported itself primarily with tariffs. The real death blow to our national income from tariffs came with NAFTA, CAFTA, FTAA, et al.

Now that the flawed theory of unregulated markets has been shown to be a ma... more

From the founding of our nation up until the establishment of income tax, our country supported itself primarily with tariffs. The real death blow to our national income from tariffs came with NAFTA, CAFTA, FTAA, et al.

Now that the flawed theory of unregulated markets has been shown to be a major contributing aspect of our economic failure, it seems logical that we should reinstitute some tariffs. However, this time we should take advantage of the technology and index labor, health, environment and pension costs.

Here is how it would work: Specific jobs would be assigned a labor index. For example a production seamstress in India earns 10 cents an hour while a production seamstress in the U.S. earns $10 per hour. The import labor index factor into the U.S. could be something like -- 100. That way, the cost of labor would be equal in both countries. Similar index factors could be applied for health, environment and pension costs.

The end result would be a leveling of these variable costs between different countries and thus create no incentive or advantage for corportions to export manufacturing plants. At the same time, we should experience an increase of income from a reivieved tariff program.

Terry Sneller 1/17/11

Enjoying Tea at a Tea Party Meeting

Today I attended my first Tea Party meeting.  I didn't even know that there was a Tea Party in Ukiah Valley, but there certainly is.  I had heard that a social activist group met every 3rd Thursday at Jensen's truck stop restaurant.  Believing that all we activists need to stop being many little fractured groups but coalesce on the big issues in agreement, I set out to make advances toward coalition.  Much to my surprise and horror, I found myself at a Tea Party meeting. 

The first thing I encountered was a smiling Christian looking man welcoming me and handing me a sign in sheet.  The only other person in the room was a man with "Dirty Old Man" written on his cap.  I ordered my dinner, and decided to sit as far away from the dirty old man as possible.  They had glossy multi-color pamphlets calling themselves the "Ukiah Valley Patriots."  I consider myself a patriot because I am passionate about the Constitution.  I discovered that is one of the things we all had in common, a passion for the Constitution.  In fact, this week they started a weekly series of teaching the Constitution that was so well attended that they ran short of materials. 

I struck up a conversation with the first man, Duane, and asked about the history of this group.  They began about 10 months ago; their first action was to protest taxes.  I studiously asked what their issue was with taxes.  Do they want to eliminate them.  Duane said he can't talk for the Tea Party, but his personal belief is that there ought to be a flat tax, the same for everyone, and no loopholes.  As we chatted, more and more people filled the room.  I thoroughly agreed with Duane that the tax system is broken and a flat tax equal for everyone would be more fair.  Then I asked him about eliminating deductions for depreciation, mortgage interest, charity donations, etc., and I saw people looking at me like I had struck an irritating cord in them.  One man talked about corporate welfare and corporate loopholes, and I found I totally agreed with him. 

Another man stood up and talked about how home-schooled children go to public school and are turned into liberals there with notions like welfare, medicare for all, and free lunch.  He complained passionately that there was not a single Tea Party member in that assembly that was polluting the minds of our youth and turning them into liberals.  He later repeated his tale to the full group and added how we must shape the minds of our youth while they are still young. 

Considering that it was the eve of the 1-year anniversary of the anti-Constitutional Supreme Court decision called Citizen's United v. FEC, I went around asking people what they thought of that decision.  The only one who had ever heard of it was Ms. secretary, who declined to talk about it.  I think, by that point, she had already identified me as the enemy. 

Pretty soon, the room was packed.  I envied them because our little progressive group can barely get 5 people to attend.  The Democratic caucuses barely got 40 people to attend, and another 40 attended in Eureka, for a total of 88 Democratic voters in a 5 county region.  There were 41 people in this room, including myself.  On the whole, the majority were Caucasian.  I overheard people talking about their ancestors coming over on the Mayflower.  There was one Hispanic man who covered up his accent speaking a careful general American, but I heard the little inflections in his voice and pronunciation of certain consonants that revealed his roots.  There was one Hawaiian.  We pledged allegiance to the flag, and prayed to Jesus Christ to guide us in doing the right thing. 

I noted a fat, hardbound copy of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.  I had recently read the book to find out what all the conservative references were all about.  There was only one person in the room that had also read it, the secretary, who had the same name as me.  She said, "It is certainly a great book, isn't it?"  I replied that it was amazing.  I gazed around at the many blank faces in the room and realized that this was not a very literate crowd.  In fact, there were only 4 slim people in the room.  All the rest were obese.  Ms. secretary was one of the slim, literate ones. 

As they followed the agenda with the order of business, the key presenter was a man donating 100 conservative books up for grabs.  That's all he had to say.  So, in his place, a retired police chief got up and talked about listening to three days of Glenn Beck talking about George Soros.  He was inspired to Google George Soros and presented us with a 3-page summary of all of his connections.  He connected Soros with Goldman Sachs, which was a surprise.  I looked it up afterwards, and found that Soros had purchase up to 40% of Goldman Sachs in 2008, but dumped the stock later saying that the banking sector was insolvent.  After a good 10-minutes of badmouthing the EVIL George Soros, someone mentioned that he did all that totally out in the open!  The room was aghast!  I was also silently aghast that patriots that love free enterprise and the Constitution, would find it shocking that a philanthropic capitalist would operate in the open. 

After the former police chief mentioned Soros' history as a Jewish Nazi collaborator, he related a tale of a billionaire starting several investment and philanthropic organizations, as well as political action groups and think tanks.  Everyone was repeating how evil Soros is.  Then I asked the speaker if he had ever heard of the Koch brothers.  He hadn't.  Ms. secretary corrected my pronunciation of the name.  She obviously had heard of them.  I mentioned that, save the Nazi collaboration, all the rest sounded exactly like what the Koch brothers were doing, using their billions to open political action groups, investment groups, and think tanks.  Several people contested that there is nothing at all similar about Soros and the Koch's.  But Mr. former police chief later asked me to write down their name so he could look them up.  He thanked me for mentioning them.  With all the talk about Soros, some in the crowd mentioned the Committee on Unamerican Activies, and said that McCarthy was right and should have been allowed to continue his work.  A chill rose up my spine. 

Then they began talking about the Smart Meters that PG&E is planning to install on everyone's property.  They were incredulous that the hated liberals were actually on the same side as they were.  They proposed joining with the liberals on this issue.  Some people thought that was very humorous.  I shrunk down in my chair, because it was becoming very apparent that the liberals were their sworn enemies, and I could easily be considered a liberal.  One woman succinctlty summed up the whole issue for the Tea party: She's just tired of everyone telling her what to do.  I pondered this statement.  A whole political movement has been built up because people are tired of being told what to do.  It seemed ludicrously petty to me. 

Eventually, they asked for topics for future meetings.  I suggested two.  I suggested that they discuss the book Atlas Shrugged, which made everybody giggle.  Duane thought it was a good idea.  I also suggested that they hammer out an ideal model of what they would want the good government to look like.  Ms. secretary sneered that we already have that; its called the Constitution!  I contended that the government currently in place believes that they are abiding by the Constitution.  And that the Supreme Court justices that passed the Citizen's United decision believed that they were providing a correct interpretation of the Constitution.  Ms. secretary replied that the Supreme Court has nothing to do with the Constitution.  I tried to explain to her that it is the purview of the Supreme Court to interpret the gray areas of the Constitution.  I added for example that Ayn Rand said our founding fathers wrote Capitalism into the Constitution, but I can't find that reference.  I only see rights to freedom of speech, the pursuit of happiness, and ownership of land.  Ms. secretary exclaimed that those ARE capitalism; they just didn't have that word at the time.  My model idea fell on deaf ears.  The group that equates ownership of land with Capitalism is sure that they have the only right interpretation of the Constitution as opposed to liberals, socialists, Democrats, the Supreme Court, and all the current elected officials. 

Not everyone in the room were as adamant as Ms. secretary.  Those who felt their privacy invaded by Smart Meters and defended the right of free enterprise to lay off whatever workers whenever they want, move factories offshore whenever, and to pollute the air, water, and soil freely in the name of profit, might be receptive to the idea that pollution which involuntarily ends up in our bodies is another kind of invasion of privacy. 

I haven't decided if I will ever go back again.  We were in accord on many issues.  I wondered where they got all the money for the slick brochures and T-shirt/sweatshirt sales, and all the books on the Constitution.  I suspected that Ms. secretary knew their group had been funded by the Koch brothers, and the others didn't.  Several people said my presence made this one of the liveliest meetings yet.  I enjoy lively meetings and debate with folks who have different beliefs than mine.  We'll see....

In my goal to replace the current government with one more responsive to the Common Good, and in my notion to create a massive coalition of disparate groups in order to non-violently accomplish this goal, I wonder if it will be important for me to continue to attend their Tea Party meetings.  I might plant seeds of Peace in the more moderate Tea Party participants which will bear fruit in the future. 

A liberal Dose of Reality by John Cory

A Liberal Dose of Reality

By John Cory, Reader Supported News

16 January 11

Reader Supported News | Perspective

"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds."- Samuel Adams

o far there is no direct factual connection between the violence in Tucson and the toxic GOP and its subsidiary Tea Party screaming mobs, or the despicable daily spewing of hate-radio or the crazy chalkboard diagrams of the coming end times.

The false equivalency by the right wing and corporate media that the left does it too is merely a deflection intended to distract and shift focus away from them and their tactics. You can't connect the dots, they say.

A drop of ink on porous paper slowly seeps across the sheet. Multiple drops in multiple locations eventually bleed together without any external help. No one has to connect the dots; they connect themselves.

Thirty years ago Ronald Reagan said, "... government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem."

Plop.

Over the next three decades, vilification of government became a self-replicating meme. Big government fed the cash-driven paranoia machines. Politics got religion with the Moral Majority, which was neither, and Jerry Falwell made a devilish new BFF in Ronald Reagan. The Christian Right was born.

Plop. Plop.

Bogus welfare queens were created from thin air. The dismantling of Unions and the Fairness Doctrine turned news into a product for the corporations, who insisted that they owned the airwaves, not the public. The public good was tossed aside in favor of free-market profiteering without protective regulation.

Money is free speech and some of us have more freedom than others.

Plop. Plop. Plop.

With all this madness came Iran-Contra, the Savings and Loan crisis, HUD grant-fixing scandal, the Lobbyist scandals, EPA scandals and more. An estimated 130 Reagan officials were indicted and/or convicted or investigated for misconduct and/or criminal violations. But Reagan was the best president ever says the GOP.

Big government is bad. Small government, small enough to fit in a President's zipper is good. God be praised.

Boom.

The Great Microphone of Anti-Democracy was created and funded under Reagan and allowed to grow and smear at will over the following decades.

Politics became reality television. The profits of fear made millionaires of the new hate-media puppets, supported extremist think tanks and generated a publishing industry dedicated to the propaganda of self-appointed "real" America; all in the name of the corporate owners of America.

And where has our liberal progressive movement been?

Pointing out their victimhood at the hands of the GOP and how the GOP is mean. Ignoring the elimination of investigative journalism. Scrambling for consultants and pundits to appear on the TV to provide "balance" while agreeing that both sides do it. Gently promoting "objective" media in a world rewarding biased punditry and outright lies.

Woe, is us! It is so unfair. Whatever can we do?

We need to get off our ass and quit pretending the bastardization of corporate media is something new, or that the hateful politics of the right wing cannot be defeated. We need to face reality and stop looking to billionaires and millionaires to fund us or rent us a megaphone to speak to the people.

We also need to disabuse ourselves of the illusion that the Democrats are on our side, or that they represent liberals and progressives let alone the concept that they represent everyday citizens. Modern Democrats are Mugwumps straddling the fence between self-enriching celebrity and GOP corporate compromise.

All of this is obviously more complicated than my simplistic presentation. But I'm a simple guy that believes in the KISS principle. Keep It Simple, Stupid.

And if we think MSBC is the anti-Fox or that it is the liberal platform needed today, then we are just dumb. Snark and shouting and satirical lists are not news reporting or analysis, just tribal entertainment for the converted and like-minded.

No, we need to walk our talk. The other side will call us names no matter what we do, so let us embrace their hatred, as FDR said. Let us be proud radicals and fierce promoters of the common good.

Unions and organizations like the NAACP and La Razza have money that could be used to invest in a non-profit internet/newspaper/broadcast network instead of being spent on lobbying politicians.

Think of it, our own news outlet that conducts investigative reporting and covers real issues. Public subscriptions for print editions and sales of apps for iPad and other devices would provide support money too. Media of, by, and for the people!

Think of putting Robert Parry, Chris Hedges, Sy Hersh, Amy Goodman, Laura Flanders, Glen Greenwald and so many other wonderful voices together in one powerful force of messaging.

We pick a half dozen or so prime issues to promote - issues that overlap compatible areas so as to serve multi-functional roles. Here's a short list off the top of my head:

1. End the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. War creates graves, not jobs.
   
2. Universal Healthcare - explain why the US spends $7500 per person on healthcare while most other countries spend $3500. Is it American exceptionalism, or just plain greed?
   
3. Promote government spending on infrastructure like roads, parks, schools and bridges and playgrounds. Immigrants can earn a living and progress toward citizenship by repairing and building infrastructure and paying taxes including Social Security taxes. Jobs, immigration and saving Social Security all rolled into one.
   
4. Taxes - progressive and enforceable on all persons including corporate persons. Taxes are not evil or onerous, they are the investment in America that sustains all of us.
   
5. Financial Reform regulation to protect the people. To paraphrase George Carlin, if we're concerned about street crime - that means Wall Street too.
   
6. Labor must be protected. The right to a living wage. The right to collective bargaining to protect the powerless from the powerful. Labor is not a product - it is not enslavement for corporate enrichment.
   
7. Bring back the Draft with some modifications that expand the age groups, limit exceptions, and include private contractors being converted to active duty and subject to military pay scales. Government contracts must be severely restricted. To profit from death and bombs cannot be a government function. Conservatives should love this because it is patriotic and confirms their mantra that government does not create any jobs. Right?
   
8. Support Marriage Equality. "If you're against Gay marriage - don't marry one!" (I saw that on a button.)

Impossible? Why?

In an interview on Democracy Now! Slavoj Zizek pointed out, "Did you notice how strange the word 'impossible' functions today? When you talk about private pleasures and technology, everything is possible. But the moment you go to social changes ... practically everything that disturbs the market is impossible ... we will live forever ... whatever you want ... we will travel to the moon - that's all possible. But a small social change of more healthcare is not possible."

Corporations don't see "impossible." Conservatives did not see "impossible." Fox News and talk-radio were not built in a day, but over years.

If we don't unite and combine our forces, progressives and liberals will drown in the coming corporate GOP takeover of democracy.

In the Pennsylvania coal strikes of 1902, miners wanted to cut their work week from 7 to 6 days and cut their work day from 10-12 hours a day to 9 hours a day and raise wages.  George Baer, president of Reading Railroad, spoke for the owners in what became known as the "divine right" letter when he wrote: "... the rights and interests of the laboring man will be protected and cared for - not by the labor agitators, but by the Christian men to whom God in His infinite wisdom has given the control of the property interests of the country."

When the letter became public, support shifted to the miners as the public saw what was headed their way. An informed citizenry is the greatest fear of every corporate driven government.

It took progressives years and years to bring change and enlightenment to workers and politicians alike. People like Ida Tarbell, Eugene Debs, Emma Goldman, Sinclair Lewis, W.E.B. DuBois and so many others all fought and organized and published their cause and the cause of the everyman and the poor and the sick. And it worked; not always in big events, but in small continuous determined steps.

To quote Edward R. Murrow: "We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it, and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late."

An ink drop on porous paper slowly seeps across the sheet. Add another and then another, until at last they bleed together to forge their own image and shape.

"Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts." - Edward R. Murrow

-PEACE-