Category Archives: Politics

Oh, Yeah, Can You See

September 28, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Fall Falling Leaves Moon

The temperature, the political temperature, of Colorado can be taken in the gubernatorial race between Democrat John Hickenlooper and conservative Republican Bob Beauprez, scrambling over who will control fracking in western Colorado counties, but my favorite is Jefferson County high school students protesting against a conservative school board.

Here’s a couple of paragraphs from the Denver Post that show what the students are mad about. Denver Post, 9/25/2014

“The curriculum proposal, crafted by board member Julie Williams, calls for a nine-member panel to “review curricular choices for conformity to JeffCo academic standards, accuracy and omissions,” and present information accurately and objectively.

Williams’ proposal calls for instructional material presenting “positive aspects” of U.S. heritage that “promote citizenship, patriotism, essentials and benefits of the free enterprise system, respect for authority and respect for individual rights.”

Materials should not, it says, “encourage or condone civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law.””

Interesting definition of accuracy and objectivity.

Jefferson County is a western suburban county that runs from near Boulder in the north through western, affluent suburbs of Denver to an area not far north of Colorado Springs.

“Jefferson County’s electorate is Colorado in miniature, with roughly equal parts registered Democrats, Republicans and unaffiliated voters. The geography ranges from close-in suburbs with many students poor enough to qualify for discounted lunches to wealthier areas and mountain towns. Jefferson County is more than 90 percent white but has a growing Hispanic population.” Denver Post, 9/28/2014

I love it that these student have taken the essence of U.S. outsider politics like civil disorder and social strife, utilizing the mildest of these strategies, peaceful protest, and flung it back in the face of a school board attempting to rewrite history. My kinda people.

Jefferson County borders both Clear Creek County and Boulder County. We’ll almost surely land in one of those or even Jefferson County itself. I’ll unpack ready to help.

Minnesota, Politics, Sierra Club

When did this happen?

September 26, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Fall Falling Leaves Moon

Cultural immersion today at Spyhouse Coffee at the intersection of Broadway and Central in Minneapolis. I suggested it for a meeting because it was a coffee house. Quiet, right? Farthest thing from. Every table and most of the nooks and crannies were filled with twenty and thirty somethings, laptops up, heads over keyboards or deep in conversation with someone, hands gripping smartphones. Loud rock played from the timbered rafters. The password code for today, jackiebrown, scrawled on a chalkboard by the register.

This was today, Friday, at 11:00 a.m. When Michelle came in, I was a bit sheepish, “I didn’t realize this place was so. Popular.” She laughed. “It’s fine.” And it was. We got down to work. And, guess what. Michelle had her laptop open and we gazed at its screen. Occasionally I would check some material on my cell phone.

Full disclosure. I didn’t bring my laptop only because I couldn’t remember the password. Which I could reset it said. But only if I was on the internet. Which was where? Behind my password. Which I couldn’t remember. Ouroboros.

Commentary on the news, Politics, Sierra Club, US History

Love it or leave it

September 22, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa College Moon

Cool nights. I’m enjoying these. A great advantage of mountain living is that most nights are cool nights. Looking forward to that. Also, realized that after we move Coming Down the Mountain will take on a new meaning in our life.

The push this week is getting things ready to make efficient use of the SortTossPack folks. A major emphasis will be sorting art, objet d’arts, souvenirs, all that stuff that hangs around because it got set down long ago and never moved. This is the love it or leave it sort.

Which reminds me of a conversation with Tom Crane at the War Memorial during the Woolly Meeting last week. Pondering the weirdness around patriotism, the notion that the only patriots were veterans and flag wavers. I said, yes, and recalled the 60’s when the love it or leave it bumper stickers pretended to sort out the patriotic, worthy of citizenship folks from those of us with long hair and in opposition to the Vietnam War.

Love of country does not equate to love of government and pride in all its decisions. Nor does it equate to love of the economic system that sorts folks into the 1% and the 99%. Love of country has many roots and more than one flower.

With a son in the military I appreciate the dedication and sacrifice those who serve in the armed forces make, even in peace time. That some in the country want to remember and honor those who serve seems like a natural impulse to me. Most nations have needed warriors over the millennia and they are often the difference between freedom and servitude.

But, the warriors in our country serve at the discretion and for the policies of our elected officials. This means that the work they do passes through the sausage works of politics before it comes to marching orders. Not all wars (most wars?) are just. Thus, it is not reasonable to conflate opposition to war, or to a particular war, with opposition to the military per se.

The love I feel for my nation has three main sources: the people as a collective, the nobility of our experiment and the vast diversity of the land itself. Though we become separated by distance, by values, by history, by future potential each person in our nation is my fellow citizen, a person whose rights and responsibilities I respect.

This great experiment, whether a people with roots in other lands can flourish as one country, is a noble one because it represents in microcosm the world. The fact that our history has many regional, ethnic, even religious conflicts does not take away from the experiment, rather it underwrites it. Can we live with and grow together in spite of the depth of our differences? That a nation can persist, can become great under such circumstances is hopeful.

Finally, this land that is our land. The oceans and their shores. The rivers and lakes. Old mountains like the Appalachians and young vibrant mountains like the Rockies. Vast areas of level fertile soil in a humid climate. Even vaster areas of thin, rocky soil in arid climates. The forests and the wildlife, the farms and the ranches. The wild places and the domesticated. It is a wonder and a full lifetime, even two full lifetimes would not be enough to explore it.

It is this combination of people, political purpose and powerful geography that makes me love where I was born and where I will die. The good old U.S.A.

Politics

Arrested for Organizing

September 19, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa College Moon

Door-knocking is a rite of passage for many activists, first encountered often in a political campaign or in service of a group focused on some sort of organizing. Neighborhoods Organizing for Change (N.O.C.) is the latter, in this instance engaged in an organizing drive in North Minneapolis. It’s lead organizer and most of its door-knockers are people of color, not a surprise given the demographics of the North Side.

Lead organizer Wintana Melekin was at the American Votes table this morning representing N.O.C. If you recall, I’m there representing the Sierra Club. Wintana had some time on the agenda to report on an incident that happened to one of her organizers, then, in a cascade, to a crowd of onlookers and finally herself.

The organizer, a young man, was gathering signatures for a petition at a Cubs Food Store when a policeman confronted and arrested him. (Star-Tribune article) When a crowd gathered, the policeman threatened to shoot them. When Wintana showed up (having been called), to ask what was going on, she was arrested, too.

Melekin’s presentation this morning was brief, thoughtful and important. We must, she said, change the narrative about police interactions with black persons. Even more important we must ensure the right of people of all colors to enact their democratic rights to assemble and represent themselves in the political process. We know what resistance to this kind of work looks like: Lester Maddox and his ax; George Wallace at the Alabama Statehouse; Bull Connor and his firehoses.

Yet we are not talking about the deep south, but the far north. We are talking about this very white state and its racist assumptions. (The policeman, Tyrone Barze, Jr., is black.) Institutional white racism does not need white actors to enforce its views.

Politics

Next Time

September 19, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa College Moon

As a man with Celtic blood in my veins, I’m saddened by the vote in Scotland, but not surprised. Safety is a powerful motivator, coming in second in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Only the Hullian needs: air, food, warmth are more basic.

It would take a strong commitment to override the concerns of bankers and businesses, though a return of Celtic pride, perhaps, with the Celtic tiger, Ireland, even a return to Celtic prominence, could have been such motivator. But it was not to be this time.

I’m proud of the 44% that put their sense of national history and cultural heritage in the forefront of their minds. In a world gone risk averse it takes courage to try something really different. The idea of an independent Scotland had been a wee bairn, now it’s grown into young adulthood. Perhaps next time such a vote happens it will have reached maturity.

Politics

Obama a Good President

September 18, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa College Moon

Another America Votes meeting tomorrow. I can imagine gnashing of teeth since the political winds look like they’re blowing in the Republican direction. A mid-term election with light turn-out and gerrymandered districts in the House mean a continued Republican stranglehold on the House of Representatives and a possible pick-up of a majority in the Senate.

I agree with those who have analyzed Obama as a much better than average president, in spite of his low approval ratings. Why? Because he’s had fractious Republican majorities in the house since 2010 and a weakened Democratic majority in the Senate. In spite of those he’s passed the first major reform of our healthcare system, held to a principled foreign policy that tries to avoid entanglements abroad (whether this is wise or not is another question.), pulled troops out of both Iraq and Afghanistan, overseen the recovery from a banker driven financial catastrophe and finally begun to push for meaningful climate change action.

Did I mention that he’s the first black president and has had racist nutjobs on his trail the entire time?

Politics is about what’s possible, not about what’s ideal. In the arena of the possible Obama has shown remarkable ability to get things done.

Great Work, Memories, Minnesota, Politics, Third Phase

A Minor Leftie Memoir

September 15, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa College Moon

Groveland UU has asked me to speak on December 14th. Their theme for the year is social justice. They wanted me to talk about restorative justice, a topic about which I know little. Instead I suggested this:

Social Justice: Reflections Looking back at work for affordable housing, neighborhood organizing and neighborhood economic development, against corporate control of neighborhoods, organizing for jobs, for equity in philanthropy, for a sustainable human presence on the earth, for undocumented immigrants, for progressive politicians like Wellstone, Karen Clark and Peter McLaughlin, against the Vietnam War, for women’s rights, against the draft.

Looking forward at work necessary to retain and expand gains made.

When looking at it again, I realized it had the character of a summing up about my political work over the years, mostly in Minnesota. Sort of a minor leftie memoir, but not for the purpose of the memories, or not mostly for them, but mostly for teasing out the themes, the underlying rationales, the whys. What worked, what didn’t. What might work now, what might not.

This topic came to me because I realized it would be my last time at Groveland, with whom I’ve shared a two decade plus relationship and possibly my last time speaking in Minnesota, maybe ever. I don’t, at least right now, intend to find a religious community in Colorado since such institutions no longer interest me.

There is a modest bolus of energy in reviewing a body of political work that arose mostly in response to individual issues and moments of time, that never followed a straight path and that, like most serious political work, had some successes and many failures.

Where I wondered, did all this energy and effort come from? It wasn’t a good career move, yet the political path was the one I followed anyhow, pushing away more logical trajectories. There was, of course, my father’s role as a newspaper editor and his often weekly airing of his Rooseveltian liberal opinions, basically pro-social welfare and anti-communist, pro strong defense. That may have shaped my willingness to be seen publicly as a representative of unpopular points of view.

Also important was the nature of my hometown’s work force, the parents of my friends. With few exceptions, my parents being among those exceptions, my friend’s parents were either factory workers or stay-at-home moms. It was the 1950’s after all. As factory workers, a very high percentage worked for General Motors, others often in suppliers to the auto industry or other vehicle related manufacturers like Allison-Chalmers. They were members of the UAW.

These folks, the majority by far from the hills of West Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas and other southern states, usually had not finished high school, but had jobs in General Motors, jobs that, thanks to the UAW, had health care, pensions, regular vacations, good wages and decent working conditions. As a result, Alexandria, Indiana hummed. When the auto industry went into decline and the UAW with it, Alexandria crashed into a ghost town.

A third factor was my mother’s unwavering compassion all people, no matter their condition in life or the color of their skin. Her example shaped me profoundly in that way.

The final ingredient came when the U.S. went full force into Vietnam. I started college in 1965 and would be in higher education for the duration of the war. The struggle against the war radicalized many students and I was one of them.

Cinema and Television, Humanities, Politics

Conclusion? Yes. Rationale? No.

September 12, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa College Moon

A.O. Scott’s article, The Death of Adulthood in America, has this claim at its heart:

“In suggesting that patriarchy is dead, I am not claiming that sexism is finished, that men are obsolete or that the triumph of feminism is at hand…In the world of politics, work and family, misogyny is a stubborn fact of life. But in the universe of thoughts and words, there is more conviction and intelligence in the critique of male privilege than in its defense, which tends to be panicky and halfhearted when it is not obtuse and obnoxious. The supremacy of men can no longer be taken as a reflection of natural order or settled custom.”

Woolly Mammoths take note. His claim rings true to me and I am happy that it does. Those who find feminism an important part of their political and personal life will, too. Scott’s argument highlights the reason intelligent conservatives have concern about the Republican future. It is a party controlled by and serving mainly the interests of elite white men.

While I appreciate and concur with Scott’s conclusion, his analysis seems shaky to me. As the film critic for the NYT, he naturally sees an arc in cinema and television that expresses this change through popular media. You can read his article for the particulars of his claim, but the essence is that film and television used to reflect patriarchal assumptions about family, career and the meaning of life; but, now, such television programs as Mad Men, the Sopranos and Breaking Bad reveal the tenuous and disintegrating hold maleness has in our culture. Instead of valiant heroes we have flawed men in morally compromised, even morally bankrupt roles.

So far he’s making sense. But he then tries to track back through American literature a quasi-homo erotic thread: Ishmael and Quee-Queg, Huck Find and Jim, Natty Bumpo and Chingachgook and make the case that Americans have generally written young adult novels rather than the more mature marriage and courtship work prevalent in European writers. This argument he gets from the famous literary critic Leslie Fielder.

Scott quotes Fielder:

“The typical male protagonist of our fiction has been a man on the run, harried into the forest and out to sea, down the river or into combat — anywhere to avoid ‘civilization,’ which is to say the confrontation of a man and woman which leads to the fall to sex, marriage and responsibility. One of the factors that determine theme and form in our great books is this strategy of evasion, this retreat to nature and childhood which makes our literature (and life!) so charmingly and infuriatingly ‘boyish.’ ”

The works of Dreiser, Lewis, Anderson and Fitzgerald, to mention four all have works counter to this conclusion. Dreiser’s American Tragedy, The Financier and its trilogy of desire and Sister Carrie each one cut against this argument’s grain. Lewis’s Babbit and Arrowsmith do so as well. Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio and Fitzgerald’s Gatsby are novels of American civilization, not “man on the run” fiction. Willa Cather, too. Think of Death Comes for the Archbishop or My Antonia.

Too, Scott posits a run of puerile comedies, Judd Apatow and Adam Sandler’s work for example, as consistent with this man on the run ethos though admittedly devolved. I don’t have his grasp of third millennium cinema, so I don’t know what to cite as counter evidence, perhaps some of you readers do, but my sense is that the Apatow/Sandler axis surely represents the low end of the pool.

My point here is that American culture is not puerile, not young adult fiction, but is a distinctive and thoughtful attempt to understand who we are as a people and how sex roles have worked and have changed and are changing. I’m not arguing against Scott’s conclusion, but rather in favor of what seems to me to be his intuition, not his rationale.

Politics, US History

That Other Brutal Atrocity

September 4, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa College Moon

On the other brutal atrocity. America’s death row. The release of the two brothers in North Carolina, after 30 years on death row, only adds to the growing list of miscarriages discovered before the fact of execution: 146 since 1973. Death Penalty Information Project. The same source of information found ten cases in the same time period where there were grave doubts about the executed person’s guilt.

While the barbarity of severing a living man’s head with a hunting knife is self-evident, frying someone on an electric chair, poisoning them with cyanide, hanging them so their neck breaks, shooting them with rifles or that mockery of medical procedures, lethal injection on a Naugahyde cross is on the same continuum, not a “more humane” method, just a different method.

It’s important to see the log in our own eye as well as the log in that of ISIS. We do not come to them with clean hands or pure hearts. We too are compromised and fall short of the glory that could be the human race. This is not to point to a particular solution for either one, but simply to call out the truth.

Music, Politics

Music for Labor Day

August 29, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa College Moon

Well, now I know if anybody comes and tries to steal our front porch, Gertie will let us know. Dave Scott is here today doing outside maintenance aimed at getting the best price out of our house. He’s replacing the front porch, painting and spiffing it up generally. While he uses saws and drills, Gertie barks. Once in a while she’ll run to the door and growl. This means she’s running toward the danger she senses.

Most of the morning I packed maps, sorted file folders, got three more boxes of books packed. Two green, one red.

Still listening to outlaw country, thinking about it as a kind of working class male protest music. Take this job and shove it, by David Allen Cole is an example. The figure in the song fantasizes about losing his wife and going to his boss with the news. He’d tell the boss, he says, that’d he lost the reason he was working so the boss can take this job and shove it. Another song echoes a t-shirt I saw yesterday at the fair, Protect My Civil Rights, Gun Owners Alliance. In this the song the man flies two flags on his property: the red white and blue and the rattle snake with “Don’t Tread on Me.” Sums up his world, he says.

Those of us welcomed into the world of white male middle and upper middle class privilege at birth, especially those of us medicare card in the wallet types, have trouble appreciating the powerlessness experienced by those who struggle first to get a minimum wage job, then keep it. Success often means long hours in hot or dusty working conditions with little control over bathroom breaks, lunch times. Too, the work is repetitive and mind-killing. It’s no wonder that those trapped in such a work world often listen to outlaw country.

You might wonder, I suppose, why I like it. I gravitate toward those willing to stand up to the situation they find themselves in. It’s why I’ve done a lot of labor union politics over the years and why I still believe in the labor movement. Whenever the corporation has the capital and the power, the person working for wages (not talking here about white collar workers like doctors, lawyers, engineers, computer programmers, managers-though there are situations, doctors being a good one, where working conditions for even these highly educated folks are bad.) is at a distinct power disadvantage as long they remain unrepresented by a union.

Even in a time when unions are in decline, their logic has never been stronger. Just witness the home-care health workers vote this week here in Minnesota. As a potential user of their services in the future, I want these folks well-paid and well-trained. That will only happen with a union.

So, happy labor day weekend.